Use Value and Exchange Value Precis

Some things are considered valuable but are not especially useful (eg: gold, gemstones etc) simply because they require massive effort to produce, while others are extremely useful, but have little or no value because of their abundance and lack of effort required to extract them.

BA 2 Fashion Essay Titles

Gender, Feminism and the Gaze Seminar

Gender, Feminism and the Gaze Lecture

Bibliography Task

Look for a book and record information needed to write an essay. In its bibliography, look up another book, find it, and record the relevent information (and so on).

1:

Putman, J.(2001) Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium, London, Thames and Hudson

2:

Bennett, T (1995) The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, New York and London, Routledge

3:

Bakhtin, M (1989) The Dialogic Imagination, Texas USA, University of Texas Press

Technology and Sustainability Seminar

Technology and Sustainability Lecture

Globalisation

Socialist - Transformation of local/regional phenomenon into global ones.
Capitalist - Elimination of state enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders.

Sustainability

- Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
- Being able to co-exist with another system indefinatly without either being damaged.

'Most things arent designed for the needs of the people but for the needs of the manufacturers to sell to people.' Viktor Papanek 1983

Supply and Demand

Manufacturing Life Cycle

Manufacture - Consumption - In-built Obsolescence (things built not to last)

Credit/Money - Money = Consumption - Consumption = Manufacture

Eco ethical Parameters

Design for Development
Unfair Trade affected poverty alleviation.
Design for Sustainability
Farming/production methods for cloth. Unsustainable - toxic emissions, pesticides, biogradability.
Design for Remake
Abundance of discarded products that still have life in them
Design for Disposal
Biogradability and disposal. Limited carrying capacity for land fill.
Design for Performance and Durability
Losing attachment to products and buying into fast fashion.

The Hanover Principles

Remaking the way we make things.

People Tree
Recycling design
Vexed Generation
Hussein Chalayan
Refuge Wear
Lucy Orta

seminar 3 task

TASK:
100 word statement on a strategy for curating a show on the resurgance of haute couture in the late 1990's (McQueen, Galliano...)

At the beginning there is a catwalk show of haute couture, starting with older, original haute couture, through to the 1990’s.


Later, visitors are able to see mannequins up close wearing the more important garments of the collections, alongside a video of the whole collection being worn by models, arranged in chronological order.

Sections of the exhibition will contextualise the rest, with information on the history of haute couture, as well as more recent information in the form of newspapers, magazines, photography and perhaps the designers sketchbooks, inspiration etc to make it visually exciting.

Exhibitons and Audiences Visual Analysis

In the photo is an 'Outdoor Wear' exhibition in Liverpool. It consists of different coats presented on mannequins on tiered stages along with some information to the side of them. There is also cabinets in the middle of the room which hold the more precious/rare/expensive garments. Overall I find this exhibition pretty dull. The way the coats are set out means you cant see them up close and it doesn't seem to have much of a structure to it, for example, its difficult to see where something begins and ends, or whether the set up of different coats on different stages relate to one another. The graphics on the wall, which appear to be a small attempt to make the exhibition more visually stimulating tell you nothing more than what you already see, but state 'Outdoor Wear' multiple times along with illustrations of coats. There is no interactivity with the viewer apart from a small amount of information presumably about each coat for them to read, and there is a large space with nothing occupying it. Personally, I dont think fashion should ever be presented in this 'art gallery' manner.

Exhibitons and Audiences Seminar

Exhibitons and Audiences Lecture

seminar 2 task: Triangulation [NOT FINISHED]

TASK:
Follow up Marx by looking at Benjamin/Adorno etc. Find examples of ways in which history has demonstrated ideological power.

Art, Design and Sociology: extras

Art, Design and Sociology Seminar

Art, Design and Sociology Lecture

Dissertation Task

Bad Taste Good Taste

Comme des Garcons (CDG) and Walter Van Beirendock; both controversial designers; however, both received very differently by their audience. Beirendocks work is widely regarded as 'conceptual' and 'fashion as art'. Although very controversial (particularly for menswear), even quite alarming at times (phallus shapes and hairy chest prints galore), it is more understood.

These days Comme Des Garcons are a very desirable brand, but their earlier collections shocked, provoked and (eventually) changed peoples opinions on taste. They blurred the boundaries between masculinity and femininity, they stuck two fingers up at the expectation for women to dress 'sexily' and believed fashion was a way of communicating, not just to look 'hot'. For them, the words independent, individual and intelligent are like sex. They make clothes for women of this description.

'Comme Des Garcons are sort of like a fucked up version of Chanel' (not sure who said this, but I liked it!)

Their collection in 1987, which consisted entirely of black, was a big controversy for the 80's, when anything remotely classy was shunned in favour of 'tack' and their 'lumps and bumps' collection in 1997 with silhouettes being distorted beyond recognition underneath plaid dresses provoked adverse reactions from the audience. Their fall 08 collection, however, despite being designed with bad taste in mind, was regarded by the press as good taste (bad taste worn in an ironic way - perhaps that's what people in the 80's had in mind?) As CDG's reputation built up (along with other designers, of course) , peoples opinions have changed - not just of their fashion but of women's fashion in general.

Aesthetics and Taste Seminar Notes

'No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions it will not look ugly' Oscar Wilde

Some key points:

• 'Nothing is beautiful in itself - only in the relationship between us and the object [the context] can it be beautiful.

• Fashion and 'taste' are inextricably linked.

• Ideas about fashion are culturally and temporarily specific. They are linked to a time and a place.

• Taste is subjective - it is difficult to know what taste is, it can only be judged.

• Professional issues - how does the institute create taste? (trickle down, copying, ideas are enforced on us about taste.)

• Revivals and Retro fashion - Its possible to 'return' to fashions. {Positivism - versions, not copies. Always getting better through time}

• Issues of taste and indentity.

Androgyny and Mary Quant.

Quant wanted to do away with the idea of a 'woman' that girls should turn into their mother. She shifted the signifier of women and taste away from traditional ideas. The androgynous look she created sought to redefine the markers of taste. (Taste is temporal, the markers can be changed.) She argues that taste is noy succession, it doesnt neccessarily get better with time. Taste was an object owned by the old and the middle classes. The idea that cheap fashion could be tasteful was refuted.

Fashion and Bad Taste

[Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen.] Designers who use limits and what is considered 'bad taste' in their work.

McQueen's Highland Rape 1995 was considered bad taste at the time. As his reputation rose on the basis of bad taste, so their designs became tasteful. The object hasnt changed, but the recognition of its tastefullness has.

Hidegger - Tried to stop us thinking about KNOWING what taste is and focussing on how we go about understanding taste and beauty.

Wittgenstein - Fashion as a language - unable to represent real meaning.

Kant - The sublime - our ability to approach understanding of the unseen and unknowable

Aesthetics and Taste Lecture Notes

Knowledge of the World

• A knowing
• Something to know

Dualism - Material and Immaterial - body and mind.

Body = vehicle of the mind (dualism)

Sensations and Objects

Beauty means 'good' (moral, ethical spiritual...) in Greek.

Plato - truth - abstract ideal.

Reality = imperfect copy of forms (truths)

Art therefore = much less perfect copy of a copy.

Aristotle

Art - Mimetic. Could purge the soul.

phenomenon of beauty, not merely an ideal.

Immanuel Kant

What does it mean to know and result of knowing.

good, agreeable, beautiful.

The mind contributes to the experience of objects

Kant attempted to combine rationalism and empiricism

Noumenon - a thing in itself.

Phenomenon - a thing as it appears through senses.

Imagination - a thing in itself.

Judgements of taste therefore are the result of a relationship between an object and subject. Both subjective and universal - a response of individuality.

Disinterest = having no interest, not to be confused with uninterested

Hegel

Art = evidence of revelation of spirit. When not needed, art will end.