Adorno & the Culture Industry

In How to Look at TV (1954), Adorno suggested that the effect of television cannot be expressed in terms of 'success or failure, likes or dislikes, approval or disapproval'. He suggested that understanding the effect of television is not simply trough visual perception but personal to a subconscious level.

The example I want to address here is animation on television such as Simpsons, the simple lines and readable plots provides the audience perceptions in a straightforward way rather than unengaging animation with lack of general understanding. Which leads to where Adorno states that we are 'concerned with the nature of present-day television and its imagery' rather than 'the effectiveness of particular show'.

Study Task 5 - Writing an Introduction

Other than the narrative, the main body of an animation is the character, scenes are elements surrounding the character, where it is placed by the animator, socially and historically, the extras as a part of the society environment as well, everything varies along the timeline excepting the character on the whole. Among the three sections, pre-production, production and post- production, design of the layout of the scenes, usually happens during the production part. During production, role of the characters and the narrative of the story determines the blueprint of the scenes, its main role is to build atmosphere guiding the audience into the narrative, and to clarify the relationship between space and time within a film. It is constantly being considered when determine the good or bad of an animation, stands a vital position in conveying message to the audience. In additional, environments provides the stage and space for the characters to act in, a well-designed set of scenes can improve the animation on artistic aspect, enhanced the theme and has great impact on the style of the animation. Barry Purves referred in the Fundamentals of Animation, interpreted animation as an art of ‘metaphor’ for role-play showing different perspectives and ideas about the culture we live in, and elements within the animation are integrated in a coherent way (2006, p33). The point that environments and characters illuminate and support one another has been made in the statement. Apparently, the design of scenes is an art form, but serves the purpose of the animation in the first place, not its own, therefore not an individual art piece that ignores the rationality of the script. In my opinions, it occupies an important position of the visual experience given to the audiences, constitute the main visual content and the reflection of the style of the animation, imperceptible influenced on perception of re-narrated metaphor. Therefore I intend to discuss the position and visual influence of scene designs in an animation, supporting the argument with key statements and sources. To my subject discipline, effective scene designs reinforce the impact of an animation visually and emphasis the character that brings the animation to a higher level, therefore discuss on the topic offers either a possibility of a clearer understanding of application of scenes as an animator or the ability to comprehend and interpret of films.

Study Task 4 - Choosing a Research Question

Research question: 

What is the role of animation scene design in animation aesthetically?

What is there to study (ontology)? 

There are a number of existing books and articles written by either animators, film directors or writers.

How can we know about it (epistemology)? 

I will include quotations of each forms to support the point in the essay, to inform

How do we study it (methodology)?

I will be analysing texts, animations.

Resources available:

Fraser, M. (2011) Setting the scene: the art and evolution of animation layout, San Francisco: Chronicle Books

Wells, P. (2006) The Fundamentals of Animation, AVA Publishing
Bacher, H. (2012) Dream Worlds, Independence: CRC Press
Selby, A. (2009) Animation in Process, London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.
Ghertner, E. (2012) Layout and Composition for animation, (n.d.)

Animation available:

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron 2002, film, DreamWorks Animation, America.

The Lion King 1994, film, Walt Disney Pictures, America.

IMDb. 2006. Paprika [online]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0851578/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Study Task 1

Laura Mulvey has stated that gender imbalance within films and animations. She is a feminist film maker who is best known for the essay she published in 1975 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', it suggested that 'women displayed as sexual object is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle', a crucial definition influenced by the women's right movement, addressing that male protagonist provides the sense of authority and the females provide the 'erotic look'. J Storey has referenced to Mulvey's essay of female position in 'Cultural Theory and Popular Culture', indeed support one another by suggesting the women in film are 'to-be-looked-at-ness', the term Mulvey used in her article.

End of Module Evaluation

The context of practice module is one of the longest module throughout the year, looking back on what I have achieved and file the work together help me to comment on the process that I have went though and clarified what I have not done well enough or missed out.

Started with blogging on the context of practice blog, I summed up the lecture notes as I took notes on the booklet and transferred onto the computer in order to post then on the blog. Procrastination sometimes affected as the note was not typed up onto computer on time, therefore some loose sheets had been lost. In that case I would refer back to the power point used during the lecture and seminar sessions to recall what I have missed. The biggest difficulty I experienced was the essay, it is the first time to write essay in a formal standard with Harvard reference. The ability of summing up ideas and sort them by logical ways is what I need to improve. I have tried to do mind map for the purpose of making the ideas clear, it did helped largely, but if I am going to write an essay, I would maintain the effective method I used and seek for other methods that suit me better. During the middle of the essay, I also struggled with finding the best way to organize the language in order to express what I want to express. I think it is caused by lack of reading of academic writing. However during the course of writing the essay, I feel that I have gained a great experience and practice of this level of writing skills.

The other part of the module is the practical part, which is the animation response. I started to think about the practical part which is the animated response to the topic I have chosen, I found that the definition of the title is still vague to me, though it is a broad title that allows a wide range of arguments, I intent to go near to an abstract animation. I generated all sorts of ideas that are totally different from each other. I struggled to make my mind on one of the idea, eventually I went for an abstract one where I feel I could include some interesting sorts of materials. Photoshop and After Effects are the two main pieces of software I used to create the animation. What I would do to improve if I can do it again is to refer to more similar kinds of animations before I actually starts to process mine.

Ultimately, a habit of recording information in order to absorb it afterwards, and essentially read more books to broaden horizon, when writing an essay can easily reminds up and refers to books or journals. Watch more animations to gain knowledge in all kinds of animations but not only one.

Lecture: Semiotics

Sign=signifier+signified

The relation between then is arbitory. The semiotic chain of meaning links: feeling, thoughts and emotions. To trace from sigh back to signifier+signified.

information source→transmitter→channel→receiver→destination

The noise source affects the channel, it change the communication and starts a new communication. The redundancy indicates the high predictability plus low information, which is universally agreed, shared meanings.Oppositely, entropy means low predictability and high information, which is unconventional.

A paradigms is a set of signs from which one is chosen.

Codes are signifying systems.

Animated Response: Development

A sheet of generation of ideas that the main charactor has been mass produced, and he finally found out he's just one of them. This idea has a relatively clearer storyline, however I decided to make the animation closer to an abstract film.

Lecture: Colour theory

Colours stands out of contrast of backgound, therefore it can be seen by human eyes. Contrast include not only the difference of the colours, but the "warm"  and "cold" of the colours as well. For example we indicates red as warm colour while orange is a less warm colour comparing to red, which differentiate orange from red.

Lecture: Intro of colour theory

The visible light are from the range of 700 to 400 nm, from red to purple. Human eyes detects colour with rods and cones, which are the receptor in our eyes. The rods detect shadow and lights, while the cones detect colours. 
There are three kinds of cones, where one detect red and orange, the other one detect green, and the remaining one detect blue and violet. Primary colour means the colours that can be detected straight forwards with the cones, while secondary lights are the lights that's needing more than one cone to combine in order to detect the colour. The chromatic value means the luminance. 

Study Task 2

At the very first part of the book, Storey clarified the way we define popular culture with the term ’culture’, where it is ’one of the two or three most complicated words in the English Language’, suggested by Raymond Williams, it is not only restricted to a word but a massive definition. Culture can be refer to ‘a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development’, yet it can represent a huge part of the culture part of a country. He also suggested that ‘culture’ can be interpreted as ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group’. This definition is suggested when speaking of the cultural development, analysing the evolvement through a period of time of people or groups of people. Furthermore it is not only restricted to a narrow range of cultural products but also literacy and religious for instance. Storey suggested that culture is ‘synonymous with that structuralists and post-structuralists’ where poetry novel, opera and fine art and these sorts of art usually defined as high culture. In conclusion, popular culture usually means to ‘mobilize the second and third meaning of the word ‘culture’’, that allow us to consider pop music, comics and soap opera (Storey, [2008], 2).

Source: https://drive.google.com/a/students.leeds-art.ac.uk/file/d/0B-4SIkiY5HDGejBPV0lRYk82YzQ/view

Lecture: The Design as Social Critic

In the late age of print, Gutenberg's printing press,1440, has started the mass produce of printed products, and it is was when it spread out.

The mass image culture:
New royal academy is the first art school, the ideas of fime art and rest of creative production been trained to make historical propaganda oil painting for money purpose of famous peopel from past.

Culture and popular culture:
urbanization of royal vreses working class, making of a working class of two different cultures, which are always in confix. People starts to produce political cultures and political threads. New sorts of urban culture of selling reproduction of paintings, and starts the reproduce of art. The reproduction has chosen the simple grey scaled, as it is easier to mass produce.
Hence at that time, mass culture is everything being standatd, and traditional authority of what's good and beautiful are rebuild.

Animated Response: Development

A scibble of one of the initial ideas of an abstract living life conbined by peacock and snake.