SIGN AND FORM MAKING

Graffiti - Italian root is 'graphic'

"The writings on the wall"
TRUTH.
Doesn't exactly refer to graffiti.
From the bible. appearence of truth.

Anonymous.
Political sloagns.
Mark out territory.

Graffiti visual style.
Sprayed, tags.
Graffiti mimics corporate branding. Letter as a visual image.
About the envolope, rather than the content.
shape + word.
logos + graffiti.
nothing to read, just recognize.

Signature is the work.
The brand becomes the thing that's being sold, name eclipses the product.
Blankness of commercial logo, no specific meaning attached.
Different meanings at different times, amrketing campaign.
Coca-Colas, endlessly repeatable.
Tag is blank, meaningless.
Visual style has no meaning other than signifying graffiti. Content is unimportant, as long as it identifies you as being different.

Meaning of the mimicry?
What are the significant differnce?
Copyright, property, insist on originalty, graffiti's relationship to copyright, mockery. lay claim to the building, ownership of public space.
Using the language of corporate advertising.
Subversive.
What does a graffiti tag individualize?
Brand name relates to a brand. Tag doesn't refer to anything. Signature and brand at the same time.
Signifier/Signified.
Brand name signifer, brand name signified.
Tag refers to other tags, doesn't refer to specific individual. That tag again, trace of something.

If a piece graffiti was placed in a gallery, it would no longer be graffiti as it woudn't be illegal, it would be an example of graffiti. The same as if a piece of work was deliberatly made to be put in a gallery, it would simply be be art in the style of graffiti. When it's authorised it is no longer graffiti as it is not illegal.

Metaphor

Mixed metaphor - two metaphors together.

Normal speech is deeply metaphorical.
Metaphor, is about the perception of common properties, not just word use. Seeing one thing in terms of another.
Example "He's a cold person"
"He's a warm person"
Conceptualize an emotion as a temperature.
Time, Motion, Space, Object, Landscape, Future.
Blossoming friendship, budding.

Fitting two realms together, mapping one in terms of another. Cross -domain. mapping stages in a relationship to places you have travelled.

Love as a journey.
Target Domain - emotion
Source Domain - Personality.

Thinking guided by metaphors, sleeping metaphors, e.g leg of a table, dead of night.

Vision, common invisable metaphor, seeing means understanding.
Thinking about self. "out of your mind" "beside yourself"

Why do we need metaphors?
Doesn't just refer to something, it describes it.
Seeing death as night,
scream of brakes.
sound, secondary properties suggests fear.

Put the past behind us. Not descriptive, easier to think of time as space.

Key points/Notes

SIMULACRUM
An image that has lost touch with what it refers to.
Empty.
Something isn't original until there is a reproduction of it.
Detachability of the image through technology.

Language of advertising, modern advertising started at the same time as department stores. People started "going shopping" for leisure, rather than for essential items that they needed.
Identical products began competeing for attention. They had to gain a 'symbolic value' advertising thurns things into signs.

Simulacrum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Simulacrum (plural: simulacra), from the Latin simulare, "to make like, to put on an appearance of", originally meaning a material object representing something (such as a cult image representing a deity, or a painted still-life of a bowl of fruit). By the 1800s it developed a sense of a "mere" image, an empty form devoid of spirit, and descended to connote a specious or fallow representation.

In the book Simulacra and Simulation (1981/1995), the French social theorist Jean Baudrillard gave the term a specific meaning in the context of semiotics, extended from its common one: a copy of a copy which has been so dissipated in its relation to the original that it can no longer be said to be a copy. The simulacrum, therefore, stands on its own as a copy without a model. For example, the cartoon Betty Boop was based on singer Helen Kane. Kane, however, rose to fame imitating Annette Hanshaw. Hanshaw and Kane have fallen into relative obscurity, while Betty Boop remains an icon of the flapper.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia itself may be seen as a large-scale field experiment in the spread of simulacra. It is notable that many pages contain factoids about the meaning of words in the fictitious context of popular movies, video and role-playing games, usually derivative cliches in imitation of other such fictions. For instance the 1999 movie The Matrix explores the relationship between people and their simulacra; and in a further example of self-reference Neo, one of the lead characters from the movie, uses a hollowed out copy of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation as a secret store.

Fredric Jameson uses the example of photorealism to describe simulacra. The painting is a copy of a photograph, not of reality. The photograph itself is a copy of the original. Therefore, the painting is a copy of a copy. Other art forms that play with simulacra include Pop Art, Trompe l'oeil, Italian neorealism and the French New Wave. Jean Baudrillard puts forth God as an example.