RI - Chapter 7: Materiality and meaning

This chapter focuses on how the material design of an image is vital to an images representation. I did not get to all of this chapter and have just focused on highlighted points.

Material production of design: not just the execution of something already complete, but a vital part of meaning-making. Resources may be tied to a specific form of material production, that can be realized, for instance, only in the medium of paint or only in the medium of the photograph.

Meaning of inscription: changes the text; presentation, for a marketing executive, would be significant part of the making of the text, increasingly often equal to, or even more important than, other aspects. "Texts are material objects which result from a variety of representational and production practices that make use of a variety of signifier resources organized as signifying systems (we have called these 'modes', and a variety of 'media', of 'signifier materials' - the surfaces of production (paper, rock, plastic, textile, wood, etc.), the substances of production (ink, gold, paint, light, etc.) and the tools of production (chisel, pen, brush, pencils, stylus, etc.)." (216)

Signs in their materiality are fully motivated, though as always the motivations are those of a particular culture in a particular period, and those of the maker of the sign; they are not global, nor are they a-historical. To explore material production is therefore also to explore the boundaries between the semiotic and the non-semiotic, and between individual expression and social semiosis.

Production systems and technology:

• Narrow sense - technologies at the hand; representations are articulated by the human hand, aided by hand-held tools such as chisels, brushes, pencils, etc.
• Recording technologies - technologies of the eye (and ear); allow more or less automated analogical representation of what they represent (audiotape, photography, film).
• Synthesizing technologies - allow the production of digitally synthesized representations; tied to the eye (and ear), these reintroduce the human hand via a technological 'interface' (keyboard, mouse, etc.).

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Semiotic features of colour: monochrome - painting or drawing in shades of the same colour.

• Value - grey scale from maximally light (white) to maximally dark (black).
  
• Saturation - scale from the most intensely saturated (pure) manifestations of colour to its softest (pale, dull/dark) manifestations, ultimately to complete desaturation (black and white).
  
• Purity - scale that runs from maximum (purity) to maximum (hybridity) and has been at the heart of colour theory as it developed over the last few centuries. (e.g. Colours with commonly used single names (brown and green) are considered pure. Mixed colours - specialists (cyan) and non-specialists (blue-green)).
  
• Modulation - scale that runs from fully modulated colour to flat colour. Flat colour - perceived as simple and bold; modulated colour - perceived as subtle; richening texture of real colour - overly fussy, detailed.
  
• Differentiation - scale that runs from monochrome to the use of a maximally varied palette.
  
• Hue - scale of blue to red; red - associated with warmth, energy, salience, foregrounding; blue - associated with cold, calm, distance, background.