The Death of The Author - OUGD501

Today's session started off in the deep end, by analysing a linguistic theory by Roland Barthes to uncover the true meaning of who is the real author of a piece of text. This being any medium that can be read by another person.

Barthes thought that the whole notion of the 'author' needs to be rethought. That the simple explanation of owning a certain material means you were the one who wrote it, the one who designed it, took the picture or painted the painting has been clouded by the manifestation of cultural influences, therefore, the owner is not the person that put pen to paper, rendering the 'author' as irrelevant.

I suggested that the text can be highly interpreted as ironic, as the idea's of one man (Barthes) can be interpreted in many different ways, although, this again solidifies his theory, suggesting a never ending loop of different interpretations which is dependant on culture/social/political/etc influences.

In my case, to make sense of his theory and understand it better, I found looking at cultural influences that only mean something if you have something to compare it to, like the stereotypical hipster for example, we all as a culture label 'hipster' to people with huge beards and tattoo's. But what our (In some cases 'my') interpretation of a hipster may be completely different to those in another culture. 

Post-structuralism explains it all much better than I can, but this is purely to help me fully understand the philosophies of Barthes and his ideologies.


Task
Decipher the given words in a way that relates to Barthes theory:
Culture, Society, Technology, History, Politics.

We were split up into five different groups and we were all appointed the task of using an example of the text that relates to the given word, then use this information to relate this to a piece of design.

Culture:
Can dictate a movement.
Social and cultural hierarchy.
A never ending loop of Culture vs. Popular Culture.
No example, similar to Society.

Society:
P142. Society determines who is successful.
Capitalist ideology.
Promotes evil.
Vignelli dictates that his canon is the right way to do design and that every other way is wrong.

Technology:
Apple is the identity of the designer. If you use anything else you are considered to not be at your full potential. < (I somewhat disagree with this statement, as I was not influenced by others around me to chose a computer based on popularity, my decision was based on logic and reason. However, there are others without the latter opinion.)

History:
Author's are 'modernist'.
Retrieving history as inspiration.
Dictionary of quotations.
Again relate to modernist graphics and its 'rules'.

Politics:
Purely hierarchical.
Authority over the author.
Prejudicial against certain classes.


Study Task

Explain: Use the idea's of Death of the Author, using quotes to relate to design.