[...]tiny units, vectors, colors, forms (within the visual plane)
2. mid-level: human-level characteristics of gender, hairstyle, posture, facial expression, buildings, rhetorical devices in the image (such as metaphor and troping)
3. meta-level: narrative structure, mythic in nature, to see embodied in the properties and dynamics of the image the macro properties and fynamics of social world (<-- business of semiotic)

Barthes --> (new medium of) photographic advertisement = a codified structure =/= a transparent reflection of the world


-*Barthes reading of Citroen DS car
impossible newness
it appears at first sight as a superlative object صفت عالی
object which appear at first sight as completely finished present to us at once a perfection and an absence of origin, closure and a brilliance, *a transformation of life into matter*, a silence that belongs to the realm of fairy tales
*smoothness is not a property of material, but a social value*
-Christ's robe was seamless, science fiction, made of unbroken metal, phenomenology of assembling, hold together by sole virtue of their wondrous shape ==> the idea of benign nature
}--learn--> (to make) lines of connection: visual convention + religious painting, science fiction film, politics of nature (constructed over the past 2000 years of western culture) [<-- to understand this in your own work #feedback @apass]


-*Haraway
neutral images of (high-tech) science --> stock of Renaissance visual analogues ==> legitimate lineage + origin story (for technical revolutions)

(Barthes > Campbell) **what sign constructions do westerners use to tell the story of how technology comes to be present in the world?**


-*Campbell reading of Simens’ ad “builing blocks” (2005)
Simens products float into space, as naturally and as pure white snowflake falling to the earth
absence of labor ==herald==> a universe of self-organizing invisible agency
“technology = invisible force that is lighter than air, rearranging itself into whatever seems to be needed” (=/= fashioned, melted, hammered , soldered and generally forced into the natural order)
==> the agency that organizes is non-pollutant, non-disruptive, non-energetic
(from) cacophonous --to--> harmonious [<-- technology seeks its home]
sky above, supra-structure =/= [*]infrastructure: structure from below
--Simens--> [*]technology: apotheosized (تکريم) by extending its self-organizing capabilities, lending it a divinity which is universal, inevitable, natural and just (Simens’ ad ==> Iron Man image)


supra-structure --> new / Star Trek
                             |
infrastructure --> old / planets they visit


the human body: the most depicted object in advertising
--> research tradition:
humans have more synapses for interprting face
depiction of female body
male body
sex in advertising
racial marked body
(boring questions:)
•whether advertising reflects the world or shape it
•how signs reproduce, create, normalize or subvert the often unequal power structures that exist between male and female bodies
--> **despite potential ambiguity in images we as visual consumers are always presented with a “preferred reading”** @Pierre, Goda --> “image is controlled by discursive limits” (--Sina--> fable of ‘subtlest ideological weapon of advertising’) --Campbell--> paradox of identity construction: the consuming subject chooses among a limited repertoire of “iterated” or preexisting identities provided by marketing and adertising, steering viewers in preferred directions [<-- a fable]
[*]coopt: advertising pretends to acknowledge a competing discourse or ideology, but only pays lip service to it, ignoring its real radical challenge

the idea of advertising: a system that instils (القا، کم کم تزریق کردن) products and services with cultural and social values that are not intrinsic to them [~ magic]
--> highly visible display of ruling-class interests
*advertising = capitalism + aesthetics*
advertising: the pre-eminent way in which the interest of the powerful minority maintain the docility, alienation, or servitude of the majority (--> Goda's understanding of pop culture)

[*]magic: conjure an object from its immediate material rootedness and animate it with a much more potent energy ==> erase human experience of the monotony of consumption with its transient satisfactions and reinvigorate it anew with fresh promise-claims
for example advertisement for mobile phone = *suggestion* (about a certain design aesthetic + a certain tole in professional life + a certain sexual appeal + a certain social network) =/= *announcement* (about a technical device)
(announcement =/= suggestion: the act of advertising)

}--1--> the idea that advertising's signs = carefully constructed highly selective and distortive ways of seeing [=/= simple reflections of the state of the world] ==(Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Klein, Curtis, Jhally, @apass, Pierre)==>
•false consciousness
•commodity fetishism
•docility
•passivity
•manipulation of unconscious desire
•environmental degradation

}--2--> the idea that signs actually achieve their aims (through mortise and framing work, cropping, reification, interpellation, cooption, the gaze, face-ism, individuation) --> [Althusser's] interpellation: process by which we are called or hailed into subjecthood through practices imposed onto us from outside interests, subjects are created through material practices (going to church and kneeling down to pray precedes my subjecthood as a spiritual person)
•recruitment advertisement: interpellative genre par excellence ~ through the practice of response we enter into the predefined parameters of relation with the organization {Microsoft's “we want you!” --> 1: act of defining the subject: one who is special, unique, an individual among the masses. 2: collective pronoun: “we” serves to close the subject and the organization within a circuit of common purpose. 3: what is missing: a concrete visualization of working life in the organization, an absence which allows the reader to project his/her own fantasy onto space : ‘infantilize the organization ==> empower the subject’ --represent--> an imaginary relationship =/= real conditions of our existence}

}--✕--> (Campbell) ****images are ontologically cryptic**** : we conceive images to be both agentic & passive, residing in and affecting many spheres simultaneously
•image: visuality, apparatus, institutions, discourse, bodies, figurality, exist within a distinctive socio-legal environment --> **multiple ontologies [Ihde's multistable] move images beyond simple categories of analysis (<-- that is why i am still a visual artist, @Pierre)
***images are extra-organizational entities*** (they are designed by organization but become) *quixotic* and *uncontrollable*
*fable of complex: there is something about the image that is beyond analytic investigation (--Mitchell--> every image theorist seems to find some residue (surplus value) that goes beyond communication, signification, persuassion (there is an extra in images) --> images are complex {
1. they are constantly mutating in meaning and significance
2. they cross aesthetic borders and are not confinable to a particular domain (image = aesthetic + political + social)
3. they act on all domains recursively --impossible--> how the aesthetic life of images affects the political life of images }--Mitchell--> *image as species* (co-evolutionary entities, quasi life-form depend on a host organism) ==>
◦something not fully under human control
◦spread through the host organicism
◦some die some become pandemic


aesthetic --affect--> politic --affect--> aesthetic --affect--> politic


#workshop make an ad for apass


advertising trend
1. information: (from) traditional forms of print & television --to--> intensification and hybridization in oblique ways + through new media (adver-gaming, twitter-piccing, virtual-worlding, Corridor Crew's product placement)
2. persuasion: [as a rhetorical force] (from) information-heavy selling --to--> dramatic persuasion
3. entertainment: communication through entertainment =/= information, persuasion
•(from) staging products in films --to--> embedding of brands so deeply into the fabric of the film's narrative as object-actors that propel the plot
(Corridor Crew's unobtrusive embedding of branded goods and services in storytelling, hybrid both staging and embedding)

brand --> creativity of consumers to create artistic output in the form of art (Star Wars world, Marina Abramovic) --advertising--> rhetorical purpose: *entertain* =/= inform (announcement), persuade, *warn*[old original function of advertising]

*to warn = to inform* [<-- 15th century advertising ==> journalism]


ever growing impetus of advertising to reproduce itself in new forms ==> different account of the evolution of new media : advertising creates new media to propagate itself (*two globally pervasive and path-changing forms of media that would not exist without advertising revenue:)
•search engine
•social networking site

(McLuhan's “medium = message” --> that we should look at the structural nature of media rather than what it contains =/=) *message = medium* (in 20th century)--> [*]advertising: species that create media in order to allow it to replicate =/= a thing that we humans create and put in media as an incidental extra to an originary agent of meaning [<-- hylomorphic understanding of advertising]


[in 20th century (task of)] advertising: to render the invisible [qualities, such as: complexity, network, information,,,] into compelling visualities (--into--> public imagination)
•(in organizational discourse) complexity: (--articulate-->) unpredictable, multi-layered, decentered, emergent, globalized (world of Homeland TV series, of apass, of ERG's website: technological + adaptable + multi-layered)
*success <== visualize the complexity of their products* [in the case of ERG: student's knowledge and the institution of university]

(Goldman's landscape of Capital -->) corporate advertising:
•visually depicts the phenomenon of globalization
•affect the cultural imaginary
•shape political sensibilities (with respect to life in high-tech globalism)

amorphous phenomena (that require high-stakes visualization):
•counter-terrorism
•climate change
•


[*]advertising: an institution that organizes meaning, a visual sign system (as powerful as other systems that organize meaning: medicine, law, education,,,) [~/= apass]
--> *a form of literacy* = can be learned + lexicon + grammer (that can be fruitfully investigated)
*advertising = capitalism + aesthetic* ==Campbell==> research in advertising one of the most important research priorities in any discipline today (@apass)

...................................

***marketing = the ultimate social practice of postmodernity***

marketing practices
promotional campaigns
consumption culture

postmodernity: a phenomena specific to the cultural history of western europe and north america --impact--> globe
--Lyotard--> incredulity toward *metanarratives: unified idea systems
--Jameson--> consumer society (marked by:)
◦pastiche: an attitude of a certain detachment (on the part of the individual) where all stylistic expressions of parody, nostalgia, and other illustrated feeling lack emotional depth and commitment
◦schizophrenia: disjointedness and discontinuity of the individual's personal identity and experience in life
--Angus--> infinite delay of *modernity: improving human lives by controlling nature
--Wilson--> expression of incoherence of contemporary urban life

postmodernity =/= authority, unity, continuity, purpose, commitment
= “modernity: era of scientific ideology ==> disillusionment, disintegration, anxiety”
--> hedonism
--> tolerance (recognition) of difference
--> metanarrative = story (that people construct to tell themselves) =Foucault= regimes of truth
=/= conformity

examples of modern metanarratives:
•bourgeois (capitalist) ideology
•marxism

}--✕--> *market = new metanarrative in postmodernity*


postmodern condition:

1- [*]hyperreality: becoming real of what initially was/is a simulation/hype: simulation of imagined potential or imagined past (signifiers arbitrary linked to their original referent)

marketing: a practice that resignifies (a brand name)

tendency and willingness of the customers to prefer the simulation (for example the theme areas in city centers of an imagined pasts) =/= “real”

postmodernism is a cultural critique (=/= economic, social critique) of modernity

postmodern critique tends to rely on experiential or sensible judgement (--valued--> trusting intuition and sensing of what is practical/pragmatic based on cultural experience) =/= analysis of material evidence

****post world war II politics --> youth movement culminated in the 1960s --> institutionalization of the generational rebellion --> postmodernism*** ==>
•postmodern cultural critique rely on intuition + experiential sensibilities (in seeking a better world)
•postmodern consumer feels more justified in playful enjoyment of the simulation (=/= constantly seeking the somber reminders of “reality”)

hyperreality ==> “loss of history” : historical phenomena = collage with visual excitement = journalism
*voyeuristic exposure to the spectacle = cultural pastiche of the contemporary world*
--> #integration of the hollywood films (nested: music brand names become sub-spectacle within the spectacle of the film) --> (we are immersed in) an era of *metamarketing: marketing itself is marketed (becomes a prominent spectacle ---> go to Devil wears prada movie)

blurring of genres in news programs (Vox news), soap operas (), games ()

decontextualization + spectacle

the duality of ‘appearance =/= essence’ is dead in postmodernity --> cereal strategic decision-making in marketing : ****image = positioning****

-consumer always seeks an essence (in adopting a product)
-consumer of postmodern culture play the game of “surface” (they increasingly acquire the skills of recognizing the images and the positions these images offer)

[*]marketing: institution of simulation, imaginary, hype
(forms of) persuasive communication : transformational propositions ==> simulating potential experiences (=/= true or false discourse)


2- [*]fragmentation: the consumer engages in a series of independent, separate, unconnected acts --each--> require a different product
+ fleeting moments of exciting scenes and images

(postmodern) transcendence of the (modernist) necessity to *understand connections*

***artists of all kinds are increasingly assuming the role of marketing institutions***

the consumers (of postmodernity) are encouraged to play the game of *image-switching* (caring mother, efficient manager, elegant partner, gourmet homemaker --each--> require a different style {labeled as consumer liberation}) =/= central character
[---> go to Deleuze and Guattari's schizophrenia of late capitalism]

disconnected from authentic self ==> (enormous potential for) creativity in manufactured representations
~~--> market becomes a pastiche

postsuburban transformation
complex interaction of high-technology production + socio-spatial configuration + spectacular shopping environment = ubiquitous shopping malls (--acquired--> postmodern theatrical character, fragmented experience of all cultures)

unrestricted ability to use signifiers [?pushed back by some emerging sensibilities of cultural appropriation, political correctness, gender policing, religious, etc.]
--> marketing competition rests on the creation of images (meanings) removed from any history, context, origin =/= excellence and sophistication in form and technique
[---> go to contemporary artists anti-excellence attitude and the celebration of failure and failing]
--> **each instance of communication becomes a spectacle**

purposefully decontextualized + rendered free floating ==> marketable product
(surrealist artists made use of this --now--> shop window designer)
Duchamp, Rauschenberg, Warhol (ready-made)

***themes of postmodern culture:
irreverence
nonconformity
noncommitment
detachment
difference
fragmentation

(paradoxically) what seems to be difference at the level of symbolic culture stems from an underlying uniformity <-- ***heterogeneity has its origins in homogeneity*** : cultures where market and marketing are less developed exhibit greater variance[...]