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.