Syllabus

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Calendar/Schedule

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Student Work

 

 

      

Art 540 Projects

"Rerouting" Photographic Media Assignment

"Rerouting" or detournnement is a term developed by the Situationist theorists. The Situationist movement was initiated in Paris during the 1960s to protest the escalating commercial takeover of everyday life including the corporate advertising machine that manufactured this "fake" reality. Rerouting "hijacks, misappropriates or corrupts preexisting aesthetic elements" to transform mediated images into something far different from the advertisement's origin intent. Situationist interventions include "defacing billboards, spray-painting slogans, tagging storefronts or simply scribbling subversive comments on political posters." A well-known Situationist is Guy Debord, author of "The Society of the Spectacle."

A contemporary term for this type of intellectual, often visual vandalism is referred to as "Culture Jamming." The Culture Jamming ethic is the cornerstone of a socially responsible design movement spearheaded by Adbusters Magazine [www.adbusters.org] and other groups critical of corporate consumer culture.

Quotes from "Spectacular By Design, Architects of Spectacle: Revisit the Reverie," Veronique Vienne

We will:

  • analyze how the media producers incorporate largely unrelated concepts to sell their products and services. (i.e. sex, hygiene, lifestyle, nature)
  • learn how to interpret and deconstruct underlying and sometimes subversive language of mediated images
  • investigate how simulated images affect our sense of the real
  • construct are own visual interventions with appropriated photographic advertising imagery

Process:

Part 1: Leaf through prominent magazines of ALL types (not just fashion/lifestyle). Bring to class at least 5 different print ads exhibiting complex corporate marketing methods and techniques.

Part 2: Select an advertisement to "reroute" in a way that informs the viewer of its true intent. Your intervention may be a political reroutement, in jest or satirical. Write a short statement describing your plan of action. Create rough sketches and a final tight comp.

Part 3: Create your final version of the "rerouted" ad. You may scan and use part of the original or create it from scratch with your own photography. Please note that rerouting projects involving restaging and rephotographing will earn a higher grade (more work involved).

Resources:

Due Dates:

 

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