#garp20

Mina Yang basically explains how that asian members generally succeed more if they westernise themselves more, for example in a literal sense she refers to the jabbawokeez dance group, which literally where white masks. Due to there being no noticeable distinguishable feature of race its more accepted within a wider mainstream audience. Even to a certain extent K-pop bands reflect older boybands which used to be popular. Oliver wang an asian rapper describes some representation as a “authenticity crisis”, as the idea of diversity sells could be taken advantage of.

This was a great well executed documentary explaining the rise of asian hiphop and how artists like Rich Brian and Keith Ape broke that boundary through globalisation (the internet). Its nice seeing how an “asian rapper” is just becoming a rapper and being fully implemented within the industry. While perceptions of the nerdy stereotuped asian role has been is changing as told in the documentary. Theres also a split audience, so this genre isnt exclusive while the audinece is willing to listen to hiphop in a different language. Even though fun, the documentary is very heartfelt as it describes the art as an expression for some of the artists, due to certain events or censership within their country.

An interesting read on the struggle of the lead singer of The Temper Trap. Due to hoping around as a kid Dougy generally doesnt express his heritage as much as some previous artists research, generally having a more western approach to the industry. Which in turn is not bad as the focus is music and not this idea of “diversity sells”. Theres still an expression of self identity as his sorrowful for his relatives but it seems to be more subtle out of respect, as he generally seems to be perceived as an australian within his australian band.

One of my resources for this subject is the book Raw Creation: outsider art and beyond written  by John Maizels (07/11/1996) of which depicts art created by those struggling with mental health issues.

An interesting article on how the label 88rising is trying to promote diversity more within the music industry. In the article it explains the struggles of artist NIKI as a female asian artist due to the male dominated scene, and how hopefully icreatives in the next generation will promote diversity more in the industry without using it as a usp but more for representation and the quality of music.

Through further discussion I decided to look at asian representation in the music industry as theres a rise in diversity within the music industry. Due to the media represnting a more modern society. Intially I was leading towards the indie animation idea as for the final outcome I wanted to do something animated but realised I could just apply this to another idea. This idea has a lot more research which could be delved in like asian artists on billboard in the last 10 years, or the uk charts within the last 10 years, this could also be compared to other western countries.The data sets would be more interesting to look at via graphs. This idea can be explored more theoretically aswell through theories like post colonialism, globalisation and some representation theories. I could also try and find some smaller bands with asian artists and try and interview them to see what they think of the current representation of asian artists within the industry and how culture may influence their music or not, within a western society.

Pages from my research notebook looking into what I’m interested in within visual storytelling

Another possible focus is if there is a formula for making a good visual story, mainly focusing on comics and animation. This can be done by looking at successful visual storytellers, such as Disney, Marvel etc and then some of the less successful ones and seeing if there is are any differences between them.