Intertextuality

Once again I attended the Media Histories and Cultures lecture with my colleagues. Today's lecture was about "Intertextuality". I came to an understanding that Intertextuality means the transposition of the one or many sign systems. So, it is still related to what we learned last week (Signs and Semiotics) in this lecture.

We were shown some fine examples of intertextuality used in the Media world. Such as, the name of the famous boy band "Beatles" relates to the insect "Beetle". The band was originally named "The silver beetle" and later changed to "Beatles" where the word itself relates to the insect "Beetle" and term "beat" in terms of music.

If I have to come up with my own example, then in the movie “Shrek 2”, characters re-enact the scene from the movie “Spiderman” where a half-masked man hanging upside down kisses a woman, with some differences such as the characters are ogres instead of humans and the upside down character has mud half way down his face instead of being half masked. But even so, the relation is very clear and obvious and hence, shows the Intertextuality.

In one of the theories, something interesting caught my attention. It was said that no ideas are unique as every idea goes through the process of intertextuality and in some way relates to something that already exists. And when I thought about it I could not agree more. Even when someone thinks of something all on his/her own and creates something totally new, it will have some relation with something else that already exists and the creator might not even know about it.

This helps me up in my course as we can have countless inspirations from all sorts of things to add up to our creations. For example, when creating a 3D model of an alien creature  for instance, we can merge features of different animals found on Earth to create a new creature.

Signs

Today in the Media Histories and Culture lecture, we learnt about signs. The basic form of communication that exists between us. What we did this lesson was a bit of practice to help ourselves understand the concept. Some of us were told to get out a pad and a pen and turn around and face our colleagues sitting behind us. We weren't allowed to look on the front screen. Our colleagues sitting behind would look at the screen and tell us what is being drawn in the screen. We, then, had to draw them relying on the information given by the colleagues. This exercise was quite fun to be honest and definitely helped us grasp the concept. Soon after this exercise we were shown the process model of communication to further ease our understandings which was something like this:

       Signs, messages, information
T    ----------------------------->    R
      <-----------------------------
                     Feedbacks

Here, T means Transmitter and R means Receiver. Transmitter communicates (provides information) to the Receiver via various possible methods (speaking, signalling, gesturing) and when the Receiver responds back to the transmitter, he/she is giving feedback in response to the transmitter's information. This is the basic form of communication.

In this lesson, we came across a term "Semiotics". I didn't know the meaning of this term but this lecture sure helped me understand it. From what I gained, I take the meaning of semiotics as certain signs and their arrangement that create certain meanings which can be used in the communication. All the text created in different languages all around the world are the examples. But also the certain artefacts, objects and codes used in various cultures can also be considered as the valid examples.

This artefact has a meaning as it clearly represents the structural figure of a wild Rhino.

This is a form of visualisation. This is very important stuff to understand in my chosen course of Digital Animation as it is mostly about visual communication. We, as animators and artist students, have to have clear understanding on the visuals to be able to successfully create them in the digital world of animation.

Realism in Media

Today in the Media Histories Lecture, we were given the understandings of what role realism plays in the Media Industry. From what I have archived, realism is a lot more interesting subject than I originally thought. I always thought higher the realism, better the quality but it is not the case. Sometimes having high realism can make the product (film or game) loose attraction or interests in the audience or viewers.

For example, when creating a cartoon show for children, it is a better choice to use childish drawings in the animation that stays away from realism than making the drawings extremely real.

Here is the image of Spongebob and Patrick. The show is very popular among kids. It has very less amount of realism on it.

(If this image does not show use the URL below)

http://static.funnyjunk.com/pictures/20055_313243692524_708987524_4021396_1943704_n.jpg

Now this image can be considered as more realistic (comparatively) version of Spongebob and Patrick but this image quickly makes these character look a lot less interesting specially among kids. So, I learnt that affect of realism can be bad as well.

Also, the animated movie, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, was not a hit movie even though the realism in the movie is of high level. People were definitely amazed with the realistic graphics but it was not enough to be appealing among larger number of audience.

So, the main lesson that I learned from this lecture is that the effects of realism should be used very carefully and within a balance in the Media Industry in order to attract the audience.