06 - TASK - Globalisation Research

Globalization is a term which describes the act of an economy or society spreading 'globally'. A prime example of this is the sushi chain 'Yo Sushi'. There are hundreds of these eateries popping up all over the UK, and yet this was something that up until recently was a japanese thing. Japan pushes out alot of its cultural and societies to the world.

A photographer who has visually commented upon the issue of globalisation and hints of capitalism is Andreas Gursky. Producing, incredibly large scale, colour imagery, he often shows scenes of great gathering in multicultural gatherings, mainly in business and economical matters. An example of this is his piece of the trading on the stock exchange floor.

He shows hundreds, thousands of people, all going about the daily business, but with it being on such a large scale, individuals are still indistinguishable. They appear tiny within the image and make you look at the entire scene rather than focusing on the individuals and what they are doing. These images seem as though they could commenting on several things, with the main being it could be commenting on the unimportance of the individuals in todays society, wether your in or out, somebody else will be there to step in and take your place, if you die only members of your family are affected, the world still continues as if you never existed. Or he could be commenting on how we all need to come together and enforce/embrace globalisation to ensure that together we can all move forward, together, as one.

Lesson 06 - Globalisation

Lecture 05 - Hyper reality

05 - TASK - Repetitions

Repetitions

Ed Ruscha was a photographer i remember looking into in Year 1 contextual studies. He produced a book entitled "Twentysix Gasoline Stations". The book was exactly what it said on the tin, on each page was an image of a gas station, beneath it, text detailing the brand and location.

He has been very methodical for this project apart from one or two images. All of the gas stations are on route 66 from west to east, LA to Texas. The images are taken from different angles, but still maintain this repetition link, which enables them to flow well together in the book. 5 stations are moved out of order that you would encounter them driving along route 66. 3 of them were taken at night, 1 of them out of a car window and only 1 of the images has a human presence. 

The images seem to have intentionally aimed to not have human presence in them, with as good as all images being empty, and shot from across the  highway.

The industrial simulacra transforms the natural world. Signs, as featured in Ruscha's work are mass produced on a large scale and originate through material production.

Lesson 05 - Repetitions