New notes

Andy's New MTD Notes

1. old MTD notes are here: Andy's MTD Notes

Week 1 Resources

1. Introduction
2. Go Over syllabus
3. show Sister Wendy's story of painting
4. Oleksiuk New Work ppt
5. Assign proto-assignment 1
   1. send me a representational photo via email

Week 2 resources

1. Review: modernism
   1. Cezanne, Picasso, cubism, dada, surrealism, Bauhaus, social realism, minimalism, abstract expressionism, pop art, Andy Warhol.
2. Edison's Miracle of Light
3. Discuss Edison's miracle of light
4. Discuss Berger Chaps 1-3 (30 min)
   1. Saussure: Semiology or Semiotics
      1. Write on screen "I went to a book sale and all I bought was a semicolon." Discuss what makes this funny? Illustrates: Saussure's assertion that language is a system of signs in which the meaning of a term is based on its relations to othr terms in the system. i.e. we would have expected to have purchased a book, not a small piece of punctuation (hey comedy is hard)
      2. signifier: sound object image
      3. signified: concept generated
      4. signs are identified in terms of oppositions, uniqueness
      5. The notion the linguistics might be useful in studying other cultural phenomena is based on two fundamental insights:
         1. first that social and cultural phenomena are mot simply material objects or events but objects and events with meaning, and hence signs;
         2. second that they do not have essences but are defined by a network of relations
   2. Barthes (Myth)
      1. semiology can be applied to history, culture;
      2. sees problems with normativity (mythmaking)
      3. cultural feedback loop: this is the way mass media works: if a "meme" gets picked up and widely distributed, it becomes the norm (Lots of parallels with Cool Hunting)
   3. James W. Carey
      1. Two Models of Communication
      2. See also James W Carey
5. Watch Edison's Miracle of Light. Videorecording (VHS). Elevator Pictures, Inc. for the American Experience. WGBH Boston. Matthew Collins, producer/writer. John Walter, director/writer. 1995. (1 hour)
6. Assign Project 2,