Result of assessment

In March 2015, I received the assessment result. 

I achieved 72% overall with scores as follows in the individual criteria:

Demonstration of Subject Based Knowledge and Understanding:      18

Excellent knowledge and understanding of subject and context              

Demonstration of Research Skills                                                                     19                   
Excellent range of research from a wide range of                                         
sources, excellent design and implementation of
research project where appropriate

Demonstration of Critical & Evaluation Skills                                            18

Excellent critical skills, demonstrating a well
developed intellectual understanding and analytical
ability.

Communication                                                                                                       17
Very good communication of ideas and knowledge 

Overall Comments

You have produced a very interesting body of essays and research that demonstrates your excellent understanding of key ideas developed alongside your choice of topics. Your communication of an argument around the deconstruction of an image was very good, moving forward consider expanding the core of your subject so as to maintain your focus on the key aspect of your essay, this was evident in your very interesting consideration of your 'manipulated' digital photography in assignment 5. Your learning log contained an excellent range of research, continue to explore wide aspects of visual culture as you have done throughout the course.

A good result - I share on the blog so hopefully others may get a feel for the assessment standards. It is not intended as a self-congratulatory exercise, though am very pleased with the result, the best of the three modules studied in Part 1.

This has given me confidence to continue with the course, especially as the new Level 2 Landscape course is much more about reading and understanding the history of landscape photography. This is an approach that I prefer, rather than simply taking 'great pictures'. It provides more intellectual stimulation. UVC will be an excellent base, both because of the reduced emphasis on the practicalities of photography and the corresponding increase in the intellectual understanding, and because some of the course is very relevant to the new Landscape course. A good example of this is the second exercise in Chapter 1 of Landscape: read an essay by Rosalind Krauss on Pohotogrpahy's Discursive Spaces that happens to be included in Visual Culture: the reader, one of the standard texts for UVC.

Postscript: Ex Machina

On 31 January, saw Ex Machina. The write up has shades of Blade Runner and The Matrix.

Ex Machina is an excellent sci-fi movie. Celeb wins a competition to spend a week with the leader of the IT company for which he works. Thrilled, he is flown by helicopter to spend a week courtesy of the CEO's house in the middle of nowhere. Nathan, the CEO, is a strange individual, programming artificial intelligence women. His latest model is Ava, on who he wants Caleb to perform the Turing test. In moments when Nathan is not listening (or so Caleb believes, incorrectly as it turns out) Ava implores him to help her escape. They hatch a plan that goes wrong as first Nathan is killed by Ava and another robot, his last words being "this is fucking unreal", then Caleb is deserted by Ava and left in the locked building as she catches the helicopter to meet reality.

It is a well crafted script, using the Turing test, and the concepts of Boudrillard and others. It plays too on sexism, as the robots are female, constructed by a male who has, it is ultimately realised, a depraved mind. Ex Machina is explored as Caleb is introduced as the metaphorical machine that is released into the comfortable set established by Nathan, bringing about the destruction of Nathan and his world.

Tutor reports

Please click here for tutor reports on Assignments 1-5.

Feedback from Assignment 5

The feedback was very positive: "this was a very impressive submission, which I have judged as outstanding across all four criteria."

Tutor note how I have progressed from an "intelligent cynicism about the course to an understanding of how you might use it to enhance [my]  appreciation of everything from contemporary cinema to [my] partner's poetry and from your experience of a visit to the Tata to an analysis of your own photographs"

This one paragraph does summarise very well an eleven month journey grappling with some difficult concepts, and trying to be open-minded while endeavouring to understand. It is easy to give up, to blame the message rather than one's understanding thereof. There has always been a slight tendency to see the light side of things - 'wry humour' tutor calls it - as an antidote to the complexity of the concepts and the ways in which they are enunciated. 

Tutor expands on some of the concepts, noting how Farid and Turkle set out that new technology is somehow a new phenomenon. It isn't; as tutor says, the printing press was a major trigger of the Reformation. I would add that the camera was a (emphasize 'a')  precursor of Modernism as artists moved away from copying visual reality.

Two things really came home to me in this chapter and the Assignment:

1. How all pervasive the concept of reality is. I watched the first in the series The Secrets of Quantum Physics on BBC4 recently. The presenter sets out the differing views of Einstein that there is an objective reality, as against Niels Bohr's contention that there is no reality until something can be measured or observed (Schrödinger's Cat experiment discussed in this section set out to debunk the Bohr theory. This really gets ot the nub of existence itself;
2. As a corollary, how important it is to visual culture. The course did not explore children's TV or cartoons, but of course the latter (entirely) and the former (mostly) are all about exciting the young viewer's imagination of an alternative world, as were books by the likes of Lewis Carroll on which many of the films and series are based. In a less obvious way, I wish to explore this further in Photography 2. Landscapes are, prima facie, as close to an objective reality as you can get, but our portrayal of landscapes is anything but. 

This was a high on which to finish, very pleased with reports generally and this one in particular.

Reflections on Understanding Visual Culture

This will be my penultimate post - one more for the Assignment 5 feedback, then UVC will be completed.

Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed this course. It has been hard work, has taken many more hours than I anticipated; probably well over the 400 hours OCA use as a guide. It is not just the reading and research, but also the blog maintenance (Blogger behaves in strange ways occasionally; one post was lost completely and had to be retyped).

Outcomes

In the introductory post of exactly 11 months ago, I set out three anticipated outcomes:

1. The challenge of "understanding and criticising more general theories in a visual context". This has undeniably been met: the theories of Berger, Marx, Debord, Bourdieu, Benjamin, Freud and Lacan (to mention just a few) have been read. Interpreting them has been a significant challenge in some cases, particularly due to the arcane language used in places, as discussed below;
2. Broadening the range of academic skills to incorporate those seen as relevant to this course: knowledge and understanding; research skills; critical and evaluation skills; and communication. Tutor has judged Assignments 1,2 & 4 as excellent across all criteria, and Assignment 3 as very good across all. Subject to comments on A5, this objective has been met also (postscript 10 December 2014: A5 was marked as outstanding in all respects);
3.  The final outcome of relevance to future courses will be outstanding for some time. but it seems highly likely that the concepts and theories in UVC will be useful in future modules. Completion of UVC marks a significant milestone: I have now completed Level 1, having started in 2011 with The Art Of Photography, followed by People and Place, and now Understanding Visual Culture. I have decided to carry on to Level 2, commencing with Landscape  then, probably, Documentary. The decision has been made easier by the move in the new syllabus towards reading, challenging, interpreting, and communicating via the photographic medium: to 'articulate your individual perspective of place' in the words of the course summary for Landscape. Documentary encourages us to advance communication skills and apply semiotics to images. Specifically, one assignment in each module is a 2,000 word essay. This all seems to chime with the approach in UVC.

But studying UVC has provided much more than these three outcomes. It has broadened my knowledge generally; I freely admit to knowing little about Art now, but at least I know more than 11 months ago. Visiting the Tate Modern a few weeks ago, I felt more confidence in understanding what I was looking at. I have some idea of the theories of Freud, Lacan and others. And, most of all, I have enjoyed the 'voyage of discovery'. Unlike the photography modules, I started many of the sections of UVC with zero knowledge. Reading and interpreting the works in the course was challenging, but even better was researching material for the Assignments. 

Despite the cautionary note in Assignment 5, digital technology has been empowering in this course. All the notes, logs and assignments have been created and stored digitally and, more important, the internet has been the source for a large chunk of my Assignment material. As well as the work of Jeff Koons, Sherry Turkle, Sarah Lucas, Hannah Höch, to mention just a few well-known names, I came across and used sources and authors that were writing on matters and in ways that were not directly relevant to what one might term 'academic UVC', but struck me as very relevant to the subject-matter. There are several examples in Assignment 4 - the use of the story about the uniform of the Colombian women's cycle team and Brogan Driscoll's coverage of nude sports photography in the Huffington Post. A quote from a blog by Christy Stewart-Smith was used in Assignment 3.  

And in a wider sense, the course has provided opportunity to explore media that I otherwise would not have: Jay-Z and others performing rap videos in Gendering the Gaze, and watching the films: Vertigo, Simba, Battle of Algiers, The Matrix and Blade Runner. Battle of Algiers is an outstanding film; I have suggested it to many family and friends since watching, as it has an almost disconcerting relevance to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. There were, too, some references that added humour with their irreverence: Craig Brown's My Turd , a satire of Tracey Emin's My Bed, is one I returned to several times when despairing of understanding what a particular article was driving at.

I learnt more too about using software, and annotation. An internet search revealed how to ensure that a link, when clicked, opens in a new page; important so I could incorporate links to annotated pdfs in the blog that open in a separate page. (The default position in Blogger, is such that viewers are required to use the back button to get back to the original post after clicking and reading a link). Thanks to my wife, Sue, who helped with MS Publisher, the software used for the annotations. Not studying Art, I had to assume how an annotation worked for an academic assignment; seems that the results are satisfactory as had no adverse comment from tutor. Sue also found a link on how to insert superscript for use in the text to refer to notes, used in Assignment 5, another of those little touches that provide a more professional result. Wordpress would probably be a better software than Blogger, but the latter has worked so far in the three OCA modules. 

It is what you make of it

To quote again from the  introductory post:

"Probably my main concern is not understanding the subject, finding the jargon arcane, and the arguments highfalutin. I have little time for academic study that is deliberately opaque so as to appear more difficult than it truly is. The challenge will be to avoid scorn or dismissiveness when reading an commenting on such material."

This was prescient, or at least the first part (I think I have avoided scorn and dismissiveness, albeit shown some exasperation at times). A lot of the reading - Lacan, Barthes, Derrida, Debord, Altthusser, Baudrillard - is really very difficult to interpret in the original for an unpractised reader (for anyone). My favourite phrase was by Althusser, referred to in Reflections on Chapter 1:

 "[The Absolute subject] subjects the subject to the Subject..." I was whimsically reminded of Major Major Major Major, a character from Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22. 

Latterly I have come to wonder why it seems necessary for these authors to be so oblique. Is it some sort of conspiracy or game with the audience, challenging them to struggle and make meaning of the writings? 

Firstly, let's bear in mind these thinkers come from a strong French tradition of philosophical thinking. Philosophy remains a strong influence in French education so it is hardly surprising that it has produced some leading academics on philosophy and related subjects. It can be argued that it is not the place of leading thinkers to be accessible; let those coming behind do the spade work of helping the rest of us understand the opaque prose. My second sentence in the above quote is therefore misguided - these are difficult concepts that do not lend themselves to direct and easily readable prose.

An internet search of 'Why are French philosophers so difficult to understand?' adduced nothing of assistance but refining the search came up with a review of a book by Bruce Fink (2004). The following extract from the reviewer's comments is instructive:

"Firstly, he [Fink] reads Lacan literally to the letter, arguing that if one is prepared to undertake a close reading of the text, he is quite often not obfuscatory, but actually says what he means.  Secondly, he reads Lacan to the letter in the sense that he attempts to understand him on his own terms as having an artistic, literary style of writing.  This argument is sustained by Lacan himself, who often seems to have more in common with literary criticism than clinical psychoanalysis.  Lacan criticizes analysts who over-use the word “analyze”, because they “no longer know what it means to interpret.”

Fink, the reviewer continues, contends that Lacan’s mode of writing is a part of his philosophy, and attempt to psychoanalyze psychoanalysis. One could perhaps say that Lacan looks at the reader looking at his work. He challenges the reader to interpret, rather than to analyze. 'Interpret' in the English language has connotations of of holism and of individuality, that one person's  'interpretation' will be different from another's; 'analyze' has connotations that the subject can meaningfully be disaggregated into smaller more understandable parts each of which will have an objective truth. Nusselder (2009, loc52), in a similar vein, quotes Lacan as saying that it is so much better when one does not understand his writings, since it gives a chance to explain them. Lacan, at least, it seems is challenging his reader to make sense of his prose. Shades too of Derrida, who reportedly tired of explaining "il n'ya pas de hors texte" in his later life.

So it is up to us to read, interpret and (by implication) set out what we consider the meaning is without fear of contradiction because each 'intepretation' is unique. It is perhaps not a giant leap of generalising faith to extrapolate this to all the writers above, because that is the way with arts and the social sciences: universal, unassailable, objective truth is hard to to find. This remains an incomplete explanation of the issue of the tortuous nature of the language - you can openly invite your reader to interpret your work in his or her own way without writing in riddles - but it goes some way to explaining it. 

Conclusion

2014 has been an eventful year personally: retiring from employment in August, and completing The South West Coast Path (followed in October by the much shorter Ridgeway.) It is an arresting thought that considerably more hours were spent on this course than walking 630 miles (albeit that many hours were spent planning and travelling to and from each stage of SWCP as well as the 283 actually walking). Both projects require structure: SWCP requires planning of accommodation, transport and itineraries; UVC requires reading, researching material, executing projects and assignments. Yet within the structure, there is room for improvise, to confront the unexpected, to explore something different than was planned. Some things exceed expectations, others disappoint. Open mindedness is an essential. Not only have SWCP and UVC been in their own ways intrinsically challenging and rewarding, they have also been cathartic.

References:

Fink, Bruce (2004) Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (ebook version)

Nusselder, André (2009) Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology Kindle version. Amazon  

Reflections on Chapter 5

Reading and the projects

I recall wondering a few months ago when looking ahead what Chapter 5 was about. How does it relate to anything I have done so far in OCA? How, indeed, is a project entitled "Illusion only is sacred, truth profane" or "Ecclesiastes misquoted" relevant to visual culture? Never mind Schrödinger's cat.

The chapter title, The concept of reality, suggested that psychology would feature significantly, although the first project took us back a couple of stages to consider advertising again. Because of its openly manipulative raison d'être, advertising is a rich source of material for visual culture analysis. Preceding that was a reread of Debord's Separation Perfected; gained much from a second read. The project was interesting, especially finding adverts for products past and present; I incorporated the current Guinness More Than campaign.

Reading around the project, I was struck again by the contrast between academic visual culture approach to advertising, and articles from those within the advertising industry. No apologies for 'leading the reader' or 'manipulating the message' from them; this is what they do. It is straight to the point as to how you get the viewer to absorb your message, from subtleties like colour or positioning of objects within images, to the textual message. The photographer for the Barclays ad proudly announces on his website how he set up the image to promote the required lifestyle of the ad agency. It reminds one of the quote from Scott Clifford, the author of the Top 20 Sexiest Female Athletes of 2014 that was included in Assignment 4: after musing over the inherent sexist nature of what he does, Clifford concludes: "....I really need to get paid so enough with the words and such." Barthes would doubtless say this is symptomatic of accepting the existing as the natural order of things, and maybe it is, but Clifford does need to be paid, and the advertising industry does need clients.

The intriguingly entitled Ecclesiastes Misquoted required reading of Baudrillard and his misquote from the Old Testament. The article is absent from the third edition of the course reader, requiring some reading around (unusually could not find an online copy). Baudrillard seemed prescient; the idea that reality however described is basically a single construct was timed very well when digital technologies were beginning a period of rapid development, and formed the basis for the second part of the Assignment.

Alongside, Blade Runner and The Matrix were good viewing. I had not seen them in the cinema when released. The academic significance of both is perhaps overstated - like Scott Clifford, the film studios have to make money and there is more to be made from the entertainment value of violence and special effects of which there is plenty in both movies - but there is also congruence with the Baudrillard's view of reality. A few images from Dr. Who in other projects have been used in a similar vein in other projects.

I had difficulty finding Lacan's What is a Picture? as it is not included in third edition of the course reader. One advantage of having an open blog (>2,500 visitors to date) is that, after posting that I had given up looking for it, a helpful reader pointed out in a comment where I could find the article online. It is not an easy article to read (more of this in the final post) but I referred to the concept of the image screen in the Assignment.

Perhaps the most bizarre project of the whole course was to read about Schrödinger's cat, but does highlight (and provide some theoretical credence) that one observer can face two realities. The concept of dual reality is used a lot in sci-fi (I referred to Dr. Who but it is equally relevant to the two movies above). Was pleased to find six images demonstrating Lacanian gaze for the associated project as at first sight could not fathom what to do. As with many other projects, not quite sure whether I hit the right notes, but it was a challenging project, and, incidentally, emphasised what a brilliant work Holbein's The Ambassadors is.

I was not a Buffy fan. Viewing Restless scarcely convinced me that there is a gaping hole in my cultural existence as a result. The dreams lend themselves to some psychological analysis, notably Willow's discomfort at being exposed in front of class and in a situation where she does not know her lines for the imminent performance of a play, or where Xander confronts his dysfunctional father. I was rather less convinced about the significance of Giles' and Buffy's dreams, but then may have missed something. Joyce has the best line: in response to Willow's announcement that the spirit of the first slayer had tried to kill them all in their dreams, she offers hot chocolate, the panacea of all ills.

The Assignment

I aimed to present two rather different examples of how the virtual and real boundaries merge in contemporary culture: one with a relatively narrow focus, based on personal experience, and very much 'visual'; another, wider, example considering how current technological advances impact us socially and culturally.

Throughout the course, I have attempted to use photography as examples when discussing ideas and concepts as it is the course I am following. The course notes actually mention digital manipulation as an example one might use in the Assignment. Considering the virtual nature of photographic manipulation provided an opportunity to step back for moment and think about the why rather then the what and how. Howells and Negreiros discuss manipulation in their book Visual Culture, and this provided an opportunity to address their conclusion. 

 One of the paradoxes of this course has been the lack of contemporary material in what is a very dynamic and rapidly changing digital world. The impact of technology and in particular how the Law of Unintended Consequences raises its head in so many developments. Technological advances have seldom if ever come without some negative baggage attached; only this week, Sue Perkins considered the impact of damming the Mekong in the third episode of her BBC2 series. It is a classic case of the dilemma between the big economic argument - the generation of more electricity than Laos can use with the added benefit of using no fossil fuels - against the inevitable impact on the livelihood of millions downstream. Perkins ends confused, not least because she acknowledges her privileged Western view that risks being patronizing whatever she concludes.

Yet the iPhone has come on to the market as result of a masterpiece of design by Apple - and rapidly 'copied' (or at least as close as the lawyers can argue about to not being a copy) by a plethora of hardware that use the Android operating system - with very little consideration of the unintended consequences for society as a whole, and users individually. We are already on iPhone 6, only seven years after the 1st generation; just hours before writing this entry, Apple's market capitalization hit $700bn for the first time (it was already the world's largest company by market cap, not much more than a decade after it was in the doldrums). It is valued at more than Switzerland's GDP. 10m iPhone 6s were sold in the opening weekend; 71.5m are due to be shipped in Q4 2014, (source: Time business), an archetypal example of commodity fetishism. It is always tempting to assert a phenomenon as a 'revolution' in order to emphasises the importance of the point one makes but I think the smartphone (and of course, its partner, WiFi) mark at the very least a sea change in which the real and the virtual interact; the clue is in the point Sherry Turkle makes in the interview embedded in the Assignment: if you act out your virtual self seated at a computer, you get up at the end and resume 'normal life'. It is maybe not quite as clear cut as that, but the point is well made. The smartphone (with WiFi) is qualitatively different because of its transportability, and the consequence of us being 'always on' with respect to the virtual world. It is a hook.

The aim of this part of the assignment was to address this implications of this. I commenced by the now familiar routine of searching for relevant material. I read substantial part of Nusselder's Interface Fantasy: a Lacanian Cyborg Ontology (Kindle version), which helped put cyberspace into a psychological framework. Nusselder refers to the work of Sherry Turkle in several places; I searched for her work and read much of Alone Together. Her messages chimed exactly with what I was seeking; she has the ability to make serious points in a way that is comprehensible to the ordinary viewer/reader, as she demonstrates in the interview. She emphasises the superficiality of the cyber existence - "moments of more, lives of less" - with some examples. We vote online on many issues nowadays by checking a box but we tend not to go meetings to engage with others on these issues or to act on them.

Interestingly in the context of OCA, she talks about online learning. There are advantages - I could scarcely engage in a Photography course around a busy life without it, as a very proximate example - but, as she says, there are also disadvantages: the inability to engage with others doing the same course, or with tutors, on a regular face to face basis. For many, she argues, 'it is better than nothing', but, she emphasises, there is a risk that it becomes the delivery mechanism with inherent unintended consequences: "better than nothing becomes better than anything."

Space precluded detailed discussion on other technological advances. I would have liked to include more on artificial intelligence (AI) and the likely impact of robots on our lives. On the premise that virtual sex was very likely to be a feature of AI, I searched for articles/books on the subject and found Daniel Levy's interesting book. Turkle covers AI in her book, but Levy's slant was more positive, and added a specific dimension.

Lastly, my online research uncovered the I-Seeing project, a virtual reality experiment that was timed to perfection for this Assignment as it is ongoing as this is written. The project may be seen as the apotheosis of the merging of virtual and reality: the complete mirroring of another's existence.

Conclusion

This was a fascinating section. Probably the most significant learning outcome is a volte face regarding the psychological approach to the subject. Having previously shed doubt on the applicability of Freud in particular to visual culture, I reconsidered in previous blog entry. The reading of Lacan and, especially, the reading above re the Assignment, have led to a Damascean conversion. If we wish to understand the underlying processes to visual culture, then psychologists provide the theoretical framework, albeit that the authors considered in this course could explain their points more succinctly and clearly, as will be discussed in final post.

I have found all the Assignments to be the best part of each chapter, and this was no exception. Although the subject-matter is prescribed, there is a great deal of latitude to explore it in ways that are relevant to you. I had a rough idea of what to write about, but thoroughly enjoyed, and felt enriched by, reading the sources located for the essay.