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Reading Images
1.The semiotic landscape
In the early years of schooling the texts that were produced were richly illustrated but towards the later years of primary school images began to give way to a bigger propotion of written text. So images didn’t disappear but they came specialized in their function. The situation in school basically remained the same but there are two important conditions: images in the more technical/scientific subjects (Science) have become the major means of representing curricular content, while in the more humanistic subjects (History) they vary their function between illustration, decoration and information. However in materials demanded from children (by a teacher) writing remains the expected and dominant mode. Outside school images play an ever-increasing role. Most texts now involve a complex interplay of written texts, images and other graphic or sound elements, but the skill of producing these multimodal texts is not taught in schools and, to put this harshly, this new visual literacy produces more illiterates. While the old visual literacy, which is writing, has for centuries now been one of the most essential value of Western culture and goals of education, so much that a major distinction has been made between literate and non-literate cultures. The opposition to the emergence of visual as a full means of representation is not based against the visual itself but against those situations where it forms an alternative to writing and can be seen as a possible threat to the dominance of verbal literacy among elite groups. Nowadays the importance of visual communication is evident and the absence of means for thinking about what is actually communicated by images is problematic. One of the early semioticians, Roland Barthes, in his essay Rhetoric of the image , claimed that the meaning of images is always related and dependent on verbal texts, because by themselves they are too polysemous. He distinguished between an image-text relation, called relay, in which the verbal text extend the meaning of the image and vice versa (es. speech ballons in comic strips), so that new and different meanings are added to complete the message, and an in one in which the verbal text elaborates the image, or vice versa, so that the same meanings are restated in a different way. Of the two, elaboration is dominant and Barthens distinguished two types of it: one in which the text comes first and and images are an illustration of it, and one in which the image comes first so that texts form a more definite restatement of it. Before 1600 Barthes argued that illustration was dominant, so images elaborated texts, specifically the founding texts of the culture (Mythology, the Bible...), but this was until nature became the source of authority and (in the era of science) images began to function as observations or as “the book of nature” and verbal texts as interpreters of them, loading them with culture, moral and imagination. Although this descriptions may at times be dominant, today things are a little different. One important difference is the use of work in linguistic theories and descriptions. These ones have not been importend directly on the domain of the visual (es. we don’t make a separation of syntax, semantics and pragmatics,…). The view that has been taken (in this book) is that language and visual communication can both be used to realize the fundamental system of meaning that constitute our cultures, but each does so by means of its own specific forms, differently and independently. However, each medium has its
own possibilities and limitations of meaning. Not everything that can be realized in langauge can also be realized by means of images, or vice versa. The approach to communication (of this book) starts from a social base, in fact the meanings expressed by speakers, writers, printmakers, photographers, designers, painters and sculptures are first and foremost social meanings, while acknowledging the importance pf individual differences. Given that society are not homogeneous, but composed by groups with varying interests, the messages produced by individuals and the different modes through which texts are constructed will reflect the differences that characterize social life, so that in a multimodal text using writing and images, the writing may carry one set of meanings and the images carry another. An unconventional history of writing The dominance of the verbal, written medium over other visual media is firmly coded in conventional histories of writing. Language in its spoken form its a natural phenomenon; writing, however, is the achievement of only some cultures. In fact, at a particular stage in the history of certain cultures, there developed the need to male records of transactions of various kinds, which were initially iconic. This led to what is regarded as the rarest of all achievements, the invention of alphabetic writing. It developed out of iconic, image-based scripts. First an object was represented by an image of it, then this image came to stand for the name of the object and after then for its initial letter. Clearly it was a process where each step involved considerable abstraction, so much that alphabetic writing has been invented only once in the history of human cultures. However, it is worth investigating the crucial step from visual representation to the link with language more closely. Prior to this step there were two indepentent modes of representation, language-as- speech and the visual image, both serving particular purposes (the construction of myths, the recording of measurements…), until one form took over the other, as a means of recording. So the visual was taken over by the verbal as its means of recording. In other cultures, however, this development did not occur and the visual continued along with the verbal (Inca quipu strings). In this connection it is interesting to consider the history of the words grammar and syntax, that together indicate the initially independent organization of the mode of images and the mode of verbal language, but at the same time, the subsequent history of the word grammar brings out clearly the subordination of the visual medium to the medium of verbal language. Our unconventional history of writing is one that treats the coming together of visual and verbal representation as only one possibility and one that brings with it both the benefits of writing and the negative aspects incurred in the loss of an independent form of representation, the diminution of modes of expression and representation. The ‘old’ and the ‘new’ visual literacy in books for the very young We have distinguished two kinds of visual literacy: one in which visual communication has been made subservient to language and in which images have been viewed as unstructured replicas of reality; and another in which spoken language exists side by side with, and independent of, forms of visual representation which are openly structured. Both exist side by side, at least in the contemporary Western culture, and we may be in the middle of a shift in valuation and uses from one mode to another in many important social contexts. The very first books children encounter may introduce them to particular kinds of visual literacy. For example, Baby’s First Book , declares
Summary: -Visual communication is always coded. It seems transparent only because we know the code already, but without knowing what it is we know and without having the means for talking about what it is we do when we read an image. -Societies tend to develop explicit ways for talking only about semiotic resources which play the most important role in controlling the common understandings they need in order to function. Until now, (written) language has been the most highly valued and the most prescriptively taught mode in our society. If this is now changing in favour of more multiple means of representation, then educationalists need to rethink what should be taught and consider the new and still changing place of writing as a mode with these new arrangements. The semiotic landscape The place of visual communication in a given society can only be understood in the context of the range of forms and modes of public communication available in that society and their uses and valuations. We refer to this as the semiotic landscape. Each feature of a landscape has its history and each is subject to constant remaking. Semiotic modes are shaped both by intrinsic characteristics and potentialities of the medium and by requirements, histories and values of societies and their cultures. The new realities of the semiotic landscape are brought about by social, cultural and economic factors: by the intensification of linguistic and cultural diversity within the boundaries of nation states; by the weakening of these boundaries within societies (due to multiculturalism and global economic developments). The place, use, function and valuation of language in public communication is changing, moving to a role as one mode among others, to the function, for instance, of being a mode for comment, for ratification, or for labelling, albeit more so in some domains than in others and more rapidly in some areas than in others. (To explain it better let’s think about a child who drew some pictures on six different pages, then he put them in order. The father, who had just noticed everything, asked what he was doing and so the child explained it to him. So the process of representation and classification had proceeded through the visual medium, it took place in the visual mode, but the child was forced to use words when the parent came along, so speech was necessary to describe what had taken place without it. Two weeks later the child brought home some exercise books and one of the tasks was of classification, undertaken at school prior to the making og the drawings at home. If we think about this period of two weeksm the child’s production of signs involved a series of distinct semiotic modes and of translations between such modes. First the teacher spoke with the children about the task; then introduce the book and showed them what was at issue; the children used their pencil to draw the connecting lines; and finally the teacher engaged the children in spoken discussion, making them comment on their work. Of course, while all this took place the child would no doubt have experienced constantly shifting emotional states. He might have been enthused by the task or he might have had a difficult time and all of this would have influenced how the activity was taken up by him. In other words, here, the affective aspects are always one with, and act continuously as a modlaity on, cognitive semiotic processes.
The incessant process of translation or transcoding between a range of semiotic modes represents a more adequate understanding of communication. So in many areas of public communication it clearly matters which semiotic modes of representation and communication are dominant. ) Summary: human societies use a variety of modes of representation; each mode has different representational potentials and specific social valuation in particular social contexts; individuals havr available a range of means of meaning-making, each affecting the formation of their subjectivity; affective aspects of human beings are never separated from representational and communicative behaviour; each mode of representation has a continuously evolving history, in which semantic reach can contract or expand or move into different areas of social use. A note on a social semiotic theory of communication In order to function as a full system of communication, the visual has to serve as several representational and communicational requirements. For this purpose we can use Michael Halliday’s notion of metafunction. There are three metafunctions which he claims them to be the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual. -Ideational metafunction: any semiotic mode has to be able to represent objects and their relations in a world outside the representational system. So semiotic modes offer an array of choices in which an object and their relations to other objects can be represented (vectors, tree structure). -Interpersonal metafunction: any semiotic mode has to be able to project the relations between the producer of a sign and the receiver of that sign. So the modes offer an arry of choices for representing different interpersonal relations between the producer, the viewer and the object represented. -Textual metafunction: any semiotic mode has to have the capacity to form texts, complexes of signs which cohere both internally with each other and externally with the context in and for which they are produced. Visual grammar makes a range of resouces available.
2.Narrative representations: designing social action
Participants The term participants points to the relational characteristic of participant in something and it draws attention to the fact that there are two types of participant involved in every semiotic act: interactive participants, which are the participants in the act of communication (who speak, write, read, make images…) and represented participants, that is people, places and things represented in and by the speech or writing or image. The situation is of course more complex than this, because sometimes the two categories may shade into each other. In the case of abstract visuals such as diagrams it does not seem too difficult to determine who or what the represented participants are. Shannon and Weaver’s famous communication model, for instance, is made up of boxes and arrows which respectively represent participants and the processes that relate them (boxes=nouns, arrows=verbs, together=clauses). However, in the case of more detailed naturalistic images, it may be difficult but also useless to try and identify the represented participants. Any way some think that they can
literally is straight and the straightness may carry a vast range of meanings). Second, these meanings derive from the common qualities we may detect in objects in our environment and from the values attached to these qualities in different social contexts. From basic shapes other geometrical shapes can be derived, in fact squares, circles and triangles can be horizontally or vertically elongated to different degrees, as well as towards the right or towards the left. Vertically elongation creates a pronounced distinction between top and bottom and hence a bias of hierarchy, so that what is most important goes on top and what is less important is relegated to the bottom. Horizontal elongation leans to a structure in which what is positioned on the left is presented as given, as information that is already known to the reader, while what is on the right is presented as new, as information not yet known to the reader. Finally it is important the interchangeability of visual and verbal participants in diagrams and in many other visual genres. In fact, the participants which relate to each other may be of different kinds (pictures, words, abstract shapes…). So visual structures relate visual elements to each other which may themselves be heterogeneous. Narrative processes When participants are connected by a vector they are represented as doing something to or for each other. These vectorial patterns can be referred to as narrative and which are in contrast to conceptual patterns. While the latters represent participants in their generalized essence, narrative patterns serve to present actions and processes of change. In abstract images, such as diagrams, the vectors representing narrative patterns are oblique lines with an arrowhead which means that something “is connected to” or “is related to”. The Actor is the participant from whom or which the vector departs and which may be fused with it to different degrees. However, the meaning potential of diagrammatic vectors is broad, abstract and difficult to put into words. The accompanying texts tend to be more explicit about participants and things existing in space than about processes, events and actions. Scientific and bureaucratic writings generally put most of their meaning in the nouns rather than in the verbs, which remain restricted to a small set of connectors. Because their meaning is so abstract and general, vectors can represent fundamentally different processes which can be distinguished on the basis of the kinds of vector and the number and kind of participants involved. 1 Action processes The Actor is the participant from which the vector emanates or which itself forms the vector. In images they are often the most salient participants. When images or diagrams have only one participant, it is usually the Actor and the resulting structure is called non-transactional, which has no Goal and is not aimed at anyone or anything (it is therefore analogous to the intransitive verb in language). At other times there is only a vector and a Goal, the participant to whom or which the action is done or aimed. Representations like this are called Events: something is happening to someone but we cannot see who or what makes it happen. When a narrative visual proposition has two participants, one is the Actor and the other is the Goal. These processes are called transactional and here the Actor is the participant which instigates the movement (analogous to a transitive verb). Some transactional structures are bidirectional, each participants playing now the role of Actor, now the role of Goal (as for instance in de Saussure’s speech circuit, in which A and B
are now speaker now listener). It is not always clear if bidirectional transactions are represented as occurring simultaneously or in succession, however, it is usually used one arrow with two heads to signify simultaneity and two arrows pointing in different directions to signify sequentiality. In such structures participants are referred to as Interactors. 2 Reactional processes When the vector is formed by the direction of the glance of one or more of the represented participants, the process is reactional and we will speak of Reacters and Phenomena. The Reacter, who does the looking, must necessarily be human or a human-like animal, while the Phenomenon may be formed either by antoher participant at whom the Reacter is looking or by a whole visual proposition, for example, a transactional structure. Like actions, reactions can be transactional or non-transactional. In the latter case there is no Phenomenon and it then left to the viewer to imagine what he or she is thinking about or looking at. Sometimes photographers or picture editors crop photos back to close-ups of non transactional Reacters who look bored, or animated, or puzzled, at something we cannot see. This can become a source of representational manipulation. A caption may suggest what the Reacter is looking at but it need not be what the Reacter was actually looking at when the picture was taken. 3 Speech process and mental process A special kind of vector is the oblique protrusions of the thought balloons and dialogue balloons that connect drawings of speakers or thinkers to their speech or thought in comic strips. Today they increasingly crop up in other contexts too (in connection with quotes in school textbooks…). These processes, like transactional ones, connect a human being with content, which is the content of a mental process in the case of thought balloons and the content of an inner speech in the case of speech vectors. The Phenomenon of the transactional Reaction and the content of the ballons are not represented directly but ,edoated through a Senser (thought balloon) or a Speaker (dialogue balloon). 4 Conversion process When a chain of transactional processes results in a third kindo of participant, which is the Goal with respect to one participant and the Actor with respect to another, we will call it a Relay. Relays do not just pass on what they receive but they always also transform it. Some models represent communication as a cycle and in that case participants are all Relays. This kind of proces, called Conversion process, is especially common in representations of natural events. 5 Geometrical symbolism Some models use pictorial or abstract patterns as processes whose meanjngs are constituted by their symbolic values and so extended the vectorial vocabulary to other possibilities beyond the diagonal action line or the simple arrow (coils, spirals, helixes). Variants of the arrow may affect the meaning of the process in narrative diagrams (a curved arrow partakes the symbolic value of the circle, so that the process is represented as natural). Vectors may also be attenuated by the use of dotted lines, by making the arrowhead smaller or by placing it in the middle rather than at the front of the line, diminishing the sense of impacting and targeting. It may also be amplified by means of bolder arrows, which suggest a certain density of traffic.
Diagrammatic tree structures can take different forms (the branches of the tree may be parallel or oblique, straight or curved…). The contrast between straight and curved branches is similar to that between the mechanical and technological and the natural and organic. Although classificational structures represent participants in a static order, the verbal levels which may accompany them do not always do so. The term reporting diagram, for instance, uses an active process (report) rather than a static one such as "is subordinate to". Visually, however, a hierarchical order is signified, a system. Thus the visual representation can blur the boundaries between the dynamic and the static. A similar blur may occur between analytical (part of) and classificational (kind of) processes. Classificational diagrams may also be rotated so that their main orientation is along the horizontal axis, typical orientation of narrative diagrams, however, they still represent the relation between the participants as a system. Features from different types of structures are recombined to create patterns that are in between the dynamic and the conceptual. When such diagrams aquire arrows, for example, they become dynamic and narrative but they still move from general to specific in contrast with flowcharts. Taxonomies and flowcharts (diagrammi di flusso) provide two different kinds of knowledge: the first represents the world in terms of a hierarchical order, ranking the phenomena form a single unifying term (the origin of things); the second describes the world in terms of an active process with a clear beginning and an end, it has a sequential progression and is goal-oriented. Recently there is another kind of diagram, the network. Networks tries to show the multiple interconnections between participants. Any participant can form an entry-point from which its environment can be explored and the vectors between them (the participants) can take on different values (signification, combination, composition). So they are, in some sense, associated with each other. We can say that networks are, in the end, modelled on forms of social organization as taxonomies and flowcharts. Taxonomies are modelled on hierarchical organizations in which everything has its pre-ordained place in a grand scheme unified by a single source of authority. Flowcharts are modelled on the principal of a structured, goal-oriented activity. Networks are modelled on a vast labyrinth of intersecting local relations in which each node is related in many different ways to other nodes in its immediate environment but in which it is difficult to form a coherent view of the whole. (Guardare pag. 87) Analytical processes Analytical processes relate participants in terms of a part-whole structure. They involve two kinds of participants: the Carrier (the whole) and any number of Possesive Attributes (the parts). Fashion shots, for instance, are analytical. They display the parts of an outfit and label both the Carrier (easy-wearing, inexpensive cottons…) and the Possesive Attributes (Benetton jodhpurs…). Maps have the same structure: there is a Carrier (Australia) and there are Possessive Attributes (the states of Australia), both labelled either inside the picture space or in a legend. Maps may provide distinct analysis of the same Carrier. Some of them focus on geographical features (waterways, altitude…) while others concentrate on social and political boundaries. Some characteristics of the Carrier are singled out as criterial while others are treated as irrelevant. The difference between
the map and the fashion shot lies in their interpersonal structures, for example in their modality. Many analytical visuals have low modality (depth is reduced or absent, colour is restricted to a reduced palette, background is left out) because too much detail would distract from their analytical purpose, so only the essential features of the Possesive Attributes are shown. There may be analytical pictures in which the purpose is more interactional and emotive than representational, in which the viewers are inclined to use their imagination rather than an impersonal detached scrutinity. Today, the personal and informal enter increasingly many domains which formerly were characterized by impersonal and formal modes of address, verbally as well as visually. Of course, some photographs remain almost as objective as traditional diagrams and maps (mainly scientific and aerial photographs). Abstract art may also be analytical. It analyses reality in terms of Possessive Attributes, highly abastract ones, but it does not label either the Carrier or the Possessive Attributes, it leaves it up to the viewer to do so and as a result this kind of paintings can be read in many different ways. Lowered naturalistic modality is not a defining characteristic of analytic visuals. At most we can say that in specific social contexts there is a tendency for certain modality choices to go together with certain representational choices. The defining characteristic of the analytical process lies in the absence of vectors and the absence of compositional symmetry or tree structures. As a whole the analytical process is the usual and therefore also the most elementary option in the visual system of representation. 1 Unstructured analytical processes Some analytical processes are unstructed; that is, they show us the Possessive Attributes of the Carrier without showing the Carrier itself, they show us the parts but not the way they fit together as a whole. Especially when the Carrier is abstract, it cannot be visualized in an assembled state and any arrangement of the Possessive Attributes is therefore possible. This can be seen, for instance, in advertisements which display all the parts that make up the engine of a car in order to impress the viewer with their sheer abundance. 2 Temporal analytical processes There is also the category of the timeline, a process that occupies an intermediate position between the narrative and the analytical. Timelines involve the temporal dimension, and this suggest narrative but these lines are not vectorial and they analyse history into successive stages with fixed and stable characteristics that can be then treated as though they were things. The essential characteristic of temporal analytical processes is that they are realized by timelines: the participants are arranged on an immaginary or actual line and the timeline may be topographical, drawn to scale or topological, assembling the participants in the right sequence. Timelines may involve all kinds of geometrical symbolism. 3 Exhaustive and inclusive analytical processes Structured analytical processes can be exhaustive, that is, they can exhaustively represent the Possessive Attributes of a Carrier, so that all of the carrier is accounted for. In these structures the Possesive Attributes are joined together to make up a complex shape. Structured analytical processes can also be inclusive, that is, thay can show us only some of the Possessive Attributes of
produce a sense of progress or decline, depending on the order of the Possessive Attributes along the horizontal axis. Something similar can happen in language. In particular, Hodge and Kress focused on the effects of the transformation of nominalization, which turns clauses such as “people learned” into nominals such as “people’s learning” which may then become actors in new events (“the new learning spread”). The dynamization of two-dimensional analytical processes cannot occur when the arrangement is vertical. (Guardare pag. 104) Symbolic processes Symbolic processes are about what a participant means or is. Either there are two participants (the Carrier and the Symbolic Attribute=Symbolic Attribuitive process) or there is only one participant (the Carrier=Symbolic Suggestive process). Symbolic attributes are objects with one or more characteristics: -they are made salient in the representation in one way or another (by being placed in the foreground, through exaggerated size…);
- they are pointed by means of a gesture which can only be interpreted as the action of pointing out the symbolic attribute to the viewer (arrows); -they look out of place in the whole; -they are conventionally associated with symbolic values. Human participants in Symbolic Attribuitive Processes usually pose for the viewer, rather than being shown as involved in some action. This means that they just sit or stand there, for no reason other than to display themselves to the viewer. Symbolic Suggestive Processes have only one participant, the Carrier. They cannot be interpreted as analytical because here detail tends to be de-emphasized in favour of what could be called atmosphere, which can be realized in several ways (colours, lightning…). The way in which the blurring of detail occurs then lends symbolic values to the Carrier (a soft gold would confer on the Carrier the values associated with softness). As a result Symbolic Suggestive Processes represent meaning and identity as coming from within the Carrier themselves. Embedding In language, sentences can be simple (consisting of only one clause/process) or complex (containing several clauses, each with their own process, coordinated with or subordinated to each other) and pictures too, can be simple or complex. Which of the structures are major or minor is, in visual, determined by the relative size and conspicuousness of the elements. Conceptual structures in language There are some points of contact between the way conceptual structures are realized in language and images. We could make a comparison starting from the kinds of linguistic structures Halliday calls relational and existential processes. He recognizes two main categories of relational process,
the Attributive and the Identify process. The meaning of an Attributive process clause can be schematically described as “a is an attribute of x” in which “a” is simply called Attribute and the participant whose attribute it is, Carrier. The meaning of an Identifying Relational Process clause can be schematically described as “a is the identity of x” in which the identity “a” is the Value and the participant “x” whose identity it is, is the Token. In Identifying clauses the order of the participant can be reversed, whereas in Attributive clauses this is not the case. Existential clauses, finally, simply state that something exist. They only have one participant, the Exitent and may either be an Event or an Entity. The precence of a dummy subject (there or refentless it) is the principal identifying characteristic of existential clauses. Visual Classification and Analytical structures could therefore be said to be akin to, respectively, Intensive and Possessive Attributive clauses, and Symbolic Attributive structures could be seen as akin to Identifying clauses, and there is perhaps also some affinity between the Symbolic Suggestive structures and Existential clauses. But the differences are greater than the similarities. The visual semiotic has a range of structural devices which have no equivalent in language.
4 Representation and interaction: designing the position of the viewer
Images involve two kinds of participants, represented participants, the people, the places and the things depicted in images, and ineractive participants, the people who communicate with each other through images, the producers and viewers of images, and three kinds of relations: relations between represented participants; relation between interactive and represented participants; relation between interactive participants. Interactive participants are therefore real people who produce and make sense of images. In some cases the interaction is direct and immediate (producer and viewer are involved in face-to face- interaction), but in many cases there is no direct involvement (the producer is absent from the viewer and the viewer is absent for the producer). In everyday face-to-face communication, there is always an image-producer and viewer and there are the represented participants and these may include the producer and/or the viewer themselves. Producer and viewer are physically present but the participants they represent need not to be. However, when there is a dijunction beteen the context of production and the context of reception, the producer is not physically present and the viewer is alone with the image and cannot reciprocate. However important is this disjunction, the two conexts do have some elements in common: the image itself and knowledge of the communicative resources that allow its understanding, a knowledge of the way social interactions and social relations can be encoded in images. This disjunction also causes social relations to be represented rather than enacted. Even when the viewer receives an image of the producer (which is physically absent in this case), that is only an image, a representation detached from his or her actual body. The relation between producer and viewer, too, is represented rather than enacted. In face-to-face communication we must respond to a friendly smile with a friendly smile, but when images confront us with a friendly smile we are not obliged to respond, even though we understand how we are addressed. The image act and the gaze There is a fundamental difference between pictures from which represented participants look directly at the viewer’s eyes and pictures in which is not the case. The visual configuration, in the
There is a second dimension to the interactive meanings of images, related to the size of frame, which means that imahe-producers must also choose to depict human or quasi-human participants as close to or far away from the viewer (close-up, medium shot, long shot). The choice of distance can suggest different relations between viewers and represented participants and in everyday interaction, social relations determine that. Edward Hall shows that we carry a series of invisible boundaries beyond which we allow only certain people to come. Close personal distance is the distance between people who have an intimate relation with each other, non-intimates cannot come close and if they do so, it is considered some kind of aggression. Far personal distance is the distance at which subjects of personal interests and involvements are discussed (people can touch fingers if they extend their arms). Close social distance is the distance at which impersonal business occurs. Far social distance is the distance to which people move when somebody says “Stand away so I can look at you”. Public distance is the distance between people who are and are to remain strangers. With these differences correspond different fields of vision. At intimate distance we see the face or head only; at close personal distance we take in the head and the shoulders; at far personal distance we see the other person from the waist up; at close social distance we see the whole figure; at far social distance we see the whole figure with space around it; and at public distance we can see the torso of at least four or five people. The system of social distance can apply also to the representation of objects and of the environment, as objects come in many different shapes and sizes. That size of frame can suggest social relations between the viewer and objects, buildings and landscapes. At close distance the object is shown as if the viewer is engaged with it (film and television cutaways of objects use this distance). At middle distance the object is shown in full but without much space around it, ot is within the viewer’s reach but not actually used(advertising). At long distance there is an invisible barrier between the viewer and the object, it is for our contemplation only and out of reach. The same kind of distinctions can be made with respect to representations of buildings and landscapes. In the English language there are different ways in which social distance is realized. Intimate language is a kinf of personal language spoken only by members of a couple or family, or by a group of school friends. The speaker of such language have special names for each other, the language is minimally articulated and non-verbal expressions carry most of the meaning. Personal language is casual, colloquial enough, non-verbal expressions still carry most of the meaning but not so much that half a word is enough. Social language is still colloquial but it begins to introduce a hint of formality and the language need to be more verbally explicit. Public language, finally, is the language used in more or less formal address. Speech is no longer improvised but thought out in advance, intonation and non-verbal expression become more formal and speech must be fully explicti and articulated verbally. Perspective and the subjective image There is another way in which images bring about relations between represented participants and the viewer: perspective. The system of perspective developed in the Reinassance, when individuality and subjectivity became important social values. Perspective became dominant with its single, centralized view point so picture began to be framed precisely, marking off the image from its environment and turning it into a window on the world. Since Reinassance there are two
kinds of images in Western culture: subjective images, with central perspective, in which the viewer can see what there is to see only from a particular point of view; objective images, without central perspective, in which the image reveals everything there is to know about the represented participants, even of to do so it is necessary to violate the laws of naturalistic depiction or the laws of nature. Modern technical drawings, for instance, may show what we know which about the participants they represent (what is objectively there), rather than what we would see if we were looking at them in reality (what is subjectively there). The system of perspective is fundamentally naturalistic. It developed in a period in which the world of nature was no longer manifesting a divine order but as an autonomous and meaningless order whose laws also governed the conduct of people. Involvement and the horizontal angle Horizontal angle is a function of the relation between the frontal plane of the image-producer and the frontal plane of the represented participants. The two can either be parallel, aligned with one another, or form an angle, diverge from one another. The image can have either a frontal or an oblique point of view. There are degrees of obliqueness and we will speak of a frontal angle so long as the vanishing point(s) still fall(s) within the vertical boundaries of the image. The difference between the oblique and the frontal angle is the difference between detachment and involvement. The horizontal angle encodes wheter the image-producer is involved with the represented participants or not (frontal angle=participants involved; oblique angle=participants not involved). In the depiction of humans, involvement and detachment can interact with demand and offer in complex ways. The body of a represented participant may be angled away from the plane of the viewer, while his or her head and/or gaze may be turned towards it or vice versa. Involvement in language, perhaps, may be realized by the system of possessive pronouns. However, it differs in many ways from the visual system of horizontal angle. Involvement is always plural, a matter of distinguishing between what belongs to us and what to them and, while in language this could be difficult to represent, in images it is an intrinsic part of the system of involvement. Finally, there is no yours in the system of horizontal angle. Persepective puts a barrier between the viewer and the represented participants, even in the case of a frontal angle. Power and vertical angle If a represented participant is seen from a high angle, then the relation between the interactive participants and the represented participants is depicted as one in which the interactive participant has power over the represented participant. If the represented participant is seen from a low angle, then the relation between the interactive and represented participants is depicted as one in which the represented participant has power over the interactive participant. If, finally the picture is eye level, then the point of view is one of equality and there is no power difference involved. Narrativization of the subjective image In many cases there is no immediately motivation for point of view. The angle may be high and frontal, and so convey power over and involvement with the represented participants, but the
At one end of these scales the dimension of colour is maximally, while at the other it is used to its maximum potential (fully articulated). Naturalistic modality increases as articulation increases but, thereafter it reaches its highest value, it decreases again. -Contextualization: a scale running from the absence of background to the most fully articulated and detailed background (when the background is sharper and more defined, more than real impression will result); -Representation: a scale running from maximum abstraction to maximum representation of pictorial detail; -Depth: a scale running from the absence of depth to maximally deep perspective (perspective can become more real as when strong convergence of vertical line is shown); -Illumination: a scale running from the fullest representation of the play of light and shade to its absence; -Brightness: a scale running from a maximum number of different degrees of brightness to just two degrees, black and white, or dark grey and lighter grey, or two brightness values of the same colour. Brightness values can also contrast to a greater or lesser degree (in one picture the difference between the darkest and the lightest area may be very great while in another it may be minimal). It might seem that realization of modality in images is much more complex than that in language. However, language too allows complex combinations of different modality cues and their value depends on context. Coding orientation Coding orientations are sets of abstract principles which inform the way in which texts are coded by specific social groups or within specific contexts. We can distinguish the following: -Technological coding orientations, which dominant principle is the effectiveness of the visual representation. Whenever colour, for example, is useless for the scientific purpose of the image, it has, in this context, low modality; -Sensory coding orientations, in which the pleasure principle is the dominant (food photography, interior decoration…). Here colour is a source of pleasure and affective meanings (high modality); -Abstract coding orientations, used by sociocultural elites (high art, academic and scientific contexts). Modality is higher the more an image reduces the individual to the general and the concrete to its essential qualities. -The common sens naturalistic coding orientation, which is the dominant in our society. It belongs to all the members of a culture (addressed as members of our culture). Individual with special education may use non-naturalistic coding orientations in certain contexts (they may use the abstract coding orientation when visiting a gallery…) but they are likely to use the naturalistic one when they are just being themselves. Modality in modern art
The issue of modality becomes particularly complex in modern art, because it has been the project of modern art to redefine reality in contradistinction to photographic naturalism. Changes in the definitions of reality have profound cultural and social effects and are always likely to produce scandal. However, whether a representation is judge credible or not is not necessarily a matter of absolute truth, because what one social group considers credible may not be considered credible by another. This is why modality is seen as interactive rather than ideational. Modality both realizes and produces social affinity, aligning the viewer with of representation that are those with which the artist aligns himself, and in this lies some of the power of art. Modality configurations From modality markers we could construct modality prints to characterize the modality configurations, and show which modality markers are reduced and which are amplified. Such modality configurations would describe what in a specific work or genre is regarded as real, as adequate to reality. And it would demonstrate that images are polyphonic, weaving together choices from different representational modes into one texture.
6 The meaning of composition
Composition and the multimodal text Composition relates the representational and interactive meanings of the image to each other through three interrelated system: -Information value: the placement of elements gives them specific informational values attached to the various zones of the image (left and right, top and bottom, centre and margin); -Salience: the elements are made to attract the viewer’s attention in different ways (placement in the foreground, size, colour…); -Framing: the precence or absence of framing devices (dividing lines or frame lines) disconnects or connects elements of the image. These three principles apply not only to single pictures but also to composite visuals, which combine text and image, the so called multimodal texts. The integration of different semiotic modes is the work of an overaching code whose rules provide the multimodal text with the logic of its integration. There are two integration codes: the mode of spatial composition, which operates in texts in which all elements are spatially co-present (paintings) and the rhythm, the mode of temporal composition, which operates in texts which unfold over time (music). Some types of multimodal text use both (film and television). Given and new: the information value of left and right When pictures or layouts make significant use of the horizontal axis, positioning some of their elements left and other different ones right of the centre, the elements placed on the left are presented as Given, something the viewer already knows and the elements placed on the right as New, something which is not yet known or perhaps not yet agreed upon by the viewer. The information is presented as it had that value for the reader, and that readers have to read it within that structure, even if that valuation may then be rejected by a particular reader.
