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.