Week 2

This week’s class was about the deeper meaning within everything, that everything has a deeper meaning to it. It is something that is normalised within social interaction where we read peoples expressions and body language to understand the meaning being put across. Looking deeper into the meaning of art is something that I have been doing for a while now; I have always been interested in art that challenges my mind. However it’s not been something that I can say I am particularly good at. I spend a lot of time reading up other people’s opinions and researching about what the artist was trying to portray, before I can formulate an opinion of my own. But that’s only with contemporary art that I think meaning is unclear.

We took place in exercises or examples in order for us think about how we could find a deeper meaning. We were shown two jackets, I know now that they are both biker jackets but at the beginning at though the first jacket was from the punk era. The mixture of leather and studs seemed reminiscent of the rough nature the subculture. But I guess that was due to the culture memory I have toward it. The second jacket I knew was a biker jacket only because a friend of mine is into the biker subculture I recognised some the elements that make it jacket. But again I missed certain elements that shown the origins of the jacket it being Southern California and that it is from an outlaw biker club. I guess these shows that sometimes to understand the message you must at least know where it comes from, so if I wanted to accurately convey a message,

a good understanding of the place it comes from is essential.

Semiotics came up, something that I had never of heard of before till now. It’s obviously essential to design in order to communicate a meaning across. For example in John Cooper Clarke’s poem “I married a Monster From Outer Space” the signifier would be the language in which he uses and the signified would be the negativity toward interracial couples. Though I don’t think it has to a deep and meaningful message to put across in order to use Semiotics. Simple emoticons can use semiotics as well. I understand that this is something that I will have to a good grasp of in order to portray meanings across in my work.

One of the last things we looked at was a short film about a farmer and his useless dog. I felt that subtext within the film was pretty clear, it is a sort of love hate relationship between owner and dog. The owner does nothing but talk negatively about the dog but the tone of the film was very warm and loving. There were also a few scenes where you see the owner loving playing with the his dog. I have thought about subtext before in films but was never sure of my opinion on it to really voice it.
To be honest I think a lot of these meanings in films or in art are left up to an individual’s own perspective of the subject matter, regardless of what the initial message was. “The Death Of The Author”. I think that whenever everybody understands subtext or meaning behind the art is when the artist is successfully in portrayed their message.