What I have learned this semester . . . .

This semester has challenged me in visual theory and in practice. I had very little knowledge of visual theory when the class first began. As the class continued I began to implement many of the concepts into my projects. Use of vectors and color representation were used heavily in my projects. I actually began incorporating color into my avatar before we discussed it in class. I understood--after we read about the concept--that I needed to continue in my use of black and red and also use it more frequently.

This semester challenged me in learning various software programs. I had no knowledge of Photoshop and movie software. The MovieMaker software was simple; I caught on to that quickly. With Photoshop I feel like I have a solid footing with the program and can do what I need to. With Dreameaver, I had used it before but this semester, the program frustrated me because I could not do what I wanted to do with it. I feel I was able to adapt and now have a basic knowledge of the program for future use.

At one of our STC, Bobby Rettew spoke about his time in the MAPC program and how it has helped him in his current career. He said that he appreciated the ability he now has to learn software quickly. So although more instruction in the programs would have been helpful, I understand that being able to learn software quickly can help me succeed in my future career. Different companies use different software and now I feel that I have the basics of what I might be asked to do in the future.

As far as the film, I was totally intimidated by it. I didn't know how I was going to complete the project and assumed it would take me hours to produce 30 seconds. I surprised myself and thoroughly enjoyed writing my script, filming the footage and putting the pieces together.

One of the biggest challenges for me this semester was learning how to express an abstract idea in concrete visual way. I had to learn visual concepts quickly in order to be successful in my expression of fear.

Website

http://people.clemson.edu/~hwitmer/fear/

Chapter Seven

Visual components are an intregral part of the branding process. The authors dicuss this in the beginning of chapter seven, "In visual communication, similarly, the material production of a design is not of the execution of something already complete, but a vital part of meaning-making" (215). This reminds of the Tropicana carton redesign. Apparently people have been complaining to Pepsi, Tropicana's parent company about the design. After just six weeks the company is going drop the design.

The section on color as a semiotic mode was another thorough dicussion of the impact of culture. "Putting it more generally, colour is used to act on others, to send managerial messages to workers, or parental messages to children, as we have shown in an analysis of a child's room" (230).

This workplace sign uses orange to convey the message and also shows the red barrel in the background. Both colors or alarm or caution.

The sign uses a bright color to cause action or awareness.

The book continues on to discuss who the hue and saturation of a color can change the way a color is percieved. Pastels convey a different message than a highly saturates color.

Chapter 5 Modality

Coding orientation is dicussed on page 163. One statement that the authors make is concerning the social construction of refering to items or problems in terms that relate to sight. " Behind this, in turn, is the primacy which is accorded to visual perception in our culture generallly. Seeing has, in our culture, become synonymous with understanding" (163). We use sight terminology to rate or assign a degree to the ownership of an idea or understanding.


Another factor of modality is the color of the visual image. "It is here that the affective values of colours come into their own, for example. The emotive colour is sometimes seen as a general characteristic of colour" (165). I discussed this issue in the first subproject involving my avatar. I chose black and red because of the emotions and characteristics that they represent and how I wanted my avatar to convey the message that the colors embody. The meaning of the colors chosen, can make a statement (high modality) about the object in question.

Modality can be altered due to the social characteristics of a culture or society. For example the color dicussion mentioned above. In Western cultures a bride wears white at a wedding but in India the bride wears red and that culture wears white for funerals. The cultural context where the visual is percieved can change the the strength of modality. "This is why we see modality as interactive, rather than ideational, as social, rather than as a matter if some independently given value" (171).

Happy Easter!


http://people.clemson.edu/~hwitmer/fear/

Chapter 4

On page 117 the authors dicuss representation and vectors in regards to the way the person is viewed in the picture. "There is, then, a fundamental difference between pictures in which this is not the case. When represented participants look at the viewer, vectors, formed by participants'eyelines connect the participants with the viewer. Contact is established only on an imaginary level." I had never really looked at the eyes as vectors or seen the meaning behind they way a person is positioned in the picture. But as the picture on page 117 the eyes create a connection and provide a vector effect for the viewer.

On page 123 the authors compare and contrast images acts and speech acts. They draw many similarities like offering information, demand information and set the mood, but come to the conclusion that each mode has it's own characteristics and method of completing acts. "But if there is such an 'offer of goods-and-services' in images, it must take the form of an 'offer of information'. It must be represented. It cannot be enacted directly." Whereas the speech act can be enacted with directly.

Chapter 3

Every visual has participants- Carriers and possessive attributes. The book says that a representative structure "involve two kinds of participants: one Carrier (the whole) and any number of Possessive Attributes (the parts)" (87). When I read this I immediately sketched a little picture in the margin of my book. This concept was difficult to visualize. I am partly a visual learner and tend to draw alot in this book. Many times the few pictures they are refering to are on the next page. It made me wonder what other pictures I could use to help cement this idea in head. So here are a few I found. I tried to find ones that showed multiple part.

In addition to the carriers and possessive attributes page 105 discusses symbolic processes and states they "are about what a participant means or is." This makes perfect sense to me, other terms may be a bit fuzzy but after reading about attributes (page 50), symbolic to it adds an additional factor that is understandable. Symbolic= representative in nature. So a symbolic processes is a representative process. The authors go on with this concept further on page 106 and adds suggestive to the attribute and creates and discusses the symbolic suggestive process.

Digital Remix

Chapter 2 Narrative Representations

Vectors seemed to be one of the main focuses of this chapter. The original defintion given, "What in language is realized by words of the category 'action verbs' is visually realized by elements that can be formally defined as vectors"(p46) appeared to give an adequate definition, but as I continued through the reading I kept trying to nail down a clearer view of what it was. It seems that vectors can be signs, brackets, arrows and basically anything that helps to guide or give direction. Vectors are important for any communication model or any other model intended to inform.

In the discussion of visual structures creating reality, the authors states, "On the contrary, they produce images of reality which are bound up with the interests of the social institutions within which the images are produced, circulated and read. They are ideological, Visual structures are never merely formal: they have a deeply important semantic dimension" (47). Ideology and the beliefs one holds are a fliter in which people view images and the meaning they gather.

Non-transactional structures appear to be static and therefore do not take in the use of vectors. Non-transactional processes do not necessarily involve people and seems to be unrelational in nature. There is only one part that is has no goal or action. The book used nonhuman elements to describe this type of process, "the water of the Gulf Stream does not move something, it just moves; and the wind of the Mistral does not blow something, it just blows" (63).

Tell Me More

The Introduction and Chapter one provided interesting background and theory on visual communication. One thing I noticed was that the authors would make statements that would make strong assertions but then never explain or go in depth about them. I am interested to see if the book continues this or explains those assertions.

So this blog post consists of some the assertions and my thoughts on them.

1. "Not being 'visually literate' will begin to attract social sanctions" (3). -What do they mean by 'social sanctions?'
2. 'Visual literacy' will begin to be a matter of survival, especially in the workplace" (3). - What is this based one? I want to read more about this but this sentence comes at the end of the paragraph.
3. "Within Western visual design, however, we believe that our theory applies to all forms of visual communication" (4). - this seems very generalized and it sounds like they found a culture to fit their theory instead of vice versa.
4. "Perspective is unique to images" (19)-- Why is it unique? I would like a little more explanation.
5. "Language in its spoken form is a natural phenomenon, common to all human groups" (21).- This is a poor word choice. A phenomenon and common? I understand what they are saying but a different word like - occurrence would have conveyed the message better.

Science and Globalization Chapters

I think the authors of the book took the last two chapters to bring in ideas that are not necessarily related to visal communication. It seems as though they are advocating the stance that everything in culture is intertwined and connected. Some parts of the chapters appeared to have nothing to do with visual communication until the authors would tack on a sentence at the end of the paragraph connecting it all. It seems as though they were trying to say that visual and culture go hand-in-hand and that you can't have one with out the other. The end of chapter 9 is says, "Similarly, as we have shown, scientific images have cultural meanings that govern not only how they are produced and for what purpose but also how they are interpreted and gain cultural value" (384). The things we see affect the culture and social constructions that we participate in.

For example-

We see this bumper sticker and associate it with elections, a cultural influence-




This is car symbol is part of the 'going-green' cultural wave-

This American Eagle symbol on a shirt identifies a person as part of the American Eagle culture-

The Wikipedia not only a place to look up culture but creates it as well.





One of my personal favorites-

Not in Your Face

I inserted pictures that give me ideas of what I could do for my digital remix. I think I have decided to create pictures that convey my topic, fear, in a subtle way. I want to take normal scenes and add some element of fear to them.








This last picture is the effect that I will be trying to achieve with my digital remix.

Final Avatar

Visuals and Advertising

On Monday we had an STC meeting. The speaker was Bobby Rettew a MAPC graduate. He had a lot of great things to say but one of the things that resonated with me was his point about technology. He said he hasn’t use Dreamweaver and InDesign in a long time. He has self taught himself on all the software that he currently uses. In Visual Communication we all thought that learning the programs would be the most important part of the class. It has been commented in class that the most crucial thing to learn is the concepts and the theories about visuals. Software and programs come and go, technology advances, and learning a specific program is not what makes a person successful at what they do. Having a MAPC graduate who is successful and in the industry helps to reinforce these ideas.


Of course the other big thing this week was the Superbowl, which goes along great with chapter seven. Chapter seven states that ads make promises, show how life could be, point out inadequacies and promote a certain cultural ideal.

The commercials were great and here are a few of my favorites-

Monster.com - points out an inadequacies




Bridgestone-makes a promise




Doritos -cultural ideals

Second Life Avatar

After changing avatar's appearance-


I haven't narrowed down exactly the direction I want to go with my theme but I chose my avatar's name- Phobia to represent my theme. I am sure that my avatar will continue to change to represent fear but for right now I changed her skin, clothes and hair so that she wouldn't be called a newbie anymore.

Initial Second Life Avatar

Phobia Innovia before making improvements

Reproductions and Visual Techniques

The beginning of chapter five begins with reproduction and the advances in visual technologies. The author makes the statement, "We argue against this approach, because technology itself does not determine change" (184). This is termed technological determinism.

Wikipedia says,

"Technological determinism is a reductionist doctrine
that a society's technology determines its cultural values, social structure, or
history. Rather than acknowledging that a society or culture interacts with and
even shapes the technologies that are used, a determinist view holds that "the
uses made of technology are largely determined by the structure of the
technology itself, that is, that its functions follow from its form" (Neil Postman)."

Technology changes so slowly that the technology does not force change but rather responds and adapts to social change. Although some changes have been forced by technology like computer books, classes, etc. geared towards older generations, overall most technological advances can be traced to social wants and desires.


I thought the section on the advances in photography was interesting and I wanted to track and compare the different types of photography types. I was able to find a picture of Abraham Lincoln in each type-


Daguerreotype
(a silver compound adheres to a mirrored surface)

Ambrotype

(collidon on wet glass is dipped in a silver compound)

Tintype
(silver compound put on an iron plate)

By putting these pictures in my blog I have proven the author's point of the power of reproduction. Because of the technological advances I am able to easily locate old pictures and reproduce them instantly and accurately. "The rare and cherished old photograph of our grandmother at age five, fading and crumbling in the family album, becomes a bit less difficult to lose when we have preserved it in a digital file that can be stored, copied, sent via e-mail, or placed on a photo album website" (214).

Art and Ideas

Jean- Auguste- Dominique Ingres's painting La Grande Odalisque and the Keri advertisement is an interesting usage of visuals to convey a message. The Keri advertisement was tapping into the aspects and positive points of the painting. Keri was also relying on a knowledgeable audience. This made me consider what other advertisements are based on works of art and what the companies are trying to convey by using works of art.


Mazda


















Lego

I couldn't find a lot of examples but the Mazda one was very interesting. I'm not entirely sure what Mazda is trying to conveying with this ad other than it is an integral part of our society.

"And the marketplace of images has become more self-conscious, playing with the issues of power and looking, and in the process has produced new image codes in film, television, advertising, and on the Web" (136). The word 'marketplace' could be in relation to groups of ideas and connotations that need weighing, trading and/or bargaining, The struggle of weighing all the ideas is a part of producing necessary conclusions. I think the struggle to find the conclusions is the catalyst to producing new thoughts and ideas.

"Particular visual styles can thus help us to generally date an image, evoking an earlier moment in history" (143). The way something looks gives off a lot of information--its period in history, its social classification, among many other ideas. I believe this is the idea behind the argument concerning the confederate flag. For some people the flag signifies slavery, bondage and discrimination. Others claim it represents their southern heritage. This is an illustration of how many images can evoke different connotations and reputations.

Theme Selection

I have spent a lot time thinking about a theme and trying to find something that would not only be interesting but somewhat academic. Many ideas I had were fun and interesting but I wasn't sure I would want a potential employer to see them. I finally came up with two ideas that I think would work well in my portfolio and be interesting to work on throughout this semester.



1. My first and favorite idea is exploring the concept of fear. This is broad right now but I plan on choosing specific fears like the paranormal, spiders and possibly others. I created my avatar and choose the name Phobia.



2. My other idea for is Ancient Rome. I enjoy history and Ancient Rome has influenced American culture and would provide interesting architecture to try to recreate in Second Life. This is also broad right now but would be narrowed down to possibly Women in Ancient Rome.

Pictures and Culture

The myth of photographic truth makes photos and pictures so powerful. We assume that what we see actually occurred. Photos equal reality. We believe what we see and as the author stated we use photos as proof of life and circumstances. I remember in my government class in high school, my teacher held up a picture and asked us if we thought the picture was real. There was much discussion about how to tell if the picture had been altered. That was several years ago and since then technology and software has progressed to where many times, if done right, the changes are many times unnoticeable. But culturally I think that the myth is still believed and acted upon.


Another aspect of the photographic truth is the emotional component of pictures. Not only does society assume that the photo is true, but it also attaches emotion and meanings to the image. Whether it be our own photos of loved ones or professional photographs, pictures carry emotion and are able to evoke a response. Pictures are seen as credible and beliveable and that aspect gives the photographs the ability and power to create such a response.


"Practices of looking are intimately tied to ideology" (23). What society believes directs them to the photos taken, the pictures that are desired and the emotion tied to an image. Cultural choices are based on this and further the cultural beliefs and its influence. American ideology places importance on democracy and freedom. This cultural ideal directs to either accept or reject images and their connotations. This cultural ideal is perpetuated by itself. We believe this is ideal and we uphold it and spread it as part of our national pride.