Vector Vectoria - Chapter 2: Narrative Representations

Reading about formal art theory according to Arnheim is to recognize the powerful charge located within every visual image. Arnheim refers to participants as volumes or masses, what linguistically we could term as nouns; processes are called vectors, and, linguistically, it is easy to think of them as verbs. Perhaps we can better portray this verb as vecter, to give it action. Halliday theorizes the participant as the actor, goal, or recipient and the vector as a transaction. Both theories are comparable.

I now find myself looking for and interpreting the vector within the visual images we have created in our visual remix projects. By doing so, I realize that the placement of the vector in the visual image may not always be conscious, but, like writing, our creation of the visual image uses the same semiotic process; only the symbols change; the meaning is still composed, the signifier still signified. To be aware of the theoretical relationship between the vector (verb) and the vectoria (object/noun) is to gain the ability to create more powerful and meaningful images, whether graphic, photographic, or artistic.