South African Subcultures: Kwaito

Kwaito is a South African music genre which begun during the 1990's in Johannesburg. This type of music stands out from the rest for its easy catchy lyrics and african sounds which are sung or rapped over a slow distinctive house melody consisting of deep bass lines and percussive loop samples. The style of the people who represent this genre is was so fashionable back in the 90's when it promoted the label Loxion Kulca(figure 1) , Dickies(figure 2) and Converse All Stars sneakers(figure 3).

Figure 1

  

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

People often compare the similarities between kwaito and hip hop whereas they are far different compliment each other to a point, kwaito is about living a simplified life and simplified lyrics, fashion and dancing and in hip hop it is about representing elements such as rap( rhythm and poetry), b-boying, skate boarding, grafitti and battle rap(cyphers where rappers come together and show their poetic skill against each other). Ofcourse today all these elements of both kwaito and hip hop may have crossed paths or even disappeared from the branch of a subcultures to become subcultures of their own. Today we have a music genre from the North West of South Africa named "Motswako", and this is basically a setswana version of kwaito and hip hop, which can be said to be venecular hip hop lyrics on kwaito beats or even hip hop beats, this type of style was given birth by kwaito music and is now a subculture on its own.

Links:

http://www.sahistory.org.za/performing-arts/kwaito#content-top

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui3q2g55z3A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph8_DyOnSbM

Digital Age

Links:
http://www.google.com/glass/start/
http://www.oculusvr.com/
http://www.android.com/wear/
blog.us.playstation.com/2014/03/18/introducing-project-morpheus/

Technocentricism of Postmodernity

Firstly the word "technocentricism' refers to technology being the centre of everything, and "postmodernity" is a late 20th century movement in the arts, architecture and criticism that was a departure from modernism. Therefore what Konik is saying is that basically we as humans of the postmodern world has become so centred to technology that most of the things we do today depends on technology, for example: in this assignment 1 blog entries we had options to either write all this information on an exercise book and hand it in for marking or we could use the internet and upload to a blog instead, well the option we chose is quite obvious, I mean we are the so-called generation X. Even our elders knows us as always staring on the screens of our cellphones, computers, and with smartwatches and technological glasses being on the developing stage at the moment one can say that we are never going back and will forever miss on the physical contact we used to experience with other people when growing up. Today we rely on technology for everything and this is because everything is online, from the answers to the question we have on our everyday lives, to the step to step tutorials about anything we need to do. Therefore Konik has a point by arguing that we are being dehumanized by technology through refering to a movie called Sonrezo's Pulse. 

Modernism and Postmodernism

The Modern and the Postmodern: Contrasting Tendencies

The features in the table below are only often-discussed tendencies, not absolutes. In fact, the tendency to see things in seemingly obvious, binary, contrasting categories is usually associated with modernism. The tendency to dissolve binary categories and expose their arbitrary cultural co-dependency is associated with postmodernism. For heuristic purposes only.

Modernism/Modernity	Postmodern/Postmodernity
Master Narratives and metanarratives of history, culture and national identity as accepted before WWII (American-European myths of progress). Myths of cultural and ethnic origin accepted as received. Progress accepted as driving force behind history.	Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives for history and culture; local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master narratives: counter-myths of origin. "Progress" seen as a failed Master Narrative.
Faith in "Grand Theory" (totalizing explanations in history, science and culture) to represent all knowledge and explain everything.	Rejection of totalizing theories; pursuit of localizing and contingent theories.
Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity, hierarchies of social-class and ethnic/national values, seemingly clear bases for unity.	Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear bases for social/national/ ethnic unity.
Master narrative of progress through science and technology.	Skepticism of idea of progress, anti-technology reactions, neo-Luddism; new age religions.
Sense of unified, centered self; "individualism," unified identity.	Sense of fragmentation and decentered self; multiple, conflicting identities.
Idea of "the family" as central unit of social order: model of the middle-class, nuclear family. Heterosexual norms.	Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-class marriage model, multiple identities for couplings and childraising. Polysexuality, exposure of repressed homosexual and homosocial realities in cultures.
Hierarchy, order, centralized control.	Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation.
Faith and personal investment in big politics (Nation-State, party).	Trust and investment in micropolitics, identity politics, local politics, institutional power struggles.
Root/Depth tropes. Faith in "Depth" (meaning, value, content, the signified) over "Surface" (appearances, the superficial, the signifier).	Rhizome/surface tropes. Attention to play of surfaces, images, signifiers without concern for "Depth". Relational and horizontal differences, differentiations.
Crisis in representation and status of the image after photography and mass media.	Culture adapting to simulation, visual media becoming undifferentiated equivalent forms, simulation and real-time media substituting for the real.
Faith in the "real" beyond media, language, symbols, and representations; authenticity of "originals."	Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful than the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original". "As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more powerful than unmediated experience.
Dichotomy of high and low culture (official vs. popular culture). Imposed consensus that high or official culture is normative and authoritative, the ground of value and discrimination.	Disruption of the dominance of high culture by popular culture. Mixing of popular and high cultures, new valuation of pop culture, hybrid cultural forms cancel "high"/"low" categories.
Mass culture, mass consumption, mass marketing.	Demassified culture; niche products and marketing, smaller group identities.
Art as unique object and finished work authenticated by artist and validated by agreed upon standards.	Art as process, performance, production, intertextuality. Art as recycling of culture authenticated by audience and validated in subcultures sharing identity with the artist.
Knowledge mastery, attempts to embrace a totality. Quest for interdisciplinary harmony. Paradigms: The Library and The Encyclopedia.	Navigation through information overload, information management; fragmented, partial knowledge; just-in-time knowledge. Paradigms: The Web.
Broadcast media, centralized one-to-many communications. Paradigms: broadcast networks and TV.	Digital, interactive, client-server, distributed, user-motivated, individualized, many-to-many media. Paradigms: Internet file sharing, the Web and Web 2.0.
Centering/centeredness, centralized knowledge and authority.	Dispersal, dissemination, networked, distributed knowledge.
Determinacy, dependence, hierarchy.	Indeterminacy, contingency, polycentric power sources.
Seriousness of intention and purpose, middle-class earnestness.	Play, irony, challenge to official seriousness, subversion of earnestness.
Sense of clear generic boundaries and wholeness (art, music, and literature).	Hybridity, promiscuous genres, recombinant culture, intertextuality, pastiche.
Design and architecture of New York and Berlin.	Design and architecture of LA and Las Vegas
Clear dichotomy between organic and inorganic, human and machine.	Cyborgian mixing of organic and inorganic, human and machine and electronic.
Phallic ordering of sexual difference, unified sexualities, exclusion/bracketing of pornography.	Androgyny, queer sexual identities, polymorphous sexuality, mass marketing of pornography, porn style mixing with mainstream images.
The book as sufficient bearer of the word. The library as complete and total system for printed knowledge.	Hypermedia as transcendence of the physical limits of print media. The Web as infinitely expandable, centerless, inter-connected information system.

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Created by Martine Irvine

Link:

http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/pomo.html

Benetton! Benetton! Benetton!

United Colours of Benetton has been known not for the colourful clothing they manufacture but rather for the controversial posters of theirs which they claim to have bring awareness of the things happening in the world towards the public. We will look at some of their posters throughout the years and comment on what changed and what stayed the same about the views and posters of the company found by the Italian Benetton family during 1965.

1982

1991

1993

1996

1997

2012

2013

2014

Looking at the images above one would realize that United Colours of Benetton never comprimizes when it comes to their  posters, they tell it like it is and this is on of the reasons that people see it as exploiting the people they use as models on their posters because they advertise the Benetton company with these posters instead of helping these people. It seems that the Benetton advertisements has become mild throughout the years as we can see in the most recent images of theirs above, either way, the company is being recognized by doing what no other company dared to do. Even to this day there is a history of their posters but only from about 3 years back, well the others could be absent because maybe, just maybe there is a limit on digital space for a website or could it be that they are too controversial maybe? 

“We did not create our advertisements in order to provoke, but to make people talk, to develop citizen consciousness,” Luciano Benetton assures us. - See more at: http://top10buzz.com/top-ten-controversial-united-colors-of-benetton-ads/#sthash.8egiyPTs.dpuf

Well I guess he achieved his goal because people are talking, and when people talk sometimes it is hard for them to stop. 

Links:

http://www.benettongroup.com/media-press/image-gallery/brand-campaigns

http://top10buzz.com/top-ten-controversial-united-colors-of-benetton-ads/

South African Conceptual Design

There many styles, types and forms of art, which include the art movements which has been  developed and discovered throughout the history of art history, talking about all those styles in context would take up a lot of lifetimes therefore in this case we are only going to focus on one which is conceptual design. Conceptual art distinguishes itself from design for its ability to stand for something that is functional and by also illustrating design ideas which could potentially be functional. Before conceptual design text was illustrated to give the message to the viewer and often words and images were used to make sense of the design, conceptual design changed that by giving the artist or designer the freedom to use whatever they see as a canvas to use it to give out information using expressive ideas and concepts.  South Africa is one of the countries which has the media flooded with conceptual art of campaigns which raises awareness about the issues which has to be attended to in the country.

HERE ARE EXAMPLES OF THESE CAMPAIGNS USING CONCEPTUAL ART WHICH ARE LINKS TO THEIR SITES:

Figure 1

The image above is a poster about the Nelson Mandela Day which is about recognizing the good things that the icon has done for us and we dedicate this day to him and celebrating it by simply doing good things for those in need and wanting nothing in return. I see this poster as conceptual art for the fact that there is no image of Nelson Mandela in the poster, just the idea of him and one cannot actually tell that the person masked with text is facing to the back or to the front, because there is no recognizable face on the image  one can see the person as themselves as they help those they can just like Nelson decided to stand up not only for the black race but for equality in South Africa. The poster does not tell individuals what to do by encourages them to choose to do anything that they see as being a great idea for them. 

Figure 2

Another issue facing South Africa is the extinction of rhinos in the country and no matter how the security measures are upped in the country there are still hunters around the world which pose a threat for the animals. The Save the Rhino campaign is made for the recognition of the pouching of rhinos and how that endangers these animals and threatens their existence for they are not that many in the world. The image shows another animal with a rhino horn strapped on its face and uses the tagline "nothing will ever bring them back"emphasizing how different and weird the other animals would look to us if they had an extra feature which does not belong to them, this also gets one to think of how bad it would look for a rhino to miss a feature it is mostly known of possessing, the campaign's aims is to make the people aware of the corruption and cruelty against animals which take place and donate money to help stop this. 

   Figure 3

The image above titled figure 3 is by the South Africa Counter- `Trafficking Programme (SACTP) and it is a programme by the International Organisation of Migration (OIM) which is aiming to raise awareness and stop the act of human trafficking and protecting victims and potential victims of the crime. The poster reads "she can't ask for help" which is emphasized by the red marks covering her mouth and by seeing this one immediately gets the idea that the victims are not in a position to stand up for themselves, therefore it is up to the viewer to be aware of the crime and not only protect those who  are close to the person but also help in retrieving the victims of human trafficking and catching the people behind the crime. No one would want someone they care about get taken from them and no one wants their freedom to be taken from them.

I find that the conceptual image affects the emotions of the viewer more than commercial art where composition is used to make the art beautiful than thought through in presenting an idea. I find that in most cases conceptual art is used for serious issues which has to be taken care of and it used in  a way that it attracts the eyes of the viewers and yet reveals the idea of the unspoken reality which takes place. Although it can be used to express any idea, conceptual art is mostly used in raising awareness about issues which otherwise one would not feel right seeing the design advertising something else like Benetton used to do with his controversial ads.   

The Importance of a Manifesto

Manifestos has been around for centuries until today and they have served people well, but the question is what is a manifesto and what purpose do they serve? I will answer that later as we look at a couple of manifestos including the "First Things First" manifesto as well as the "Incomplete Manifesto of Growth".

As I revealed above the idea of manifestos has been around for centuries shows that these specific types of documents served  some kind of an important purpose to the human history through years, these include the political ones, the technological, artistic, scientific and educational, but we will not discuss this deeper for in this case we are only focused on the artistic ones. The first artistic manifesto was launched in 1909 by Fillipo Tomasso Marinetti and was titled "The Futurist Manifesto" which explained and made more clear the ways of the Futurist artists and the value of their movement. The Oxford Leaner's dictionary defines the word 'manifest" as to show something clearly, especially a feeling, an attitude or quality, derived from that a manifesto is a written statement which  explains the beliefs of the people who are for the movement that the manifesto explains. The Futurist Manifesto was explaining how the art resembled the fast living of the city life, the sleeplessness, and the energy in every way possible, they did this through paintings, poetry and sculptures.

THE FOLLOWING HEADINGS ARE LINKED TO THEIR MANIFESTOS:

First Things First (2000)

The First Things First manifesto was written during the year 1964 by Graphic Designers declaring the importance and value of design arguing that it should not be overlooked, therefore designers should not use their imagination to make designs for companies exploiting their creativity to promote their products in order to sell. This argument was revisited by the year 2000 as Graphic Designers of that year also believed in the views of the manifesto and rewrote it to accommodate the what was the contemporary times by then, these designers also believed that designers should do work that matters as in for charitable causes and other information designs which urgently require their expertise. I agree with  these arguments, but then again I see design as I see Mathematics, the more one actually works in something the more experience and skillful they will get which will give them more skill to execute his or her creativity well with different mediums without reaching dead ends. Therefore although this manifesto argues facts by saying our worth as designers should not be used for what we do not believe in such as product marketing for it is merely promoting the company's name and products, but I see it as a challenge to a designer which at the end will show if a designer has the capability to do what is expected of him or her. Design is a career and as designers we should engage in as many project as possible, as long as we learn something from them and they help us to be more creative, I believe we should not limit our creativity according to a certain number of projects to work  on, we should use every opportunity we come across and use it to grow.

Incomplete Manifesto for Growth (Bruce Mau)

The Incomplete Manifesto for Growth I see more as a desiderata(things wanted or needed) for it is how many designers would want to be, it is steps that reveals the secret of growing as a designer in the art world, now no matter where one is in life I do not think there are those who are at a point where they do not want to grow, maybe in years but in mind and spirit everyone yearns that. As a Graphic Designer there are times where I would feel frustrated about a project and not know what to do because I do not have an idea to work from, therefore I would spent time stressing and wondering when will a piece of creativity fall from  the sky because in the design world time is literally money. This manifesto is about showing designers that they do not have to go through that, all they have to do is to enjoy what they do and test themselves with the projects they do while knowing that nothing is ever wrong, but something to learn from. One would decide to view this manifesto as something that is intending to build a perfect individual with the excuse of "no one is perfect" in mind, well the thing with this manifesto is that it is for growth and not for perfection, it does state that the things you would see as mistakes should not be seen as such for that type of perceiving will only block one from growing, this manifesto is about growth and there is no human which has reached a point where they can no longer grow.

De Stijl (1918)

The De Stijl group had a goal of an organic combination of architecture, sculpture and painting in a lucid, elemental, unsentimental construction. This group was interested in "pure reality", universal harmony, asymmetry, abstract reducing, geometry as well as vertical and horizontal lines. This pure reality which they mention means that their art was to be represented by the purest things as in primary colours(red, blue and yellow), and straight horizontal and vertical lines with  representations of only geometrical shapes. With this kind of art if there was no manifesto to explain its values people would have had overlooked it and saw it as something directed towards children and that right there is the importance of manifestos. De Stijl is truly art in its purest form with nothing abstract.

Without manifestos it would have been hard to understand the meaning of art, because unlike mathematics and science there is no one thing which describes it totally. Therefore manifestos has helped  in making the movement's pioneers message to be clear to the viewers and the listeners of art as they explain their visions and purpose of their art so that it would not be misinterpreted.