1. HYPERTEXTUALITY AND POP ART Murat Gungor Harjant Gill October 3, 2006

2. Today… Role of the Reader –Text –Signs –Eco’s Perspective –Cultural Encyclopedia Pop Art –What is it? –Critiques and Proponents –Enablers of Pop Art –Pop Artists –Experiment: Putting Eco into Pop Art

3. Umberto Eco Born in 1932 Italian medievalist, philosopher and novelist Most famous works: The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum Worked as a cultural editor for Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) His works illustrate postmodernist literary theory concept of hypertextuality.

4. On Text Text is a lazy machinery, which forces its possible readers to do the part of its textual work by its modalities of interpretive operations. In order to engage with a text: a pre-textual theory of signs is needed. Notions of linguistic signs must me addressed in such a way that the textual destiny of the sign is recognized: a junction between theory of signs and a theory of text can then be achieved. Text are the loci where signs are produced.

5. On Signs Buyssens: Sign (and visual image) in itself becomes fully meaningful when inserted within the larger context… Larger Context: Simple word-processes in some way that certain features, which prescribes it textual fate. Signs cannot exist outside the context of the text. Theory of Signification should be the first theory of all a theory of signs. Dictionary/Production of new meaning: They make signs interact with each other in the light of their previous intertextual history. Text (possibility of new semantic kinship/production of new discourses) Vs Sign (forced unification and limiting of discourse). Kristeva: The Ideology of sign is coherent with the classic ideology of the knowing subject.

6. For Eco Language is Homonymic: Eg. Bachelor, Smoke. Objecting to: Unified concept of sign… “Signs are conceived of as being intentionally emitted and conventionally coded, linked by a bi- conditional bond to their definition, subject to analysis and syntagmatically disposed according to a linear sequence.” Reconsider the history of signs: followed a different evolutionary pattern: one would realize that linguistical fixing of signs is recent phenomenon… Eco is critiquing the previous linguistic model and eliminate the notion of linguistic signs.

7. What is Eco Proposing? Need to understand how text is interpreted. Role of the reader: Active interpretation of the text, informed by subjectivity. Encyclopedia-like semantic representation: Semantico-pragmatic rules: establish how and under which conditions the addressee of a given text is entitled to collaborate in order to actualize what the text actually says. The sememe are visual texts: the text is expansion of the sememe. Encyclopedia Competence: Notion of cultural encyclopedia. Scripts or frames… would consider the standard sequences of actions that an interpreter needs to presuppose in order to work out a text and to render explicit information which is not expressed, or at least not apparent at the level of manifestation

8. When Reading a Text Maneuvering Coded Semantic Information Negotiate Different Semes, Provided by the Sememes Make Them Mutually React and Amalgamate

9. Eco Argues Signs are the starting point of a process of interpretation  which leads to infinite series of progressive consequences Signs are open devices (Multi-Conditional)… Echo is deconstructing bi- conditionality of Signs. Textual interpretation  SAME PRINCIPLE APPLIES  Sign interpretation

10. Deduction and Induction vs. Abduction Principle feature of text is its ability to elicit abductions. Reader looks for a possible context capable of making initial expression intelligible and reasonable. Signs are not fixed/dead; they are continuously evolving their readings…de-constructing the notion of sign as definition or as synonymous. The reader plays an active role in textual interpretation.

11. Cultural Encyclopedia Exchanges of Meaning Cultural Memory Cultural Dictionary (Pre-exists Individual User) Memory Machines of Culture: Language, discourses, narratives and visual images Media-Externalized Memory Machine: Privileging Ideology, Promoting Hegemony, Hierarchy of Cultural Knowledge Social Functions of Encyclopedia are Culturally Constructed

12. In Conclusion Eco is trying to understand the epistemology of thinking and how meaning is produced. LITERARY TEXT  FIELDS OF MEANING (rather than STINGS OF MEANING)  OPEN, INTERNALLY DYNAMIC & PSYCHOLOGICALLY ENGAGED FIELDS. Eco is moving beyond intertextuality, to consider the reader as an active subject…leading to HYPERTETUALITY or INTER-CONNECTEDNESS of all texts. Meaning is manufactured by consciousness, and how it may be possible for human reading to be without the pursuit of, and sometimes-unconscious application of meaning…

13. Pop Art “I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”

14. What is Pop Art? Lawrence Alloway’s comments: –Masses doing art, not minorities –Democratization of art –Characteristic of industrial society –Accompany changes better –The rise of the audience Shift of focus from England to USA Pop Art forms celebrating the urban culture

15. Critiques and Proponents Greenberg: –‘Avant-garde and Kitsch’ essay (1939) –Avant-garde artist uninfluenced by commercial art –What is avant-garde?

16. Avant-Garde Art Definition of Avant-Garde Paris Salon and Salon de Refusés Progressive notion of art Non-representational art Édouard Manet (1832-1883), Luncheon on the Grass (Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe)

17. Critiques and Proponents Greenberg: –‘Avant-garde and Kitsch’ essay (1939) –Avant-garde artist uninfluenced by commercial art –What is avant-garde? Lucy R. Lippard: –Unexpected outcome of a decade of Abstract Expressionism –Uncritical reflection of our environment can be a breath of fresh air. –Branded Pop Art under abstraction

18. Where is Pop Art Coming From? - Enablers AVANT-GARDE ART Impressionism Divisionism... Abstract Expressionism... POP ART Socialist Realism Cold War CapitalismCommunism Postmodernism

19. Pop Artists Lived in Manhattan and knew each other Had experience in advertising Used mass culture to create their segments

20. Lichtenstein Style: Used comics Technique: Used projection and silkscreen Brush Strokes (1964)

21. Pop Artists Lived in Manhattan and knew each other Had experience in advertising Used mass culture to create their segments

22. Rauschenberg Style: cords, mundane tarnished objects Technique: Painting and sculptures Dylaby (1962)

23. Pop Artists Lived in Manhattan and knew each other Had experience in advertising Used mass culture to create their segments

24. Warhol Style: Celebrities, repeated frames, tragedy Technique: Silkscreen, mechanical production: ‘Factory’ Campbell’s Soup Can 1 (1968)

25. Re-Cycling Pop Art: Putting Eco into Pop Art How can the reader make sense of Pop Art today? Trek Thunder Kelly iPod Gharib - TortureiPod Gharib - Electrocution

26. Re-Cycling Pop Art: Putting Eco into Pop Art How can the reader make sense of Pop Art today? Trek Thunder Kelly Suicide of Frida Kahlo Devolution of Fool Bull Geronimo’s Last Stand The Instigator

27. Re-Cycling Pop Art: Putting Eco into Pop Art How can the reader make sense of Pop Art today? Trek Thunder Kelly Clintonian CigarCereal KillerViagra Pills Ohs

28. Putting Eco into Pop Art How can the reader make sense of Pop Art? Re-cycling Pop Art

29. Thank you