Project 3 - reading visual communication - Exercise 1 What does this apple mean

What an image of an apple could represent or signify?

A source of vitamins - healthy fruit, the Eden story a snake gave an apple to Eve - understanding/knowledge, Snow-white fairy-tell - poison thing - malice / desire / jalousies, Newton and falling apple - gravitation and the logo of Apple company represent high end technology/knowledge.

Apple in Religion:  the apple signifies the sin, when snake encouraged Eve to give Adam the denied fruit by god.

Here the apple means youth as the title offers but still we can judge the painting through the religious point of view (man, woman, apple tree, apples in their hands) as a sin according to religion.

The "company grievance", you are not buying my products (McLuhan). In advertisement the apple here is an object of goods which is expected to appeal to buy it.

Apple company logo: in this advertisement the apple is a symbol of knowledge, the truth?, something unspeakable. For me the apple represent stability, perfect compatibility, great technology, suitable for gadget lover (McLuhan interpretation of narcosis)

Time: the apples are used here in direct comparison with the shell on the left. The shelf is empty the life is done, the apples still "eatable". It is about time - death - frozen image. 

Here is an abstract examples. Even I do not know what it meas, the religion pop up very quickly if there I see am egg in these four objects. The egg the birth of Christ, the apple the sin or there is something else. There is an enter to a building, probably, it is really up to viewer what one can see.

The use of apple is wide but the most dominant meaning is connected to religion stories, it has its place on Christmas, we love it as a fruit. When you put keyword in google line you get most information about Apple company but the flat logo somehow I did not have connected with the Sin but with the technology. 

Exercise 3 Film posters

The choice of film was obvious in my case. Kubrik's Odyssey was something which made me sitting at black white screen and watching that film with open mouth in my childhood.  I do not remember how old I was but the visual issue and and slow tempo really address me. I think I understood the thing the film was saying but I have not words to describe it. Anyway I research some posters and made a board on pinterest: https://cz.pinterest.com/emilnemecek/a-space-odyssey-posters/


Particularly I like poster above, especially how title 2001 is used for Hal's eye. The designer lovely "simply" used the magical Hal's eye. "Open the door Hal" scene we can see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSIKBliboIo , beautiful scene, machine is protecting itself against human being.



This poster uses black red colour with a font which looks like hand drawn and it suits here, I really like it, the whole poster is not so "technical" but keeps the mystery of the film and reminds me the Hal deactivation scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY



This poster uses serif font and it changes the mood from too technical to a romance film I think at the first glance. I am not saying it is wrong but when we compare the first poster with this one we can feel the posters announce different film. The first represents emptiness and Hal's eye, we are not getting more. In the third we have got more information, we can see hills,  a "monkey", an astronaut, an obelisk, red planet (Hal's eye), if we know the story, we know what this is about. If not, we can construct a story, we are expecting some form of the film based on our experience. I am not sure about the colour which designer used here. This poster does not correspond to my feelings about 2001 Odyssey.



This poster uses the same structure as the one before but the font is sans-serif and the overall mood of that version has better effect than the serif font.

How has the aesthetic of moving image influenced the design of the poster?

All posters have a title to transfer the name of the film for the viewer. However, it depends on designer how to introduce (reflect) the nature of the film. In the examples they used the main elements from the film such as astronaut (exploration), Hal's eye (high end technology, sci-fi), an obelisk, a monkey etc. and each has another style. The first is very simple but very effective to introduce something unknown, we hardly can get any feeling what the film will be about. In the second poster we see an astronaut walking to us, what the film is about? An exploration? The poster let us curious. The third and fourth are illustrative and posters have a softness in their visual issue. From this style I would expect other style of film than from the two previous. It reminds me E.T. film.

Bill Viola

Hearing and watching Viola's work I get clear signal that he is doing what I am thinking last years. What am I, where we are going, what is happening here and there, what is inside my body, who is there. Especially the Birth and Death is a great piece. Last year I lost my grandfather who was as my father and that experience change my perception of man. Grandfather lives in my memories, in my head, I can share it with others but I will never speak to him anymore and that is what makes me sad.

https://youtu.be/t0RCkNugozU?t=1480

Two most dangerous instruments we have today

Being alone

Alone with the alone

True purpose of our life

Birth and Death

3000 years lod poems about love

Video Art

As I was searching for another interpretation of narcissism I found a bachelor work about narcissism in video-art. Here is pinterest board of video-artists I made: video-art

I like the repetitive structure in Dara Birnbaum's works, especialy in that restructured piece of Transformers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD32qfCF4CI, she completely change it, "cool mam - cool mam - cool mam" repeated when we are getting a juxtaposition of sound and picture in contradiction which put us in awareness that something is wrong. The entertainment is changed into discomfort which keep us watching what will end that piece. After the stress there is a quite part where the transformer-machine says it is peaceful  planet.

Peter Campus's Three transitions are interesting in the playing with video possibilities. I really like the presence of illusion, something mysterious, terminal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar99AfOJ2o8, https://vimeo.com/49083676

Marshal McLuhan's interpretation of Narcissus story

As I have been reading Understanding media book by M.L. I was really captivated by the ideas how media keep us numb because of senses and mind auto amputation but even more I really like the interpretation of Narcis story.

McLuhan explains that Narcissus did not fell in love of himself as a reflection in the water instead he did not recognise himself in the reflection. "The extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. Echo tried to win his love ......., but in vain. He was numb. He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed system."

"Medical researchers like Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas hold that all extensions of ourselves, in sickness or in health, are attempts to maintain equilibrium. Any extension of ourselves they regard as "auto-amputation" ............... . the central nervous system acts to protect itself by a strategy of amputation or isolation of the offending organ, sense, or function."

"The function of body, as a group of sustaining and protective organs for the central nervous system, is to act as buffers against sudden variations of stimulus in the physical and social environment."

"Therapy, whether physical or social, is a counter-irritant that aids in that equilibrium of the physical organs which protect the central nervous system. Whereas pleasure is a counter-irritant (e.g., sports, entertainment, and alcohol), comfort is the removal of irritants. Both pleasure and comfort are strategies of equilibrium for the central nervous system."

"Shock induces a generalised numbness or an increased threshold to all types of perception. The victim seems immune to pain or sense. Battle shock created by violent noise has been adapted for dental use in the device known as audiac. The patient puts on headphones and turns a dial raising the noise level to the point that he feels no pain from the drill. The selection of a single sense for intense stimulus, or of a single extended, isolated, or "amputated" sense in technology, is in part the reason for the numbing effect that technology as such has on its makers and users. For the central nervous system rallies a response of general numbness to the challenge of specialised irritation"

"Any invention or technology is an extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies, and such extension also demands new ratios or new equilibriums among the other organs and extensions of the body."

"In audile-tactile Europe TV has intensified the visual sense, spurring them toward American styles of packaging and dressing. In America, the intensely visual culture, TV has opened the doors of audile-tactile perception to the non-visual world of spoken languages and food and plastic arts."