Vocabulary

Authenticity - Undisputed credibility.  


Appropriation - To adopt, borrow, sample aspects of work.


Avant-garde - Any creative group active in the innovation and application of new concepts and techniques in a given field. 


Binary opposites - The oppositions through which reality has traditionally been represented. Eg. male/female, nature/culture, mind/body.


Bricolage - A construction made by whatever materials at hand. Something created from a variety of available things. 


Broadcast Media - Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video signals which transmit programs to an audience. The audience may be the general public or a relatively large sub-audience, such as children or young adults. 


Capitalism - An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. 


Cinema verite - A style of film making that stresses unbiased realism and often contains unedited sequences.


Classical art - Conforming to the artistic and literary models of ancient Greece and Rome.


Code (in visual culture) - In communications, a code is a rule for converting a piece of info (for example, a letter, word, phrase, or gesture) into another form or representation (one sign into another sign), not necessarily of the same type.


Colonialism - A policy by which a nation maintains or extends its control over foreign dependencies.


Commodification - The commercialization of an object or activity that is not inherently commercial.


Connoisseur - A specialist of a given field whose opinion is valued; especially in one of the fine arts, or in a matter of taste.


Commodity Fetishism - A state of social relations that occur in a capitalist market based societies. The social relationships are transformed into an objective relationship between commodities or money.


Connotative Meaning - All the social, cultural and historical meanings that are added to a signs literal meaning. Relies on the cultural and historical context of the image and it's viewers lived, felt knowledge of those circumstances. Connection thus brings to an object or image in the wider realm of ideology, cultural meaning and value systems and a society.