Study Task 5 - Practical Approach

Practical Proposal

What do you intend to investigate:

• A variety of bluegrass album covers
• The themes behind the imagery
• The visual language of the covers

How theorists, writers, case studies and quotes triangulate (backbone):

• 'Attempts of young people today to shed their urban surroundings and get back to their more traditional surroundings'
• 'The early albums long out of print'
• 'Reaffirmed the traditional values associated with bluegrass music' Lonesome 'is to bluegrass music what blue is to the blues'
• 'It has been a professional and commercial music from its beginning'
• 'Bluegrass seems symbolic of responses to outside pressure'
• (Bluegrass: A History)
• 'Social existance'
• 'Permits his creatures to live again'
• (Paul Valery)
• 'Personal possession'
• 'Divested of its function and made relative to a subject'
• 'Envisaging a set or series of each item'
• (Jean Baudrilliard)
• 'The aura includes a sensory experience of distance between the reader and the work of art'
• 'The reproduced work of art is completely detached from the sphere of tradition. It loses the continuity of its presentation and appreciation'
• 'The work of art can be disconnected from its past and brought into new combinations by the reader'
• (Andrew Robinson)
• 'Record covers are often as much a part of the whole work as the songs' 
• 'I'd pin them up in plastic sleeves, as works of art' (George Shaw)
• 'I'm proud of the records on my wall; its a way of managing the world of popular culture' (George Shaw)
• 'I bought records just because of how they looked' (Juergen Teller)
• 'The music and the images go totally hand in hand' (Juergen Teller)
• (The Art on your Sleeve)

What activities do I need to do (experiences/visits/materials):

• Need to decode/visually analyse a variety of different bluegrass album covers to determine they key visual information
• Collect photographs of my bluegrass band; ones of us performing and take some of rehearsing (details of the different instruments and musicians)

End product vision:

1. Chose a few specific covers from different to reinterpret, modernise, bring back to life?
2. Create an album cover for my bluegrass band using the old visual language? perhaps singles covers for a few songs (focus)?

• Created with fully analogue media? (collage, pen, paper cut, print, paint, texture)
• Final outcome = an album cover/ digital reproduction of the album cover?

Sketchbook:

• Sketch imagery of the Bean Train Gang performing and rehearsing
• Develop ways to visualise themes; alcohol, landscape, religion, death/depression, home, perverts/dark side

Study Task 4 - Introduction

Question: 

'Defining the concept of aura by applying it to the collecting and analysing of bluegrass album covers.'

Found out:

1. Can listen/see/make art everywhere-very accessible
2. Bringing artists and culture back to life
3. Collecting things for specialness, vintage, identity
4. Uniqueness, aura, authenticity
5. Reproduction vs analogue
6. Key themes of bluegrass songs and covers
7. Lack of women in bluegrass
8. Modern Vs Old covers (hard to find, passed down)

                                                     
Core texts:

• Paul Velery 'The conquet of ubiquity'
• Jean Baudrillard 'System of collecting'
• Andrew Robinson 'Art, Aura and Authenticity
• Walter Benjamin 'The work of Art in the age of mechanical reproduction'
• Phil Taylor ' Analogue VS Digital in the creative process'
• David Douglas 'The work of Art in the age of digital reproduction'
• John Berger 'Ways of seeing'
• David Greenwald 'The art on your sleeve'
• Heidelberg 'The Thing'
• Neil V. Rosenberg 'Bluegrass A History'

Key quotes/Triangulation:

1.  'can all self publish with ease' DD 'the days of pilgrimage are over' JB 'will exist wherever someone with a certain apparatus happens to be' PV
2.   'closest one can get to the artists intension' DG
3.  'quantity is in fact activated by quantity' (Callot) JB 'manages to literally outline himself through his collection' (Freud) JB 'intimate, and perhaps authentic, relationship' PT 'urge grows stronger to get hold on an object at close range' WB
4. 'aura resides not in the thing itself but in the originality of the moment' DD 'although it is hard to use in medium with inconsistent results, the desire for the "authentic" o medium is driving the resurgence in interest'  PT 'a wave breaking on a beach' DD 'the uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from it being imbedded in the fabric of tradition' WB
5. 'the reproduced art is completely detached from the sphere of tradition' AR 'no longer a clear distinction between original and reproduction in virtually any medium' DD 'authenticity cannot be reproduced' AR
6.  'a culture that did not encourage women to follow their own muses' 'i couldn't really accept her voice as a bluegrass instrument' thebluegrasssituation.com

Practical way to explore:

Something to do with creating and album cover and a reproduction of the album cover. Linked to bluegrass, drawing on primary evidence from my bluegrass band.


OPENING

This essay will explore the idea of aura and originality through an analysis and
discussion of a selection of bluegrass album covers. The main concerns explored in
the essay are aura, time and collecting.. The topic was chosen as a way of
exploring a creative practice in a bluegrass band more theoretically, at the same
time as linking this exploration to existing analogue interests that emerge from
illustration practical work.
The selection of album covers chosen are used as visual examples to discuss theory
around. They also tell a narrative of bluegrass in their composition. The themes
raised in the narrative of the album covers can be broken down and explored
through the discussion between reproduction and analogue, considering uniqueness
and authenticity and how increased accessibility to albums themselves has
impacted on this. Another theme is why people have the desire to collect, and is
this perhaps an attempt to bring culture back to life? The visual and aural themes
of the bluegrass genre are unpicked thorough exploring a series of traditional songs
that appear in the musical practice discussed here. In addition, these themes are
also discussed from a historical and critical visual analysis perspective using, for
example, Rosenberg’s Bluegrass A History (XXXX). Another important text is XXXX
by XXXX (XXXX).
Aura and analogue elements of reproduction will be discussed thought he writings
of Jean Baudrillard – who discussed collecting – and Walter Benjamin – who helped
to define the concept of aura and began challenging it. Douglas’s writings on aura,
from a contemporary perspective, are also used to unpick the themes. The culture
and aesthetic of the bluegrass genre, and the enormous significance of landscape
and place, are portrayed in the film XXXX by XXXX (date) that is also referred to in

this essay.