Reading an Image

That in this generation, graphics or art in general now appears to be looked upon as a bitmap or a ‘pixel-lated’ world.That we have not fully understood the concept of art in its highest or creative form and we still need to investigate on what makes art, art. So we started off with learning about ‘Semiotics’ and that it split up into two forms, the study of media and the study of language. From the subject of the study of language a French philosopher called Rolland Barthes, studies and had his theories on the matter. For example, he murdered his wife in a sense of passion and emotion. For more likely a romantic gesture. Then we looked at the topic sociation briefly and just clarifying that the definition is that is makes people believe what certain images or objects are to them. For example, is someone drew a certain image which was shaped like a tree, someone could easily mistake it or interpret it for a dog if that’s what they believed it was. Another example of sociation would be the three terms, past, present and future tense in subliminal messages which would be sign, signify and signified. The main note taken of this topic is whenever you bring sign into a equation you must look for the ‘sign’ or the sub – text (hidden message).The Denotation would be term for the sign, and Connotation would be the term for signify and then the final stage would be the concept of gathering and understanding. We then focused on a few painters and how they can produce art that has a certain style which can be convenient for a type of movement, form or position so therefore it has a reason behind it. We looked at both David Hockney (a painter) and Andy Warhol (a printer) and started investigating more into their art. For example David Hockney, was a painter for many different forms, but mainly portraits, and whenever it came to a certain exhibition he noticed that for every painting the body forms were similar or not in proportion but that was only because he used a certain technique called camera obscura which reverses an image, so the reason being for a certain series of painting that would have similar feature or positions. This Is an image of the camera that was used for this technique: And as for Andy Warhol, people have questioned why his work is so expensive through the reason of no signature. But the reason behind it is people do not necessarily buy an artist’s work for his signature, they buy it for the art and creativity. Art can be seen upon as pointless and irrelevant in some cases through the artist mainly making their self’s famous through their work that they produce, therefore, their finished pieces become irrelevant. Different methods of art can debate on whether it is art or not, or whether the artist is an artist. For example, is a graphic painter or designer uses Photoshop or a graphics tablet to produce their art work is it the technology that creates the art or the artist? But as a quote has said about this matter ‘ The technology doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it.’ Finally we looked at psychedelic patterns which also have their own forms of hidden messages and images to make you have an influence without even knowing it.