Blog Entry 63:
Today in Personal Practice and Methodologies, the class was asked to consider their potential audience and what aspects of this might be takin into consideration. As we are to difine a research topic at the end of this semester (four weeks time) to inform the next Concept stage semester, we must also consider audience.
During the presentation on Audience and Impact, it was suggested that having a specific idea about the ideal target audience for my work. This is something that I have not fully considered as of yet, I am aware that I want my work to have an adult target audience, inspired by the work I have created in my Ba(hons), but what is an adult audience? Who exactly do I intend to speak to through my work?
Part of the presentation outlined how many commercially made magazines and other such items thrive on advertisements which are aimed at a similar, sterotyped audience to that of the publication. This made me consider who and what might advertise to me through social network or the internet. As is well known Facebook often takes into account through the use of an algoryth, my information of things I have put on my profile that I am interested in and streems adverts to you most notably down the right hand side of the home page, so what is being advertised to me?
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| Screen shot of the advertisements on the right hand side of my home page on Facebook |
These advertisements tell me that as a young woman with many friends of the same culture and age I am constantly shown imagery that advertises clothing and jewellery websites. This is probably due to a much deeper connotation shown through the media as a means of making people, in this case specifically young women feel venerable due to their emotional desire to be/ feel attractive. Imagery of an unrealistic perfection in this society is everywhere and many people find themselves being emotionally affected because they do not look this way; clothing companies latch on to that self loathing and advertise using this device to suggest to their target audience that they will be more attractive if they have what the company is advertising. As a practitioner I have no intention of adhering to this type of manipulative advertisement and intend to ensure my work either avoids this or fights against it.
Another aspect mentioned in todays talk given by tutors was that sometimes visual stimuli will if successful not only be looked at and enjoyed by the specific target audience, but will also be adopted to interpret new or different meaning (not always drastically different) in the visual. In the case of this advertisement (above) these adverts are adopted or adhere to not only young women, but men buying for women, transgender or transexual men, older women, and many many more.
A point raised was the question as to how to be both commercially viable and stick to my personal style and research proposition, this can be done by considering audience. An image with no audience or made selfishly on the part of the practitioner can fail to be commercially viable due to a wider audience not being considered or catered for.
Audiences are often stereotyped by commercial companies in order to apply to a generalised version or the public or area of which can be manipulated or advertised to, shown above. As a practitioner, I do not intend to adhere to a stereotypical version of an audience, which in itself will be a challenge.
When considering in this country alone (United Kingdom), there is a multitude of people of all different cultures and languages, when thinking how to reach more people with my work, I consider how through a visual representation, language barriers are less of an issue (assuming imagery has no text).
Multimodality is also something I must consider when looking at how and where to situate or advertise my work: Many commercial enterprises such as web pages and magazines carry adverts. With this in mind, I must consider how an audiece might draw intertexual connections or be destracted by multimodal aspects that I might not have envisaged being in context with my imagey.
When considering audience, it was suggested that each of us should strive to create in our minds an ideal reader or viewer, this will help to underpin, who I am talking to and how I need to underpin my practice. This is a good way of looking to what I want to achieve with my project for next semester; however it must also be mentioned that the 'perfect' viewer might not exist and I should aim to apply this to people who might fit the catagory or the work might apply to. When thinking about who my ideal reader might be, it is possibly good practice to humanise this person through more simple human qualities, subtle traits and preferences.
So far I have a vague idea that I might like to either look towards asking the question what depicts the divine or how to raise awareness or speak to people who have autism on a more adult level, this I will consider in later blog entries.
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