How are they linked? “Affirmation: a statement or sign that something is true” (dictionary.cambridge.org). Our UVC manual uses this example to illustrate difference: “those cats look the same, but one has blue eyes, the other green, that is the difference”. So: in the everyday then, “difference” denotes an absence of something: that is the “thing” …
Category Archives: Coursework
Exercise 4.2: The First Man was an Artist.
Write a short summary of Newman’s essay in 200 words. The link supplied for us to find Newman’s essay does not exist. Luckily there are plenty of ways to find it, I have a copy in Herschel B Chipp’s “Theories of Modern Art” (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1968). Basically, this …
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Exercise 4.1 Charles Minard, and Alfred Barr Revisited.
How might Alfred Barr’s Cubism and Abstract Art be understood as “information in a system”? Compare this to Charles Minard’s 1812 data-map of French losses in Russia. Minard created his map in 1869 to illustrate Napoleon’s march to Moscow in 1812. The chart plots army size, location and temperature. The script at the top of …
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Exercise 4.0 Two Sowers: Millet and Van Gogh.
Look at Millet’s “The Sower” (1850) and Van Gogh’s “The Sower” (1889) and account for their similarities and differences. These two paintings were made 39 years apart, are obviously of the same subject matter and obviously (unless we were sure that one artist had dramatically changed his/her style) by two different hands. Rather than use …
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Exercise 3.9 Rachel Whiteread’s “House”
In what sense is this piece indexical and why does it matter for an interpretation of the work? Would overlooking this feature be wrong, or would that simply be a different interpretation? Whiteread talks about “House” in a short film for theEYE and Illuminations Media which I found on Youtube. It may seem a little …
Exercise 3.8 What does it mean, to say that Nature is Culture?
Can there be one without the other? What would it be like? Does the term “binary opposition” apply to nature and culture? Let’s start with defining what binary opposition is. Basically, what we are talking about is something that has an exact opposite. We can describe something as “hot” because there is a “cold” at …
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Exercise 3.7 The Simulacrum and Jeff Koons
Write a paragraph on a single work by Koons according to what you understand of the simulacrum. 400 words is required for this: not very much, so I cheated a bit, by laying down some ground-work in my previous post about the praying mantis. Hah! Ultimately I will be using two of Koons pieces as …
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Simulacra: The Preying Mantis.
I admit to having problems with understanding the notion of the simulacrum. It has caused much head-scratching, and I have struggled with trying to understand the relevance with all this. I found Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation” but found it impossible to understand. It was peppered with phrases like “whereas representation attempts to absorb simulation by …
Exercise 3.6: “One cannot say the world is socially constructed and say there are misrepresentations”.
This sentence (which we are invited to reflect upon) comes at the end of a paragraph concerned with contrasting realism with constructivism. It talks of entitlement, and of being wrongly placed. It pigeon-holes: not specifically rightly or wrongly, but it does suggest that constructivists should not “mourn the passing of a world less driven by …
Exercise 3.5 Artificial Intelligence
Does the prospect of artificial intelligence make us doubt the authenticity of human intelligence or is it forever a fake version of human intelligence? Give reasons for both arguments. The first reference to any kind of artificial intelligence in the media that I could find was a short silent movie from 1917 called “The Clever …
Understanding Visual Culture with the Open College of the Arts 