For this week's seminar, we were asked to read 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' by Laura Mulvey so that we could discuss it in the seminar. Unfortunately, I could not attend due to food poisoning, so I will just post a few thoughts.

• It provides a very good example of how to go about applying a particular critical approach to a text, in this case psychoanalysis.
  
• Daniel Chandler has written a very interesting piece about Mulvey at http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze09.html  He says that it was the first work to introduce the concept of 'the gaze', with Mulvey describing the figure of the woman on screen as the object of desire and "the male gaze". The term is now used in a far wider sense by media theorists and includes both the way that viewers look at a visual text and the gaze of those depicted in the text itself.
  
• However, at present I am not convinced of the validity of Freudian psychoanalytic theory as a basis for a critical approach. I tend towards Karl Popper's view that psychoanalysis is a 'pseudoscience' as its claims cannot be rigorously tested and subject to possible refutation.
  

Here are some key words that define my practice:

• Line
  
• Texture
  
• Shade
  
• White space
  
• Drawing
  
• Urban decay
  
• Street art
  
• Photography
  
• Pixels
  
• Contrast
  
• Found patterns

Although I have not been able to undertake site visits, as I am a part time student and work the rest of the week, I have already visited one of the sites that we discussed in the seminar and I have found another one that looks interesting:

1.  Cafe/bar, Folk House, Park Street, Bristol

The Folk House is an adult education centre in the centre of Bristol, specialising in arts based courses. It runs day and evening classes and regular events. It also holds art exhibitions in the cafe/bar which is open to the public.

The advantages of the Folk House are that it attracts people who are interested in art, both people attending courses and exhibitions and the general public who come to use the cafe - people may come already with the idea of buying a work of art. The central Bristol location means that an exhibition is easily accessible. Any publicity for an exhibition would be included in the wider marketing materials and website for the Folk House which would reach a wide audience.

The disadvantages are that it is only suitable for works that are framed and displayed on the wall. The lighting is not particularly strong in places, and the positioning of some of the tables makes it hard to see all of the exhibits.  It is also distracting to view an exhibition whilst the room is full of people eating, drinking and talking.
http://www.bristolfolkhouse.co.uk/index.php

2. We discussed the Old Bridewell Police Station - I went to a graffiti exhibition there in December 2007. However, it has now become 'The Island', a centre for performing rather than visual arts. After some research on the internet, I found a gallery in Gloucester Road called 'Room212' which looks really interesting:

First exercise for Visual Culture - find 30 contemporary practitioners and list the following information about them:  

• Name
  
• Discipline
  
• Medium
  
• The themes they address in their work
  
• Where you found the information