What I Have Learned This Semester

Throughout this semester, while reading both Sturken and Cartwright’s "Practices of Looking," and Kress and van Leeuwen’s "Reading Images: the Grammar of Visual Design," the ghosts of the grand linguistic theorists are omnipresent. I see shadows of Michel Foucault throughout, especially when considering the signified and the signifier.


When Sturken and Cartwright discuss semiotics and the relationship between the sign and the interpretant to construct meaning, or that the signifier and the signified construct the sign, is this relative to Foucault’s admonition to "abolish the sovereignty of the signifier?" In addition, both texts force the reader to consider how our socially constructed views, the lens from which we evaluated the visual images before us, contribute to their interpretation. Sturken and Cartwright discuss how meaning evolves with public distribution, how ownership of the interpretation of a work is transferred from the producer to the consumer, and how the work and its meaning can be transformed along the way, or even used in opposition to its original intent. This discussion parallels Jenny Edbauer’s work: “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies.” Another way these chapters compel me to consider Kenneth Burke’s terministic screens and motivated language is in the images the authors of both textbooks have chosen to illustrate their texts. In the selection of those images, what has been excluded, or deflected? I could relate much more to the images in Sturken and Cartwright’s text than I could to the images, or lack thereof, in Kress and van Leeuwen’s text.

But most of all, I have approached both of these explorations of visual communication with a healthy dose of skepticism. Does the visual communicator really have an awareness of the way she constructs her meaning? Or does she just work at it until it "looks right?" Then I remember that 25 years ago I began my post-secondary education as a fine arts major, took a detour, and ended up with a minor in Art. But my initial coursework included at least 18 hours in art history, courses in two-dimensional and three-dimensional design, drawing, drafting, and perspective. And then, after switching my major to journalism, I took more visually-oriented courses in photography, page layout and design, typography, and photographic composition. While I don’t recall these classes being taught relative to specific theories or theorists, the practice, the outcome of the teachings has not changed. Now, late in my current semester, I’m coming to a realization that, perhaps what I had considered to be intuitive, innate, the pointing out of the obvious, is really something I learned – albeit half a life ago.


So it is interesting to reconsider the practices that have seemed to come naturally to me under the theoretical and linguistic umbrella of Kress and van Leeuwen, after Halliday. After all, now that I am an English major, it makes sense to approach the visual within the lens of grammar and linguistics and semiotics. What I have learned over the semester is to think about how and why I create designs and layouts and types and images like I do — stopping to consider the meaning behind my construction, other than me thinking it looks attractive. Now I must consider the theories that tell me why it looks attractive, because "attractive things work better" (Norman).

Within this blog are a couple of other images that I've made for other classes, using what I learned in ENGL 853.

ENGL 853 - Wrapping Up the Rhetoric of Golf

The Galaxy Golf Links Web site
Our semester-long project has four segments: Second Life (identity); Digital Remix (intervention); Film (meaning); and finally, a construction. This construction was to have taken place on Second Life's Clemson development island, but overcrowding and budget constraints forced a change of plans; so the final segment is a Web site.

I had thought that making the film would be my most challenging project; I was wrong. It is definitely the Web site. This surprised me, as I have spent the past 10 years editing, if not building, the Web site at the company where I worked. I was pretty well versed in HTML and PHP and knew how to navigate my way around the directory system.

Well, I really struggled here! And I've also struggled with Web development in Clemson's Cascade Management System. It is not user friendly and also constrains design. For this class, Dreamweaver was the suggested technology. While I rely heavily on the Adobe CS4 trilogy of InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, Dreamweaver leaves me out in the cold. I do not find the program either intuitive or easy to navigate. So my original intent was to build from scratch in CSS, but I was warned against that by a web development professional due to the short turnaround time for this project.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my site, which brings together all four of the project segments. But it wasn't happening for me in Dreamweaver and I was tied up in knots, both emotionally and physically! Then my classmate, Brandon, whose own Web site is really "ballin'," told me he built his in iWeb, a Mac program. "You have it," he said. I opened my laptop, located the program, and within two hours had built the framework for my site. This program lets you drag and drop information, use a template or build your own from a blank page (my choice), and seamlessly builds the code for you in the background. I finished my site in no time at all, save for building the needed graphics.







My main focus for the site was the visual construction of "signature" golf holes that signified my theme: The Rhetoric of Golf: Ethos, Pathos, Logos. I wanted to build golf holes that illustrated the language used in my movie, and that signified the logos, the sexual innuendos so inherent to the game. I had intended, in Second Life, to build a hole that resembled the female anatomy, a uterus and ovaries, with a river of blood. What better way for a golfer to fulfill his dream of "scoring" than by forcing the ball "long and hard down the middle?" So this is now one of my "signature holes" on my golf course Web site. I also designed the Par 3 hole on which I got my virtual hole in one, and a Par 5 hole for good measure. The holes are depicted as thumbnails on my Web page, and serve as hyperlinks to larger views with hole descriptions (logos).

I built the holes in Illustrator. This was a challenge for me; Illustrator is the software in the proverbial "trilogy" that I have used the least. And I wanted to design swatches to symbolize the natural landscape of the golf course, something I had never done before. I designed swatches for the fairway, with mower stripes, for the water (both blue and red -- the red is for my "female" hole where the creek bank is the typical South Carolina red clay), for the bushes/trees, and for the marsh. I used solid colors and gradients for the greens and the bunkers. I really like my golf holes! They turned out so much better than I had imagined possible. And I learned a lot, which is important.

On a lighter note, if you visit my site, you'll see that my Galaxy Golf Links fantasy course is located in Sugar Tit, SC. This is (or was) a real town near Clemson! During our movie-making weekend, Beth told Brandon and I about it -- and I said, "That's where I'll put my golf course!" It suited my theme.

Chapter 7 - Materiality and Meaning

COLOR VALUE$
In last week's class, Lidia eloquently refuted the socially-constructed view of the white wedding gown as a symbol of virginity. She told us that the white color actually arose amidst the class consciousness of European society and the white dress symbolized that one had the means to afford a dress that could be worn only once; otherwise, wedding gowns were often of darker hues, blues or browns, that wouldn't show dirt or stains, and would, most likely, be worn again.

THEIR HOME

Consider home decor, as Kress and van Leeuwen do in Chapter 7. While they discuss how the rich color palettes and saturation impart the personality of the residents, one might argue that these colors make a house quite livable. By contrast, the white carpet, glass tabletops, white-washed walls and eggshell, ecru, beige, and ivory fabrics clearly point to a house where the very wealthy reside in leisurely repose -- no "living" being done in this space!

MY HOME

My career in communication and brand management in the not-for-profit sector has made me keenly aware of the perceived "value" of color. Until very recently, printing in color was expensive. And printing a four-color document on coated paper stock was considered taboo in non-profit organizations, especially in fund development materials. Color demonstrated a disregard for budget concerns, and sent an impression that this organization probably really didn't need the funds they were seeking. Pretty much a double-edged sword one had to wield when trying to create visually attractive and appealing documents in black and white, or in black plus one color. A strategy was to use saturation/hue as a tool. By choosing a dark color instead of black, you could screen colors to give the appearance of a multi-colored document, although monochromatic.

Colors also have monetary value. I love the horrible scene from the movie Frida, the trolley accident, where the gold dust being carried by a passenger/painter coats the tragic aftermath of broken bodies and blood. It reminds me of how an artist's choice of color, especially in the past, depended on the availability and affordability of the natural dyes and minerals used to create the medium. I once commissioned a stained glass artist to create a window in my gazebo, matching it to the fabric of my dining chairs. We shopped for glass together, and I wanted a deep rich red. Burgundy, she said, is very expensive as it is made with gold. It sure was! The pieces were very sparingly incorporated into the design and the remaining shards are stored safely underneath my bed for a later project.




Finally, I am thinking about the rich colors of the Post Impressionists. Never a fan of the pastels and muted tones of Impressionistic painters, I was drawn to the rich palettes of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. However, at the Art Institute of Chicago, in an exhibit featuring the work of these two artists side by side, it was apparent that Gauguin's Tahitian color palettes could not compete with Van Gogh's French countryside -- not because of the color itself, but by the sheer volume of paint laid onto the canvas. Next to Vincent, Gauguin's work looked flat, something the viewer doesn't see in prints or online images. Nonetheless, I'm sure Gauguin had more money with which to buy paint than Van Gogh!

Chapter 5 - Modality: designing models of reality

Modality and Multiple Meanings
I’m having a difficult time this week juggling “modal” terms. Here in ENGL 853, Visual Communication, we’re discussing modality in terms of Kress and van Leeuwen’s definition: “The term ‘modality’ comes from linguistics and refers to the truth value or credibility of (linguistically realized) statements about the world” (155).

However, in ENGL 885, Teaching Composition, we are preparing for a final assignment, a multi-modal composition, in which we construct meaning using something beyond the traditional pen and paper (printed document). Our activity in ENGL 885 does not seem to be congruent with the above definition. Kress and van Leeuwen’s definition relates to truth, which, in my mind, is a social construction. The multi-modality of our composition, will also signify a “truth,” within different media, in my case, a web page, video, audio, text, and visual entities. I’m trying to stretch myself from the traditional school of composition, into new (multimodal) media, perhaps to the avant garde.

So what do these two interpretations of modality have in common? When the authors talk about the linguistic qualifiers that indicate lower or higher modality, I shudder to think these terms might transfer to my multimodal composition to affect the credibility of one medium over another. For am I not able to tell the “truth” or at least signify my meaning equally in all media at any given time, whether my audience reads it, sees it, or hears it? In the case of paper or another concrete object, my reader may also feel and smell the medium (on another “canvas”). I guess this will all become more clear when we discuss Chapter 6: The Meaning of Composition.

Here in Chapter 6, the authors say: "any text whose meanings are realized through more than one semiotic code is multimodal" (177). But what about the truth?

Chapter 4: Representation and Interaction

Production vs. Reception
Whether the author of an image, or the author of a text, it is rare for that author to be on hand when the audience receives the message. The viewer or reader interprets the meaning of the work in isolation. This is where the real communication test begins. How well does the signifier represent the signified? How accurately will the viewer/reader interpret the meaning of the author’s work?

Kress and van Leeuwen remind us that “the knowledge of the producer and the knowledge of the viewer differ in a fundamental respect: the former is active, allowing the ‘sending’ as well as the ‘receiving’ of ‘messages’; the latter is passive, allowing only the ‘receiving’ of ‘messages’ (115).

Chapter 4, Representation and Interaction, delves into this “imaginary” relationship between the author and the viewer and asks us to consider the various means by which the visual image establishes a connection with a viewer, whether subjectively or objectively.

The Image Act and the Gaze (116): When an image appears to look directly at the viewer, the eyes form a vector, connecting the viewer to the personified image. We say "personified," because that image may not even be that of a human, but a cartoon or representative shape, an icon. The authors refer to the meaning of these images linguistically as either "offer" or "demand."

Size of Frame and Social Distance (124): Meaning is also achieved through distance from the signifier. Much as the action of meeting someone on the street and avoiding eye contact, or moving close to someone for physical intimacy as well as proximity, framing a subject within a space achieves the same purpose.

Perspective and the Subjective Image (129): Perspective refers to the "point of view" chosen for the viewer, the audience. Unnatural perspective applied to an image or photo disrupts conventional meaning, thus forming a subjective image, one left to the interpretation or social context of the viewer.

Involvement and the Horizontal Angle (133): The horizontal angle unites the participant and the viewer, inviting the viewer to enter the scene. However, the frontal angle depicts the participants' involvement with the viewer, while an oblique angle signifies the participants' detachment from the viewer.

Power and the Vertical Angle (140): We all know how we feel when we are forced to look up at someone or something. We are subjugated psychologically, we feel dominated. The vertical angle in a static image is no less powerful. When looking down at an object, the viewer is dominant, in charge.

Narrativization of the Subjective Image (143): Narrativization of an image asks the viewer to conjecture how the image might be seen in the eyes of another viewer. Who "occupies" the space from which this scene could be realized?

Objective Images (143): Throughout this book, I have noticed that I do not enjoy or wish to linger on depictions of charts, graphs, or geometric illustrations. These are objective images; they leave nothing to the imagination. They undermine the viewer's desire for interpretation or subjective meaning. The viewer is not involved.

My Film Project

Well, after about 12 hours of editing, my movie is "in the can." I am actually thrilled with the results. There are a few sound issues that iMovie just would not resolve, but the end product definitely illustrates my project thesis, The Rhetoric of Golf: Ethos, Pathos, Logos.

The following movie is for mature audiences only. Some language may offend more sensitive viewers.

Movie-making Blunders in Myrtle Beach

Well, it's movie-making weekend in beautiful Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and Brandon and Beth and I are having a hilarious time trying to be filmmakers. Some tips? Make sure you have your accoutrements on hand -- I thought the golf course had pink balls for sale; they thought so, too. But they didn't, so we had to improvise. Another thing we learned? That while the camera has the capacity for seven hours of video, it only has the battery capacity for 100 minutes. What's up with that? The best blooper of all is, after our first fifteen minutes of filming, we realized that every sequence we took where we thought the camera was on record, it was off. And whenever we thought the camera was off, it was recording. We should have some great outtakes once we download.