Working on one of my examples of pragmatics in visual literacy, I was exploring visual shortcuts for objects or phenomena. I call them shortcuts, because there are images which help us to understand something faster, than if you would explore complex notion of something . I am talking about certain archetypes and cliches which represent ideas we know, in a way it actually doesn’t exist in its pure form, but we kind of artificially charge it with a meaning. So I had this idea and tried to work with it, literally unfolding some of the objects to get to the point that without these shortcuts, sometimes, we are not able to generate an adequate meaning.

So I came across this example, video made by Christopher Williams, called Supplement. It was made in 2003 and takes 335 minutes which is more than 5 hours. I show some parts of it which I think can give an image of the whole video. Footage resembles normal cooking TV show. It begins with a handsome host enters, discusses mushroom varieties in front of a studio audience, and turns to a chef who demonstrates the preparation of a stock by piling ingredients into a pot to boil. At this moment, the cameras of a normal TV program would turn away as the chef reveals one that has been prepared earlier; however, Williams instructed his cameraman to record the pot right through the boiling and cooling process. Same he does with all the processes happening in the studio, leaving time that it takes, to boil vegetables or to bake a cake, visible for a viewer. It creates a strange feeling of time and changes perception of this TV show and television in general. I guess it is crucial moment either you decide to fast forward or meditate on a boiling pot waiting something to happen. I, personally, didn’t look at it till the end and just scrolled through the video to see some parts, but idea fascinated me. Williams unfolding these shortcuts I am working with. For me this video is an interesting example because it explores some mechanisms of how our perception works. In a way we already so get used to some of the ways we look at things that showing the actual real thing would confuse us.

Duration 16:42

Boiling soup on 2:10

Cooking mushrooms on 14:10

The ‘Kuleshov effect’ refers to the Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov who saw editing and film as an art form. He established a workshop to study the effect of editing on an individuals perception of the film as a whole. Kuleshov used the same expressionless face and gave different groups alternative images that followed the expressionless face. The mans expressionless face was remarked, by different groups, to have beamed with a smile at the sight of a baby and conversely to have filled with remorse and deep sorrow at the sight of a dead women. Even though the face was the same several different group saw different emotions due to the relational shots before and after the face. Kuleshov uncovered that ‘the meaning or a shot was determined not only by the material content of the shot, but also by its association with the preceding and succeeding shot’ (Kuleshov, Lev. Kuleshov on Film: Writings by Lev Kuleshov 1974)

Looking at this example, taken from cinema theory, we can make comparison with still image, where I concentrate my research. In semantics I look at an image as a reservoir, where images combined and alone create a system of signs that produce meaning. For an image to produce a comprehensible meaning it must be understood in relation to or as opposed to something else: two shots connected produce a meaning that is greater than the sum parts. In the same way Kuleshov effect works. A face and a dead woman produce deep sorrow whereas on their own the meaning would be only slight. For me it shows a power of montage on our perception of an image and exploration of instability of our opinion. How easy it can be influenced and manipulated and how it can be used to produce a meaning required from the viewer.

Duration 00:45

Just a small extra. I think Kuleshov's experiment is nicely and also funny illustrated by Hitchcock in one of his interviews.

Duration 01:18

Morphology is a part visual language. It deals with the analysis and description of an image. Basic elements of the formal cover of an image make morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in visual literacy.
At the example I give here there is a focus on the relation between pictorial representation and content of a real-life object. Here are four different representations of a lemon. A real lemon. A lemon-flavored air refresher in the shape of a lemon. A bottle filled with lemon juice. A plastic box imitating the shape of a lemon, made to prevent fruit from drying out when it’s cut. All of the objects have a direct relation to a lemon. All of them carry one of the qualities the real object has. But using only formal description we would describe the four lemons that we see and maybe neglect their different function which determine nature of the object.

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Interpretation of an image, in my opinion, is related to our general ability to recognize familiar to interpret world around us. First of all it determined by our environment and social surrounding. Achievement of certain literary skills such as reading, ability to see yourself as a part of a bigger group, shared culture, history etc, all these factors are a part of the mechanism we use to read visual information. There is a curious example of the attend to transmit certain information using an image to a place where a possibility of the factors I named is almost absent.

In 1972 NASA sent into deep space pictorial message, placed on board of interstellar board Pioneer 10, in case ship will be intercepted by extraterrestrial life. The art historian Ernst Gombrich writes quite an insightful commentary on this. The plaques show the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft. I found it very fascinating example of anthropocentric nature of human. Even just an assumption that these symbols can be read by extraterrestrial life seems unbelievable. I believe that our possibility to see some sense behind an image, being able to decode it, is only possible because we recognize depicted objects and situations, making connections, compare our experience with depicted one. So looking at these attends of sending universal message into space I wonder if I, as a human being, could even understand what is on it. And how would we depict our civilization in one picture.

Syntax is a part of grammar which deals with arrangement, structure and interaction outcomes between visual elements in the image. It proposes a set of principals and rules for constructing meaningful combinations of elements to generate the meaning: a set of principals and rules for constructing meaningful combinations of elements in visual language. Often fragments can’t give as enough information to perceive the whole.

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More examples:

Glass
Wooden piece
The sour is yellow

Looking through the Aspen magazine once again for some references for this project I found this curious example of nature trail for the blind. It consist of 23 trail markers which were written by Dr. Alfred Etter, naturalist and conservationist. These markers are are descriptions of certain roots, plants, insects etc. Printed cards with descriptions can be found side by side with the Braille messages on the 23 signs that are placed along the trail.
A self-guiding nature trail for the blind — both seeing and non-seeing — teaches us to comprehend the natural world through the purest form of communication — touch, smell, hearing — without first filtering it through sight. For me it was interesting to imagine these possible places and feeling without being present there. I think that the idea of describing objects opens up another level of perception and gives us freedom to translate text or sound in visual form but in our imagination. Another aspect which triggered me in this trail was exploring and activation of the senses. For most of us the three senses — touch, hearing, and smell — are generally subordinated to the sense of sight. It is only when the sense of sight is lost that we grasp at contact with the outside world through our other senses. What was once an auxiliary sense now be comes a vital link with reality, with life itself. If tomorrow we were to lose our sight, we would listen as never before to sounds we have never heard. We would search out textures, shapes, and even become aware of the subtle differences in temperature of objects that we have never noticed before. But for me even with ability to see this trail opened up another perspective on sight and made me think of photography. These descriptions look like attempts to transmit a feeling of presence in the same way photograph works to me. Ability of an image to carry us away in a place we never were and give a feeling of satisfaction with this journey.

The Braille Trail as pdf

Semantics focuses on the relation between visual elements, such as color, form, compositions etc, and what they stand for, so to say, their meaning. Our reading of a picture depends on conventions or preset rules and former experience we apply on the depicted objects. Semantics in visual literacy are responsible for such conventions: sings, symbols, archetypes and other mental models.

A key concern is how meaning attaches groups of visual elements, possibly as a result of the composition from smaller units. In this chapter we will review the important elements of visual semantics. So if we are considering semantics as a study of a meaning than let’s start immediately with an example of how it works in visual language.

The example consists of random images placed here in the same context. By context here I mean the same settings. Such a depiction already forces us to lay connections between these the objects. Every object in the image has certain a connotation which was formed by experience and prior knowledge. When we combine these archetypes, we can easily step into the trap of false assumptions and find a meaning there, where was no intention to have one.

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More examples:

Detective case
Strawberry box
Visual metaphor

This amazing documentary form 1997 made by German director Harun Farocki explores the process of taking a photograph. Advertisement photograph, still live, to be precise. It shows the working process of a photographer who is busy with “constructing” his image. There are no comments or voice over while we are looking at this process, just conversation between photographer and his assistant. It allows us whiteness the process when the magic happens. Crazy enough to think of the amount of work being done, which stays unnoticed by the final consumer of an image. But I am more interested in relationship between real and visual representation of the real in a form of the image. Looking at this documentary it becomes very clear how people, who are busy with photography building their picture. Step by step they are looking for the right perspective, light, tone etc. All little details that remind unnoticed appear to be carefully staged and thought out. I became interested in the idea of what kind of image we perceive as the last part of the chain, chain between maker and ourselves. How much are we aware of the process of formation of an photograph that we used to think about as objective medium.

In the case with advertisement photography construction of an image also gets another consequences. Image becomes responsible for customer demand on a product. Even though its representation is almost surreal construction of the maker determined by rules and numerous surveys. But from this side thinking about the magic around the image too unromantic which I would like to avoid. Farocki probably also doesn't like this kind of approach and that is why in his documentary he is mixing footage make in the modern photo studio with voice over, talking about classic 17th century Flemish still lives. Director in this way juxtaposes these two bringing photographers to the same level as painters in their way of working with an image. Looking at the painting we are looking at it from esthetic perspective, apart from their relation to the real-world objects but looking at the photograph we know, for the time being, that there is somewhere in a studio these object really existed. But what triggers me is that we still lay connection between those two worlds but the gap between them is as big as between painting and actual food being painted.

Duration 13:14

Pragmatics in visual literacy focus on the ways in which context contributes to meaning. It studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the formal and descriptive characteristics, but also on the context of the appearance and presentation, knowledge about the status of those involved, cultural background, traditions and other factors which stand apart from actual appearance of the objects depicted on the picture.
Example illustrates disability to comprehend the meaning without precede knowledge about this object. Depicting six different objects one can recognize one but to be able to know more about them you will have to have experience of seeing them before.

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More examples:

Bouillon cube
Unfamiliar objects

Some time ago I came across a movie that was made by Werner Herzog “Die fliegenden Ärzte von Ostafrika”. In this film he documents British physicians who provide medical supplies and aid to the vast undeveloped interior of tribal East-Africa. The story wouldn’t be interesting or related to this research if it wasn’t for an interesting discovery that he makes there. Herzog is not that much interested in doctors but in the different ways of seeing and understanding the world by different cultures. In the movie we see a fascinating example of this difference. Doctors use a poster, that has an image of a fly on it, to educate african people about a decease which spreads through the parasite that fly can carry. This decease can cause blindness so people are advised to keep the flies away from their eyes. However the posters were ineffective because the picture of a fly which was on the poster wasn’t associated with a real fly that people saw outside. People couldn't understand what that poster was supposed to represent. Being asked to point at a picture of an eye, they ignored the huge eye on the poster and point at the eye on a picture of a whole person next to it. This example demonstrates our ability to read visual information in different ways.

It seems like the whole movie was made just for this remark about the difference between Western culture and African. Herzog stresses this difference raising a question about the idea of cultural supremacy of the West. Ironically enough he is doing it throw quite Western activity in problematic regions, benefit medical help. So exploring these two opposites director confronting us with the fact of different possibilities in general comprehension of the world abound and visual perception and particular.

Duration 4:48