Final Project -- Essay on Field Notes

The posts in this blog tagged "Field Notes" were written for my History of Graphic Design class during Fall quarter 2010 at Foothill College.  The course covered “the development of visual communication in art, graphic design, illustration and popular culture” from its start in cave painting and pictographs, through modern times.  Each post was written after reading the weekly assignment in Megg’s “A History of Graphic Design” and class lectures, then researching some of topics discussed.

I am always amazed at how new knowledge can transform the everyday; when something new is learned, it seems to pop up everywhere.  It’s as if you suddenly were able to see a new color; maybe it has always been around but you are seeing it all over for the first time.  The posts relay not only what I discovered but also my new way of looking at the various topics.  I think this is the most valuable thing I learned from the class.  To take what I had read and not leave it in the isolation of my studying, but to go out and look for it, see it in its new forms, find it in my life. 

And in being aware of these new topics, opportunities to expand on them seemed to present themselves.  When we were reading about the development of printing, I was travelling to Ashland, Oregon to see their Shakespeare Festival and was able to view Shakespeare’s First Folio and listen to a docent lecture on the printing of it.  During our reading about Ukiyo-e and its influence on the Impressionists, the nearby Palace of the Legion of Honor was hosting an exhibit on exactly those topics.  While the exhibits were excellent by themselves, there is a special pleasure in bringing your own knowledge of the subject to the viewing.  There are two extra credit posts that I wrote on my visits to these as a direct result of the class; they are tagged "Extra Credit" if you'd like to read them.

I learned a lot from the class, and I think the posts reflect that.  The class nearly killed me – the workload is pretty intense – but I guess that if it is easy and accessible, its impact is not nearly as strong. 

I hope you enjoy the posts as much as I did researching and writing them.

Module Essay: Explaining the Differences

I spent a lot of time researching my essay for Quiz #2, not because the topic was so hard or required it, but because I got lost in all the information and wonderful pictures!  I'm very happy with the way the essay turned out, so I am posting it here too, as a personal reference.   Also, I can add pictures and links to many of the sites that I got lost in!!!

A petroglyph is an image somehow cut into the rock.  It can be carved, chipped or somehow embedded into the stone in any other way that pre-historic people could.

Petroglyph from http://www.petroglyphs.us

A pictograph is an image that is painted onto the rock.  Different types of earth, charcoal, ground stones or plant matter were mixed with a medium, usually animal fat, to adhere the pigment to the stone.

Pictograph from
http://www.oddee.com/item_93915.aspx

Ideograms are pictures or symbols that convey an idea or concept.  For example, how would you draw heat or warmth? They really aren’t visible, physical objects that you can depict, although you physically feel them.  You might draw a fire or the sun, but you really aren’t talking about those objects specifically -- you are communicating something that comes from them.

Native American ideogram for Bear Dead

Native American ideogram for Bear Alive
from the website
http://nativeamericans.mrdonn.org/northeast/ojibwa/picturemessages.html

Found on all continents, petroglyphs, pictographs and ideograms are a form of pre-writing.  All do not represent words or sounds of a language.  We don’t believe they were made for artistic reasons, but for:

a) utilitarian purposes such as an animal painted to use in a hunting lesson;

b)  religious or magical rites such as pre-hunting rituals to gain power over animals; or

c) other cultural reasons lost to the sands of time.

 

A logogram is a picture or symbol that represents an actual word in a language – not just the idea of it.  This implies that there is cultural agreement that the symbol means this sound or series of sounds, which in turn means something.  So the ideogram you drew for heat could evolve into a logogram if your clan agreed that it meant the word heat – not just the idea of heat.  Logograms are examples of word-writing, and many writing systems used logograms, including Chinese, Egyptian hieroglyphics and cuneiform. 

from the website:
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/writchin.htm

However, all languages include at least some symbols that represent a particular sound or group of sounds in a language.  These are called phonograms, and do not necessarily represent words.  For example, names in Egyptian hieroglyphics were written using phonograms, basically showing how they sounded, and then encircled to group them together.  Every letter of the English alphabet is a phonogram.

from the website
http://www.mediumbold.com/04_thinking/type/origins/index.html