The semantics of psychospace

Traditionally, in the landscape profession, landscape analysis has been concerned with the physical aspects of place. Properties like shape, amount, use, colour and content have been surveyed, identified and classed in their various combinations to describe ' place character '. With few exceptions, ( Appleton 1998 ), the psychological aspects of place as criteria for classification have been largely ignored. One of the reasons for this, has been the argument that such data are' subjective' and personal, when what is required is, ' objective', verifiable and subject to 'constancy'. Another equally valid objection has been the difficulty in defining and identifying the psychological properties of place.The proposed method of analysing places by their psychological properties depends on people being able to verbally describe their feelings and states of mind. To define the survey parameters, these personal , emotional and mental properties have been identified and arranged in spectrums. By selecting the appropriate terms to describe their feelings in place, psychological profiles can be prepared, describing person -place relationships. With many such profiles, linked to personal details, like age, activity, sex and culture, factor analysis allows statistical examinations to be made of these person -place relationships. These reveal consistent patterns, relating particular combinations of feelings to particular combinations of perceivable place properties.Language is the medium of analysis and a linguistic examination of the data allows its classification into different types of place property. Those which are tangible, nominals and nouns, like apples, beds and chairs, and those which are intangible and descriptors, like abnormality, banality and chaos. Linguistics also offers, through concepts like antonymy, the ability to express opposites or contrasts in design terms, like, alien -friendly, bold -weak, chaotic- ordered.Certain combinations of emotions and perceivable, intangible place properties indicate places of particular significance. These are defined as archetypes. Thus, Arcadia is emotionally peaceful, restful and tranquil, and perceivably fertile, productive and beautiful. Battlefield is tense, shocking, stressful and perceivably brutal, chaotic and dramatic.CG Jung, (1968) asserted that anthropomorphic archetypes exist in the 'collective unconscious' of society and that this innate knowledge prepares the mind for future encounters. His archetypes included concepts like Mother and Father, Superman and Hero. By extension, it is postulated that places are also archetypal.To relate people to places objectively, the concept of 'objective relativity' is evoked ( G H Mead. 1932), allowing personal properties like awe, beauty and calmness to be logically attributed to place, relative to particular people.The main concept on which the thesis is based, is 'Psychospace', a linguistic model of the total psychological experience of place. New concepts are created to describe further people - place relationships. Pratties are property feelings of people attributed to place and Percies are properties of place perceived by some people and not others, and therefore 'subjective', like order, chaos and formality.Also included in 'subjective' judgements are those of assessment. Procons are personal properties, like quality and value, good, bad and satisfactory, but also objectively relative.Methods are proposed for the analysis of places and people and the identification of concepts which are employed in the processes of design. Examples are shown and discussed of how the formulated principles work in practice

The Sandman: The Artifice of Comics and Power of Dreams

Neil Gaiman’s Vertigo Series The Sandman is an exceptional artistic endeavor. From “Preludes and Nocturnes”(1988) to “The Wake” (1996), Gaiman worked alongside a team of talented artists and graphic designers to produce an indelible work of revisionist mythology. This thesis will attempt to establish the framework by which our modern literary canon has celebrated classical Western myths while relegating graphic or visual forms of literature or outright neglecting comic myths altogether. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics will frame the discourse for pictographic analysis of Neil Gaiman’s mythological revisionism of Milton’s Paradise Lost in Season of Mists, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and The Travels of Marco Polo in “Soft Places.” The Sandman is a playful modern myth that revives classical mythology within the comics medium, calling for a new kind of literary discourse that seeks to reverse decades of literary bias resulting from the 1950s Comics Code that has relegated the medium as juvenile. I will argue that given the comics flexibility, it is the only medium in which a transtextual myth of this nature can be fully realized

The Riddle of the Vase: Ozu Yasujirô’s Late Spring

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90889/1/Ozu_Riddle.pdf17

Art and the unconscious : a semiotic case study of the painting process

This dissertation is an attempt to design an interpretation model for the comprehension of unconscious content in artworks, as well as to find painting techniques to free the unconscious mind, allowing it to be expressed through artwork. The interpretation model, still in its infancy, is ripe for further development. The unconscious mind is a fascinating subject—in art production as well as in many scientific fields. This hidden part of the mind, being the source of creativity, constitutes an important foundation for many possible and valuable inquiries in multiple areas of knowledge. In the present study, the unconscious is approached from an art-educational perspective. The nature of the unconscious is addressed through the theories of Carl Gustav Jung and Charles Sanders Peirce, as well as through the information gained from data the author produced herself during the experimental painting process she devised for this study. For psychological distinctions not addressed by Jung, the theories of Sigmund Freud are used to forward this inquiry into the unconscious mind. A research method was created to bring Peirce’s theories into consonance with Jung’s amplification method. Since Peirce’s theories are challenging to read, to avoid misinterpretation, the author used Phyllis Chiasson’s 2001 book Peirce’s Pragmatism: The Design for Thinking as a secondary source. Peirce’s three modes of reality—firstness, secondness, and thirdness—were utilized to interpret artworks. This three-mode reality allows interpreters to reflect on their subjective feelings and then to compare them to collected data. The interpreters’ intuitive self-interpretations often correlate well with the more objective data. In this approach to interpretation, the work of art is seen as a sign, in the Jungian as well as in the Peircean sense, and interpretation seeks to discover a sign’s objects—icon, index, and symbol. Additionally, the objects are studied in combination with Peirce’s designation of the sign’s character elements—sinsign, qualisign, and legisign. Peirce’s theory offers a logical and productive structure for approaching a variety of signs and reaching a multiplicity of interpretations. Jungian theories inculcated a combined psychological and artistic perspective for the interpretation of artworks. Jung’s method of amplification is an effort to bring a symbol to life, and it is used as a technique to discover—through the seeking of parallels—a possible context for any unconscious content that an image might have. In amplification, a word or element—from a fantasy, dream, or, in this study, artwork—is associated, through use of what Jung called the active imagination, with another context where it also occurs. It must be remembered that unconscious images in artworks do not easily open themselves up for interpretation. One way to interpret possibly unconscious images is for the interpreter to become vulnerable by employing his or her own unconscious mind to interpret an artwork; such use of the active imagination can enable a subjective experience of the artwork on the part of the interpreter, who might thereby uncover unconscious content. Moreover, in this study, Jung’s theory of archetypes is employed, in parallel with Peirce’s and Jung’s theories of the sign, to illuminate an artwork’s images by connecting them with collective unconscious archetypes. The author relied upon The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images (Ronnberg and Martin 2010) as the main source for interpreting possibly unconscious elements in the artworks. This approach is especially powerful when artists interpret their own artwork—possibly leading to a galvanizing self-discovery as they revisit past encounters, personal highlights, and other pieces of unconscious content that might reveal previously unknown meaning important to their life. By comparing archetypes to the unconscious content in their own lives, people can discover themselves. Unconscious phenomena were approached on both the theoretical and empirical levels. Different methods and ideas were used to stimulate the author’s unconscious thinking while performing artwork analyses of three paintings: surrealist Salvador Dalí’s (1904–1989) Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapislazulina; abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock’s (1912-1956) The Deep; and one painting by the author herself, and for which the process of painting is videorecorded (www.astagallery.com/academic.html). With regard to the third painting interpreted, the author is the study subject, and her artistic production is used as an opportunity to explore the unconscious mind. During the act of painting, an attempt is made to free unconscious thinking by fusing Dalí’s and Pollock’s methods as well as by testing multiple other methods. The author’s artistic production was conjoined with use of a technique that is called the verbal protocol method, which generates additional data not necessarily visible in the final artwork. This method unseals the artist’s tacit knowledge, which in normal circumstances remains silent. In the verbal protocol method, the author, while engaged in the act of painting, speaks aloud the stream of consciousness that accompanies and guides the art-making activity; the recorded and transcribed monologue from the artistic production is supplied, in both Finnish and English, in appendices. This thinking-aloud technique allows a person to become more self-aware and to create more solutions while struggling with emergent artistic problems. Such narratives can reveal more about the painting than the completed artwork alone can convey. Along with the artist’s finished painting and the videorecorded material, narratives produced during the painting activity were interpreted. Moreover, the discoveries arising from the author’s interpretation of her own artwork are correlated with some of the latest research on the unconscious. This study allows the reader-viewer an intimate glimpse into the author’s subjective painting experience and demonstrates the participation of the unconscious in an artwork’s creation. The interpretations methodology constitutes an interpretation model suitable for other artists and art educators to follow. Keywords: unconscious, art, archetype, mandal

Representations Of Women In Fin-de-siècle French Advertisements

This thesis analyzes the depictions of women as highly idealized, feminine, and/or seductive figures in Art Nouveau style advertisements in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century France. Ultimately, I demonstrate how these advertisements developed the now widespread phenomenon of using idealized women and sexually appealing imagery in order to sell products. Specifically, lithographic posters created by male artists such as Jules Chéret, Alphonse Mucha, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and will be examined. My research will therefore encompass the works of various art historians to explore the representation of the female form in the Art Nouveau style and how artists used the female body to sell lifestyles and products to consumers. Furthermore, this thesis will analyze the cognitive strategies that such images deployed, many of which continue to appear in French advertisements today. Research regarding the use and effects of sexually appealing imagery in contemporary mainstream advertising is well documented. However, my research hopes to offer a nuanced analysis of the origins of such advertising strategies that can be found in French lithographic advertisements during the Art Nouveau movement

New Mexico Daily Lobo, Volume 089, No 143, 4/24/1985

New Mexico Daily Lobo, Volume 089, No 143, 4/24/1985https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/daily_lobo_1985/1067/thumbnail.jp

Eating the allegory

This project explores imagery, sense memory, and performance through the intersection of an event and the objects within it and at its periphery. The archaeological dig provides the emotional and intellectual setting for discovery, history, and cultural identity, as well as an outlet for creation (of new memories) and desire (for knowledge). The performance elements of the show, including roles portrayed by audience and participants, provide the uncertain layout and improvisational aspect that relies on people coming together in a moment that is unique. The ephemeral nature of a moment lends itself to construction of memory, so that it will be somehow represented. This representational re-telling of the moment can take the form of oral, visual, or other sensorial traditions, such as food, in the case of this project, baklava. It can also be perpetuated through artifacts left in the wake of the moment, in this case, a large glass tile mosaic made from a photographic portrait, a construction trailer, and the documents, photos and other contents. These remains can be clues with potential, but may also lead to a stagnancy of investigation. The two strategies of constructing, preserving and transmitting memory, the ritual and the archive, are portrayed through the story of the archaeological excavation. The conflation of object/icon with shared process/experience is at the heart of this project. The chaos of the day, with its varied moments and sensory cues, form a fleeting collection of divergent sources of memory and meaning

Store Stories – Analysis of a retailer’s store personality in consumer stories

This study aims at identifying and analysing the construct of a retailer’s store personality in consumer stories and how these stories relate to the retailer’s brand story on a global level. To fulfil the purpose and analyse a retailer’s store personality, a qualitative approach was chosen to analyse the empirical data provided by a case study of H&M through narrative analysis. The main theories that the study is based upon include retail branding and brand personality. Moreover, theories of narrative analysis have been used. In particular, special attention has been paid to Yannis Gabriel’s classification of stories into four generic poetic modes. The empirical data, on which this study is based on, consist of various global consumer blog stories that deal with experiences made in stores of the Swedish clothing retailer H&M. The analysis of consumer blog stories revealed that consumers tell stories about their experiences made in a store for sense-making. Moreover, the assumption that consumers personate stores/retail brands in their stories was supported. People assign roles to the store in accordance with either the epic, romantic, comic or tragic genre on which conclusions on the store personality can be drawn. Overlapping personality traits between brand and consumer stories were identified and presented the common ground which might indicate a certain control of managers over consumer stories. The study contributes by showing how retailer, personality and stories are connected, how consumers construct store personality in stories and points to the importance of understanding consumer stories for brand management