Critical writing

MS1404Criticism and Writing

Reminder about next week: March 11th – CW1 – 25%DEADLINE: Monday March 11th 2013

CW1: the individual/paired project should be submitted in week 6. If you are working as a pair the work must be submitted together. Use a single production cover sheet and put both student numbers on it. You will need to include individual barcode sheets too!

Reminder about next week: March 11th – CW1 – 25%DEADLINE: Monday March 11th 2013

SUBMISSIONS: 1) Image Text: CW1 - Skills: Individual /PairedResearch, develop and design 1 image/text collage per person based on the adaptation of a particular fairy tale or myth and considering ideas in the lectures on Freud and the Dreamscape. Using Adobe CS you will use the cut and paste tool, the type tool and colour balance. All images used should be original - textual sources could be gathered from the following sources:i. Academic text, seminar reading packs, reading list. ii. Speech. Consider dialogue, lyrics, conversation.The collages should be printed on A4 paper for submission along with a digital copy on CD-rom or DVD.

Reminder about next week: March 11th – CW1 – 25%DEADLINE: Monday March 11th 2013

SUBMISSIONS: 2) Video: CW1 Skills project/ individual or pairedUsing in-camera editing you will shoot a 60 second long, silent, non-narrative film based on your own dreams/nightmares or with reference to a fairy tale. Once you have shot your film you will then create a sound track using sound effects recorded in the studio. You will need to utilise radio skills from last semester here. Finally you will combine your film and sound effects using FCP and burn to DVD. 

Reminder about next week: March 11th – CW1 – 25%DEADLINE: Monday March 11th 2013

SUBMISSIONS: 3) Radio: CW1 Skills project/ individual or pairedUsing digital audio recorders and basic editing techniques, you will create a 60 second long, non-narrative audio recording based on your own dreams/nightmares or with reference to a fairy tale. This will involve establishing and developing a character(s) either real or fictional, using sound effects and voice (s) recorded in the studio. You will need to utilise skills from last semester here. Finally you will burn to CD or DVD.

Reminder about next week: THOSE WHO ARE IN THE VIDEO STRAND

FOR MARCH 11TH ONLY – YOU WILL GO TO MEET AND WORK WITH ANDREA IN ROOM AVA1.29 – from 10:30 – 1:00pm instead of the regular room – (AVA.1.34)

Reminder about Work Book:

Please remember we are asking you to undertake a specific exercise in the workbook. Whilst this is not due next week – A reminder to take notes this week in order to discuss and undertake the work due in the future.

See: UEL/Moodle for downloading workbookhttps://moodle.uel.ac.uk/

Reminder about Work Book:

Aims:

• To learn techniques for critiquing artist’s work (and later your own work)

• To examine the language used in writing about media

• To develop good critical writing skills

http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Planetary-Dreamscapes-Screenshot-7745.html

http://www.kristensimmonsbooks.com/books/breaking-point/

Cheryl Maeder (2008), Dreamscapes. http://www.artlica.net/category/cheryl-maeder

Criticizing Media

‘Criticism is informed discourse about art/ media to increase understanding and appreciation of art/ media’(T. Barnett 2000:3)

Questions to ask about a piece of work

• What does it mean?

• How does it work?

• Can we think something differently about it?

• What was the intention of the artist practitioner in creating such a work?

Points of Analysis

Subject matter/ themesThe content of the work will include what we see or hear i.e. the storyline etc but will also cover underlying themes, ideas or issues.

Form

Medium

Style and structure

Comparing and contrast

Techniques used

If you were discussing genre what would it cover from the above list?

Think about what questions you might ask about this piece of work.

S. Dali (1931) The Persistence of Memory

What does it mean? What is the significance of time?

What is the purpose of the soft clocks?

Does the landscape have meaning? Why doesn’t the tree have any leaves?

Why has the artist used these colours? What was the artist trying to say?

What do the ants mean?

When was the painting made?

What country is the artist from? What symbols are used?

Suzanne Szucs ( 2008 ) Sketch 4.I.Dhttp://www.vsw.org/ai/portfolio/suzanne-szucs/

And artist’s websitehttp://www.suzanneszucs.com/support/pages/sketch4ID.html

What is the form – i.e. how is it constituted?What medium is it created in?What techniques are being used here?How might we consider the structural and stylistic conventions being used here?What symbols are being used ?What is the artist trying to evoke?When was the work created?Where is the artist from, what country?Can we compare this to another artist’s work we have already seen.How might we think about a wider cultural meaning ?

MS1404

Critical Writing

When we produce or read a piece of critical writing it is usually made up of all or some of the following:

• Description

• Interpretation

• Evaluation

• Theorization

Description

This is factual and should be kept to the minimum. Descriptions need to give the reader/ viewer information, particularly if they cannot see the work. Consider carefully how you describe subject, form, medium and style.

• How might this relate to your synopsis?

To interpret a piece of work/ image is to make sense of it.

• What does it represent, what does it express, what is it about, what is it a response to?

• Does it belong to particular traditions? • How does culture influence its production? • What purpose does it serve? • What pleasure or satisfaction does it bring to its

producer, its audience? • Whom does it address, whom does it ignore?• What prejudices and preconceptions does it

reinforce or disrupt?

• Does it change my view of the world?

Interpretation

Interpretive claims

Has a piece of work been constructed from a particular perspective, theoretical viewpoint, belief system, methodology…?

Feminist interpretations

Psychoanalytic interpretations

Formalist interpretations

Marxist interpretations

Ethnographic interpretations

This is tied up with judgements: positive, negative or ambivalent. They get mixed in with both description and interpretation. Descriptions are not value- neutral or value free. You need to be conscious of this when you analyse work.

A good evaluation will summarise strengths and weaknesses from an informed point of view and be able to back up opinions with research and analysis.

Evaluation

• Theorisation

• To explore answers to big questions and to critically examine those answers.

• A theory is a set of principles and beliefs about something.

• Theories can offer competing explanations of a phenomena.

• Analysis makes theories explicit.

AES group, 1996-2003 - http://www.aesf-group.org/index.php?wwwIslamic project started on 1996 as an installation and performance with interactive communication with public: purchasing souvenirs, filling questionnaire concerning their opinions about Future. It works as a kind of social psychoanalysis – visualization of fears of Western society about Islam.

Digitally manipulated Photographs

William Egglestonhttp://www.film4.com/reviews/2005/william-eggleston-in-the-real-world

Google image re Eccleston’s images.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?offset=0&limit=15&narrow=&extrasearch=&q=william+eggleston&commit=Search&quality=0&objectnamesearch=&placesearch=&after=&after-adbc=AD&before=&before-adbc=AD&namesearch=&materialsearch=&mnsearch=&locationsearch=

‘William Eggleston's colour photographs pinpoint the moment when colour photography began to be generally accepted as part of the language of art photography. Adopting processes previously used to manipulate advertising images, Eggleston set the precedent for colour documentary and art photography of the last twenty years. Eggleston finds in places such as shopping centres and ordinary interiors, "the uncommonness of the commonplace", as photographer Raymond Moore described it. Inspired by the beauty of family snapshots, Eggleston looks at the everyday and the overlooked in order to reveal them as remarkable.’

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/

Writing for an audience and effective note taking

Choose either photograph A or B

Using the notes you have made to help you write a short critique of the image.

A

B

Check list

How effectively did you make use of the notes and information given in the start of the lecture?

V. good, average, poor?

Did you use any direct quotes or ideas not your own? If yes did you remember to reference correctly?

AES group, 1996-2003 - http://www.aesf-group.org/index.php?www

Digitally manipulated Photographs

AES group, 1996-2003 - http://www.aesf-group.org/index.php?www

Islamic project started on 1996 as an installation and performance with interactive communication with public: purchasing souvenirs, filling questionnaire concerning their opinions about Future. It works as a kind of social psychoanalysis – visualization of fears of Western society about Islam.

Digitally manipulated Photographs

What does it mean?

How does it work?

Can we think something differently about it?

What was the intention of the artist practitioner in creating

such a work?

REMEMBER

Phillip Lorca di Corcia

Write a short description of this photograph.

“…In creating his “Streetwork” collection, Di Corcia travelled to several major cities throughout the world, placed hidden lights on the pavement to illuminate various spaces and passers-by, and photographed them (Noorderlight Photofestival, 1999). His lights created an effect such that those who passed through them, and those whose images were captured, appear as though they have been selected from within the hustle and bustle of their Paris, Calcutta, Tokyo, Rome, or New York City streets and elevated in such a way that their facial expressions, body positions, and gestures play off the space to connote a sense of isolation or alienation. Di Corcia attempts to press ‘pause’ on fractions of instances of lives of individuals in the city and reflect them through his photographs—the resulting images are not so much of individual subjects as images of what it is to be subject to the city.”

Wortman R(2010) Street level: Intersections of Art and the Law Philip-Lorca de Corcia’s “Heads” Project and Nussenzweig v. di Corcia Gnovis vol 10:2

Check list

Who is the writing for and what is its function?

Lecture and seminar notes

Formal academic writing

Always make several drafts of more formal types of writing