Integrated Theory and Practise - Connectivity Lecture
Chosen categories: Notions of Originality & Recontextualised Ideas in Contemporary Culture
The first point of the lecture I am going to talk about is the ‘Notion’s of Originality.’ You’ve either got to be blind or stupid to contemplate that a piece of your work is original. Of course we were talking in the context of art, design and visual communication. In every piece of work you do, whether you are affected directly or indirectly, you will be inspired by something you’ve already seen. If you’re taking a pattern, shape or pose you’ve seen on a poster and using that, or you’ve seen someone’s particular style and methods that you like and replicate them, it is not original. Someone has done it before you, whether you realise it or not. To re-enforce this, the notion that nothing is actually original can be outstretched to other parts of life. An example could potentially be a toaster. When the toaster was invented people were amazed you could put some bread in this box and 2 minutes later toast pop out, but isn’t that what a grill was for? It may have seemed like a new invention, but the technology was the same, the electric powered grill lines were just re packaged and re branded, the toast wasn’t being made by a new technology, the technology was just put in a rectangular box.
Above: Lucas Cranach Below: Desperate Housewives
The above point of the toaster being a re packaged links to the next part of the lecture I will talk about, ‘Recontextualised ideas and concepts in contemporary culture.’ I believe it overlaps with Notion’s of Originality. From examples shown in the lecture I concluded that the main difference between points is that with Notion’s of Originality, it talks of the style or small details within someone’s work that is never original, within ‘Recontextualised Ideas’ I think it is linked more closely to the fact that two pieces of art, of which were created years apart, may be or look strongly similar. However take into consideration context of society, new methods available and subsequently used, they are in fact different and the audience won’t think negatively of them as an imitation of the past works. An example (see above imags) is the iconic scene of Adam and Eve picking forbidden fruit. From the painting created by Lucas Cranach of his depiction of ‘Adam and Eve’ c.1520’s, the same image, composition and event looking very similar is used in the Tv credits of American drama Desperate Housewives. Some people may potentially argue this is a copy of Lucas Cranach, but if you look closer at each of them you see that the Desperate Housewives version is made from different methods, most recognisably the digital format and the context of the two depictions are completely different. With Lucas Cranach, it is most likely that this was for a religious reason that he wanted to illustrate this scene to warn people visually, whereas in the Tv credits version the contemporary context reveals that the picking of the forbidden fruit, by Eve standing next to her partner Adam, is a way of saying that the wives in this programme aren’t your typical housewives, they rebel and they aren’t under the control of their husbands.
Bibliography (photos top-bottom)
Image 1: Connectivity Lecture PDF
Image 2: http://readingart.info/desperatehousewiveslesson.htm
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