Power

To continue my research from my workbook where I’ve been looking at power in terms of persuation, such as adverts like the British Heart Foundation adverts involving fat dripping from cigarettes:

I looked at adverts as they have to be visually hard hitting to put their message across in a simple image. Unlike television adverts which have the advantage of using sound and moving image to influence their audiences, print adverts ned to startle people from their mundane reading habits, or make them stop and take a second look as they go past the advert if its on a billboard etc

I looked as well at the artist Santiago Sierra. His art work is designed to create controversy, and works on the same principals as adverts- to change the opinions and ideologies of those who witness it/them. It also means that people are persuaded, even if they are unaware of it, to change certain aspects of their life; whether it is to stop smoking or to simply consider the conditions that others live in and how desperate they must be to accept only $5 to carry heavy rocks all day.

To get an understanding as to why people are persuaded I decided to look into the psychology behind the power of persuation, also known as social influence. I looked as well at how social influence is shown in films, such as minority influence in 12 Angry Men (1957); and the power which exists between a film and its audience, as well as between the characters in Funny Games (1997).

From looking at power from visual medias I started to look at audio sources of power, I looked at how radio commentators are able to bring the excitement of sports events to those who can’t see them, and I looked at how radio can directly influence people’s behaviour by researching the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when a whole race of people were convinced to kill their neighbours based on the speeches of radio presenters.

From this I decided to look at propaganda as a whole to see how visuals and audio working together have the power to persuade and influence people. In particular I looked at World War Two propaganda, and how the German people would/could “allow” the halocaust to take place.

 

This is what in particular I have decided to concentrate my Power artefact on- how people can be influenced, and how easily this can snowball.

I looked at images such as early Nazi propaganda:

Subtley there is a Star of David on the snakes head suggesting that the snake is Jewish, and as snakes are seen to be evil this suggests that the Jews are evil. And as the sword is piercing the star and head of the snake, the Nazis are seen to be slaying the evil of the Jews.

This is still a subtle poster compared to their later propaganda, during their time in charge of the country the Nazis became far more explicit in their anti-semitic views as public opinion became more used to, and in favour of the anti-jewish opinions the Nazis had. This acceptance of such views could be seen to be due to the power and influence of word of mouth.  Rumors started by party members were no doubt exaggerated upon by normal people, and soon became the accepted truth as to why the country was in trouble, and so giving the Jews and far more extreme and hated identity.

This is the type of idea I am going to use to create my artefact. My plan is to start with a simple, non-emotive image, but the through 14 following stills the image will morph to become something far more extreme. This morphing will follow an accompanying audio track. The audio will be of people describing the orginal image, but each description will become exaggerated and more extreme then its predecessor, showing how word of mouth can influence and have power over people’s perceptions. The final image will be symbolically linked to orginal, however the most obvious interpretation of it will be far more explicit, and if seen by itself could have the power to influence people’s opinions, but not necessarily in a positive way…

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