An artist exploring what the gap between the media's message and the audience's reality looks like.
Reception Theory in Visual Arts (Novo-Surrealism)
Intro to the Project:
Imagine a town, or a village, that does not exist in our reality in that we cannot visit it or touch the buildings or talk to the people, but we know it is there nonetheless. This town has people, buildings, vistas, objects of desire, and an atmosphere, or an energy, that exists that gives this place personality. What would your town look like if you could visit it and describe its contents? What does mine look like? How do we know for sure what is real and what isn't?
In order for it to exist in our minds, this town must have been created before, and it was by two entities. Actually, it is not created by two entities, but by the void that is exists between the two entities instead. The town exists in the void. One entity (the mass media) provides the information of what this town looks like, and the other (the audience) receives the information, except that the latter doesn't receive the information in the way that the former intended. For example, if I tell you the color "blue" your blue may range anywhere from light blue to dark blue, even if in my mind I thought I was telling you dark blue. And even if I tell you more specifically "dark blue" your version may be darker than mine still. There is always a variable, and this town exists within the variable.
The goal of this project is to allow the audience to provide the information of what this town looks like instead of the mass media doing so. It is attempting to change the direction of information that currently exists from the media to the audience. This project challenges us to change the direction from the audience to the media instead, thus redefining what and who are the media.
The links below show what I think the town looks like, separated into six categories for now. Images include paintings, drawings, sculpture, video, and photography. For a deeper explanation about Reception Theory and how the "town" was conceived, read the definition noted below the image links.
In order for it to exist in our minds, this town must have been created before, and it was by two entities. Actually, it is not created by two entities, but by the void that is exists between the two entities instead. The town exists in the void. One entity (the mass media) provides the information of what this town looks like, and the other (the audience) receives the information, except that the latter doesn't receive the information in the way that the former intended. For example, if I tell you the color "blue" your blue may range anywhere from light blue to dark blue, even if in my mind I thought I was telling you dark blue. And even if I tell you more specifically "dark blue" your version may be darker than mine still. There is always a variable, and this town exists within the variable.
The goal of this project is to allow the audience to provide the information of what this town looks like instead of the mass media doing so. It is attempting to change the direction of information that currently exists from the media to the audience. This project challenges us to change the direction from the audience to the media instead, thus redefining what and who are the media.
The links below show what I think the town looks like, separated into six categories for now. Images include paintings, drawings, sculpture, video, and photography. For a deeper explanation about Reception Theory and how the "town" was conceived, read the definition noted below the image links.
Walking on Both Sides - News as Art
Reception Theory: a definition
Reception Theory is a theory that judges an audience's response to a particular communication method. In particular, Reception Theory began as an analysis of how literary texts were interpreted by readers. Because there is an interpretation built inherently into the theory, this means there must be a gap, or a difference of opinion, between what the original communicator meant and what the audience understood. With regards to visual arts, I take this a step deeper by tackling the surreal, or dream-like nature, of the existence of the gap knowing that neither the audience nor the author recognize the gap exists at the time of either producing or receiving the communication.
This project is an aesthetic, conceptual-art philosophy that I started to develop during the events leading up to the 2016 coup d’etat that resulted the impeachment of the Brazilian President, Dilma Rouseff. Philosophically, it examines how the media and the media’s audience communicate with one another with the understanding that there’s a gap of understanding between the two parties. Aesthetically, it recreates in visual terms what that gap of understanding might look like if it were an actual place instead of a state of mind. The goal of this project is to map this place into a town, so to speak, using a series of curated works of art on a website. This mapped town would look similar to what I have created above, with streets, avenues, parks, churches, schools, etc..
The original term for this was Novo-Surrealism, which was named as such to convey the surrealistic nature of the media-audience difference during Brazil's election. Novo is the Portuguese word for "new" and is specific to this context with regards to this project.
This project is an aesthetic, conceptual-art philosophy that I started to develop during the events leading up to the 2016 coup d’etat that resulted the impeachment of the Brazilian President, Dilma Rouseff. Philosophically, it examines how the media and the media’s audience communicate with one another with the understanding that there’s a gap of understanding between the two parties. Aesthetically, it recreates in visual terms what that gap of understanding might look like if it were an actual place instead of a state of mind. The goal of this project is to map this place into a town, so to speak, using a series of curated works of art on a website. This mapped town would look similar to what I have created above, with streets, avenues, parks, churches, schools, etc..
The original term for this was Novo-Surrealism, which was named as such to convey the surrealistic nature of the media-audience difference during Brazil's election. Novo is the Portuguese word for "new" and is specific to this context with regards to this project.
