New semester, new job!

Pipilotti Rist @ Hayward Gallery, London 2011

As from Monday the 23rd of January I am now officially Curriculum leader of the Art and Design department @ Harrogate college...finally got there, not bad I guess from someone who started in 2004 on only 2 hours teaching a week..I need a picture to add here..must go and have a look before I continue on. back shortly..


ok back..I think Im going to continue on from last posting, that is where I am now in terms of what I have been reading. the paper written on Hilary lloyd by Michael Newman has been a real inspiration to me I have made a lot of good connections, for  example, Jean louis Baudry, narrative  apparatus and ideology, (difficult reading...but i have manage to grasp some of it) focuses on the positioning of the camera in relation to the spectator, that is the viewer is taken out of the vanishing point of the image. Laura Mulvey (Visual methodologies P107) essay looks at cinema, more to the point voyeuristic 'male gaze' in visual pleasure and narrative cinema, which links to Warhol p42 stargazer. Scopophilia...the pleasure in looking and what overlaps into fetishistic scopophilia, in which Mulveys decribes the female figure represented simply as a beautiful object of display (close ups of her overwhelming beauty) as seen by the hero of the film and the male spectator. Warhol's film can be seen in the same way, his central metaphor being the voyeur, simply the one who see's...but defends himself as someone whose presence must remain unknown...p41 Stagazer. 
Also what is of interest is the term 'interpassivity' (Robert Pfaller. little gestures of disapearence) which has replaced 'interactivity' I shall try to explain this...interpassivity as I understand it means 'delegating ones pleasure' for example; watching a tv programme that contains 'canned laughter' is put there so we don't have to laugh, its already done for us, soaps in the same way are easy to follow, it doesn't matter how long you stop watching, on return you could quite easily pick up the story line, the characters etc...Warhols film are viewed in the same way 'Sleep' in 1963 we see the film remaining on the screen always, its time is dissociated from the audience, only to be glanced at from time to time, warhol is perhaps the only film maker to ever concede that his audience might not want to see every minute of his work...so when not being viewed by the audience it is then the cameras mechanical eye that does all the work..this I can link with interpassivity!


thinking about all of this...SE suggested I make a sentence of linked concepts, how they relate and frame my research. I think I am doing this to some degree, its difficult not to get side tracked there's always so much to take in. this is what I have come up with so far..


TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION, VOYEURISM, STORYTELLER/THE PLAYER OR CHARACTER, TIME-BASED=TEMPORAL, AUDIENCE/PLAYERS.


I want to continue looking in this area, its really interesting. I've ordered a book on audience studies, it relates to a lot of what I have been discussing above...although where this is leading to I'm not quite sure, I have now until September, not long to decipher what my RQ clearly states. I need to get it clear in my mind to fully understand myself. Last leg of the MA which focuses on 'reflection' and commercialisation (dull, its business)...FR has now gone and I have hopefully on board Ellie Land, she sounds quite exiciting..thats all for now. next meeting with SE. 23rd Feb 3:45 thursday.