Task 4 - What Is Visual Culture

What is Visual Culture?

            Visual Culture is everything that is seen, that is produced to be seen, and the way in which it is seen and understood. It is that part of culture that communicates through visual means. “ Is perhaps best understood as a tactic for studying the functions of a world addressed through pictures, images, and visualizations, rather than thorough texts and words”.    (Nicholas Mirzoeff). Visual Culture ia a growing interdisciplinary field of study, which emerged out of the interaction of anthropology, art history, media studies and many other disciplines that focus on visual object or the way pictures and images are created. (Jackson, 2012)

Figure 1 : Keith Farquhar Boy, 2012

            Visual Culture also concerned with the production, circulation, and consumption of images and the changing nature of subjectivity. It also involves exploring, analyzing, and critiquing the relationship between culture and visuality, from a range of diverse theoretica perspectives, including art history, postmodernism, gender studies, marxism, feminism, sociology, globalisation, postructuralism, literary theory, philosophy, cultural anthropology, postcolonislism, capitalism, queer theory and film/TV. (Jackson, 2012)

            The visual culture approach acknowledges the reality of living in a world of cross-mediation. The culturally meaningful visual content appears in multiple forms, and visual content and codes migrate from to another. Image often move across social arenas from documentary images to advertisement to amateur video to news images to artworks. Each change in context produces a change in meaning. (Jackson,2012)

Figure 2 : Mark Wallinger State Britain, A recreation of Brain Haw’s anti-war protest in Parliament Square, 2007.

Visual Culture is recognises that the visual image is not stable but changes its relationship to exterior reality at particular moments. A single image serve a multitude of purpose appear in a range of setting, and mean different things to different people. Representation and spectatorship involves relationships of  power. Visual Culture also merges popular and low cultural forms, media and communications, and the study of high cultural forms or fine art, design, and architecture. (Schroeder, 2009)

            On visual culture tends to revolve around at least three complex and wide-ranging concepts such as representation,meaning and culture. This complexity makes the as yet inchoate discipline diverse in its aims and eclectic in its methods, thus reflecting a radical interdisciplinarity. Visual Culture as a term, refers both the visual aspects of culture and to visual culture as a scholarly discipline. Visual Culture offers profound implications for understanding consumer culture. Furthermore, visual culture, as a discipline, highligts the fundamental importance of the image in cultural life. The pervasiveness and power of the image in Western culture means that it is a central way to represent issues in society, to the extent that Western intellectual throught in the late 20th century exoerienced a “pictorial turn”, where the image assumed aprivileged status in its  ability to reflect and commnunicate the world. Martin Jay (1994) describes this growing centrality of the visual to contemporary life as ‘ocularcentrism’, or ‘scopophilia’, where the practice of looking helps us make sense of the world. (Cartwright and Sturken,  2001).  (Schroeder, 2009)

            Visual culture is a field that focuses on the many loci of meaning in an image, incorporating a wide range of theories, methodologies and perspective from discipline as diverse as sociology and psychoanalysis. It is important to remember that there are three sites, or position from which to investigate the meaning of an image, first is the site of image production, second, the site of image consumption and third is the site of the “text itself”. (Van Leeuwen, 2006). Visual Culture concentrtes on the text itself, and generally pays less attention to the sites of image production (the artist, creative briefs, compony or brand strategy, the technologies of image production used, and so on. Or the sites of image consumption like how conumers relate to the image, attitudes towards the image, issue of display and so on.  (Schroeder, 2009)

Street Art

            Street Art is any art developed in public spaces. The term can include traditional graffiti art work, as well as, stenci graffiti , sticker art, wheatpasting and street poster art , video projection, art intervention, guerilla art, flash mobbing and street installations. Whereas traditional graffiti artists have primarily used free-hand aerosol paints to produce their work with tagging and text based subject, street art encompasses many other media, techniques and subject matter. (Vault, 2014)

            Street Art is one of the most powerful art movement in the world today. This however has not led to any real recognition  of the art form, with the notable exception of the Five Points neighborhood, the underground studio scene in Springfield and the blog posts of Joey Marchy at UrbanJacksonville.info. The art form was allegedly banned from the Riverside Arts Market as well as the annual Festival for the same reasons that caused both Rock and Roll and Jazz music to be banned in 'tasteful' communities around the country in the last century. "Turn", Thursto, Tommy Armageddon (and some would include the Urbismo team) are probably some of the most exciting artists ever to come from our city and yet the art form that they practice makes their art 'unsuitable'. Maybe this is partially due to confusion about what Street Art is. (Vault, 2014)

Figure 3: Example of street art, Banksy, North London.

Figure 4 : beautiful and creative graffiti street art

Figure 5 : 20 jaw- street art

Figure 6 : amazing guerilla street art

Figure 7 : lovely street art

Figure 8 : creative street art and urbanism

        There is as yet no simple definition of street art. It is an amorphous beast encompassing art which is found in or inspired by the urban environment. With anti-capitalist and rebellious undertones, it is a democratic form of popular public art probably best understood by seeing it in situ. It is not limited to the gallery nor easily collected or possessed by those who may turn art into a trophy. Considered by some a nuisance, for others street art is a tool for communicating views of dissent, asking difficult questions and expressing political concerns. Its definition and uses are changing: originally a tool to mark territorial boundaries of urban youth today it is even seen in some cases as a means of  urban beautification and regeneration. Whether it is regarded as vandalism or public art, street art has caught the interest of the art world and its lovers of beauty. (Vault, 2014)

            Street Art is totally separate from vandalism, dirty little wall poems and tradisional gang territory marking. When you say street art or post graffiti you mean the art as opposed to the vandalism.  Is street art Vandalism?, street art is the best way for  people to express themselves in this city.” Finkelpearl, who helps organize socially conscious art exhibitions, added, “Art gets dialogue going. That’s very good.” However, he doesn’t find  graffiti to be art, and says, “I can’t condone vandalism… It’s really upsetting to me that people would need to write their name over and over again in public space. It’s this culture of fame. I really think it’s regrettable that they think that’s the only way to become famous.” ( Tom Finkelpearl).                 
The street art Illegal?, the legal distinction between permanent graffiti and art is permission, but the topic becomes even more complex regarding impermanent, nondestructive forms of graffiti (yarn bombing, video projection, and street installation. With permission, traditional painted graffiti is technically considered public art. Without permission, painters of public and private property are committing vandalism and are, by definition, criminals. However, it still stands that most street art is unsanctioned, and many artists who have painted without permission  have been glorified as legitimate and socially conscious artists. Although it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to clearly define what unsanctioned imagery is art and what is not, the effects of such images can be observed and conclusions can be reached regarding images’ function within a public environment. (Vault, 2014)

History and Modern Of Street Art

                Street Art can be anything from simple scratch marks, to writings in pen, or large wall murals with paint. Street Art has existed since the dawn of time as the cavemen painted pictures of animals, battles and themselves on the walls of their homes in the caves of Africa and Europe. Street Art can be found in the ruins of ancient Greece and preserved in the ruins of Pompeii. Evidence of random writings on walls of structures that back between the 1st century BC to 4th century AD have been found in what is now modern day Syria, Jordan and Iraq. These writings, were on topics of religion, politics, romance. Some cartoon like drawings resembling people have also been found. The Romans wrote Street Art on walls and monuments and these writings have given a great deal of insight into life in these ancient times. From the Mayans in Guatemala to the Vikings of Scandanavia, the soldiers of Napoleon to the pioneers on the Oregon Trail, they all left their mark along their routes of travel forever preserving their accomplishments and lifestyles for the future civilizations of the world to see. (NYGARD, 2008)

Figure 9 : Keith Haring Painting the Berlin Wall, 1986

Figure 10 : Street Art in El Carmen, Valencia

               Graffiti, Street-Art, Urban-Art; with nearly 20,000 years of cultural evolution behind it, it’s still art by any other name and nothing seems able to stem its phenomenal popularity.  We’ve come a long way from the simple cave-paintings of our ancient past, and the amazing diversity of today’s graffiti has shown an enviable mating of resilience and adaptability.  The once-simple idea of drawing on a nearby public wall has become something truly extraordinary in a world increasingly walled-off and walled-in.  Art’s most public legacy has definitely reached maturity. Modern street art now incorporates distinctive themes and heavy use of personalized style in even the most basic signatures.  These can range from the ultra-minimalist tags shown in the uppermost images above, or in full-detail.  In either case, as the smaller tags seem to swarm the objects they present themselves upon, a full canvas eventually develops. It was only inevitable that script would be replaced by images, and in the world of graffiti and street-art those images stand out from their surroundings with exceptional contrast.  The advent of illustrated street art was arguably responsible for the single largest boost in followers among the general populace, as the general style of writing is nearly completely illegible to the untrained eye.  Pictures in street art allow for a clearer, more poignant message to come across from the artist.  While some of these pieces tend to be for the mere fun of it, many are political in nature and aim to make a statement to be seen by any and all who pass by. (NYGARD, 2008)

Types Of Street Art

            Street art have a lot of types and have more ways to make street art. It was have a special tehniques to do that. The example for street art such as, traditional, stencil, sticker, mosaic, video projection, street installation, wood blocking, flash mobbing, and yarn
bombing. (Vault, 2014)

a)      Traditional
- is painting on the surface of public or private property that is visible to the public, commonly with a can of spray or roll on paint. It may be comprised of just simple words like commonly the writer’s name or be more artful and elaborate, covering a surface with a mural image. (Vault, 2014)

Figure 11 : example of tradisional street art

a)      Stencil
- Painting with the use of a homemade stencil, usually a paper or cardboard cutout, to create an image taht can be easily reproduced. The design is cut out of a selected medium, and the image is transferred to a surface through the use of spray paint or rool on paint. (Vault, 2014)

Figure 12 : example of stencil on the wall

C ) Sticker
-     like a sticker bombing, slap tagging, and sticker tagging, it is propagates an image or massage in public spaces using homemade stickers. These stickers commonly promote a political agenda, comment on a policy or issue, or comprise an avantgarde art campaign. Sticker art is considered a subcategory of postmodern art. (Vault, 2014)

Figure 13 : example of sticker street art

D) Mosaic
- Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of smaller parts or pieces, to resemble a single giamt piece of art. (Vault, 2014)

Figure 14 : example of street art using mosaic

E) Video Projection
- Digitally projecting a computer-manipulated image onto  surface via a ligtht and projection system. (Vault, 2014)

Figure 15 : example of video projection street art

F) Street Installation
- are a growing trend within the ‘street art’ movement. Whereas conventional stereet art and graffiti is done on surfaces or walls, ‘street installation’ use 3D objects ad space to interfere with the urban environment. Like graffiti, it is non-permision based and once the object or sculpture is installed it is left there by the artist. (Vault, 2014)

Figure 16 : example of street art installation

G) Wood Blocking
- Artwork painted on a small portion of playwood or similar enexpensive material and attached to street signs with bolts. Often the bolts are bent at the back to prevent removal. It has become a form of graffiti used to cover a sign, poster, or any piece of advertisment taht stands or hang. (Vault, 2014)

Figure 17 : street art using wood bloking

H) 3D  Street Art
-  often kwon as 3d chalk art is 2-dimensional artwork drwan on the street itself that givens you a 3-dimensional optical illuson from a certain perspective it can be very breathtaking realistic and at the same time captivating once you get the angle correct. And creating one is certainly through and challenging as you are creating a realistic 3d view out of a 2d painting. (Vault, 2014)

Figure 18 : examples of 3D street art

Some example of video for street art :-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SNYtd0Ayt0        - 3D street art

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icrFlC6KkfY           - Graffiti street art

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLlo6hTaJzA            - Stencil street art

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isoblsa7uFk              - Video projection street art

Bibliography

Jackson, D. (2012). Introduction To Visual Culture. Slideshare .

NYGARD, J. (2008). Graffiti and Street Art: A Brief History. Yahoo Voice .

Schroeder, J. (2009). Visual Culture. pdf.

Vault. (2014). What Is Street Art? Art Radar Asia .