Category: Reading Assignment

Foundation 4D- Reading Assignment

Pre-Seminar Task 

Impulse installation-the Streets of Montreal 
http://lateraloffice.com/IMPULSE-2015-16

Impulse is an interactive sound art installation from the collaboration between CS Design and Toronto-based Lateral Office, on the Streets of Montreal. It’s an installation of 30 interactive lighted seesaws. It requires 2 people to be on the seesaw to activate it. Once activated it will begin to produce sound resulting in various musical harmonies when as more seesaws are being activated. This Installation promotes public participation and not only that it gives users an experience they will truly remember. Using seesaw as one of the elements which are a childhood relatable item really brings the attraction for users and also using sound as a product they can produce just by playing a seesaw is an interactive process which users will enjoy.

Garden of Russolo – Yuri Suzuki
https://www.designboom.com/technology/yuri-suzuki-garden-of-russolo-sound-installation-at-va/

Garden russolo is an interactive sound installation by Japanese designer Yuri Suzuki. The installation allows visitors to have a sonic and interactive experience using their own voice. This is how it works, as users speak into the speaker, it would produce back a modified sound using the user’s voice. Different sound box produces different modification of sound. It is an interesting installation which requires users to participate and experience it themselves. An experience where the user feels they have produced something unique when interacting with the installation itself.

Seminar Questions

  1. What is sound? – The direct definition of sound is a vibration that travels through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear. Sound can be something soothing or something dreadful to the ears. It can be produced by anything. It’s a product of two objects come in contact. It requires an effort, force, and an impact to produce sound.
  2. How has it been use in culture and society? – Sound is used as a form of alert, signal or even delivering a message in culture and society. It’s there in our daily life. The sound from our phone notification, a sound that is produced on a lift button to alert us. The sound produced by a traffic light to deliver us an alert, a message that we need to speed up as we cross the traffic. ASound is also used for entertainment or even to fulfil a religion rituals.
  3. What makes it an art? – Its when sound is used for an experience. When it is not only about a purpose. It doesn’t need to have a purpose to be used or produced. It can become art when different sounds are being produced at the same time or the process of producing the sound itself and how the sounds are produced. In what form do the sounds turn out. The exploration of the loudness of the sound and even the length and beat of the sound.
  4. How does advancement in audio technology affect our sense? – Audio technology exposes our sense to something new, something that is not natural. It is something modified which means it alerts the human sense that its something different and unique therefore attracting us to further listen and which then be brought to a different sense.

Reading Assignment: Roland Barthes Rhetoric of the Image

What are some of the key questions Barthes aims to investigate in the article?

Barthes aims to investigate the meaning of an image. How the message reaches the viewer, does it really shows in terms literal or symbolic? Are there actually codes in an image and how does meaning gets into the image.

What are some of the key terms/ concepts introduced and discussed?

Linguistic message: a first message, its support are the caption which is marginal, and the labels, these being inserted into the natural disposition the scene.

Iconic message: A certain informational matter that we need to further read and understand that it assembles in a common space number of identifiable objects, not merely shapes and colors. Real objects.

Lexicon: A portion of the symbolic plane (of language) which corresponds to a body of practices and techniques.

Polysemous: They imply, underlying their signifiers, a ‘floating chain’ of signified, the reader able to choose some and ignore the others. It poses a question of meaning and this question always comes through as a dysfunction.

Do you agree or disagree with his argument and point of view?

I do agree with his point as an image is not just for aesthetic purposes, it has a message/ meaning to tell. And it has to really reach the viewer the way it’s supposed to tell.

Provide a brief analysis (200 words) on an advertisement of your choice by using the terms/ concepts proposed by Barthes and discuss the role of text and its relationship with the image in the advertisement. Please include an image the advertisement in your post.

Global Warming PSA Project-Ferdi Rizkiyanto
link: https://www.behance.net/gallery/253771/Global-Warming-PSA-Project

This is a global warming awareness poster by Ferdi Rizkiyanto for a Global Warming PSA Project. The linguistic message shown is “We are running out of time…Act now before it’s too late”. Its role is to support and further pushes out the meaning of the iconic message that already explains the meaning of the image itself. For example, the hourglass, clearly it represents ‘running out of time’ and as we can see the top half of the hourglass shows a melting Antarctic dripping water into the other half of the hourglass which the city we live in, filling it up. This shows the effect of global warming on us which is rising of sea water level. Therefore, the text is in a small and thin font as it’s not really needed to shout out the message of the image.