Module Evaluation

On the whole, I have found this year's context of Practice module very interesting and have enjoyed almost every aspect of it. The lectures has served a meaningful purpose in informing my work and I have found them useful in providing valuable insight into the creative practice and I very much look forward to them returning in second year. Applying what I learn in the lectures to the medium of animation with my studio practice was also a valuable skill to have. As somebody who enjoyed English Language at A-Level, Context of Practice has provided me with an outlet for my creative writing and writing the essay was an interesting and enjoyable experience.

I do however feel there is room for improvement in second year. I myself am guilty of putting Context of Practice on the back burner while I got on with other projects for most of the year. Also, I didn't really keep to my essay plan, mapped out at the beginning of the year as a part of one of the study tasks and I feel had I done that I wouldn't have struggled with structuring my essay like I ended up doing. Next year, for CoP, I will make an effort to better pace myself and ensure that all the work I do as a part of the seminar programme and study tasks informs the final product of my essay.

There are a few things I would change about my essay. Upon reflection, the structure is all over the place and I dedicated a bit too much of the essay to providing the context for postmodernism in the broader culture. I would also have wished to study more case studies and more independent animations differing from the mostly mainstream affair I ended up analysing for my essay. While I did meet the minimum requirements for the bibliography I do feel I should have referenced more academic sources overall. 

As for my animated response, I have mixed feelings. While I do feel it effectively communicates the content of my essay to some degree I could have spent more time on it. The final product here I feel is rushed and as a result the animation quality is not to the standard I would hope for. This is in no small part due to poor time management on my part, as I far too long on the pre-production part of my animation and ended up changing my entire idea numerous times. Originally I had something more ambitious planned for my animated response and pre-production went as far as the storyboards, but in practice the animation didn't work and I was forced to scrap it. Some of the ideas however did carry over to my finished product, such as character designs and the overall themes of the piece. My animated  response also deviated from my storyboard more than I would have hoped, as I had to cut corners in the animation in order to get it finished on time.

Overall, I feel my work has proved successful with room to improvement going into second year. I am satisfied with the quality of the essay itself, but feel that the animated response could have had more time spent on it.  

Context of Practice- Visual Response

The basis of my Animated response to accompany my CoP essay is to depict disillusionment with the modern world, specifically modern ways of living and social conventions in an age of social media. The way in which I chose to approach this was deliberately more obtuse than usual, opting to utilise suggestive imagery and symbolism in order to tackle the themes of Modernity and disillusionment.

Storyboard for my Final CoP Animation

The animation consists of a series of camera pans between a woman and her neighbour in what is supposed to be a modern apartment block. The idea is that this woman longs for human interaction, a point illustrated and symbolised by the flowers on the windowsill. I deliberately chose pink Camellia flowers as they symbolise 'longing' and are reflective of the main character's internal feelings. Externalising the internal is a technique I am very interested in exploring in my animations and the colour palette is also designed to reflect the depressed psychology of the main character.

Subjectivity is another technique I employ in order to communicate my message. My intention with this animation was to show a character's perception of the modern world, which is not necessarily accurate to how it is in reality. When the camera pans to the other window, this is supposed to be symbolic of the character's perception of what is going on next door. When the character leaves the scene we are brought back to a more objective view of the scene, where the window next door also has flowers in the window. What I am trying to say with this is the modern world, as symbolised by the setting in the case of this animation, skewers our perception of the truth, a point discussed in my essay on Postmodernity and that in actuality while we may feel lonely and isolated in the modern world, many others feel the same.

My animation is Postmodern because it seeks to deconstruct perceptions of modern life and expectations, as well as in its multiplicity of styles, especially the colour palette. The soundtrack, taken from the Spike Jonze film Her which deals with similar themes in a Postmodern way, dictates the rhythms of the editing in a way which draws attention to the artificiality of the animation in a way that is self aware. While I do wish I had more time on my animation I am overall satisfied with how I get my point across and feel it effectively commmunicates some of the points of my essay.

Context of Practice Lecture: Semiotics

'The myths which suffuse our lives are insidious precisely because they appear so natural.'

                                                                                                                                                 -Barthes, R

Semiotics is the science of studying codes, signs and signifiers. Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure describes it as a philosophical way of viewing the world based around structuralism. Saussure believed that there were deep underlying unconscious structures of culture and that the same way we unravel meaning in language by understanding written and spoken material, we can also unravel meaning in cultural practices if we take culture as operating like a language.  Saussure identifies Signifiers as sounds and images, while the signified is the mental concept said signifiers evoke.

Signs are based around socially agreed conventions. For example, we associate suits as items with connotations of prestige, following the cultural codes of conformity, whereas a more rebellious punk fashion style denotes anti-conformity. A code is a system of symbols and signifiers that embody meaning. They can encompass anything from fashion styles to the language of cinema. There is no logical relationship between the signifier and the signified. Their relationship is arbitrary. It is whatever the culture decides it is. There is no innate link between the signifier and the signified, this link is constructed by the culture.

In his book 'Mythologies' published in 1957, Barthes attempts to unpick and unravel underlying cultural codes. Barthes says that a 'myth' is the deep level of a crude connotative meaning that people forget has been encoded into a signifier in the culture. Semiotics is the attempt to decode cultural meaning and debunk myths.

Context of Practice Lecture: Colour Theory

White light is made up of a spectrum of colours. Spectral colour, is colour exhibited by a single wavelength of light within a visible spectrum. Every wavelength of light is perceived as a spectral colour in a continuous spectrum. Colours of similar or sufficiently close wavelengths are often indistinguishable to the human eye. Our perception of any colour is based on the eye receiving light that has been reflected from a surface or an object.

Colour is contextual. As white light is refracted it has different effects on the receptors in our eyes. The Rods, receptors that convey black and grey determine the luminance and tone, while the cones, which allow the brain to see colour, determine the hue. These factors, when combined together are how we perceive spectral light.  There are three types of cones, Type 1 which allows you to see Red and Orange, Type 2 which allow us to see Green and Blue, and Type 3, which allows us to see Violet. When a single cone is stimulated, the brain perceives the corresponding colour, though light must be present in order to perceive colour.

When it comes to Systematic Colour there are three aspects of colour to consider. The Physical, Physiological and Psychological. Perception of colour is physiological, meaning we can never be entirely sure everyone is seeing the same colours.

The Principles of Colour:

• Systematic understanding of colour dates back to Josef Albers (1888-1976) and Johannes Itten (1888-1967).
• Colours can be categorised as Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. 
• By mixing complimentary colours, we create neutral tones/tertiary colours. (Grays, Browns etc…) This is why complimentary colours are aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
• Because perception of spectral light is a physiological response, the eye can be fooled into seeing this wide spectrum of colour through stimulation of three primary colours, Red, Blue and Green, not Yellow.
• Yellow is a combination of Red and Green. The eye cannot differentiate between spectral yellow and some combinations of red and green.
• Theoretically, Primary colours cannot be created by combining colours.

Colour Modes:

Additive Colour System: 

• RGB (Red, Green, Blue)
• Used for screens, RGB Primaries CRT Monitors.

Subtractive Colour System: 

• CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black)
• CMY Primaries, Film Stock, Print Media

The Primaries for one colour system are the secondaries for the other and vice-versa. 

Dimensions of Colour: 

• Colour has dimension, a range of values.
• Chromatic Value (Colour) = Hue + Tone + Saturation

Today's lecture on colour theory should prove useful, especially in regards to my own work, as I typically opt to work in neutral tones or black and white for my animations as to emphasise line work. As somebody interested in the visual language and communicating things through visuals, today's lecture on colour has proved useful and will hopefully inform work produced in the future. I do wish we had gone more into the semiotics of colour, however I imagine the subject will be touched upon in the lecture on Semiotics coming up. 

Context of Practice Lecture: Postmodernism

Before talking about Modernism, one must first define modernism in order to properly define what it is to come after the modern. Born out of the aspirational and optimistic reaction to WWI, with a view to harnessing technology to improve people's lives, however in reality the ideology ends up doctrinaire, with almost blind obedience to rules above all. While Modernism is associated with innovation, individualism and progress, Postmodernism is about challenging these principles of modernism and the perceived austerity and pressure to conformity that comes with it's adoption. Postmodernism is characterised by exhaustion, pluralism, pessimism and disillusionment with the idea of absolute knowledge.

The term was first coined by German writer Rudolph Pannwitz, however wasn't widely popularised until the countercultural movements of the 1960s, born out of the perceived failure of Modernism. Postmodernity is very much a response to modernity, but does not necessarily have to come directly after it. Postmodernity rose to prominence with the countercultural movements of the 1960s, born out of a disillusionment with modern life in the west, and in America in particular, the Vietnam war. Postmodernity started off as a critique of the modernist International style but soon grew into it's own ideology. The only rule is there is no rules, so to speak. The Postmodern celebrates what may otherwise be deemed kitsch, perceived 'low culture' by the modernist elite.

Andy Warhol is probably one of the most widely recognised postmodern artists for his work with The Factory. His 1962 piece 'Marilyn Monroe Diptych' Warhol sought to expose the meaninglessness of art with an anti-auratic piece, a poorly printed pattern of Marilyn Monroe. It was anti-iconic, exposing the flaws of Technology and thus by extension the modern world, embodying a Postmodernist message.

For my essay I have chosen to answer the question 'To what extent can contemporary animation be described as Postmodern'. I really feel that this lecture, while a good introduction to the concept was overly broad in it's relation to animation, as is the nature of the term, whose meaning is still disputed to this day. I did pick up on a number of names of theorists on the subject, whom I will research further for my essay, such as JF Lyotard, who talks about 'The Postmodern Condition' and our rejection of 'totalising belief systems'.