Mieke Bal’s ‘Working with Concepts’
Discussion of Bal’s text and interdiscipliary methodology she proposes.
Elizabeth Price
Reflection on her lecture and interview
Category: Research Methods in a Cultural Context
What is a text? What is a discourse?
etc…
Roland Barthes, ‘Death of the Author’.
Summary of what I learnt:
– Different elements make up a meaning
–
Stuart Hall’s, ‘Race the Floating’.
My reflections from reading this…
My opinions on the Jimmy Choo man advert…
- At first glance i thought the man was influenced by the woman.
- Then i noticed he is carrying the woman which shows he has power. also he is holding her leg and keeping her up which indicates he has the control.
- The advert is not in black and white and because it is monochromatic it is given a cool touch. This reflects the coolness and slickness of the man.
- The composition shows importance, as everything is central on the page including the text.
- You can see the man looking at you but you can’t see the woman’s face. He is looking directly at the audience. All this information shows that the man is dominant in the advert.
MY NOTES AND RESEARCH
What is Media Archaeology?
Notes from Paprika J…
Post-structuralism
Hennessy Youngman’s link and my thoughts and reflections on what he has to say.
MY OWN EXTRA RESEARCH…
A perfomance piece of my own
Ducks in a pond, just living.
I walk thorguh the park everyday on my short journey to my fitness group or my longer adverture to work. Animals do not normlly phase me, I never had a love for them, but the elgegant creatures that I see in the calm eaters of the Greenwich Park pond on a beautiful golden morning are somewhat pleasant to sit and admire for a short while.
I record the moents I have with a measley click of my camera phnoe capturing images of them splashing around freely. It is so different how I arrived there to relieve my stress, wheaeas they seem to be constantly living without a single care in the world.
Admiring the birds and their beauty makes me feel relaxed. They swim peacefully. Their chirps fill the air with sweet musical notes and these sounds stay with me throughout the rest of my day gving me memories that make me feel happy and chilled.
The atmoshpere is quite quiet apart from their chirping voices gving me a sense of space, making it eaiser to breathe (totally different from the cooped up third floor flat that I came out from).
Then the birds surprise me. They start flapping around quite dangerously splashing large amounts of water all over the place. This is when the other passers by seem to stop for a bit of a better glance. The ducks have livened up now and created a curious audience for thmeselves. The dogs that are with their morning walkers begin to bark. I’m not sure if the hounds are intrgiued bythe ducks in the water, or bothered by them. Most probably the latter.
So as the ducks play around more, the soothing ambience is completely gone. A few young children come along. They head to the barriers between themselves and the birds hoping to meet them and join in the fun! The connections between nature are now appreciable, and there is a realtionship forming between the animals, the humans and the environment in which they are engagng. It is now less relaxing but more amazing to spectate.
I dont have that long to sit and observe, although I wish I did. So the memories are recorded as i snap, snap, snap away on my mobile phone. The children’s attentions turn to me now, as they are aware more of my phone clicking than the natural events around me that were holding their attention before.
So with the morning’s memories in the palm of my hand, it is time for me to turn around and leave the cheery performance behind. I casually walk off smiling, preapred immensely for the day ahead.
Notes and refelctions on readings
Approaches, Presence in Absentia, Dionysus in ’69.
MY OWN NOTES AND RESEARCH…
Researching a little about AI
So this is a toilet!
Nowadays toilets are made from china clay, whereas i believe this particualr toilet was made from pressed clay, in the same way that tiles were made. This is why it has an off-white colour.
We are not sure when this artifact was produced but by looking at its features , it doesn’t have two holes at the back meaning it didnt have a seat or a cover connected. From this we can tell it was produced somewhere between 1895 and 1905. The toilet was found in a back garden and this was the usual location for toilets at this period in time.
The only text on this object tells you what it was called, ‘The Earl Washdown’. However it is beautifully printed with a blue flowery design which is unusual for a toilet.
I thought it was a good artifact to choose as it connects with the Ugly theme we spoke about last week and how something ugly can be changed into something much prettier.
The toilet has been cleaned but from digitalised versions of how it looked when it was found, it was cracked and very dirty.
So toilets are connected to sewers and we live by the river thames where sewage is a big problem. The Royal Commision reported that untreated sewage should no longer be pumped into the Thames. In the future solid waste would be moved into the North Sea by sludgeboats which transported this sewage.
Now in progress is the Thames Tideway tunnel, a tunnel to control or intercept sewage which currently discharges into the Thames via 34 sewage overflows. This tunnel will ensure the river is kept clean and healthy for future generations to come.
My extra research as an outcome of my visit
Sewage and sewers
The river thames and the tideway tunnel
My presentation
Connections to my work
The research I have done about the sewage system connects to my mixed media piece in Expanded art forms as my initial idea was to use physical rubbish as one of my mediums. I chose rubbish as a medium because it reflects the ‘rubbish’ things that have happened to me in the last few years. I envisage making something more beautiful out of it . (Maybe I could make a sea out of rubbish!)