Critical StudyDCC 2014

• Critical Study= DCC 2014

• Major

• 4 credit hours

• Historical Evolution and Visual Characteristics

• Definitions: key movement, styles, influences, eg constructivism, futurism, De Stijl, Bauhaus

• With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 19th century, new art styles and movements appeared and disappeared at an increasingly fast pace - thus reflecting the growing rate of changes in our society. Here is a short overview on important modern art movements from Impressionism to Op Art.

Styles-design • • Design, when applied tofashion, includes considering aesthetics as well as function in the final

form.• Design is the planning that lays the basis for the making of every object or system. It can be

used both as a noun and as averb and, in a broader way, it means applied arts and engineering (See design disciplines below). As a verb, "to design" refers to the process of originating and developing a plan for a product, structure, system, or component with intention[1]. As a noun, "a design" is used for either the final (solution) plan (e.g. proposal, drawing, model, description) or the result of implementing that plan in the form of the final product of a design process[2]. This classification aside, in its broadest sense no other limitations exist and the final product can be anything from clothing to graphical user interfaces to skyscrapers. Even virtual concepts such as corporate identity and cultural traditions such as celebration of certain holidays[3] are sometimes designed. More recently, processes (in general) have also been treated as products of design, giving new meaning to the term process design.

• The person designing is called a designer, which is also a term used for people who work professionally in one of the various design areas, usually also specifying which area is being dealt with (such as a fashion designer, concept designeror web designer). Designing often requires a designer to consider the aesthetic, functional, and many other aspects of an object or a process, which usually requires considerable research, thought, modeling, interactive adjustment, and re-design. With such a broad definition, there is no universal language or unifying institution for designers of all disciplines. This allows for many differing philosophies and approaches toward the subject. However, serious study of design demands increased focus on the design process[4][5].

• Graphic design is a collaborative process between a client and a designer — in conjunction with producers of form (i.e., printers, programmers, signmakers, etc.)— to convey a specific message to a targeted audience. The term "graphic design" can also refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines that focus on visual communication and presentation. The field is also often referred to as Visual Communication or Communication Design. Various methods are used to create and combine words, symbols, and images to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may use typography,visual arts and page layout techniques to produce the final result. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated.

• Common uses of graphic design include identity (logos and branding), web sites, publications (magazines, newspapers, and books), advertisements and product packaging. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organized text and pure design elements such as shapes and color which unify the piece. Composition is one of the most important features of graphic design, especially when using pre-existing materials or diverse elements.

• visual characteristic• In art, an attribute used to convey intention when creating a work of art. Knowledge of

visual characteristics is also important in the interpretation of a work of art. Some of the more dominant characteristics are composition, distortion, subjects, exaggeration, metaphor, meaningful images, symbols, and personal experiences. Generally, visual characteristics are influenced by initial intention, chosen media, and place of creation; these will also alter the visual communication of the composition (what the work is trying to communicate to the viewer).While continuing to maintain original intent, artists will often use different characteristics to communicate distinct meanings. For example, the characteristics used in the creation of a mask will be different from those used in the painting of a realistic portrait. When making a mask the artist may apply personal symbols, create exaggerated features to represent certain ideas, or use a particular medium to signify a special concept. On the other hand, an artist creating a realistic portrait would not employ characteristics that would change the intention or original goal of realism (such as distortion of a feature); instead the artist would use more objective visual attributes. Works of art are often interpreted by the visual characteristics, and an artist's intent is generally distinguished by their purposeful choice of personal and expressive visual traits.

Influence• 1. A power affecting a person, thing, or course of events, especially one that

operates without any direct or apparent effort: relaxed under the influence of the music; the influence of television on modern life.

• 2. Power to sway or affect based on prestige, wealth, ability, or position: used her parent's influence to get the job.

• 3.a. A person who exerts influence: My parents considered my friend to be a bad influence on me.

• b. An effect or change produced by influence.• 4.a. A determining factor believed by some to affect individual tendencies

and characteristics understood to be caused by the positions of the stars and planets at the time of one's birth.

• b. Factors believed to be caused by the changing positions of the stars and planets in relation to their positions at the time of one's birth.

• tr.v. in·flu·enced, in·flu·enc·ing, in·flu·enc·es1. To produce an effect on by imperceptible or intangible means; sway.

• 2. To affect the nature, development, or condition of; modify. See Synonyms at affect1.

• Idiom:under the influenceIntoxicated, especially with alcohol

• Constructivism is a theory of knowledge (epistemology)  that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from their experiences. Constructivism is not a specific pedagogy, although it is often confused with constructionism, an educational theory developed by Seymour Papert, inspired by constructivist and experiential learning ideas of Jean Piaget. Piaget's theory of constructivist learning has had wide ranging impact on learning theories and teaching methods in education and is an underlying theme of many education reform movements. Research support for constructivist teaching techniques has been mixed, with some research supporting these techniques and other research contradicting those results. Social constructivism has been criticized for being a kind of behaviorism, which reduces the individual to his or her social environment

• De Stijl (Dutch pronunciation: [də ˈstɛɪl], English: /də ˈstaɪl/), Dutch for "The Style", also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917. In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands.De Stijl is also the name of a journal that was published by the Dutch painter, designer, writer, and critic Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931), propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), Vilmos Huszár (1884–1960), and Bart van der Leck (1876–1958), and the architects Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964), Robert van 't Hoff (1887–1979), and J.J.P. Oud (1890–1963). The artistic philosophy that formed a basis for the group's work is known as neoplasticism — the new plastic art (or Nieuwe Beelding in Dutch).

• Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white. Indeed, according to the Tate Gallery's online article on neoplasticism, Mondrian himself sets forth these delimitations in his essay 'Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art'. He writes, "... this new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour." The Tate article further summarizes that this art allows "only primary colours and non-colours, only squares and rectangles, only straight and horizontal or vertical line."The Guggenheim Museum's online article on De Stijl summarizes these traits in similar terms: "It [De Stijl] was posited on the fundamental principle of the geometry of the straight line, the square, and the rectangle, combined with a strong asymmetricality; the predominant use of pure primary colors with black and white; and the relationship between positive and negative elements in an arrangement of non-objective forms and lines."

• The Bauhaus movement is a school of art, architecture and design characterized by geometric design, respect for practical material, and its severely economic sensibilities. The Bauhaus movement was founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 in Germany and ended in the 1930’s. Gropius coined the term Bauhaus as an inversion of the word meaning ‘house construction’ or ‘Hausbau’. Gropius taught at a school which focused on functional craftsmanship, and his students were guided to focus on designs that could be mass produced. The Bauhaus school had some famous teachers which included Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. The Bauhaus movement continues to influence us today, where any modern environment often incorporates elements of the period. The ideas of the Bauhaus creators have influenced architecture, furniture, typography, and weaving. Famous artists of the Bauhaus movement include Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Franz Marc, Georg Muche, and Oskar Schlemmer.

• Chronology: Sequence of Key Movement, styles and influences

• Comparisons: Between key artists, designers and / or craftspeople in chosen pathway

• Influences: Visual language, period style, eg ornament and decoration

Visual language

• Written language is just a particular case of visual language. In fact there are many visual languages that appear to share common rules. Thinking about the visual language can help us to convey our messages in a more effective way.

• When you think about language, immediately one associates it to the idea of spoken or written language. A sequential language in nature, where symbols are followed by other symbols and the narration they build makes concepts and/or emotions emerge in our minds.

• It’s not that strange, according to one of my favourite dictionaries, that visual language doesn’t exist, there’s no way of finding the term. But it does. With more or less well known syntax and better or worse articulated grammar we have been using graphics for millennia to express ideas and concepts. These are non sequential languages where drawings transmit, sometimes in a much more effective way, the same ideas and even feelings.

• We can think of multiple visual languages with very specific syntactic rules. For example, traffic signs or musical notation provide you with a meaningful and precise visual language. We can also speak about the visual language of bar charts or corporate organisation charts.

• CodeInterpretationDangerPlaneAirport.+=Danger due to proximity of a place where aircraft fly frequently at low altitude over the road.MandatoryCarMandatory road for cars+=Drivers of automobiles, exccept motorcycles without sidecar are obliged to use the road at the entrance of which this signa is placed.Visual language : traffic signals. The red triangle indicates danger. The plane indicates that aircraft fly at low altitude in the neighborhood, so we are near an airport and there's danger of finding a plane flying unsuspectedly over us. The blue circle indicates a mandatory road. Wit the car inside, automobiles are obliged to drive through the road where the sign is placed.Note that the blue sign could contain the plane and would be a syntactically valid signal, although it would be meaningless. The same happens with written language, where you can write a valid sentence completely meaningless.

ornament and decoration

• 1. Something that decorates or adorns; an embellishment.

• 2. A person considered as a source of pride, honor, or credit: a singer who is an ornament to the world of opera.

• 3. Music A note or group of notes that embellishes a melody.

Period Style

• The various styles that history has left us are like gene pools, subject to selection, combination, mutation, and adaptation over time. The descent and dissemination of these architectural gene pools through the decades breeds new varieties, hybrids -- and occasional surprises.

Techniques, processes and interpretation:- explored in developmental work, selected for final outcome

• Design Methods is a broad area that focuses on:• Divergence – Exploring possibilities and constraints of inherited situations by

applying critical thinking through qualitative and quantitative research methods to create new understanding (problem space) toward better design solutions

• Transformation – Redefining specifications of design solutions which can lead to better guidelines for traditional and contemporary design activities (architecture, graphic, industrial, information, interaction, et al.) and/or multidisciplinary response

• Convergence – Prototyping possible scenarios for better design solutions that incrementally or significantly improve the originally inherited situation

• Sustainability – Managing the process of exploring, redefining and prototyping of design solutions continually over time

• Articulation - the visual relationship between the parts and the whole.• The goal of design methods is to gain key insights or unique essential truths resulting

in more holistic solutions in order to achieve better experiences for users with products, services, environments and systems they rely upon. Insight, in this case, is clear and deep investigation of a situation through design methods, thereby grasping the inner nature of things intuitively.

• Method of research and information retrieval

• Sources: eg library research, reference systems and abstracting, electronic sources, museums, galleries, exhibitions, workshop, interviews and questionnaires.

• Information retrieval (IR) is the science of searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching relational databases and the World Wide Web. There is overlap in the usage of the terms data retrieval, document retrieval, information retrieval, and text retrieval, but each also has its own body of literature, theory, praxis, and technologies. IR is interdisciplinary, based on computer science, mathematics, library science, information science, information architecture, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and statistics.

• Automated information retrieval systems are used to reduce what has been called "information overload". Many universities and public libraries use IR systems to provide access to books, journals and other documents. Web search engines are the most visible IR applications

• Method:

-survey of relevant contemporary topics, ‘ first –hand’ research

The Problem of Contemporary Art

• It's easier though, if you're an artist, to ignore reality. "Endless Column," a fire engine-red metal "sculpture" in the form of a vertical zig-zag with a broad bottom bolted to a concrete pad, has eight zigs and eight zags. More intellectual busy work.  Yes, "Endless Column" can be rationalized as an expression of our technological age. Prepackaged art works, offspring of the passionless rape of art by industry and the computer, will shamelessly roll off the Madison Avenue assembly line.

• Extracting information: topic description, ‘first-hand’ research from practicing professionals, related visual language and techniques, creative and cultural contexts, eg linked to movements, schools, style, ethnic influences

• Historical , contextual and contemporary practice

• Influences: on others’ work, social, economic. Political events.

• Styles: of contemporary practice, eg’ avant garde’, ‘cutting edge’

• Avant-garde (French pronunciation: [avɑ̃V ɡaʁd]) means "advance guard" or "vanguard".[The adjective form is used in English, to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.

• Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The notion of the existence of the avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. Many artists have aligned themselves with the avant-garde movement and still continue to do so, tracing a history from Dada through the Situationists to postmodern artists such as the Language poets around 1981

• Writing and critiques

• Drawing conclusion: eg comparative study, critical analysis, interpretations, quotations, conclusion, appraisal of finding

• Personal view: opinions, arguments, style.