lecture 2 for winter

8/13/2019 Lecture 2 for Winter

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What is visual culture?

What is culture? What are cultural and visual studies?

Culture as interactive and fluid process, and aprocess of negotiation

Culture as a contested space where many differentideologies exist

Culture as a invested in political and socialquestions


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Some ideas we will be covering

today Representation

Meaning

Seeing vs. looking

Mimesis

Semiotics

Saussure

Sign- signifier and signified

Roland Barthes

Connotative and denotative levels of meaning

Myth/ideology


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LOOKING vs. SEEING


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What is seeing?

to perceive with ones eye

to detect things by the use of the eyephysical process of receiving and processing visual data


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LOOKINGthe way we understand and engage with visual data

it involves interpretation

it is a practice through which meanings are createdIT IS AN ACT OF CHOICE

it involves power relations


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Manet, Olympia 1890s Oil on Canvas


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We engage in practicesof looking to communicate,

to influence, and be

influenced (Practices of

Looking, p.10.)


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Visual Technologies


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Representation

What is it?


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MIMESIS?

Comes from Greek- mimEsis, from mimesthai= imitation or mimicry

Are the systems of representation mimetic ?


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Juan Cotan,Quince,Cabbage, Melon,

and Cucumber,c. 1602


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Pieter Claesz, Stil l L ife 1645


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Pieter Claesz, Stil l L ife 1648


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Air Canada

advertisement in

Pride Week

brochure, 2004


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Meanings are produced through complex relationships


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The Long Stone

Standing Stone

Gloucestershire

Andy Goldsworthy,Boulder.3Boulder covered with flower pedals and leaves

The participants in a culture give meaningto other

people, objects and events.

Thingsin themselves rarely have one fixed or

unchanging meaning.

A stone can be a part of a landscape, a part of a sacred

site or a sculpture
http://www.cepolina.com/freephoto/ab/a-big.red-stone.htm


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REPRESENTATION

Is the way we use words or images to CONSTRUCTaspects of our reality

Representation is a system

It is also a process of negotiation


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PRODUCERVIEWERS/READERS/LISTENERS

CONTEXT:

Museum, home,

Street,concert hall

Television,

radio etc.

Construct

meaningsthrough

systems of

representation.

This is

influenced by

their culture,

education,

interests, status,

age, sex etc.


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Key Questions about Specific Representations

What is being represented?

How is it represented? Using what codes? Within what genre? How is the representation made to seem 'true', 'commonsense' or 'natural'?

What is foregrounded and what is backgrounded? Are there any notableabsences?

Whose representation is it? Whose interests does it reflect? How do youknow?

At whom is this representation targeted? How do you know? What does the representation mean to you? What does the representation mean

to others? How do you account for the differences?

How do people make sense of it? According to what codes?

With what alternative representations could it be compared? How does itdiffer?


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READING IMAGES ?


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In your textbook on the page 25 authors write :

The capacity of images to affect us as viewers and

consumers is dependent on the larger culturalmeanings they invoke and the social, political, andcultural contexts in which they are viewed. Theirmeanings lie not within their image elements alone,

but are acquired when they are consumed,viewed,and interpreted

They continue by saying:

Images are produced according to social and

aesthetic conventions. Conventions are like roadsigns, we must learn their CODES for them to makesense; the codes we learn become second nature.


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SEMIOTICS???

It is a science of signs.

In its most basic explanation it

can be defined broadly as a domain of investigation that

explores the nature and function of signs as well as the

systems and processes underlying signification, expression,

representation, and communication.


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Semiotics comes out of linguistics

Charles Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure


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Ferdinand de Saussure

signifier-signified

SIGN as a basic unit of language.

Composed of two elements:

Signifier and signified.


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Image/sound/word

Meaning

Signifier

Signified

SIGN

T-R-E-E


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Charles PeirceIcon, Index, Symbol

The Icon= refers directly to an object

Indexical Sign= it points to or results from something

The Symbol= does not look like its object BUT it alludes to it


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The Icon= refers directly to an object

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,

Princesse de Broglie(1851-1853), oil

on canvas

ICONIC signifiers

always resemble what

they signify.

Apictureof your face is an icon ofyou.The little square with apicture of a printeron

your computer screen is an icon for theprint

function. (Whereas a little box that has the word

PRINT'is notan icon since it has no physical

resemblance to printing or the printer.)
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/viewOnezoom.asp?dep=15&zoomFlag=1&viewmode=0&item=1975.1.186


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Indexical Sign= it points to

or results from something

dark cloudsin the west are an index of impending rain

Smoke is an index of fire


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The Symbol= does not look like

its object/idea BUT it alludes

to it

OR

Symbol is a sign with specificmeaning attached to it.

Jan van EyckArnolfini

Wedding Portrait, oil on

canvas 1434


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Roland Barthes

Connotation and Denotation

Denotationalmeaning is usually thought of as the

literal, obvious or commonsense meaning.Connotationalmeaning of a sign is related to socio-

cultural and personal implications or meanings- these

are often related to the issues of origin, race, gender,

ethnicity etc.

MYTH


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The Myth


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lecture 2 for winter

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