The New Media Reader

The New Media Reader, (2003)

Ed. Noah Wardrip Fruin and Nick Montfort, The MIT Press, London

A sourcebook of historical written texts, video documentation, and working programs that form the foundation of new media. This reader collects the texts, videos, and computer programs—many of them now almost impossible to find—that chronicle the history and form the foundation of the still-emerging field of new media. General introductions by Janet Murray and Lev Manovich, along with short introductions to each of the texts, place the works in their historical context and explain their significance. The texts were originally published between World War II—when digital computing, cybernetic feedback, and early notions of hypertext and the Internet first appeared—and the emergence of the World Wide Web—when they entered the mainstream of public life. The texts are by computer scientists, artists, architects, literary writers, interface designers, cultural critics, and individuals working across disciplines. The contributors include (chronologically) Jorge Luis Borges, Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, Ivan Sutherland, William S. Burroughs, Ted Nelson, Italo Calvino, Marshall McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard, Nicholas Negroponte, Alan Kay, Bill Viola, Sherry Turkle, Richard Stallman, Brenda Laurel, Langdon Winner, Robert Coover, and Tim Berners-Lee. The CD accompanying the book contains examples of early games, digital art, independent literary efforts, software created at universities, and home-computer commercial software. Also on the CD is digitized video, documenting new media programs and artwork for which no operational version exists. One example is a video record of Douglas Engelbart's first presentation of the mouse, word processor, hyperlink, computer-supported cooperative work, video conferencing, and the dividing up of the screen we now call non-overlapping windows; another is documentation of Lynn Hershman's Lorna, the first interactive video art installation.

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Visual Arts Aesthetics

Art:

ART: something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings. a piece of modern/contemporary art.

The word “art” is derived from the Latin ars, which originally meant “skill” or “craft.” These meanings are still primary in other English words derived from ars, such as “artifact” (a thing made by human skill) and “artisan” (a person skilled at making things).

Art is the expression of ideas and emotions through a physical medium, like painting, sculpture, film, dance, writing, photography, or theater. If you love the creative process, maybe you'll devote your life to art.

According to Aristotle, art is a form of imitation. He defined imitation as the "representation of nature in the medium of human actions." In other words, he believed that artists could capture the beauty of the world around them through the use of their creative skills.

According to Plato , art is false knowledge of reality. An artist's imitation can deceive common people, not the philosopher, who knows the essence of reality or the real being of things.

Aesthetic: of or relating to beauty or what is beautiful.

In a general sense, an aesthetic response refers to the reaction a person has to an object (e. g., product) based on his or her perception of the object (Berlyne 1974). The reaction is based on the qualities and configurality of the physical features (i. e., design) of the object (product).

Unit 1: Visual Art and Aesthetics 

Aesthetic Experience, Objectivism vs. Subjectivism

Elements of Visual Art

Creativity and Expression in Art, Symbolism and Iconography

Form and Function Form; Content and Composition; 

Form - Representational and Abstract 

Emerging Visual Context - Virtual Reality and Digital Culture

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Unit 2 : Indian Art

Prehistoric cave paintings - Bhimbetka, Indus Valley Civilisation, Buddhist Art

Murals – Ajantha, Ellora, Bagh and Sittanvasal

Miniatures – Pala, Mughal, Rajasthan, Pahari and Deccan

Art Movements – Bengal School, Bombay Progressive Artist Group, Baroda Group of Artists

Progressive Painters Association – Madras Art Movement

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Unit 3: Western Art

Prehistoric art, Greek, Romanesque, Byzantine, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Realism, Impressionism, Post Impressionism, Pointillism, Symbolism, Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Pop, Minimal, Conceptual Art, Performance Art

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Unit 4: Contemporary Movements and Artists

Street Art, Digital Art, Neo Pop Art, Installation Art, Afrofuturism

Internet Art, Posthuman Art, Data Art, Net.Art Superflat Art, Contemporary Figurative Art, Data Sculpture, Data Painting

Anish kapoor, Sudarshan shetty, Nalini malani, Amar kanwar, Shilpa gupta, Atul dodiya, Jitish kallat, Bharti kher, Subodh gupta, CJ Anthony dass, Alphonso arul doss, RB Bhaskaran, KM Adimoolam, AP Santhanaraj, G Raman Golan levin, David Mccandless, Nathalie miebach, Aaron koblin, Chris jordan, Zach blas, Tega brain, Sam lavigne, Joel stern, James parker, Sean dockray, Refik anadol, Pipilotti rist,  Bill viola, Lynn hershman leeson, Isaac julien, Hito steyerl, Arthur jafa

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Unit 5: Visual Art Analysis and Appreciation

Description, Analysis, Interpretation, Judgment Heinrich Wölfflin – Principles of Art History Clive Bell – Significant Form - Erwin Panofsky - Three levels of Iconography - Roland Barthes – Rhetoric of the Image

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Development Communication

The term "Development Communication" was first coined in 1972 by. Nora C. Quebral, who defines the field as. "the art and science of human communication linked to a society's planned transformation from a state. of poverty to one of dynamic socio-economic growth that makes for greater equity and the larger.

Definition of Development Communication

Thomas L. Mcphail

“Development communication is the process of intervening in a systemic or strategic manner with either media (print, radio, telephony, video, and the internet), or education (training, literacy, schooling) for the purpose of positive social change. The change could be economic, personal, as in spiritual, social and cultural, or political”. 

Roles and philosophy of Development communication 

• It is evident that mass communication has played a vital role in expediting the process of communication. The content of mass communication makes people aware about their own environment. 
• A large percentage of people are illiterate in a country like India. Hence, they do not understand the importance of education, and many issues come under light only after getting educated. 
• It is proved that development communication is the need of the hour and therefore, different approaches are used in development communication to reach the people with effective messages. 
• These approaches are: Diffusion/extension approach, mass media approach, instructional approach, localized approach and planned approach. In the mass media approach, dissemination of information using mass media channels is the main idea.

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Portrait Photography

Portrait Photography - Definition

Portrait photography, or portraiture, is a type of photography aimed toward capturing the personality of a person or group of people by using effective lighting, backdrops, and poses. A portrait photograph may be artistic or clinical. Frequently, portraits are commissioned for special occasions, such as weddings, school events, or commercial purposes. Portraits can serve many purposes, ranging from usage on a personal web site to display in the lobby of a business.

The subject of portraiture is extremely broad and can take an entire career in photography to truly begin to understand. Here we’ll be looking at a few things you can do to improve your portraiture. Rather than simple tips and tricks that might only work for one specific situation, we’ll look at things more broadly and discuss an approach to portrait photography.

Although we’ll be diving into a few genres of portrait photography to illustrate the points at hand, these ideas do not apply specifically to family photography, engagement photography, studio photography, or any other genre of portraiture. Each of these can be applied to every type of portrait you make. Before we jump into those, though, let’s quickly define what a portrait is for our purposes today.

What is a Portrait?

At its simplest, portraiture is the likeness of a person represented in a photograph. For the sake of brevity here, let’s define portraiture in a more narrow way so we can focus on the steps to making better photographs of people. Let’s assume that a portrait requires the subject to be a knowing collaborator in the process and not an incidental part of the resulting photograph. Let’s also assume that there’s a larger story to be told with our portraits so we can avoid being included in a mashup of identical posts on social media.

What are the Important Elements of Portraiture?

As with all photographs, the main photographic components of a portrait are light, composition, and moment. By focusing on each of these in our portrait photography, we’ll stand a better chance of making great images. In addition, since we’re working with people in portrait photography, the human element is also extremely important. All the technique in the world won’t fix an uninspired expression. For the rest of our time here, we’ll dig deeper into these four elements and how we can work on them.

Light

Let’s start with the basic building block of all photography: light. Light is just as important in a portrait as it is in any other type of photography, if not more important. Light can be used to create mood or further the story you’re trying to tell. Consider a close-up of a person short-lit, staring off into the distance and surrounded by darkness. Light plays the role here of creating mystery. Now consider the late afternoon sun illuminating a smiling couple as they walk along a beach. Light, in this case, helps to create a positive and bright feeling to the image.

"In photography, there is no such thing as

good light or bad light.

There is only appropriate light."

When thinking about light, we need think about its quality. This can be especially difficult in the beginning, but there are a few questions we can ask ourselves to help out. Where is it coming from? What colour is it? How does that affect my image? If we’re wanting to create warm, glowing family portraits, midday is not the time to do that in most parts of the world. Planning portrait sessions around the light you need for the emotions you’re trying to bring out, or breaking out the strobes and creating your own light, is a great way to ensure you’ll get the results you’re after.

Composition

Composition is a large part of how we, as photographers, give our viewers information. Consider again the couple on the beach from the beginning of our discussion about light. A wide composition including white sand, palm trees, and parasols gives us a sense of place and makes the photograph more about a couple in a situation. However, if we then switch to our trusty 70-200mm (equivalent) and get a close-up of the couple with a blurry background, the photograph becomes more about the couple than it does the situation they’re in.

In order to begin composing a portrait, we need to think about our intention (what we want the image to say to our viewers) and the output (how the image will be shown to our viewers). Our intention defines what we do or do not include in the composition. As we discussed with the simple example above, this can greatly affect the amount of information that the viewer receives. Output also informs how we compose. A portrait on Instagram, for example, needs to be much closer and simpler than a double-page spread in a magazine. It will be viewed smaller and by someone who is likely passing time rather than setting out to spend time with photographs.

As with any composition, we begin by considering what needs to be in the image and what does not. This will not only help us to tell the story we’re looking to tell, but help us to reduce the clutter of the real world and simplify our composition down to something powerful.

Example: Environmental Portrait Photography

A style of portraiture in which composition is extremely important is environmental portraiture. This type of image is used to give the viewer a window into someone’s world by showing a person in the place they spend much of their time doing something they often do. It is about the place or action just as much as it is about the person. Both elements of this style of portraiture contribute to an overall story. Thus, choosing what to keep in your frame and what to remove with an environmental portrait should be considered first and foremost when framing your image.

Quite often, environmental portraits are made with shorter focal lengths, so don’t be afraid to get out that 24mm or 35mm lens. A wide angle lens will allow us to get close to the subject. This has a couple of benefits. The first is that it allows the subject to remain large in the composition while still including a lot of background and foreground to further the story. Wide-angle lenses also tend to feel quite inclusive. The photographer’s necessary proximity to the subject transfers quite well into the final image and the viewer will likely feel that they are right there with the subject. Many environmental portraits also make use of smaller apertures to have more legible detail in the foreground and background, as well.

Moment

The third element of portraiture is arguably the most important one. The slice of time we choose to show tells our viewer a lot about us and a lot about the subject. The peak of a smile, an introspective look into the distance, fingers fidgeting in the lap. All of these moments tell us something about our time with the subject. People are complex and made up of millions of moments. The one we choose to photograph and show is the only story we’ll give to our viewer. 

Example: 

Family Portrait Photography

Let’s consider a type of photography that is all about moments – family photography. The definition of a family portrait has changed dramatically over the years. Traditionally, it may have been focused heavily on getting every member of the family in the frame looking at the camera together (this was the moment – us, now). Their heads would be placed in patterns of imaginary triangles to give a pleasing pattern for the viewer to follow as they explore the image. It would likely be photographed in extremely soft studio light or open shade to ensure everyone was flattered and that the world “smile” would likely have been uttered just prior to releasing the shutter. While this sort of image certainly has a place, a more modern take would be the lifestyle family portrait.

Lifestyle Portrait Photography

A lifestyle family portrait focuses less on the moment of the family simply being together and more on the moments they experience while they are together. It is the photographer’s job to influence the moments that will be presented and then be ready to capture them in the best light. This is potentially far more difficult than a simple portrait of everyone looking into the camera, but also potentially far more meaningful for the family themselves. What parent doesn’t want to hear their child screaming with joy and have that moment immortalised to look back on for years to come?

The Human Element

We talked above about the technical elements of portrait photography. Composition, light, and moments will bring the photograph together, but the subject needs to be part of it as well. Their ‘performance’ can make or break our photograph. If we don’t think of what we’re doing as photography, but simply as human interaction, the human element becomes much easier to incorporate into our photography.

It is this one very simple thing we can do to improve our portraits and make them stand out from the masses of images that flood our eyes every day. We can be curious. Be curious about our subjects. About what they do. About why they do it. If we want our subjects to smile genuinely in our portraits, we need to know what makes them happy. If we want to create an environmental portrait that tells a story about the subject, we need to know what that story is.

By involving the subject in our process of learning about them, we not only gain knowledge that we can use to inform our portrait, but we also gain their trust. With knowledge and trust, we can make our portraits much stronger and our work on the technical side can begin to sing.

 

Source Link

Still Life Photography

 These Photos only for reference purpose only.

Vegetable

Art of Cutting the Vegetable

Chilly Pot

Coconut Flower

Travelling Couple

Beauty Stand Alone

Shadow of the Light

Zen Orange

Lemonade Water

Story of Lemon

Still Life

The term “still life” describes a work of art that shows inanimate objects from the natural or man-made world, such as fruit, flowers, dead game, and/or vessels like baskets or bowls. Looked at another way: still lifes depict things that are “still” and don’t move.
Still life is a genre that spans art history. It is found everywhere from ancient Egyptian tombs—decorated with paintings of objects from daily life—to works of modern art where it provided opportunities to experiment with new techniques, forms, and styles. The genre became particularly popular in the Netherlands during the 17th century when urbanization led to a greater emphasis on the home, personal possessions, and commerce.

Still Life with Apples, 1893–1894, Paul Cézanne. Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 × 32 1/8 in. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 96.PA.8

Why Make a Still Life?
Take a look at the above painting, Still Life with Apples. Paul Cézanne painted these same objects—the green vase, the rum bottle, the ginger pot, and apples—over and over throughout the last thirty years of his life. He used these objects as the basis for experimentations with their shape, color, lighting, and placement.
There are many possible reasons an artist may be inspired to create a still life. Like Cézanne, they may wish to play with perspective and the arrangement of objects in the picture plane (otherwise known as “composition”) or highlight different techniques.

Life, Death, and the Passage of Time

Still Life with Ewer, Vessels, and Pomegranate, mid-1640s, Willem Kalf. Oil on canvas, 41 1/8 × 31 3/4 in. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 54.PA.1

Though it may appear simple, still life art can also portray complex themes. Some celebrate life and its pleasures by showing off food, wine, and material riches as in the above painting Still Life with Ewer, Vessels, and Pomegranate by Willem Kalf.

“Kalf’s meticulous brushwork captures the details of the reflective, glimmering metals, as well as the more textured, voluptuous surfaces of the edible objects,” said Nicole Block, Getty’s curatorial assistant in paintings.

But look carefully—there are signs of a human presence nearby. The wine glass is only half full and the bread is torn, as though someone has just taken a piece and then vanished.

Still life can also warn of the dangers or temporary nature of these pleasures. Memento mori (“remember you must die” in Latin) and vanitas paintings both tackle themes of death and fragility. Memento mori typically include skulls, extinguished candles, and hourglasses while vanitas also include other symbols of vanity like wine and musical instruments.

“Sometimes you’ll see the flowers or food rotting in a still life, or notice a skull or an hourglass, reminding you that death is the ultimate end for us all,” said Block. “Moralizing religious messages about gluttony or greed could also be built into these tableaus.”

Make Your Own Still Life

This past year has been, well, a lot. We want to see the objects that have helped you get this far—whether that’s something around your home or in out in your neighborhood.

Make your own still life of 3 things that represent this past year, or have helped you through it.

Here’s how to join in:

Pick three objects. Consider size, shape, texture, and contrast between them.

Arrange them. Will they be stacked, draped, hung, or scattered, and what is the background?

Capture it. Play with light, shadow, and material before you sketch, paint, or photograph.

https://www.getty.edu/news/what-is-a-still-life/

Some of the most common subjects of still life photography are inclusive of things like:

• Flowers
• Plants
• Rocks
• Fruits
• Food
• Glasses
• Shoes
• Tools, and other similar things

Introduction to Social Psychology - Part 1

 Introduction to Social Psychology

1.      The Nature & Scope of Social Psychology.

2.      The Methods of Social Psychology.

3.      The Development of Social Psychology:

4.      Early Beginnings – (the contributions of Sociologists and Psychologists)

·         Comte

·         Le Bon

·         Durkheim

·         Cooley

·         GH Mead

·         McDougall

Social psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes as they relate to how people interact with, or relate to, others. Our starting point is on the person, and not society. The latter is the focus of the field called sociology, or the study of society or groups, both large and small.

The Nature and Scope of Social Psychology:

·         Human life is in fact connected by thousands of invisible threads. Places that people live, the situations they meet are all continuously and consistently shape them as well as get shaped by them. The situations an individual meet or create a good number of possibilities for him to behave.

·         Social psychology is a specific branch in which it scientifically tries to understand how people influence as well as gets influenced by one another. It is a systematic body of knowledge focusing on the social thinking, social influence and social relations.

·         A fundamental theme of social psychology is to discover how a social situation leads very different people to act very similarly. As well as how very similarly act very differently.

·         Social psychology is a scientific discipline. It is deeply committed to understand the nature of social behavior and thought. Such rich field has a systematic development over the period of history. And as the field as a progressed the focusing of its area also get changed.

Scope of social psychology:

The scope of social psychology may be clarified further by a brief description of its relation to other allied branches of study.

a) Social Psychology and General Psychology:

Ø  Psychology is a scientific study of behavior.

Ø  The aim of general psychology is to study the behavior of individuals in order to find out laws which govern behavior.

Ø  It uses scientific methods to collect data in order to study the behavior.

Ø  By using such methods a large body of knowledge concerning the processes of perception, memory, learning, imagination, thinking, intelligence and personality has been obtained.

Ø  The study of individuals in his interaction with others is the task of social psychology.

b) Social Psychology and Sociology:

§  The aim of sociology is to study society and social organizations.

§  It studies society as a system of usages and procedures of authority, mutual aid and how it controls the human behavior.

§  Sociology is interested in the social relationship themselves.

§  Social psychology is interested in the individuals who enter in the social relationship.

§  The difference between these concepts lies in the focus.

§  The focus of social psychology is on the attitude, the subjective reactions of individuals to the institutions.

§  While the focus of sociology is in the institutions themselves like family, community, caste, social class etc.,

c) Social Psychology and Cultural Anthropology:

Ø  The cultural anthropologists are interested in the social institutions, the mores and beliefs of tribal societies.

Ø  According to the anthropologist all that group of people has created whether it is an artifact of a taboo an implement to work, mode of worshiping short, whether they are physical objects or social and religious ideas or relationship they all form a culture.

Ø  Cultural anthropology have shown how the perception and learning’s of an individual are closely determined by the cultural backgrounds.

Ø  Social psychology helps in understanding some of the cultural problems like superstitious beliefs, magic etc.,

Development of Social Psychological:

Social Psychology seeks to understand the Causes of Social Behavior and Thought:

Social psychology is primarily, interested in understanding the many factors and conditions that shape the social behavior and thought of individuals. Mainly, how individuals form ideas relating to the actions, feelings, beliefs memories and inferences concerning other persons. A huge number of different factors play a role in this regard. The factors affecting social interaction fall into five major categories. They are the actions and characteristics of others, basic cognitive processes, ecological variables, cultural context and biological factors.

i) The Actions and Characteristics of Others:

One person’s behavior and their characteristics expressed in the behavior directly influence other persons feeling and action. For example, suppose you are standing on the railway reservation line. If a stranger goes to the counter straightly without standing on the line, it will definitely create different types of feeling and as well action of others affects everyone.

The behaviors of other persons often exert powerful effects on the behaviors and social thoughts of everyone. For example, when many people are attending a concert in a theatre when a nearby person seated nearby receive a call on his mobile phone and begins a loud conversation about very private topics what happens to the people to the people around him? The next idea in this line is that the behavior of a person often affected by others appearance. For example, people normally feel uneasy in the presence of a person with a physical disability. People with differently behave towards highly attractive person than towards less attractive person.

ii) The Cognitive Process:

The cognitive processes such as perception, memory and inferences play a key role on the understanding and behavior of every individual in the society. Reactions to a certain situation by an individual strongly depend on the memories of others past behaviors and inferences an individual formed about these behaviors. If anybody wants to clearly understand the causes of others behavior in a social situation it is must that one should understand what went on in the thinking pattern and understanding process of those people when they behaved in a particular social situation. For example, if your friends fix an appointment in a particular time, you are waiting for him / her at a particular point of time, if he comes late what would be your reaction. In such as situations, cognitive plays a crucial role in the social behavior and social thoughts of every individual. A study of how people perceive, think about and remember information about others is really having a contributing effect of human social behavior. Social cognition is a growing area of social psychology.

iii) The Environmental Factors:

The weather and the climate a person experience have a say in his / her behavior. The findings of research indicate the physical environment necessarily influences the feelings, thoughts and behavior of everyone. The climatically conditions make a person either happy or sad. For example, if there is a continuous rain for a few days most of the people’s day to day life get disturbed. Another example is that people became more irritable and aggressive when the weather is hot and steamy than when it is cool and comfortable. The environmental factors create different types of impact on the perceptual experiences of individuals. The cognitive, affective, interpretive and evaluative responses of individual change drastically. Further, if a person is exposing to a particular environment for a long time he or she will adapt to that environment and will feel habituated for that condition. The environmental stimulations facilitate physical and psychological arousals. The increased arousals will either improves or impairs individual performances. Hence, role of the environment on the social behavior of individuals has become one of the very important factors of study in social psychology.

iv) The Cultural Context:

People live in different cultural settings. Each culture comes out with its own rules and norms to be systematically followed in different fates of human life cycle. The practices followed in one culture will be different than the other cultures. If a person is hailing from a particular culture he/she has to adapt appropriately the behavior patterns accepted by his/her culture. In all these process an individual is continuously influenced by the culture from which he/she is hailing. Social behavior and social thoughts are often strongly affected by the cultural norms and factors. For example, there are cultural specific behavior patterns exist for the birth of a newborn, the age attainment ceremony, the marriage ceremony, and finally, the funeral ceremony. These are some of the specific cultural behavior expressed by every culture. The cultural ideas also get changed by the passages of time. For example, previously love marriages were viewed in negative terms as drastic action but now the cultural beliefs and values about it have changed greatly. But, whatever the changes take place in a culture, person living in anyone of the culture is expected to follow the practices of that culture.

v) The Biological or Evolutionary Factors:

This is a new branch of psychology that seeks to investigate the potential role of genetic factors in various aspects of human behavior. It is also called as genetic factors. According to this view as any other species human beings also have a process of biological, evolution throughout history. This evolutionary process takes three basic components. They are of the view that man is emancipated as the generation processed by. Every time man is getting a new height in all his endeavors. This has led to the possible difference in body shapes and structures, the improved inheritance qualities and better selection of passing evolutionary differ on their biological structures their social interactions will also get varied in nature. The biological inheritance usually affects ones preferences, behaviors, emotions, and attitudes. For example, hair color, skin color, body structures get changed from person to person in a long run.

vi) Social Psychology in the New Millennium:

As the social psychology tries to understand the individuals’ thoughts and behavior in social settings, the subject matter of social psychology goes on changing as the years passed by. Due to the tremendous changes happening in the fields, the present day human beings are well advances in every sphere. The speedy growth found in every areas of human life, the present day subject matter of the social psychology found to incorporate the latest development in to its subject matter. This has led to the changing and formulating of new perspectives in the study of social psychology. Mainly, cognitive perspective, application perspective, multicultural perspectives and evolutionary perspectives have become the focus of research on social psychology.

vii) Cognitive Perspective

Social psychology is the field that studies both social behavior and social thought. The definition reflects the fact that both social psychologist have always been interested in how individuals think about other person and about social situations. The cognitive side of social psychology has grown dramatically in importance. Most social psychologist belief that how people act in various situations are strongly decided by their thoughts. The cognitive perspectives are recollected in social psychological research in many ways, but two are most import.