Cultural Diary Task (Week 1) Media Text Belonging to‘My culture’

Creative Review magazine is a media text that I feel belongs specifically to my culture. It is a monthly magazine targeted on the commercial arts and design scene. It was launched in 1980 and is published by Centaur Media.  In general it focuses content on media originating in United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States, showcasing some of the best contemporary advertising, design, illustration, new media, photography, and typography.

I am much inspired by the creative designs of the designer like David Carson, Neville Brody and Jonathan Barnbrook. Infect when I met Jonathan Barnbrook during my HND course I realized that there are a lot of things around us that we can use them as a teacher for us. I am inspired by their creativity, unique style and most of all to do new experiments bravely.

I am extremely involved in studying the art of typography, photography, graphics and illustration and I learned much. I also designed and participated in the design exhibition in London last year.

The website: www.creativereview.co.uk

As a web and new media student I belive that our field is mush more about creativity. Now a days all the tecknical tutorials for our field are available online and there are aslo many examples of creative work but what is epected from us is to be creative in our work.

Creative review for me as a good media text that talks about the creative culture in the field of Graphic desiging.

Creative Review is not limitted to graphic design but aslo include advertising, digital media, illustration, photography and all other fields of visual communication that are in worldwide.

I personally observe that culture always changes as it needs to adopt new changes that are accouring in the world. We are aslo a part of culture and I belive that its better to be creative in terms of changing the culture instead of copying someone else culture and name it our own culture.

F.R Leavis, 1933- Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture

The author F.R Leavis tries to judges what makes culture and how it has changed. The key points that I have found in the readings are:

  

“It is a commonplace today that culture is at a crisis it is a commonplace more widely accepted then understood: at any rate, realisation of what the crisis portends does not seem to be common.”

“The machine, in the first place has brought about change in habit and the circumstances of life at a rate for which we have no parallel.”

“The automobile (to take one instance) has in a few years, radically affected religion, broken up the family, and revolutionized social custom. Change has been so catastrophic that the generations find it hard to adjust themselves to each other, and parents are helpless to deal with their children.”

“In America change has been more rapid and its effects have been intensified by the fusion of peoples.”

“When we consider, for instance, the processes of mass production and standardisation in the from represented by the Press, it becomes obviously of sinister significance that they should be accompanied by a process of leveling-down.”

“The prospects of culture are very dark. There is the lees room for hope in that a standardised civilisation is rapidly enveloping the whole world.”

Theodor W. Adorno, 1941

 

Adorno identifies the difference between popular music and serious music.

The key points that I have found in readings are:

Adorno notes that historical analysis is one possible method that can achieve the clarification that occurs in music production and of the roots of the two main spheres.

“The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to circumvent standardization.”

“Popular music is "pre-digested" in a way strongly resembling the fad of "digests" of prmted Material.”

“Standardization of popular music has been considered in structural  terms--that is, as an inherent quality without explicit reference to the process  of production or to the underlying causes for standardization.”

“The attitude of the audiences toward the natural language is  reinforced by standardized production, which institutionalizes desiderata which  originally might have come from the public.”

"The chief difference between  a popular song and a standard, or serious, song like 'Mandalay,' 'Sylvia,' or  'Trees,' is that the melody and the Iyric of a popular number are constructed  within a definite pattern or structural form, whereas the poem, or Iyric, of a  standard number has no structural confinements, and the music is free to  interpret”

I think that the 'serious' music is more strong in terms of its poetry  so rather than saying that classical music is far more cultured and for the upper classes, we can say that its more for can be consumed by people who are serious and anybody can be serious within any class.

        

The key pints that I have found in the reading the article in the link of the website:

The reading is about is an important first step in the consideration of the role of popular music within a society.

“Adorno's belief that classical music was a superior form of human expression”.

According to him most important is the belief that the music industry imposes a high level of standardization on the music it produces.

“
Popular music is standardized to a point that it is “predigested” – the audience has already heard it. Therefore, it requires no intellectual effort to listen to it. It does not challenge the intellect to push itself. The music is simply accepted as is.”

“The “decay” of popular music is attributed to several things, such as its link with the larger culture industry such as the fashion industry”.

“The most important aspect of the article is the discussion of “standardization”.”

“Adorno argues that in a work of art music, “every detail gets is concrete meaning from the total course, and this totality in turn receives it from the living interrelation of details that oppose and continue one another, pass into each other, and recur”.”

“Popular music has its meaning “imposed” by the form itself, imposed from the outside, the social.”

Reference Link:

http://www.grebel.uwaterloo.ca/swood/Readings/Adorno%20Popular%20music.htm

Matthew Arnold, 1869 - Culture and Anarchy

The key points that I have found in the readings are:

The essay discusses the role of culture in the world. Arnold claims that every culture strives for sweetness and light, which is the ideal combination of beauty and intelligence.

“Culture as a great help out of our present difficulties”

“A man’s life of each day depends for its solidity and value on whether he reads during the day and, far more still, on what he reads during it.”

“Culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light”

Arnold claims that every culture strives for sweetness and light, which is the ideal combination of beauty and intelligence.

“The great men of the culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge , the best ideas of their times.”

“We have to get a much wanted principle of authority to counteract the tendency top anarchy which seems to be threatening us”

He notes that there are three classes in culture, the barbarians, the philistines and the populace. He defines the upper classes as barbarians, the middle classes as philistines and lower classes as the populace.

According to him the Barbarian likes honours and consideration, Philistine likes fanaticism, business and money making, comfort and tea meetings and the Populace likes bowling, hustling and smashing; the lighter self, beer. He also notes that within each of these classes there are a certain number of aliens.

Although this reading is from 1869, but the fact of dividing the culture in classes still exist. I personally feel that now each of these classes has sub classes. But now the integration of the social media networks in our life helps us to communicate with each other without the worrying about showing our classes.