traditions between japenese and american cultures

Ok, so this is a late post however I was watching howls moving castle to understand the difference and you can pick up on a lot of differences. To start with films directed by people like Hayao Miyazaki and created beautfiul painting like figures and environments. However the characters do not smile very much, instead they bow as they do in their tradition and wear different shoes. Their upbringing's are different from ours. Animations from america would be the typical up the table, possibly praying? if they are christians. However the japanese sit on the floor on cushions on an extremly low table and in a lot of films eat their tradtiional food like Ramen.

In japan they are not as protective as we are and the united states. They allow things to happen which usuall wouldnt be shown like indecentcy. Regular shows are known in japan for pretty much anything even if its mainly about death.

I believe i got a lot out of this lecture and feel I understand a lot more about japanese animation.

Realism

So realism is pretty straight forwards. It is exactly what it says. Its a close resemblement to what is real. Phoography was the first medium or form of realism in a form of art, rather than paintings which can be very decieving. A man called "andre bazin" said humanity has a "mummy complex" meaning a urge to freeze time and to capture and store reality. This is because photgraphy is proof, its scientific and copies reality.


However with realism comes non-realism where 3d is used and is becoming more and more realistic with character features using probably a photographas a base to edit and transform into creatures.

There are 2 viewson realism, art reflects and art tranforms. There are 2 types of media that relate to realism. The first is immediacy, where it makes you forget about the media you are using, wether its film, photography etc. To want immediacy is to want to be away from realism and forgetting what your looking at isnt really there.

The other type is hypermedicy is the in a way the opposite to immediacy where it uses technology to make you beleive what you are looking at is real. To disguise an object in a way. I found this slightly hard to understand and find it hard to write about.

Sructuralism & binary oppositions.

So last thursday the lecture was on sructuralism, which is pretty much straight forward. Its to see structure, shapes according to what we automaticly think of. It is how we create and interperate. By focusin on the "opposites" we as humans can only define what something is by knowing what isnt. These are known as "binay opposites".

-Jacques derrida is a man who developed the technique of post-structuraism, also known as deconstruction. This is whre binary oppositions come in. examples of binary opposition are:

good- evil
light-dark
sky-land
old-young
male-female.

All these example help show how we question opposition. However we know what is old and young. however some are no so straight forwards and these are called "zone of anomaly."
These are the one that dont fit in the catagory so fluid. This is simply because we see some on a scale in a way and can only notice what it is from how far away from the catagory it is. for example:

human-non human. - there are films where you have vampires and zombies. Are they closer towards human or non human. Its a question where everyone has their own view on. I personally believe it could be closer to human but there is a process to get to human stage. Therefor it stays in "zone of anomaly".

Semoitcs

SEMIOTICS

semiotics is the study of meaning, and within this are different areas we covred in the leture. I found most of them interesting but took a while to understand. Semoitoics is put into 5 main catagories. These are to do with what we interperate and how we study images.


Iconic or arbitray?

When an image is close to the real thing it is known as "Iconic" and when its more close fantasy its arbitray. For evample the image on the left is arbitray as its nothing like a real human, whereas the one on the right is a photograph of avril lavigne so is the iconic of the two.

















Sometime however some images may look very much like the real thing and can be noticed as Iconic. This all depends really on what you interperate it is. I personally found the slide of warewolfs and real life dolls hard to decide. If you can tell its a person in a suit then it would be more iconic than a 3d model of a warewolf as warewolfs dont existin reality and Iconic focsus on reality.



denotation- What the sign is (literally)- what it looks like
connotation- What is suggests, meaning of the image.
myth- what the world believes, and interperates.





Denotation- Skinny young male, large eyes, greyscale with hint of purple. Messy hair pale skin,scared. Smart clothing however ripped.

connotation- unwell maybe? unhappy, unloved and unwanted. Could be frightened easily. Ripped jacket suggests he isnt looked after well.

myth- fragile young male, who keeps to himself and has upperclass family but look down on him.








Sometimes the connotation and myth could be very similar. Connotation in a way is just describing behind the image and the myth is how everyone would see if they didnt know of its background. The difference between the two can be very confusing to me. The myth is how everyone will previeve it where as connotation is looking more more closely.

My art

I just wanted to show some updated work for you.