THE FIRST STEP TO MY ESSAY:

After a week panicking, having to many thoughts in my head,

LADIES AND GENTLEMAN...

THE INTRODUCTION

A Journey into Perceptions Searching for the Invisible


From the moment I wake up in the morning to the moment I switch off the light at night before sleeping, my eyes see and make images. Overnight, even with my eyes closed I still see images through my dreams. Impossible to deny the importance of image seeing and image making which occurs all the time before our eyes and also in our mind.
For my essay I decided to talk about a journey, but a Journey into Perceptions in fact, can be as broad as the universe. Perceptions are related to everything the five human senses can actually receive, notice and perceive, but the subject I am trying to focus on, is the perceptions of our senses in relation to the world of constructed images. The images I will take in consideration are mainly the ones found in the visual environment of advertising, mass media and the arts. I will look at how images work in relation to our senses, how we respond at them, and how this visual world shapes our reality.
I will also consider and compare the art images and how they work in relation to the commercial ones, questioning the use, production and consumption of both type of images, how they affect our perceptions and ultimately if the art world can really offer an alternative to the commercial use of images in a commodity culture and a society based on corporate economy.

Coloured Canvas

experimenting with perceptions, what i see in this video is not what actually happened in front of the camera. in fact the video is made of only 5 still images and the movement of the coloured light is only illusory... it happened in the editing suite. the overlapping of colours in slow transitions create that false sense of movement.
also, the amount of colours perceived in the video is the product of the editing. mixing light (red blue green) we obtain white, but mixing the clours of the images i obtained black. the light recorded on camera became pigment... digital pigment.

flush

overlapping of visions

IN THE PROCESS OF EXPLORING MEDIA AND CONTENT FOR MY TOPIC, I AM WORKING ON MY PRACTICES. HERE I AM MAKING A VIDEO FROM STILL IMAGES ON PERCEPTIONS EXPLORING HOW OUR SENSES RESPOND TO IMAGES, LIGHT, COLOUR.

CREATING VIRTUAL MOVEMENT FROM STILL IMAGES SHIFTING LIGHT COLOUR AND INTENSITY...

SUBJECTIVITY

CAVALLARO PG 93

JAQUES LACAN (1901-1981),

SUBJECTIVITY A PRODUCT OF LANGUAGE. THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE LANGUAGE.

IMAGINARY: THE CHILD DOES NOT ACKNOWLEDGE ANY SEPARATIONS BETWEEN SELF AND OTHER.

BETWEEN 6-18 MONTHS

MIRROR PHASE... PERCEIVE HIMSELF IN THE MIRROR AS AUTONOMOUS AND UNIFIED BODY-IMAGE AND IDENTIFIES WITH IT... ILLUSION OF COHERENCE AND WHOLENESS.

SYMBOLIC: THE CHILD ENTER THE WORLD OF ADULT LANGUAGE, LAWS AND INSTITUTION.

THE SUBJECT IS ALIENATED FROM ITS PHYSICAL ROOTS BY ITS INTEGRATION INTO AN IMPERSONAL ORDER OF ABSTRACT, DISEMBODIED SIGNS WHICH WILL NEVER ADEGUATELY ARTICULATE ITS THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS.

BEYOND BOTH THE IMAGINARY AND SYMBOLIC LIES WHAT LACAN CALLS THE REAL, NAMELY WHAT NEITHER LANGUAGE NOR CULTURE ARE CAPABLE OF NAMING AND REPRESENTING.

ALL THE MATERIAL FOR WHICH LANGUAGE ALLOWS NO EXPRESSION AND ALL ASPECTS OF OUR BEING WHICH REFUSE TO BE FORMALIZED ACCORDING TO DOMINANT RULES ARE REPRESSED AND GO TO CONSTITUTE THE UNCONCIOUS.

SOCIAL CONTROL AFTER FOUCAULT

http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles1(3)/AfterFoucault.pdf

IDEOLOGY

THE TERM WAS COINED BY THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHER DESTUTT DE TRACY TO DESCRIBE THE SCIENCE OF IDEAS, THAT WOULD ENABLE PEOPLE TO RECOGNIZE THEIR PREJUDICES AND BIASES.

TOP POINTS FOR MY RESEARCHES:

MARXIST THEORY RESTS ON THE BELIEVE THAT ALL CULTURAL PRODUCTS ( COMMODITIES, TEXTS, WORKS OF ART) ARE THE RESULT OF SOCIAL AND MATERIAL PRACTICES, WITHIN HISTORY AS A DIALECTIC PROCESS. (CAVALLARO PG 77).

MARX:

WHY DO WE STIL ENJOY ANCIENT GREEK ART, BEING AN OBSOLETE MODE OF REPRODUCTION?

MAX RAPHAEL: RELEVANT TO LATER CULTURES.

MARX:

CAPITALIST ECONOMY REPRESS THE BODY AND THE WORLD OF SENSES-PROMOTING PRIVATE PROPERTY REDUCES THE RICHNESS OF SENSUOUS LIFE INTO AN URGE FOR HAVING-POSSESSING.

GRAMSCI:

CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY: PERSUADING THE SUBORDINATED SOCIAL GROUPS TO ACCEPT THE SYSTEM OF CULTURAL VALUES TREASURED BY THE RULING GROUP AS UNIVERSALLY VALID AND EMBEEDED IN HUMAN NATURE.

HEGEL:

THE TRAJECTORY OF HUMAN HISTORY AS A GRADUAL REVELATION OF THE SPIRIT IN ITS EVOLUTION TOWARDS SELF-CONCIOUSNESS TOWARDS HIGHER ENDS, GAINS COHERENCE FROM HIS IMMATERIAL CONCEPT.

MARX:

ANY HISTORICAL CHANGE WILL ALWAYS DEPEND ON MATERIAL TRANSFORMATIONS ON THA BASE AND ON THE WAYS IN WHICH CLASS STRUGGLE MANIFESTS ITSELF.

HEGEL:

MATERIAL AND SENSUOUS FORMS OF ARTWORKS ARE ONLY EPHEMERAL MANIFESTATIONS OF DEEP PHILOSOPHICAL MESSAGES.

SOCIALIST REALISM EXAGGERATED THE CONCEPT ADAPTING IT INTO PROPAGANDA END.

THEODOR ADORNO:

THE GREATNESS OF THE WORK OF ART LIES IN THEIR POWER TO LET THOSE THINGS BE HEARD (ART-REALITY-KNOWLEDGE), WHICH IDEOLOGY CONCEALS.

(ART)-SUPERIOR FORM OF COGNITION IN CONTRAST WITH THE FUSION OF CULTURE AND ENTERTAINMENT FOSTERED BY MAS PRODUCTION-CONSUMPTION.

MICHEL FOUCAULT(1926-84):

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NORMAL AND ABNORMAL SUBJECTS. THE IDEA OF NORMALITY CAN ONLY BE ASSERTED AGAINT AN OTHER THAT DEVIATES FROM AN AUTHORIZED NORM.

SURVEILLANCE, CONTROL, INSTITUTIONS, PRISON SYSTEM, DISCIPLINARY MECHANISM.

LOUIS ALTHUSSER(1918-90):

IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS, ECONOMIC DETERMINISM.

THE ECONOMIC BASE DETERMINES POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY, BUT AT THE SAME TIME, IT DEPENDS ON POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY AS THE VERY CONDITIONS OF ITS EXISTENCE.

IDEOLOGY DOES NOT MERELY REFLECTS SOCIETY'S ECONOMIC BASE BUT HAS ITS OWN MATERIAL EXISTENCE AS A PRACTICE OF PRODUCTION.

http://foucault.info/documents/disciplineAndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html

FOCAULT AND PANOPTICISM

...LOTS TO THINK ABOUT...

http://cartome.org/foucault.htm

http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/journalv1i3.htm

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK

ECXTACT FROM THE WEBSITE:

http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/10/28/the-psychology-of-alfred-hitchcock/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fneurophilosophy.wordpress.com%2F2006%2F10%2F17%2Fthe-psychology-of-alfred-hitchcock%2F&frame=true

Hitchcock once remarked that “television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.” During much of Hitchcock’s career, Freud’s ideas were dominant, and although Hitchcock was skeptical of psychoanalysis (as he was of other explanations for human behaviour), Freudian concepts and motifs recur in many of his films.

REPRESSION
Repression is one of the Freudian concepts which recurs in Hitchcock’s films. According to Freud, “the essence of repression lies simply in the turning something away, and keeping it at a distance, from the conscious”. Freud believed that traumatic memories, usually of childhood events, are repressed by the conscious mind; this is a defence mechanism which keeps the ego free of conflict and tension. These memories remain hidden in the subconscious, and manifest themselves in the neuroses and psychoses of the individual, when something induces the momentary retrieval of a repressed memory, triggering a neurotic or psychotic episode. One aim of Freudian psychoanalysis is the retrieval of these repressed memories from the subconscious, in the hope that confronting them will cure the patient’s neuroses.

OEDIPUS COMPLEX
Another concept sometimes employed by Hitchcock is Freud’s notion of the Oedipus complex. This derives its name from Oedipus, the character in Greek mythology who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. Freud believed that all children are attracted to their opposite sex parent, and this creates conflict with the parent of the same sex.

THOUGHTS ON SIGNS...

the object road sign with the word "stop" is a sign. the word "stop" is the signifier, and the signified concept is the fact that we have to stop in front of the sign.
so, the sign is readeble only in a culture that recognizes it as such... a sign is a product of a culture which has established the meaning a priori.
the meaning is idealized when the sign becomes consistent and familiar in a specific environment.
for example, in advertising we consistently see the repeated images of healthy-good looking people using a certain beauty product, the mith is created in our mind not only by the advertised product, but also by the appearence and the lifestile proposed by the image which sells an ideolgy within the sales of the product.

WAYS OF SEEING JOHN BERGER

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT POINT MADE BY BERGER RELATED TO MY STUDIES, RESEARCHES AND PRACTICES...

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jsa3/hum355/readings/berger.htm

ON HITCHCOCK'S REAR WINDOW

True perversion is barely concealed under a shallow mask of ideological correctness–the man is on the right side of the law, the woman on the wrong. Hitchcock’s skillful use of identification processes and liberal use of subjective camera from the point of view of the male protagonist draw the spectators deeply into his position, making them share his uneasy gaze. The audience is absorbed into a voyeuristic situation within the screen scene and diegesis which parodies his own in the cinema. In his analysis of Rear Window, Douchet takes the film as a metaphor for the cinema. Jeffries is the audience, the events in the apartment block opposite correspond to the screen. As he watches, an erotic dimension is added to his look, a central image to the drama. His girlfriend Lisa had been of little sexual interest to him, more or less a drag, so long as she remained on the spectator side. When she crosses the barrier between his room and the block opposite, their relationship is re-born erotically. He does not merely watch her through his lens, as a distant meaningful image, he also sees her as a guilty intruder exposed by a dangerous man threatening her with punishment, and thus finally saves her. Lisa’s exhibitionism has already been established by her obsessive interest in dress and style, in being a passive image of visual perfection; Jeffries’ voyeurism and activity have also been established through his work as a photo-journalist, a maker of stories and captor of images. However, his enforced inactivity, binding him to his seat as a spectator, puts him squarely in the phantasy position of the cinema audience.