Introductory Briefing Overview of Lecture Programme

Introductory Briefing Overview of Lecture Programme taken by Richard Miles/James Beighton (10th October 2013)

During this beginning lecture we first started by getting the briefing dates together but we then went through a few things that were relevant to each of the courses that attended the lectures, as there are about 5 different ones that need catering too as a whole. 

Fish Story (1989-95) by Allan Sekula
To begin with we went over a printed novel entitled Fish Story (1989-95), written by Allan Sekula, a photographer and a theorist. In this, Sekula has expressed the shift from 'a culture of postmodernism to one of globalism and reflects the artist’s effort to renew realist art in the wake of the postmodern culture of the 1980s'. This was only really mentioned for the photography student's amoungst us but it was interesting to see how a dissertation could be submitted as long as it included a decent and accurate thesis at the same time.

Grand Theft Auto V by Rockstar North (2013) 
The next item we studied was definitely aimed at us, as DFGA students: Rockstar North's new Grand Theft Auto V. It was actually nice to take a breather from having a regular lecture to seeing trailers for video games instead, and this is one brilliant one to see. Along with just watching the trailer we did go into some detail about how the game franchise could be seen as as a manhunt, a way of killers being able to practice and also answering the main question most mums are asking: Does it cause violence? There are a lot of negative labels and sexual content associate with this series but in my opinion it is nothing more than a game, even though it does victimise women and other ethnic identities.. but as the only girl in the lecture hall that raised a hand when saying, 'Yes I do play this game series', I don't think the series should be taken literally in that sense.

Saatchi and Saatchi for Gallaher (1983)
The next thing that we looked at, seemed to go into quite a lot of detail and did end up getting slightly out of control by the end due to the nature of the advert and the supposed Freudian theories that can be suggested from it. This part of the lecture escalated very quickly from the advertising a tobacco product to it being a sexual innuendo.  During this time advertising was part of a Code of Practice in Britain, in which tobacco products are not longer allowed to be associated with:
- Glamour
- Sport
- Success in business
- Masculine or feminine
- 'Advertise should not seek to actively persuade people to start smoking

The images used in the adverts for Silk Cut, a well known cigarette brand used a lot of different images to give representations of the brand itself, for example it would use an image of silk wrapped around a pair of scissors or silk with a cut in it.

Atelier Populaire (1968)
The last part of the lecture was a bit of a blur after the amount of sexual innuendos in the last part to it but it was mainly about the Atelier Populaire, which was a group of students who rebelled at took over the print studios in France, caused some damage and a lot of bricks where thrown. When rebelling they refused to sell there pieces of work as they didn't want there to be historical evidence of a certain stage in the struggle for betrayal, but nowadays they can be bought.