Scarica Modality: A Social Theory of Reality - Understanding High and Low Modality Pictures e più Sbobinature in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity!
Modality: a social theory of the real
This is the last element, the one that you use in a regular basis.
Modality is our way of expressing reality, judgements on reality.
- One of the crucial issues in communication is the question of the reliability of messages.
For example the filters that you use on Instagram they are a certain way to make judgements
on reality.
- We trust some of the information we receive on the basis of modality markers in the
message itself, textual cues for what can be regarded as credible and what should be treated
with circumspection.
- These modality markers have been established by the groups within which we interact as
relatively reliable guides to the truth of factuality of messages, and they have developed out
of the central values, beliefs and social needs of that group.
- The concept of modality is equally essential in accounts of visual communication. Visual
can represent people, places and things as though they were real, as though they actually
existed in this way, or as though they did not.
So in Visual communication, modality markers express if a picture can be judged as close to
or not to the representation of reality.
HIGH MODALITY PICTURES are picture that can be judged as naturalistic, the closer
the picture is to reality the higher is its modality’s degree. So there are specific modality that
allows us to say that. They are the actual representation of reality.
LOW MODALITY represents an unrealistic picture. The more a picture is judged
unrealistic, the further is to reality, the lower is its modality’s degree.
Does this mean that a picture which has the highest degree of modality is the nearest to
reality?
NO
Modality is a scalar notion: An image which shows too many details is low on modality,
because in real life we do not notice all these details and elements.
Reality is in the middle.
When looking at a picture, the following modality markers can be distinguished:
(So that are the modality markers that allow us to say if a picture is a high of modality, so
it’s realistic, or is low on modality, so it’s an unrealistic type of picture)
- Color saturation : a scale running from full color saturation (high modality) to the absence
of color (low modality), that is, to black and white (those are unrealistic pictures because
they are modified, black and white pictures capture memories). Color saturation is a
modality that is typically used in TV series, movies and social media and this is related to
what we want to express linked to the type of color saturation that we use.
Examples :
world of the aristocracy and the world of the working class. If you remember we were commenting the different modality markers that can be used in images. Modality markers are a sort of judgments on reality so they allow images to be high or low on modality, meaning they are more naturalistic or not. This is linked, of course, to the expressions of reality, how we want to represent reality through images. We started with colour saturation, we said that colour saturation is a way to repeat one of the least used modality markers, it is one of this modality marker that is frequently used in images to convey given emotions so saturation is typically a way to do this. Another example that I want to provide is from Downton Abbey. Why Downton Abbey? I don’t know if you are familiar with Downton Abbey, a TV series that featured the life of this wealthy family at the very beginning of 20th century. The TV series follows over the decades the life of this family so we see how they live through World War One, then we approach World War 2 and so forth and we look at reality through their eyes, the changes linked to reality through their eyes. It reminds me of “the remains of the day” by Ishiguro (If you never heard of this author, please go to a good store and buy the remains of the day. The other one that I really love and that I have read multiple times and every time it makes me cry is “Never Let Me Go” by Ishiguro. It is one of those books who questions reality. I love the way they describe reality, the language that they used. Every time you read one of this books you perceive, you feel his love for words like there are some descriptions that there are still beautiful, there are specific words that are so peculiar. So Downton Abbey reminds me of an actual representation of those two books). In Downton Abbey colour saturation is actually used to achieve a specific purpose, colour saturation in Downton Abbey is used to distinguish two lifestyles, two worlds: that of the aristocracy and that of the working class. Typically, the working class environment we see that the reds are quite subtle, so they are not present. I will show you a clip where the faces of working class people are shock white, almost shock white. While when we go upstairs, into the world of the aristocracy, you feel like the reds are not very bright but pinks are there also because white skin was a peculiarity of the aristocracy. White skin was an indication that you belonged to a specific class. Now I’m going to show you an example. It is taken from the very first episode of this series just to show you this difference. There is this butler Mr. Carson who travels between worlds: he is the one who communicates things, interacts with his family. Actually he's kind of a father figure for some of the ladies of the house. You see when he’s here, his face is almost white, you can see that the reds are not highlighted.
As you can see, his face is almost white when he is ironing the paper. They used to iron the paper because the ink was fresh so in order to keep gentleman’s hands cleans, butler and servants used to iron the paper so that their hands would stay clean. (provate anche oggi, se sfogliate un giornale un po’ le mani si fanno sporche, si stirava Il giornale per evitare questo) If we go, on the other hand, into the other world, the aristocracy world, the space is almost normal, the reds are there. In this scene there is a problem concerning the loss of an estate, the house where they are living belong to one of their family members who died into the Titanic incident and they are trying to discuss who is going to take over this estate and so one. The one who is going to take this estate is the one who was in the library. On the other hand, the other example is from Game of Thrones, here colour saturation is used differently, actually is used to distinguish between geographical areas so typically this is common in movies, tv series and so on. In those Geographical areas images are colour saturated where the reds are highlighted, the yellows are highlighted. In cold geographical area, on the other hand, we have this kind of blues, greens that are highlighted. Let me provide an example once more. I don’t know if you have read the book or watched the series, but the geographical areas are quite important in this type of fantasy saga, we have like three geographical areas: the north of Westeros, the south of Essos, and here we are in… (il prof non si ricorda il nome dell’ultima area geografica). The south of these realms are quite hot, there is a kind of Mediterranean flavour, for this reason the reds are highlighted because we feel the warmth.
contextualization a scale running from the absence of background (low modality), to the most fully articulated and detailed background (high on modality) In older Hollywood movies shot in a studio with back projection (i.e a close-up of an actor in a car, in front of a rear window behind which we see the receding landscape), the background is sharper and more defined, resulting in a somewhat artificial, "more than real' impression-> low on modality Contextualization is linked to the background. It goes from the absence of background which is low modality), to the most fully articulated and detailed background, which is high on modality. If you remember the ad, that one with Charlize Theronwn where we had like a blurred background, only that old sensation of background, there was a sort of absence of background because we want to teach you how light the person was in the front of picture. Now there is, however, once more an example I wanted to provide: In older Hollywood movies, I don’t know if you had ever watched one of these movies, specifically those scenes where we have people driving a car and so on. Sometimes the background was sharper than the actual carpets and you get that artificial feeling, you get that feeling they are not driving in reality but they are in a studio. So again remember that if the background is too sharper than you see in reality, then the picture is low on modality. Il professore mostra una clip tratta dal film Rebecca come esempio di low on modality. This is a clip from a movie called Rebecca, a movie that has inspired many others movies. The story of this young girl who falls in love with this older man, very catchy man, very cold man but he keeps on trying to keep her at distance and so on, then of course they fall in love but when she goes in Leads with him, there is this servant who works there, which keeps on remanding her that he was married before and the presence of this ex-wife, who is dead, is quite there: in their house, in the clothes, in the furniture and so on. She starts getting quite scared by all this situation especially with the servant which tries to protect this house from her and so on. There is this scene which is sharper than what we would usually see when we are driving. You see they are driving and it should be quite blurred and we get that feeling that they are not actually driving: there is a projector, projecting behind them the streets. So this was the example I wanted to provide. Would you have the possibility to have all this details if you were driving? Absolutely no, because you need to concentrate and so on. So this was another example of contextualization. Then we have representation. SLIDE- 6. MODALITY: A SOCIAL THEORY OF THE REAL When looking at a picture, the following modality markers can be distinguished: Representation =a scale running from maximum abstraction (low modality) to maximum representation of pictorial details (high modality). An image may show every detail of the represented participants. There is a point beyond which a further increase of details becomes "hyper-real' and, hence, lowers down modality from the point of view of 'photographic' naturalism. Representation is still linked to the details that we find in pictures and representation is a scale running from maximum abstraction to maximum representation of pictorial details. So think of the image that I provided previously, the one with the joyousness feeling, there were too many details, too many pictorial details in that picture, making it feel a little bit hyper-realistic. So, naturalistic images fall in between of this: there shouldn’t be either maximum abstractions or maximum of too many pictorial details in a picture. And then we have:
SLIDE- 6. MODALITY: A SOCIAL THEORY OF THE REAL
When looking at a picture, the following modality markers can be distinguished: Depth= a scale running from the absence of depth (low modality) to maximally deep perspective (high modality) So a perspective which is realistic. Than we have illumination: SLIDE- 6. MODALITY: A SOCIAL THEORY OF THE REAL When looking at a picture, the following modality markers can be distinguished: Illumination = a scale running from the fullest representation of the play of light and shade (high modality) to its absence (low modality). Sometimes the images that we create on Instagram are played with illumination and sometimes we play too much with illumination and we look like characters which we actually aren’t. If we go back, (I know people will kill me for this), to the slide of representation, I don’t know if you have ever watched those fifty something people who take these selfies in which their skin is smooth and everything, they look like younger and so on. That isn’t very naturalistic so it’s law on modality. If you use this filters to beautify your face. And then we have brightness: SLIDE- 6. MODALITY: A SOCIAL THEORY OF THE REAL When looking at a picture, the following modality markers can be distinguished: Brightness = a scale running from a maximum number of different degrees of brightness (high modality) to just two degrees: black and white, or dark grey and lighter grey, or two brightness values of the same colour (low modality). These are all the elements of modality that we have seen. SLIDE- REMEMBER No universal grammar of visual design; Visual language is not transparent and universally understood, but culturally specific Western visual communication is influenced by the West's convention of writing from left to right, whereas other cultures write from right to left or top to bottom and will therefore produce different visual meanings. Now, what I would highlight before we end this presentation and move on the next topic in our class, is that first there is no universal grammar of visual design. The examples we have seen are from western context. So visual grammars aren’t always representing all and shouldn’t be representing all but the culture we are investigating so there is not a universally understood grammar but it is always cultural specific. Remember that, just like languages, well this is what I believe and in general there are people who believe in universal grammars of language, of course we should always apply our understanding of how visual and verbal elements are used to the culture we are investigating. That was something that was necessary to highlight.
