Visual
Communication
"WE
KNOW YOU KNOW NOTHING / SIT DOWN SHUT UP & BUY MORE SHIT"
The
initial impetus for this project came from our summer project, and
our chosen subject of landscape from the options given to us in the
original brief (playground, docks, woodland etc). My choice for the
summer project whoever ended up becoming fairly irrelevant to this
project, as through free-assocation I began to think more about the
circumstances surrounding the summer project rather than the project
itself. When the brief was sent out to students, I was still in full
time employment, working for a large firm of conveyancers (property
lawyers), a job that I was in a great hurry to leave and was deeply
unhappy with. The initial thoughts about the summer project that I
was putting down on paper were largely unemotive and fairly typical,
mainly to do with architecture and as such as I was straining to
conjure anything of any real interest to develop upon. I am very much
interested in architecture, space and the significance of our
presence in specific environments, but I found the summer project
brief to be fairly limiting with regards to this and I was struggling
to make each area connect. At this point, I began to think more about
my time in employment, as a loose connection to the summer project,
and very quickly thoughts and feelings began to surface.
The
feelings underpinning most of what I wrote down were very negative. I
felt deep frustration with the job, with how my time there ended, and
with particular personalities in the organisation that I felt made my
life more difficult or less enjoyable outside of work. There were
factors about the job that affected my relationships with other
people, and my physical and mental wellbeing. I felt great resentment
and hostility, and although the feelings being summoned were
thoroughly negative, there was a sense of righteous anger and
satisfaction in bringing it up and writing it all down, itself not a
characteristic that I am comfortable with in others and subsequently
much less so in myself. I would rather move forwards and allow
positive things to come to me instead of dwelling purposely on
negative feelings and experiences.
I
often find myself in great dismay at the current state of politics in
the world at large, with how companies large and small treat their
staff and exploit people's needs and fears. Politicians lie and
mislead, scheme and cheat, and we are now in a situation in this
country where we are effectively powerless to stop them – when the
votes of so many became worthless, because no matter what is said or
how much protestation might occur, the machine keeps on rolling
forwards regardless, stripping us of all the support systems we rely
upon, to the point where our human rights are at risk. This dismay
and anger that I feel towards these groups extends furthermore to
those that might try and push me in one direction or another to suit
themselves, and this is the central driving point in the work that I
have produced in this project.
The
original phrase that was the focal point for the project was "We
Know You Know Nothing", implying complicit ignorance, a
patronising acknowledgement of weakness in the face of authority, a
sense of resignation to our fate as subservients, and the idiocy of
beurocracy. I worked on several images with variations on orientation
and emphasis, as well as overall placement and repetition, with an
interesting variety of results.
RESEARCH:
See
also polish film posters comparison
EXPLOITATION,
CENSORSHIP AND HYSTERIA
I
have long had an interest in censorship, particularly with regards to
cinema, and so as a result I have often come across exploitation
cinema as a point of interest. My
view of censorship is that it is a failure for audience and art to
relate in an even enough ratio, for whatever reason,
whether it's because of moral outrage or for political reasons, or
both. It is by definition a fluid state – what may have been
indecent or considered damaging fifty years ago may not be considered
the same way now, or vice versa. Social standards shift and change
over time, and although some notions tend to stay fairly constant
(child cruelty for example), issues of racism, sexism, homophobia and
acceptable images of violence have all changed dramatically in the
last century. What makes work so objectional that we are not to be
allowed to view it, an arbitrary decision made by those in power
supposedly on our behalf – indeed, who has the right to choose for
any of us what we can and cannot see, listen to or read, under the
proviso that it be for our own protection? Often, work is censored or
attempts are made to restrict access to material out of the supposed
fear that it might incite violent behaviour, but evidence for such
claims is usually anecdotal at best, or outright fabricated at worst.
In Britain, we have the 1984 Video Recordings Act solely because of
the moral outrage that came about as a result of Christian pressure
groups such as the Festival
of Light or
career-oriented Conservative politicians and high-ranking police.
In
America in the 1980's, there was considerable efforts made by
Christian-right groups such as the Parents Music Resource Centre (led
by Tipper Gore, wife of Al Gore) to effectively ban works by forcing
record labels to use '"Parental Advisory" stickers, which
in turn would blacklist certain recordings from major retailers, such
as Wal-Mart. This wide-range blacklisting could effectively prevent a
release from seeing the light of day, such is the market dominance of
these companies. The "Parental Advisory" sticker itself has
absolutely no legal power and the PMRC had no legislative powers
whatsoever. The PMRC of course would not admit to seeking to ban
artists, only to prevent objectionable material falling into the
hands of impressionable youth, but their actions directly limited the
accessibility of these works for adults, and indrectly affected the
freedom for artists to speak freely with their music. Strongly
political groups such as the Dead Kennedy's, as well as rap groups
such as N.W.A, Public Enemy and 2 Live Crew with violent and/or
sexual themes in their lyrics, were significant targets. Heavy metal
bands such as Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, Venom and Black Sabbath
were targeted for violent, sexual or supposedly satanic themes, amid
an air of so-called 'satanic panic' that was a popular topic for TV
chat shows at the time, and well into the 1990's. Such 'satanic
panic' is also largely responsible for the infamous case of the 'West
Memphis Three', three teenagers imprisoned for the murder of three
eight year-old boys in 1994, on circumstancial evidence including
owning black t shirts, listening to Metallica and being interested in
the occult. The three have recently been released from prison after
eighteen years, as part of a bizarre plea deal. One of the three,
Damien Echols, was on death row. All three are continuing to try and
clear their names.
The
power of censorship, hysteria and manipulation of public opinion have
influenced the themes in my work for this project. Coercion,
exploitation and control are themes that deeply bother me, and I look
to explore these issues more in the future.
V1-V3
are variations on the same visual motif, with the image emphasising
the authoritarian element of the theme, with the instruction to be
silent as demonstrated with the 'hushing' silhouette. The variations
on text produce a variety of different readings of the same basic
sentence, with V1 implying dual levels of ignorance, with V2
emphasising the word 'know' as a constant whilst all the other
elements gradually fade to obscurity, which is a direct
counter-message to V1. V3 is or less a reworking of the same
principle used in V1, except with the text kept closer together and
emboldened for greater emphasis.
V4
stands out from all the other designs as a considerably more
simplistic approach, relying purely on the boldness of the text to
make it's impact. The central feature dominating over all else is the
abbreviation NDA, which stands for "Non Disclosure
Agreement", a direct reference to events at my place of
employment where staff were forced to agree not to disclose
information about the company and it's dealings with other third
parties. There was no choice in the matter, and if staff refused then
it would likely affect their continued employment there. I felt this
was pure coercion in a manner that, whilst fairly innocuous there (I
for one did not much care at all about the companies interests, as
their interests never did represent my own at any point beyond that
they continued to pay me), the principle of a NDA and the power which
it grants an employer or other party over an individual is
frightening to me as a concept. Furthermore, by signing such an
agreement, you are signing yourself over to third parties who have
next to no concern for your interests.
The
NDA motif did not remain in the design past this point, as it
was too vague a term to adequately convey the messages I wanted to
put across, however I was pleased with the absolute nature of the
black-on-black text against white background – it does create a
sense of strong pressure.
V5
is a development on the idea of the 'hush' motif, and was created by
first all photographing myself, then using a graphics tablet in
photoshop to trace over the key lines and creating a basic outline on
which to add colour. The colour scheme chosen was design to create
reasonably high contrast, the use of red, white and blue for the text
(hastily 'scratched' into place, again with a graphics tablet)
conjuring nationalistic themes and subsequently, government.
The
red lines placed over the mouth and eyes emphasise the 'hush' motif
further, but do not reappear as I feel this lessens the authoritarian
element and again hints at it being more responsive to
authoritarianism instead. The entire purpose of the piece is for it
to be an affront, to be abrasive and objectional in as far as to be
putting people 'in their place'.
V6
shows the introduction of the second phrase, "SIT DOWN SHUT UP &
BUY MORE SHIT". I wanted to use this text boldly to be a direct
attack, an order and an attempt at pushing people down. The line
itself is loosely drawn from an anecdote by Henry Rollins, taken from
one of his 'spoken word' performances, where he is discussing the
possible benefit of there being an electronic notice on a plane,
similar to a "no smoking" or 'fasten your seatbelt"
sign, instead saying "sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up",
the context being that trying to board an aircraft full of bumbling
American tourists (Rollins himself is American but often critical of
American culture) is a particularly unpleasant experience.
The
design itself is tighter and also includes a tagline, like you might
find on food advertising. This was meant to be sardonic, but again
ultimately I felt it undercut the overall impression that I was
trying to create, so I did not use it again.
The
vertical alignment of the text carried through into what would become
the final version of this piece, with the text rolling down the right
side of the page, however in quite a modified form ultimately. The
original phrase, "We Know You Know...", although absent in
this design, comes back in another version after being tested again
in a variety of orientations. I wanted to create a kind of logo,
something symbolic of a possible order of rule or authority, that
summarised all the of main facets of the design (superiority,
silence, confusion).
The
logo would find itself used in conjuction with the other phrase,
sharing the space with a variety of shapes and colour blocks, as well
as the subtle inclusion of one other element, a combination of a
tracing of a photograph of workers in a supermarket bakery (the
tracing and subsuqent colourisation creating a rather ghoulish
effect) with a portion of the logo design repeated in triplicate, to
enforce the idea that workers are subservient to the rule. With the
colour scheme being limited to green, red and black, the image had to
be fairly carefully manipulated to fit in relatively unnoticed, and
sits inside a block of colour to the top of the design.
I
wanted the piece to be uncomfortable and for a while I was at risk of
making things too symetrical, too much of a straightforward piece of
graphic design, which then led on to the slight skewing of the
vertical text, the inversion of part of the text toward the bottom,
and the uneven blocks of colour inversely interacting with each
other, leading downwards. Finally, I added a high-resolution scan of
a test print I did into my journal of the words 'buy' and 'shit, and
used it as a background layer to add a greater sense of texture,
again to make it less comfortable and less like a straightforward
piece of graphic design. This test page was from four similar pages,
and was done to see if I could use print as a means of achieving the
uneven effect I wanted. For some while I was considering the use of
screenprinting, but with the addition now of the extra layer of the
scanned page, this would not ultimately give me the control required
to replicate the image as precisely as the source material dictates.
Instead, I am taking the Photoshop file to a printers to reproduce at
full-scale (around A1/A2 size, in length at least).
I produced a second piece for comparison, this time using more of a deliberate sense of symmetry but re-using the background image again to create the uneven texture. I feel it is less successful but this also serves to illustrate the ways in which the first piece succeeds instead. The high contrast and high resolution of the background image however is quite dramatic and in using high resolution scans I have noticed great potential for creating texture for further digital works out of analogue creations.
