WrittenEssay

This essay of which I have written is to discuss and evaluate what I have researched in relation to the idea of ‘Death of the author and birth of the reader’ put forward by Roland Barthes shown through modern examples and other writers work in order to illustrate strengths and weaknesses of the concept as well as looking into how these examples can benefit a modern society.

The word ‘author’ is simply defined as ‘A writer of a book, article or document’ and in essence the essay death of the author written by Roland Barthes argues the imposed limitations that are traditionally imbued on to a text, usually being that a text imposes just the ideas of the author and is not up for interpretation by its audience. This is linked to the fact that the self-proclaimed author has used pre-existing sounds, words and images that have already been used before. In his ‘Death of the Author essay Barthes enforces this idea when he mentions ‘The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original’ (Barthes, 1977).

In the 1996 essay ‘The Designer as Author’ written by Michael Rock, he explains “Authorship” as “a popular term in graphic design circles”, later on in the essay, he goes on to mention that “work is created by someone, all those calls for the death of the author are made by famous authors” and “the real challenge is to embrace the multiplicity of methods – artistic and commercial, individual and collaborative – that comprises design language” (Rock, 1996).

Although I understand Barthes theory to be a prevalent notion in relation to the interpretation of a pre-conceived idea, there are other ideas that are presently considered that both challenge and compliment the theory.

The first example can be seen with the theory of ‘Aesthetic Interpretation’. The word aesthetic itself is defined as relating to or involving pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality. In the book ‘The Art of Seeing: An interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter’, it gives the notion that ‘works of art present feasible goals which can be reached by using and refining perceptual skills’, these skills in the book were previously defined as being sensory, intellectual, physical or emotional in nature. This theory itself compliments the theory laid out in ‘Death of the Author’ as it highlights in more detail how the audience from their own ‘perceptual skills’ and ‘pre-conceived’ ideas’ can formulate their own response in regards to the authors work.

However, there is a strong argument both for and against the ‘Birth of the Reader’ theory with the idea of Authorial Intent which simply means that an author encodes their own perception into their works that they are aware of. This conflicts with ‘The death of the author’ as it challenges the idea that interpretation formulates a response from a piece of work when it could be said that all the responses by its audience were in fact intentional. Although throughout modern education in terms of literature we are informed that all interpretations by the author were in fact intentional, I believe that there are controllable and uncontrollable outcomes that are created by the author; these are on the borderline between authorial intent and audience interpretation.

Personally I feel that Barthes’ ideology is predominant in modern day society with design and technologies that use collaboration. Although the internet itself is the largest alliance of websites that are designed and created by different groups of people, a more specific example can be seen through ‘Wikipedia’ also known as the free encyclopedia which actively encourages its users to edit it as part of a growing online community. The Wikipedia website then goes on to define itself as a “Live collaboration differing from paper based resources. It has derived from a type of website called a ‘wiki’ which is designed for people to work together on creating, editing and sharing forms of content and information to communicate to its desired audience.

Wikipedia is one of the ultimate embodiments of Barthes’ theory in the sense that an encyclopedia is used by everyone in society seeking knowledge, they can choose to accept the information in the traditional sense or furthermore edit and share the information, working with people globally. An encyclopedia is also ever-changing and with this requirement it will never be complete therefore consolidating its essential nature.

Although Wikipedia expresses the idea of death of the author appropriately, there are other sites available that offer a more design related approach to ‘social collaboration’. Amazons’ Mechanical Turk is a prime example of this as it allows requesters to request human intelligence tasks by workers which range from data gathering, but can extend to design tasks.

One such example can be seen from Aaron Koblin, a visual artist who crowd sourced data to be visualised, in his project ‘The sheep market’ which was self-described as ‘a collection of 10,000 sheep created by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, each worker was paid to draw a sheep facing left’. In relation to birth of the reader, it empowers its audience by allowing them to collaborate and contribute to a much larger project with their own reading as to what they feel a sheep would look like facing left with most examples looking somewhat comical as well as some appearing realistic.

Another project by Aaron Koblin is ‘The Johnny Cash Project’, being a ‘Global collective art project’ allowing the audience (in this case Johnny Cash fans or designers looking to be part of a large project) to virtually design a single frame of the Johnny Cash video ‘Ain’t No Grave’ which is then combined with others to create a music video. It is interesting to see how an audience responds to the project and how every individual involved have their own interpretations to each frame.

Also, there is a large scale collaborative art project comes in the form of Web Canvas that relates directly to the Death of the Author theory. The website unlike the previous examples, has no restrictions when it comes to allowing people to work on a digital canvas live and view others doing so. Its aim is to create an ‘infinite and eternal painting that is continuously evolving’.

In terms of Aaron Koblins’ works and the work of Web Canvas in relation to authorship, it is clear how the ever-present theory can be applied combined with additional support from the Aesthetic interpretations and Authorial Intent theories

From the listed examples, the question of ‘How does this benefit society’ can be looked at in two different ways. The first Wikipedia is a benefit to society as it is considered to be a cluster of information where people can share their knowledge. Of course this can also be detrimental due to misinformation and the notion that anyone can edit what is posted, be that an edit littered with errors or someone considered to be an internet troll posting information with anarchy intended. However the two examples created by Aaron Koblin and the work of Web Canvas benefit society in a more humanitarian way allowing people to come together to collaborate on both a project which is created purely for light hearted fun with ‘The Sheep Market’ as well as what seems to be a eulogy dedicated to the works of Johnny Cash and through this giving their own interpretations of individual scenes from the music video. Web Canvas give their users complete freedom to create whatever they want on a space that can be seen by everyone.

It could be said that collaboration in digital design in a modern environment now stretches further than just the likes of online encyclopaedias and art projects online and the ever-growing and unexplored vastness of the internet is now at the forefront of creating a playground for designers to collaborate in a digital environment in real time.

With digital technology transforming our modern culture much in the past twenty years, it has spawned what is known as the ‘Remix culture’. Although mostly known in reference to music, the Remix concept stretches to art and design. In the book ‘Remix Theory: The aesthetics of sampling’ (p3) it is written ‘Remix, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, informs the development of material reality dependant on the constant recyclability of material with the implementation of mechanical reproduction’. (Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson, 1991)
The concept of remix culture lies in its digital foundations with the idea of Cut, Copy and Paste allowing people to combine various pre-existing forms of content available digitally to create a newly formed work. This newly formed work is given its own perspective separate to that of its former in which it should have bettered and evolved.

An example of art created through remix is seen often through google and their frequent changes of their logo referred to as the ‘Google Doodle’ which change on days that are prominent in history, one recently remixed the work of Wassily Kandinsky on his 148th birthday which evidently incorporated the style use by the artist himself with permission. Google occasionally hold ‘Doodle for Google’ competition where they challenge people to create their own remixed logo.

In a recent exhibition at the Tate Britain titled ‘1840’s GIF Party’ the museum called for public submissions to remix and rework the pre-existing classic paintings from the 1840’s, in the form of a GIF. By participating the reader effectively becomes an author and similarly to that of Aaron Koblins’ ‘The Sheep Market’ comes across in a light-hearted and playful way which is a new and inventive way to refer to works of the 1840’s.

Through the two examples of works present in the Remix culture, I believe that this culture offers a ‘remixed alternative’ to the birth of the reader theory in which the reader is reincarnated as an author once they transformed what a predecessor has taught them, because of this infinite loop created, the culture will be immortalised in modern culture.

With Remix culture as a whole, it can be argued that there is a fine line between a ‘remix’ and theft. Even though the culture encourages the use of copying, transforming and combining in order to form a new creation, there has to be a clear transformation from the original where it would become plagiarism. In an online article written by Andrew Lamberson for the creative agency website ‘The42’, it mentions that ‘unfortunately, in the design world, one can copy other’s work with ease with the help of a few skills and programs’ and while claiming a work is a remix, people could in fact be stealing intellectual property.

In terms of response to the ‘Death of the Author’ by modern figures in society, I have discovered two quotes by famous people. The first Joss Whedon, a renowned Sci-Fi writer, director, producer and author is quoted as saying “All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn’t your pet, it’s your kid. It grows up and talks back to you”. Another quote by the actor Wendell Pierce in regards to art claims “What thoughts are to the individual, art is to the community as a whole. That’s where you reflect on who you are, who you hope to be, what you’ve gone through and where you hope to go”. I feel that both of the quotes adequately sums up that without critique, discussion and feedback from art, that we cannot truly understand what is being communicated by it; only in interaction do we find the answer.

In conclusion to the critical analysis of the ideas of Birth of the Reader and Death of the Author, I feel that this theory has a rightful place in regards to how people interpret art and design. I believe that this concept although debated as deep-rooted in design theory is significant in modern design and with the progression of Remix Culture (which is still in its infancy as it was born alongside the internet); will evolve into a basis for design practice.

(Total Word Count – 2002 Words)

Bibliography
Books

Image Music Text
Barthes, R (1977). Image Music Text, London: Fontana Press. P146.

Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field
Armstrong, H (2009) Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field, New York: Princeton Architectural Press
Michael Rock. (1996). The Designer as Author. In: Helen Armstrong-Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. P108-115.

The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter
Csikszentmihalyi, M, Robinson, R.E (1991). The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter. Malibu, California: J.Paul Getty Museum. P93.

Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling
Navas, E (2012). Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling. New York: SpringerWienNewYork. P3.

Websites
YouTube – Johnny Cash Project – Ain’t No Grave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwNVlNt9iDk – Last Accessed 06/01/15

Johnny Cash Project website
http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/ – Last Accessed 06/01/15

Google Doodles
http://www.google.com/doodles - Last Accessed 06/01/15

The Sheep Market Website
www.thesheepmarket.com – Last Accessed 06/01/15

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About – Last Accessed 06/01/15

Web Canvas
http://webcanvas.com/#-1162,-861,1 – Last Accessed 06/01/15

The42 Article – How the use of social media was able to stop design theft in a world of remix culture
Lamberson, A. (2012). How social media stopped design theft in a world of remix culture.
Available: http://the42.com/news/2012/03/28/how-the-use-of-social-media-was-able-to-stop-design-theft-in-a-world-of-remix-culture/. Last accessed 06/01/15.

Exhibitions
1840’s Gif Party – Link to event
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/special-event/1840s-gif-party-call-submissions
-Last Accessed 06/01/15