Semiotics and Source magazine

This session we looked at semiotics and exhibition review examples. We were introduced to some short exhibition reviews from Art monthly and Source magazine as a prompt and guide for the other 50% of this unit. One review which we looked at was in Art Monthly and of a recent exhibition by Hannah Starkey.
The introduction to the review was based on research mainly and also incorporated quotes from the exhibition catalogue.

The middle section included areas of the reviewers understanding and what their interpretation of the work is. I felt this also continued into the conclusion however the reviewer summarised the work and later questioned it.


Source Magazine
I recently purchased a subscription to "Source magazine" which I’ve found really helpful in writing my review. I also broadened my knowledge of various photographers and what other people were creating at the moment. I established looking at these reviews that a very small amount of writing was descriptions of the exhibition; it was more about the reviewer’s personal thoughts and their interpretations.

  Sourced from "Source magazine"

The latest edition has really influenced my ideas for my Representation project looking at identity and only using specific characteristics to photograph.

Semiotics
Semiotics is the study of signs. It includes sounds, gestures, images, words and objects. It is also something which we all know and develops through our experiences and culture that we're exposed to throughout everyday life.
We live in a world where we are constantly surrounded by advertising and signage with signifiers which display and portray different things. Firstly, we looked and analysed male and female toilet signs.

I felt this was a good example to use, purely because we all automatically know what the sign means. We then discussed as a group the connotation and denotation of the sign and we were asked how we automatically know what the sign means? Is it the impact of the colour? The shapes used etc? We talked about the ideas of how just because this symbol is on the front of a door, we only presume that what is behind that door is what the sign states it is. We don’t definitely know.

To develop and apply our understanding of semiotics further and the way in which each person interprets imagery different we watched the music video "Hurt" by Johnny Cash. We watched it once without music taking notes of each understanding. Then, after we watched it with music to see whether it affected our responses/ideas and connotations of the video.

Sourced from Youtube

This video demonstrated a lot of traits of religious views showing a renaissance painting. I also felt that there was elements of death portrayed as he was an older man sitting in a room alone singing lyrics which presented an idea of reminiscing.

"What have I become?"
"I wear this crown of thorns"
"Full of broken thoughts I cannot repair"