Blog 3

Walker

I liked that Walker’s article was from the perspective of guiding an instructor rather than it being written for students.  The main theme was concerned with choosing a “big idea” to guide one’s artwork.  This is really important because in the past, I have found that you can get bogged down in the details and that stunts creativity.  It is best to choose a “big idea” and see where it takes you.

This may sound contradictory, but I don’t think a “big idea” is always needed.  I took art class almost every semester in high school and most of what I made did not have some larger theme tied to it.  One could argue that I prove Walker correct and am only “problem solving” when I was mindlessly making art.  I did get stuck at times, but sometimes it’s nice to just be making something and not be thinking about its meaning.

Barrett

Barrett’s article brought up a major theme of a comparative studies class that I just took.  In semiotics, there is a signifier and signified that together form a sign.  He uses a couple different examples in his writing but an easy one for me to understand had to do with diamonds.  A diamond is the signifier and the signified can be many things, but an example could be love.  This is incredibly important with advertising because everyone knows this connection.  It’s implied that if you buy someone a diamond that you “love” them and that love is “forever,” even if it’s not stated.  It goes both ways as well since “forever” can be a signifier for diamond.  It’s a concept that is very valuable when interpreting anything present in popular culture.

I think Barrett could have done a better idea of explaining what I did above.  He gave several different examples and broke them down, but he could have gone into a more general definition of what semiotics was and then into the examples.  It could also be that I was given different terminology and “denotate” and “connotate” are synonymous with “signifier” and “signified.”