Class Notes - February 22
Two-Dimensional Narrative Space
**I’m audio recording this lecture using my new iTalk Pro. I’ll embed the audio later, which will hopefully serve as a helpful supplement. A backchannel? Anyway, to be honest the lecture section here is very difficult to make notes on, so the recording will have to suffice.**
Update: Here’s the audio. The first minute or two is mostly silence (or anything but substance), and I should have cut it. Oh well.
Professor Timmons is guiding us through a powerpoint slideshow/timeline of “written” communication.
- Something very stylized can hold more meaning than something very detailed.
- Iconography/Icons = Simplicity
Humanism - alludes to the fact that artists were looking at the world in a more realistic way.
Iconography is more static vs. Humanism which is more dynamic.
An image of the Madonna, wherein the figures around the Madonna are all gazing into space, and the only way that we can tell that the Madonna is the most important figure is because she is placed in the center, she’s bigger than all the other figures, and she’s drastically different from the others.
An image of the death of Christ, where Mary is holding her dead son in the bottom left of the frame. We’re guided to the most important part of the image–the dead guy–because all of the gazes and the lines that are implied by the other figures that lead us there.
There’s a lot of symbolism here. Mound of beauty (she’s not pregnant). The dog represents fidelity. The lone flame on the candelabra represents the presence of god. The mirror reflects the witnesses to the wedding, but not the painter–making the viewer a witness to the wedding. Perspective and Point of View
We discussed Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez, 1656. It gives viewers the POV of royalty. So the painting makes no sense unless you realize that you’re in it.
Digital technology allows us to take this one step further. Now, we can virtually enter the space and explore it.
Class is ended early because the weather sucks.
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on February 23rd, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Well thank you, Beau, it was almost like being there, sans the visuals and the worry over weather.
This audio embedded within your post brings time and space into the picture. I heard you, John, Steve, and a few other students speaking–but from my laptop and in another time period. Did you (the classroom) enter my space and time a day later? Did I enter yours by listening in? Closing my eyes and hearing the classroom sounds, an actual event in the past taking place in my present, where is the defining line of time and space? Does media manipulation change our traditional view of it?