New Media & Visual Culture

A definition of new media would be Modern systems of communication and distribution supplied by relatively small groups of cultural producers, but directed towards large numbers of consumers. There are lots of criticism that you can make about Mass Media as it can be seen as very superficial and trivial. It is seen as very conservative through its encouragement of the Status Quo and the pieces success is measured by its viewing figures. However there are many positive things that you can say about Mass Media. Not all of it is of low quality and lots of social issues are addressed. Also it gives a chance for the transmission of high art material to reach a broader audience.

A lot of fine art is incorporated into mass media and given a new meaning. A relevant example would be the Pears Soap ad which incorporated a famous painting of a child blowing bubbles and gave it a new meaning. This sort of manipulation has been used numerous times for album covers, such as the Franz Ferdinand album that incorporated an old Russian propaganda poster, or The Stones Roses cover that used a Jackson Pollock painting.

There are many people that think that art should be autonomous and should not be used in mass media. However it is my view that this is a little portentous and in many cases mass media has helped the engagement of the audience towards the original piece.

Advertising & New Media

New Media is becoming an integral part of the new era of advertising and therefore is the most relevant to us as budding creatives. Advances in technology over the last 20 years has meant that there have been far more possibilities to use more mediums to advertise in than previously.

Possibly the biggest form of new media is the internet. Advertising on the internet gives agencies the chance to reach a larger demographic than other media forms. And you can reach specialised groups more accurately, for example if you wanted to reach 15-25 year olds the perfect place to advertise would be Facebook.

Another form of new media advertising that has emerged in recent years is viral videos. These have only really come about since the creation of video sites such as Youtube and Vimeo, in which a database of videos can be stored and accessed at any time. Viral videos consist of some sort of stunt or event that indirectly relates to a product. The way they are spread is through word of mouth. These are a very affective way of advertising as they can gain cult status if good enough and cost less than if you were to make an advert for tv and pay for placement. With virals you can also reach a much larger audience, with some videos reaching 20 million hits.

Photography is a way of documenting what the eye sees. Its about capturing that moment in time and having it on record for the rest of time. The most prominent photographs in our history have mostly been shots of great disaster or despair. Like the iconic Vietnam Napalm photo by Nick Ut or the photos taken by Robert Capa which where the only photographic documentation of the D-Day landings in Normandy. More recent photographic documentation would be the photo of the falling man by Richard Drew on September 11 2001.

In terms of advertising, the most well known documentation in an advert would be the photos taken by Oliviero Toscani for the United Colours of Benetton. This was a very controversial campaign which concentrated on depicting the issue of race or domestic abuse rather that their clothes. It sparked worldwide debate over its content, which in the end was probably what they wanted as it made the advert notoriously well known and far more successful than if it had just contained people wearing Benetton clothes.

Another example of using photography as a basis for an advert is the Canon Powershot ad, in which they staged an event in a big city square which giant paper-machet bugs that roamed around spraying smoke and interacting with the crowd. They then gave out lots of their cameras to the crowd, who then documented the event and helped create an advert.

Graphic Design

Advertising and Graphic Design have a very strong relationship and often have to work together. They are very similar fields. The main differences between the two are Graphic Designers look to tell you about their own personal ideals and views and Advertisers look to find a way of making what they are selling part of your ideals and views. The way in which advertisers and Graphic Designers work together is the advertisers will come up with a concept or idea and the graphic designer will make that idea a reality. However in Graphic Design there is a lot more freedom for self-expression as you can be free-lance. In Advertising you can be creative but as long as it appeals to the demographic.

Modernity & Modernism

Modernity tends to refer to the social relations associated with the rise in capitalism and has close links with the modernism movement. The era most relevant to advertising is late modernity, which took place in the early 1900’s. Modernity was seen as a new way of thinking in terms of political, social and artistic movements.

Modernism, which originated in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, was a rebellion against realism. Although this movement is associated more with fine art, with artists such as Picasso and Bauhaus totally reinventing the perception of how art should look, fine art and advertising have always had close links. Before modernism adverts basically consisted of an image and a paragraph of blurb on the product. However throughout the modernist period adverts began to use a lot more appealing and artistic images and layouts that went with the trend of modernist art.

Romanticism in Advertising

Romanticism is an artistic movement that emerged in the 18^th century as a rebellion against the industrial revolution. Renowned advertiser Tony Kaye has managed to blend the lines between romanticism and advertising in his adverts, creating an experience for the viewer rather than just telling them the product. He has been described as a post-modern creative because of his ability to flow effortlessly between the two fields.

A perfect example of his work that blends these two fields is the advert “Dunlop – Tested for the unexpected” in which he explores the taboo, including images of latex covered daemons and mythical beings whilst including a song by Velvet Underground which was previously banned for its descriptions of bondage. He creates this experience of a sensation that viewers have never experienced before and only at the end does he relate it to the product he is selling.

Tony Kaye works so well in this blurred no mans land between romanticism and advertising because of his total disregard to the views and opinions of his clients, and instead creates an advert which is closer to a piece of art than an advert. He realises that “there are larger forces in our lives which are not easily represented through the conventional means of advertising”

Addidas Rugby Advert

Semiology is the practice of questioning the meaning of images in adverts. It is a far broader tool than compositional interpretation and quantitative estimation, which are far too descriptive and scientific. Semiology on the other hand gives you the tools to take apart adverts and understand how they work in relation to broader systems of meaning.

I have chosen to analyse the Addidas advert for rugby featuring Martin Johnson. It shows an image of Martin Johnson performing a hand-off but as a splatter of mud on a white background. It then has the words “If You Don’t Go In Hard its Not a Tackle, Its an Insult”. This advert uses Code as a way of portraying its message as its target audience is people that play rugby. They have used mud as the image because all rugby players would have experienced a muddy game at least once in their career so can relate to the grit of the image. The quote at the bottom of the image is also geared solely towards rugby players. The word “insult “ is especially relevant because rugby demands a lot of respect from players towards the game and the opposition, so by saying that you haven’t gone into a tackle hard enough is an insult to the player you are trying to tackle. You could say that the message is encoded as it would be lost on people who have never played rugby. The advert also uses myth as it is reliant on people having previous experiences and memories to associate with the advert.