RI - Chapter 4 - Representation and interaction designing the position of the viewer

Here are my notes from reading this book from authors Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen.

This chapter focuses on the interaction between the viewer and the representational image that the producer creates; below is a recap of quick notes I highlighted while reading the book.

Two types of participants that images involve:

• Represented - people, places, and things depicted in image.
• Interactive - people who communicate with each other through images (producers and viewers of image.

Three kinds of relations:

• relations between represented participants
• relations between interactive and represented participants
• relations between interactive participants

To see their work spread, Producers must: work within more or less rigidly defined conventions, and adhere to the more or less rigidly defined values and beliefs of the social institution within which their work is produced and circulated.

Context of production and reception: image itself, knowledge of communicative resources that allow its articulation and understanding (social interactions and social relations can be encoded). Disjunction causes social relations to be respresented rather than enacted. "When images confront us with friendly smiles or arrogant stares, we are not obliged to respond, even though we do recognize how we are addressed. The relation is only represented." (116) ... because we do understand the way images represent social interactions and social relations.
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Image act and the gaze: difference between pictures which represented participants look directly at the viewer's eyes, and pictures in which this is not the case. Visual configuration (two related functions) - 1) Acknowledge viewers explicitly ('you') 2) Constitutes image act (producer uses the image to do something to the viewer.

Choice between 'offer' and 'demand':

• offer - real of imaginary barrier is erected between the represented participants and the viewers, a sense of disengagement (e.g. feature film, television drama, scientific illustration)
• demand - require a sense of connection between the viewers and authority figures, celebrities and role models depicted (e.g. television newsreading, posted magazine photograph)

Illustrations in education: served to involve students emotively in subject matter, then gradually dropped out as higher levels of education are reached.

Real producers cannot refer to themselves directly: they must speak impersonally ('I's' are repressed); the public is addressed directly.

"What can be 'said' and 'done' with images (and with language) does not only depend on the intrinsic and universal characteristics of these modes of communication, but also on historically and culturally specific social needs." (123)
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Size of frame and social distance:

• Size of frame: second dimension to interactive meanings of images (e.g. choice between close-up, medium, long shots ...); film and television production define it to be defined in relation to human body using set of distinct cut-off points.
  
• Social distance: everyday interaction, social relations determine the distance we keep from one another; invisible boundary is determined by senses - this creates different fields of vision (e.g. choice between intimate, far personal, public distances...).

Distance patterns can become conventional visual genres: television 'voices' of different status are framed differently (expert/interviewer get breast pocket shot, subjects revealing feelings get bigger close-ups) - used to signify respect for authorities of various kinds.

Objects and the environment framing: no visual guide like human form; many objects come in many shapes and sizes. Three suggested distances: 1) close distance - viewer is engaged with it (e.g. reading a book or map) 2) middle distance - object shown in full, without much space around it; within viewer's reach, but not actually used (e.g. advertising product displayed in front of viewer - close, steep angle) 3) long distance - invisible barrier between the viewer and the object (e.g. shop window, museum exhibit)
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Perspective and the subject image: another way images bring about relations between represented participants and the viewer perspective; producing an image involves selection of angle (point-of-view), which implies subjective attitudes that are socially determined and are encoded as individual or unique.

Naturalized socially determined viewpoints: recording images of reality. Pre-Renaissance forms, viewers were positioned by structure of its environment. Renaissance forms, viewers were positioned by internal structure of work because the producers of said images used perspective with a centralized viewport; this image became detached from its surroundings, movable, produced for impersonal market, rather than for specific locations (window on the world).

Subjective and objective images came out of Renaissance:

• Subjective - the viewer can see what there is to see only from a particular point of view (with central perspective - built-in viewpoint)
• Objective - the image reveals everything there is to know about the represented participants (without central perspective - no built-in viewpoint) - disregards the viewer.

"... Chinese do not use the art of perspective. They do not like to see everything from a single point of view... rejects the subjugation of the observer." (131)

Modern magazine and website layouts: not based solely on compositional principles of perspective - form another category of visual works.
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Involvement and the horizontal angle: function of the relation between the frontal plane of the image-producer (what they're looking at) and the frontal plane of the represented participants (subject of producer). The two can either be parallel (aligned with each other), diverge from one another. Involvement of viewer and represented participants: 1) frontal angle - 'What you see here is part of our world, something we are involved with.' 2) oblique angle - 'What you see here is not part of our world; it is their world, something we are not involved with.' (136)

Double message - represented participant: The body may be angled away from the plane of the viewer, while his/her head and/or gaze may be turned towards it - vice versa. 'although I am not part of your world, I nevertheless make contact with you, from my own, different world' (138)

Perspective barrier - between viewer and represented participant. Frontal angle: the viewer looks at the represented participants and has an attitude towards them, but does not imaginarily engage with them.
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Power and vertical angle:

• High angle - make subject look small and insignificant; interactive participants (producer of image / viewer) has power over represented participant (e.g. school textbooks we look down on people - workers in hall; children in school yard... knowledge is power.)
  
• Low angle - makes subject look imposing and awesome; represented participants has power over interactive partipant (producer of image / viewer) (e.g. models in magazines advertisements and features; newsworthy people and celebrities in magazine articles... depicted as exercising symbolic power over us.)
  
• Eye level - point of view is one of equality, no power difference involved.

Omniscient knowledge of reader's mind: the power of an image-producer must be transfered on to one or more represented participants; understand the reader needs (must do, should think, will feel, and so on) - lack of reciprocity between the writer and reader / speaker and hearer cannot be realized in the same way in images. Revlon advertisement - "Wrinkles. They don't start where you think they do. They start underneath your skin. That's why Anti-Aging Daily Moisturizer goes beyond mere surface treatment." (142)
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Objective images: (e.g. scientific / technical pictures - diagrams, maps and charts, etc. - not always true though - oblique angles for instance.)

• Frontal angle - 'this is how it works', 'this is how you use it', 'this is how you do it'.
• Top-down angle - angle of maximum power.
• Cross-section - X-ray view; does not stop at appearances, but probes beyond the surface, to deeper, more hidden levels.
  

RI - Chapter 3 - Conceptual representations: designing social constructs

Here are my notes from reading this book from authors Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen.

Classificational process do not reflect 'real' or 'natural' things. For participants to be put together into a classificational means, they need to be judged and read as members of the same class. The more general idea is represented similar to a greater 'power'.
(def. Taxonomy - the science or technique of classification.) (e.g. Cosmopolitan magazine - Xpose watches by Sekonda)

Classificational structures represent participants by their place in a static order. Verbal labels and explanations which accompany them do not always do so.

Classificational diagrams, if rotated 90 degrees and final orientation is along horizontal axis. This has the orientation similar to narrative diagrams - dynamic connotation but retains the structure of classificational diagram (represented as a system).

Here is are some diagrams of UNIX and WINDOWS operating system, with programming languages. These diagrams reminded me of the trees in this book... horizontal axis.
http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html#04
http://www.levenez.com/windows/history.html#04
http://www.levenez.com/lang/history.html#06

Taxonomy: modeled on a static, hierarchical organization in which everything has its pre-ordained place in a grand scheme unified by a single source of authority.

Flowchart: modeled on the principle of authoritatively prescribed, structured, goal-oriented activity.

Network: modeled on a form of social organization which is a vast labyrinth of intersecting local relations in which each node is related in many different ways to other nodes in its immediate environment, but in which it is difficult, if not impossible, to form a coherant view of the whole.

Subproject: Avatar Character - Tattoo Theme

The goal of this project was to create an avatar in Second Life online game created by Linden Labs. My project focused on tattoos, so my character reflects someone in general that would get tattoos in real life. A good point to make here is that this character represents your second life, not your first (current) life; this allows you to represent yourself visually without having the constraints of permanently manipulating your body. Here are some images from creation of my avatar for Second Life.

Figure 1: Final tattoo avatar in Second Life.

Figure 2: Close up of back.

Figure 3: Face UV Layout for avatar skin.

Figure 4: Upper torso UV Layout for avatar skin.

For more information you can download a pdf file here: [TattooAvatar.pdf]

RI - Chapter 2 - Narrative representations: designing social action

Here are my notes from reading this book from authors Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen.

Comments about the image with the British and Aborigines. The thing to point out would be the difference in structure. The Aborigines tools are arranged symmetrically (equal in size, distance, oriented same way, static) and they tend to be somewhat impersonal; the British image represents technology in action, giving it a more dynamic, dramatic, and personal touch. Main thing to get from these visual structures is that they produce images of reality which are influenced greatly by varying cultures. Transactional structure - two men form one participant; together they have the role of "Actor." Analytical structure - two men form two distinct participants, linked by the lines formed by the hand of the man on the right and the gun of the man on the left.

Interactive vs. represented participants. Interactive participants speak and listen, write and read, make images or view them in the act of communicating; represented participants compose the subject matter of communication (people, places, and things (could be abtract)).

How hard is it to tell who the represented participants are? Diagrams are much easier to determine this than naturalistic images because they are abstract representations. The authors claim that detailed naturalistic images may be "difficult, even futile, to try and identify the represented participants" because an image of this kind lends itself to multiple interpretations ('worth a thousand words').

Can naturalistic images be analyzed into participants and processes much like diagrams? Artist do this by reducing the visible world to simple geometric forms, and children do this by building basic forms and gradually "fusing the parts."

Antartic explorer image comments. This picture describes the way participants "fit together" to make up a larger whole; it does not explain the notion of "doing" something to other participants. Antartic explorer represents the carrier that contains all the parts (e.g. balaclava, windproof top, fur mittens) - possessive attributes.

Communication model comments. Not all meanings conveyed visually are conveyed verbally. The diagram is constructed of boxes and circles (multiple shapes) which surround the participants (Communicator and Recipient, source-encoder-signal); these shapes are left unexplained.

How shapes intergrate into society. Squares and rectangles are elements of mechanical and technological order of world of human construction (in Western society - cities, buildings, roads). "In all fields life grows increasingly abstract while it remains real..." - quoted in Jaffe, 1967:64. I also like the comment about "the more abstract the sign, the greater its semantic extension..." Organic and natural order can be constructed with circles and curved forms, while the inorganic world of technology (built by humans) can be thought of being constructed from angles. We can rationalize our world but the organic world will always be mysterious to us.

RI - Chapter 1 - The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication

Here are my notes from reading this book from authors Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen.

Images away from 'expression' and moot a; this goes for all groups.ll meanings conveyed visually are conveyed verbally.re towards technicality. A child's image may not disappear in expression, but become more specialized in function over his/her lifetime.

Writing remains expected and dominant mode of visual communication. For materials demanded from children, this medium remains superior for various forms of assessment.

Can layout of new communication mediums, with emphasis on 'visual rather than verbal', produce illiterates? Newspapers, magazines, CD-ROMs or websites, public relations materials, advertisements or information materials all play into this part of meaningful interplay of written text and images, with more focus on visual aspect. "... seen as threat, a sign of the decline of culture." Emergence of visual could be an alternative to writing - seen as potential threat.

Images are too open to a variety of possible meanings. This image-text relationship extends the meaning of either the image or text given; one side of this relation increases the understanding of the other. "...nature, rather than discourse..." shows that source ofovert authority is verbal text over images. Each side to this relationship has their own independently organized and structured message.
; this goes for all groups.
(e.g. 'classic' documentary - viewer is first confronted with images, second comes voice of narrator who interprets the images.
anchorperson - viewer is first confronted with verbal discourse, second or simultaneously comes illustrations to recount the the verbal.)

Not everything realized in languages can be realized in images, vice versa. Images need angles of vision to gain perspective and spatial disposition of elements for syntactic relations; language does not adopt either one of these approaches.

Understanding cultural history can inform us of the blind misnomers of visual communication that exists in literate cultures. The authors discuss how closely they would like to investigate how visual representation and languages interact. They explain that in some cultures "one form of representation 'took over' the other..."

Images can be structured, such that, there could be a message derived through a given analysis. Do all images impose a 'coded' message? What makes us want to "constituent and analysis" on an image? How can words help emphasis a image's meaning?

Can the layout of text vs. image render different interCommunication modelpretations or help clarify one's interpretation? The picture of the 'Bath' has the text first; this imposes a meaning on the image, which allows you to change the image out because it solely acts as an intensifier to the text given (no loss of meaning with different images of bath).

Are images subject to linear structure? In the case of the "Bird in tree" book you can have a 'non-linear' approach; the authors say that the parents can choose the order in which they want to deal with the various elements arising in the book. Would this non-linear method derail you from the implied meaning of the book? Parents attitudes towards a character or reactions from the story could impact their child in an indirect fashion.

(e.g. bird and cat - a) political story b) powerful predators coming from another continent and native birds killed and threatened with extinction c) survival of the fittest.)

Coherant sequence is a must for a book to communicate its' code. We should not focus only on the elements of a given page, but how multiple pages could interact with each other; specific relations come out of doing this.