Semiotics

I will be using the idea of semiotics to deconstruct media texts as a form of primary research. The media texts I will be examining will be the record covers I choose to case study, by the following designers; Barney Bubbles, Andy Warhol, Peter Saville & Malcolm Garrett. The reason I will be deconstructing these media texts is to find out and elaborate on the post modern elements of the media texts.

Semiotics works on a signs and signifers basis. A sign is something that is to be taken at face value; what the thing is to put it bluntly. to prove a simple understanding of this concept I will deconstruct various elemnts of the Arctic Monkeys album cover. Take the example of a cigarette in this image as the sign. Now a signifier is what that element signifies/implies. Taking the cigarette elemnt of this album cover it could be so that he looks cool, he might be doing it because he likes smoking & maybe beyond that to show addiction.

Teach Yourself Post Modernism

Post Modernism is to becoming part of the everyday.

Film references are popping up in beer commerical in a spoof of art types and advertisers are confident that the target audience will get the references. (here's an interesting idea; Is it still post modern if the thing that it is parodying falls on deaf ears, if the audience does not get the reference).
The idea of post modernism has been adopted by every discipline; art to architecture/literature to theatre. evidence that it is not meaningless, if it has been adopted by so many professions.

It is accepted in this book that post modernism is a broad church of meaning and it's meaning has changed overtime. New meanings develop as the society changes. The book proclaims it is an artistic style, a state of affairs in society and the rules that govern these affairs. The new post modern rules; propose that the culture we are in, has changed greatly in 100 years. The new post modernism is concerned with concrete subjects. The new post modernism believes in the abstracted definition of identity and reality.

Post modernists stuck to these thoughts came up with huge and splashy ideas, subscribing to the pluralist idea, that anything goes. Anything from the past is open to interpretation, old styles and techniques were rehashed with artists quoting from other artists. (John Savage, proclaimed in the age of plunder, this diluted the artist medium, it sometimes ends up being a poor imitation of the former credible source material). But some sources claim it to be playful and entertaining.

What does it all boil down too? Are the ideas a betrayal, a rejection or just outright ignoring modernism? (Barney Bubbles didn't, some his work references the modernist structure).