From course preparation online
John Burger Ways of Seeing Episode 01 (30 minutes) and consider:
- environment and context in which an image appears
- personal knowledge and experience required for reading an image
- sequencing and juxtaposition of how images influences interpretation and comprehension of images and the impact on how messages can be crafted
"We see these paintings as no one has seen them before."
"Perspective makes the eye the centre of the visible world."
Painting can only be in one place at one time—the camera provides the ability to duplicated the image to distribute anywhere within the world. They are not situated within a gallery but instead appear where we are now. Levie, 1987, says pictures "have a dual reality: they are objects themselves, and they act as surrogates for other objects."
An images uniqueness is part of the place in which it appears.
Question
Think about the way you interact with art in a gallery, within a persons house, when it is in a book, viewed on the computer.
- How does the experience of viewing an artwork change your interpretation of it?
- How do words change the way you experience images?
- What about music, movement, and sequence can change interpretation?
For example, how does music affect the images within the music video We Can't Stop by Miley Cyris, with and without sound, and with an altered interpretation of sound.
"The images come to you, you don't go to them. The time of pilgrimage is over" and thus "meaning comes to you", says Berger, regarding the way media has changed.
van den Broek argues quotes Hans Aarsman from Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant "I always want to know what causes my first impression. I also want to know whether this first impression is right, whether what is suggested by a photo is not contradicted by what is actually visible in the photo. Whether it is a photo in the newspaper or in a gallery or on an advertising billboard, I always look for details. And I always have a magnifying glass close at hand. A magnifying glass really confronts you with the facts, even the rough gridlines of a newspaper hide details that could easily escape you. A magnifying glass magnifies, but in another sense it could be said to minimise. You only get to see a small part of the picture, the whole is outside your frame of vision. As a result you miss that first impression." This idea of using a magnifying glass is equivalent to what John Berger discusses in relation to zooming into an image, or doing so on the phone.
"Reproductions come to you."
"Art must be stripped of religiosity, cash value, in order to wonder about them."
Activity
"Unique thing about paintings are that they are silent and still" yet Berger is unable to demonstrate this to us because the television screen is made of scan lines, monitors are made of pixels, which are ever moving and transmutable, even the pages of a book are never still.
- Consider how different locations may alter the way we perceive information?
- Consider the way in which your viewing of a film is altered by context and make a list of the different experiences you might have and how it may affect your interpretation of the media:
- in a cinema where you view the film in its entirety in a quiet room as a shared experience of the film
- on a television, at home, at a pub, in a friends house and whether during the day, the evening, at night time, while you're doing other activities
- on DVD or Bluray with special features, on Stan, where the credits are allowed to roll through their entirety, or on Netflix, where they encourage you to immediately skip to the next subject
- on a train or bus in different social contexts—in Asia where solitude might be found better outside shared households, it is more common for people to view media in public
- Consider how different experiences of a text alters its meaning, consider audiobooks versus reading from a novel, does a paper back differ from a hard cover?
Want another interpretation of artwork? Try Hannah Gadsby's Nakedy Nudes available for viewing on ABC iView.
Define
Reproduction
Mystification
Susan Sontag On Photography
Susan Sontag says "a fake painting (one whose attribution is false) falsifies the history of art. A fake photograph (one which has been retouched or tampered with, or whose caption is false) falsifies reality. The history of photography could be recapitulated as the struggle between two different imperatives: beautification, which comes from the fine arts, and truth-telling, which is measured not only by a notion of value-free truth, a legacy from the sciences, but by a moralised ideal of truth-telling, adapted from nineteenth-century literary models and from the (the) new profession of independent journalism." pg 86 On Photography
Susan Sontag discusses how the democratisation of photography has allowed us to capture more of our personal lives, while also encouraging photographic tourism, where the act of travel is synonymous with the collection of images. You no longer travel to enjoy the experience but to ensure you take the best photograph of the place to bring home. It also means that travel favours those places which can be photographed beautifully.
"Through the camera people becomes customers or tourists of reality—or Realitesm as teh name of the French photo-magazine suggests, for reality is understood as plural, fascinating, and up for grabs. Bringing the exotic near, rendering the familiar and homely exotic, photographs make the entire world available as an object of appraisal."
Question
Consider how your experience of photographic images changes and shifts depending on the media through which you experience them. Limiting your focus to digital screens, consider which images are you most drawn to on Instagram, Facebook, websites, news outlets, blogs, fashion websites.
- How does your experience of the media change?
- What aspects of that media affect your reading of those images?
- Do you ever engage with images in 'stillness' or 'silence'?
- How long do you let your eyes rest or gaze at one image?
- What role does consumption play in your experience?
- How often do you try to "zoom" an image to be disappointed you cannot?
"A photograph changes according to the context in which it is seen: thus Smith's Minimata photographs will seem different on a contact sheet, in a gallery, in a political demonstration, in a police file, in a photographic magazine, in a general news magazine, in a book, on a living-room wall," says Sontag. "Each of these situations suggests a different use for the photographs but none can secure their meaning."
And she continues, "Wittgenstein argues for words, that the meaning is the use—so for each photograph. And it is in this way that the presence and proliferation of all photographs contributes to the erosion of the very notion of meaning, to that parceling out of truth into relative truths which is taken for granted by the modern liberal consciousness."
"... because the photograph is, always, an object in a context, this meaning in bound to drain away; that is, the context which shapes whatever immediate—in particular, political—uses the photograph may have is inevitably succeeded by contexts in which such uses are weakened."
And how can images be manipulated to question evidential value of image? From Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising by Paul Messaris:
And how can images be manipulated to question evidential value of image? From Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising by Paul Messaris:
- setting the scene for the subject (imitating a situation)
- editing an image (increasing contrast, colour, tonal values)
- selective imaging (cropping an image, excluding certain information)
- wrongly labeling a situation (using the wrong caption or inscription)
- manipulating an image (adding or leaving out certain elements)
Consider the use of this image of a family hiding in the water beneath a Jetty used during the recent Australian bushfires, however, it was actually from a previous fire in 2013 as highlighted on AFP Fact Check. What role does the caption and context play in misrepresenting the effects of the fire? Why is it important that we accurately report this information? What role does skepticism play in visual literacy and truth in the age of social media?
Visual Language: Perspectives for Both Makers and Users by van den Broek et al.
"Text can alter the meaning of image."
The Guardian newspaper recently published an article discussing how its editorial team would shift the way it used imagery to centre the story on the human impact of climate change rather than show only the ecological impact. This decision was made to try and centre the change on human life in order to encourage people to connect better with the material rather than to wash over it. Here are a few examples of this shift:
And this series of images from Sean Davey regarding Steve Shipton from Coolagolite, NSW who lost everything:
Three theories for how we read imagery
Gestalt theory (seeing) explains the perception of visual communication
Semiotics (understanding) explains that you understand the meaning
Rhetoric (being persuaded) explains how visual communication persuades you
Definitions
Visual literacy (reader) "the possibility of understanding and creating visual messages" or "the skill of decoding, interpreting, fabricating, questioning and evaluating texts that communicate mainly using visual means" and therefore "being able to read the intended meaning of such things as advertisements or films, the aim being to interpret and evaluate the form, structure and characteristics of the images." Myra adds the "ability to accurately interpret visual representations in both form (what is it) and meaning (what does it mean/say)."
Visual literacy (maker) "the possibility of creating images and being able to use them to communicate. The basic skills include the vocabulary needed to be able to understand images and visual symbols and to criticise them. Visual literacy can also relate to the rhetorical analysis of the way in which different media visually shape their arguments."
Visual literacy (maker) "the possibility of creating images and being able to use them to communicate. The basic skills include the vocabulary needed to be able to understand images and visual symbols and to criticise them. Visual literacy can also relate to the rhetorical analysis of the way in which different media visually shape their arguments."
Semiotics discusses images in terms of signs and sign systems such as letters, characters of a script, traffic signs, morse code, gestures, objects and symbols. Distinguishes between indexical signs, icons, and symbols. The process of how meaning is reconstructed and understood.
Iconic signs (semiotics) demonstrate relationship of similarity or bear a visual resemblance to the object in which they refer (eg. photograph, drawing of object).
Indexical signs (semiotics) share no visual resemblance to the thing in which they refer (eg. letters, characters, gestures and speech).
Symbols (semiotics) rely on a conventional agreement (eg. the written word 'cat').
Modern rhetoric regards persuasiveness of images and means of communication. How have various techniques regarding the media, imagery, text and arrangement been used to persuade the viewer of a particular perspective or argument to guide interpretation, ideas or behaviours.
Looking (biological) is directing one's gaze in a specific direction.
Seeing (cognitive/interpretive) is perceiving with one's eyes; be or become aware of something from observation; discern or deduce after reflection. The way we see is affected by our culture and society.
Point of View may refer to the physical position from which the creator, artist or viewer perceives the subject (birds-eye view from above, from eye-level, worms-eye view from below) or the way the creator expresses their interpretation of the subject based on their cultural experience. This may also incorporate ideas regarding perspective, whether it operates from a fixed-point, three points, isometric, linear or otherwise.
Vantage Point is used in "linear perspective" as a stationary point from which a viewer is related the subject / object and is the reference point from which the image is created. Perspective is "correct" when viewed only from this angle. For example, the distorted skull in 'The Ambassadors' 1533 by Hans Holbein the Younger.
Sequencing is the order in which images and text are presented and can be used to influence interpretation. For example, images by photographer Gilless Peress in Derry, Northern Island on Bloody Sunday whose contact sheets were used to provide evidence that the first civilian killed was unarmed.
Environment in which the images or media are consumed, which may have an effect on the reading, interpretation and comprehension of the text.
Media has a number of definitions and may refer to method through which images and messages are transmitted, such as radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, that reach or influence people widely. 'The Media' may refer to a body such as a news agency or firm which broadly distributes information.
Juxtaposition when two or more things are placed or seen together with contrasting effect. By juxtaposing images, text, drawings and other visual elements, we can create new meaning.
Lecture
How we see
Return to looking at the poster for Captain Marvel and think about how our eyes might jump around the image to understand the form and construct meaning.
Culture is "not so much a set of things... as a process, a set of practices. Primarily, culture is concerned with the production and exchange of meanings — the 'giving and taking of meaning' — between members of a society or group'. 'To say that two people belong to the same culture is to say that they interpret the world in roughly the same ways and can express themselves...in ways [that] will be understood by each other.' 'Thus, culture depends on its participants interpreting meaningfully what is happening around them, and 'making sense' of the world, in broadly similar ways." Stuart Hall, 2013.
Visual culture 'is concerned with the visual events in which information, meaning, or pleasure is sought by the consumer (interaction between people and na object) in an interface (surface through which information is received) with visual technology. by visual technology, I mean any form of apparatus designed either to be looked at or to enhance natural vision (clarify information, bring things closer, slow things down), from oil painting, to television, to the internet'. Nicholas Mirzoeff, 1999. We are receiving someone else's point of view and so there can never be neutrality in a picture (Myra Theissen).
Representation and language
Representation 'connects meaning and language to culture' and is 'the production of meaning through language.' Stuart Hall, 2013. 'means using language to say something meaningful about or to the world meaningfully to other people. We do this through the use of our visual and verbal languages like gestures signs and images that stand in place, represent or re-present the thing we're trying to communicate.'
1. Reflective approach where meaning lies with the object, person, idea, event but makes it impossible to discuss drawing on abstract principles like beauty.
2. Intention approach where meaning lies with the speaker and is imposed on objects, persons, ideas, events but there's no way to guarantee the receiver of the message will understand the intended method.
3. Constructivist approach where meaning is constructed by social groups through interaction with each other and with social environments (containing objects, people, ideas, events) and that it is through symbolic practice which generates meaning. Meaning resides in shared language and culture.
To represent is to describe (verbally) or depict (visually).
A representation is a sign that symbolises, stands in for, or acts as a substitute/surrogate for things (objects, places, people) or concepts (abstract ideas, feelings).
'Were there not some cultural consensus about the meaning of signs and symbols [that make up language] among members of a linguistic community communication would not be possible.' Davis, 2012.
Signs
Iconic signs (semiotics) demonstrate relationship of similarity or bear a visual resemblance to the object in which they refer (eg. photograph, drawing of object).
Indexical signs (semiotics) share no visual resemblance to the thing in which they refer (eg. letters, characters, gestures and speech).
Symbols (semiotics) rely on a conventional agreement (eg. the written word 'cat').
No comments:
Post a Comment