So I missed the last session but I was lucky enough to get my hands on the notes so I'm going to do my best to write them up!
So it seems to me that last weeks session was regarding Structuralism, Deconstruction, Modernism and Postmodernism.
Modernism was basically a movement by designers to use only what was necessary to create something. For instance, in the war, it was illegal to use excess fabric or embellishments. This however was overrun eventually by post-modernism which valued art for the sake of art; things that didn't have a functional purpose or restriction. This is what I learned, in a nutshell, about Post-Modernism and Modernism last year.
Now considering the notes I have now it seems that Structuralism is based on binary oppositions e.g. Male/ Female, inside/outside, day/night etc. It was highly influential in the 1960s and 1970s and "in the mid-20th century, two major European academic thinkers, Claude Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes, had the important insight that the way we understand certain words depends not so much on any meaning they themselves directly contain, but much more by our understanding of the difference between the word and its 'opposite' or, as they called it 'binary opposite'."
"For example, our understanding of the word 'coward' surely depends on the difference between that word and its opposing idea, that of a 'hero' (and to complicate matters further, a moment's thought should alert you to the fact that interpreting words such as 'hero' and 'coward' is itself much more to do with what our society or culture attributes to such words than any meaning the words themselves might actually contain)." (http://www.englishbiz.co.uk/popups/opposition.htm)
I can't think of any difficulties that I might have taking a Structuralist approach to my work. I think that when I do something is considered controversial in fashion, it is only considered controversial against the backdrop of what is considered conventional usually in fashion.
Deconstruction seems to be the opposite of Structuralism (the key being in the name). In the notes that I have it seems to describe work that have no fixed meaning (death of the author). Established modes of thought and binaries are questioned and there is special attention paid to written language and its graphic characteristics (so a favourite of graphic designers) such as typography, page layout, spacing, punctuations etc.
It seems to be something that I would enjoy because it focuses on taking things apart to understand them better.
According to my notes, 'Mr Woggle' is a practitioner of deconstruction who I need to pay attention to and that his work is available on SoundCloud (http://soundcloud.com/woggle/sets/mr-woggle).
It was interesting to see there had been discussion about Physical Context because, as a fashion designer, my work is based around its physical appearance and what people take from that can be vastly different to what I set out to do. Because it is a utilitarian object people focus on the physicality of my work rather than any message that I might be trying to convey.
I would have to say that my work is purely Post-modern. It will always have that element of practicality as it is a garment to be worn on the body but the more outrageous my designs become, the more it becomes about fashionable art for fashionable art's sake. For that reason I'd have to say that I'm a post-modern practitioner As well as that, I am much more into deconstruction that I am into structuralism because the whole point of modern pattern cutting (2005, Pattern Magic, Tomoko Nakamichi) is to experiment with constructing a typical shape and then adding, drawing onto, cutting into a flat pattern and then making it back into a garment. At the moment we are doing a shirt project and we have to design a fair trade white cotton shirt by pushing the boundaries of modern and classic shirt construction without taking away from what a shirt is by definition. You could say this is a very post-modern project and as we have to take apart a number of shirts to understand their construction, it could also be counted as a deconstruction method.
Wow, I was really on roll there! I think I really understand this now and hopefully I will get a little more knowledge as I read around the subject and continue the lectures :D
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