Cultural Context & Design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Cultural Context & Design - Essay Example f the ad design, not only can the careful observer learn much about the company, but can also assess how the advertisement is impacting or contributing to the general thought and behavior of society. This examination of the signs of a given advertisement is what Roland Barthes referred to as semiotic analysis. This process of looking at an advertisement for its deeper cultural meanings and associations enables us to gain a better understanding of the relationship that develops between the product or the advertiser and the viewer or consumer. After examining a little bit about what Roland Barthes meant by semiotic analysis, this process will be applied to two advertisements as an illustration of the process. Roughly speaking, semiotics refers to the process of analyzing the ‘signs’ of a given culture for indications of meaning at varying levels. â€Å"Semiology therefore aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification† (Barthes, 1964). Perhaps appropriate to the application of semiotic analysis to the field of advertising, philosopher Umberto Eco refers to it as â€Å"a discipline for studying everything which can be used in order to lie† (1976). Thus, it refers to language, image, color, shape, expression, placement and a number of other contextual clues that combine together in some unique way so as to convey a sense of meaning to a particular cultural group. To discuss these various elements, Barthes and other s have provided us with specific terms that help to keep things within an understandable framework. The primary elements that will be concentrated on in this study include signifiers, signified and sign. The sign is the compound element formed by the signifier and the signified. The signifier is

Jazz and the influence it had on the 1920's Research Paper

Jazz and the influence it had on the 1920's - Research Paper Example Jazz originated in the 20th century in the communities of the African American in the South America. It is an amalgamation of African and European music (Kirchner, Bill 2005). Jazz is a piece of music which is difficult to define and there have been many attempts to define jazz by the help of other musical pieces. One solution to this is to define jazz more broadly and hence, Berendit defines jazz as one form of art which originated in the America through the confrontation of blacks with European music. He further argues that jazz has a special relationship to time, which is defined as 'swing’ (E, Joachim and Berendit.1981). The 1920’s is commonly referred to as the jazz age but was also an age of contradiction because there was prosperity on one hand and isolation on the other hand. As already mentioned, Jazz is a term which is difficult to define but yet there are many definitions of it. J A Rogers defines it as â€Å"A joyous revolt from convention, custom, authorit y, boredom, even sorrow from everything that would confine the soul of man and hinder its riding free on the air† (Rogers, J.A 1925).... New Orleans was the birthplace of jazz and Chicago and the Midwest were the home of recorded jazz until the late 1920s (Phillips, Damon J and Owen, David A. 2004). Jazz has always been a utilitarian music that is it is intended mostly for dancing. King Oliver’s jazz band, one of the excellent jazz bands’ recorded 40 title in the year 1923. The Jean Goldkette orchestra of 1927 which featured Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke was relegated to recording a mostly dreary group of pop songs. The great jazz numbers arranged by Bill Challis were unreleased by Victor Records which considered them commercially unacceptable. The period from 1929 to 1940 is when most of the jazz standards were originated. During this era, there were many great and excellent song writers who contributed for Broadway shows, for example, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Lorentz hart, Irving Berlin and Walter Dinaldson. Most of the historians agree that jazz began just prior to the turn of the twentieth century, and the most likely birthplace of this great piece of music was the city of New Orleans. The city of New Orleans is on the Mississippi River, the major waterway from the southern to northern United States which made it a conduit for music of all types, especially ragtime from Missouri and the blues from Mississippi. A person could hear a brass band playing ragtime, string trios playing popular ballads, the street musicians singing the blues and early jazz bands playing all of these things. The first Blues number, which was written as a popular song was the ‘Dallas Blues’. Tunes with the word Blues became very popular from then onwards. The decade of the 1920s was marked by huge advances in the