History of GIC 2/23/09

In today's session, we focused on the early 20th century, and how the World Wars and art movements affected Graphic Design. To start with, we discussed how before Television and even Radio took off, Posters were how media was broadcasted, and there was a huge emphasis on how they were put together and how best to get the message across to the audience. I've always heard how military funding and wars in general are the basis for human expansion in nearly all facets of our way of life, and so i found it intriguing how it affected Graphic Design, as there was a need to catch the attention of passerbys to get them involved in Wars, and so attention was paid to the design of posters such as the famous "I Want You!" Uncle Sam recruitment works.

I was also interested in how movements such as Futurism and DADAism tried to break the normal conventions of art and escape what had been held in place for so long, to embrace what the future held. I think about the events that are happening now, how constructs such as the internet and rampant consumerism are shaping the world, and how Graphic Design will play its part. I find myself on the wrong side of my own morals, studying in a field that is there solely in the interest of corporations to make a profit. The world seems increasingly isolated even in its rapid expansion of communication, I feel we are losing ourselves to material well-being and a fascination/obsession with one another's lives while never leaving the sanctity of our own homes. I believe in a technological singularity, that one day we will lose our own purpose amongst the empire of machines we build, and that on that day, we will have to part our ways with these silly machinations and rediscover ourselves, and what it means to be a human, or simply disappear. 

But that is enough of that, it was an interesting lecture, and I enjoyed the idea of Automatism and Surrealism, that people like Salvador Dali would deprive themselves of sleep and food to see how the subconscious could emerge in odd ways and affect the artwork they produced. I'm always intrigued by what the mind is capable of. Perhaps I should isolate myself from facebook and the internet and all my material possessions such as my phone for a month, to see what things I could conjure.