Tuesday, January 15th

Reading Notes from Introduction
-Over the last two centuries, western culture has come to be dominated by visual rather than oral or textual media. For example, t.v. has widely replaced radio.
-Visual culture encompasses many media forms ranging from fine art to popular film and television to advertising to visual data in fields such as the sciences, law and medicine.
-For many decades, universities offered courses in fine arts but ignored popular media. Today, this has changed.
-Cultural studies is a field that emerged in the late 1970s and has offered many ways of thinking about the study of both popular culture and the seemingly mundane uses of images in our daily lives.

What is Visual Culture?
-Raymond Williams- a cultural theorist that has characterized “culture” as one of the most complex words in the English language.
-The meaning of culture has changed greatly over time
-Traditionally, culture was thought of as “fine arts”: classic works or painting, literature, music, and philosophy.
-The philosopher Matthew Arnold defined culture as the “best that has been thought and said” in a society and was reserved for an elite and educated audience.
-Culture was often divided into high (fine arts, classical painting, literature) ad low (t.v., movies, and comic books)
-The anthropological definition of culture is defined as the shared practices of a group, community, or society, through which meaning is made out of the visual, aural, and textual world of representations.
-Stuart Hall- British cultural theorist who states that culture is not so much a set of things as a set of processes or practices through which individuals and groups come to make sense of those things.
*Visual culture= those aspects of culture that are manifested in visual form (paintings, prints, photographs, film, television, video, advertisements, news images, and science images).
-John Berger- published Ways of Seeing in 1972. This book was groundbreaking in bringing together a range of theory, from Walter Benjamin’s concept of mechanical reproduction to Marxist theory, in order to examine images from the history of art and advertising.

Reading Notes from Chapter 1
-Seeing= something that is arbitrarily done in our daily lives
-Looking= involves a greater sense of purpose and direction; is an act of choice
-Looking involves relationships of power…to willfully look or not is to exercise choice and influence.
IMAGE- Photograph by Weegee/ photograph of children looking at a crime scene/ shows their fascination and heightened emotion.

*Means of Production- In Marxist theory, the means of production are the ways in which a society makes use of the natural resources of the world around it to make useful things. According to Marxists, those who own the means of production are also in control of the ideas that circulate in a society’s media industries.

Representation
*Representation- refers to the use of language and images to create meaning about the world around us. Literally defined as the act of portraying, depicting, symbolizing, or presenting the likeness of something.

*Social Construction- a theory that gained primacy in the 1980s in a number of fields that asserts that much of what has been taken as fact is socially constructed through ideological forces, language, economic relationships, and so forth.

-Language and systems of representation do not reflect an already existing reality so much as they organize, construct, and mediate our understanding of reality, emotion, and imagination.
-There is a debate about whether systems of representation reflect the world as it is or whether we construct the world and its meaning through the systems of representation we deploy. (it is difficult to differentiate between the two)
-IMAGE- by Pieter Claesz/ “Still Life with Stonewall Jug, Wine Glass, Herring, and Bread”/ 1642/ a painting of food that shows that the image can appear to be concerned solely w/ reflecting real life, but can also be interpreted to have a much deeper meaning (perhaps religious, etc.). Also shows that representation is a process through which we construct the world around us.
-IMAGE- by Rene Magritte, “The Treachery of Images”/ 1928-29/ is a painting of a pipe that reads, “This is not a pipe”. This image points to the relationship between words and things, since this is not a pipe itself but rather the representation of a pipe. He is warning the viewer not to mistake an image for the real thing.

The Myth of the Photographic Truth
-The creation of an image through a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective choice through selection, framing, and personalization.
*Subjective- something that is particular to the view of an individual. Is understood to be personal, specific, and imbued with the values and beliefs of a particular person.
Even in surveillance video, the camera is set up to catch a certain object/area.
*Surveillance- the act of keeping watch over a person or place.
*Black-boxed- refers to the inability of the user to see inside (metaphorically and sometimes literally) a machine and how it functions. What gets “boxed” are the qualities and capabilities of a particular technology that are not visible to its user.
*Objectivity- the state of being unbiased and based on facts, usually referring to scientific fact or ways of seeing and understanding the world that involve a mechanical process rather than human opinion.
-Photography was developed in Europe in early 19th century when concepts of positivist science held way.
*Positivism- a philosophic position that is strongly scientific in inspiration and that assumes that meanings exist out in the world, independent of our feelings, attitudes, or our beliefs about them. Only scientific knowledge is genuine knowledge.
Involves the belief that empirical truths can be established through visual evidence.
*Empirical truth- something that can be proven through experimentation, in particular through the reproduction of an experiment with identical outcomes under carefully controlled circumstances.
-Therefore, machines were regarded as more reliable than humans…The camera was regarded as a means of representing the world more accurately than hand-rendered images. (This is now debated)
*Photographic truth- the myth of the photographic truth means that photographs are understood to be evidence of actual people, events, and objects of the past, even though they are relatively easy to manipulate.
-IMAGE- by Robert Frank/ “Trolley-New Orleans”/ 1955-56/ a photo of a segregated trolley. It is a factual piece of evidence of the past. It also invokes powerful emotions about the changes that were about to occur in the South. Thus, this photo demonstrates the photograph’s capacity to both present evidence and to evoke a magical or mythical quality.
-Roland Barthes- French theorist who described the two levels of meaning that an image can have as denotative and connotative.
*Denotative- In semiotics, the literal, face value meaning or a sign. For example, the denotative meaning of a rose is a flower.
*Connotative- All the social, cultural, and historical meanings that are added to a sign’s literal meaning.
*Myth- Roland Barthes used this term to refer to the cultural values and beliefs that are expressed at this level of connotation. For him, myth is the hidden set of rules and conventions through which meanings, which are in reality specific to certain groups, are made to seem universal and given for a whole society. Thus, myth allows the connotative meaning of a particular thing or image to appear to be denotative.
*Simulation- does not represent something in the real world.

Images and Ideology
*Ideology- the shared set of values and beliefs that exist with in a given society and through which individuals live out their relations to social institutions and structures.
-People often think in terms of propaganda when they think of ideologies, but it is a much more pervasive and mundane process.
*Propaganda- the crude process of using false representations to lure people into holding beliefs that may compromise their own interests.
-Ideologies appear to be natural or given. Thus, they are connotations parading denotations.
-Visual culture is integral to ideologies.
-IMAGE- OJ’s mugshot on Time magazine/portrays guilt
-Newsweek ran the same image but darkened his skin color…this was an ideological choice since dark skin is often associated with evil.

How we negotiate the meaning of images
*Codes- the implicit rules by which meanings get put into social practice and can therefore be read by their users.
*Decode- the process of interpreting and giving meaning to cultural products in conformity with shared cultural codes.
-We read (or decode) images almost instantly.
-IMAGE- sensations napkin ad- places man in female position/ this is a coded message.
-We are trained to read for cultural codes such as aspects of the image that signify gendered, racial, or class-specific meanings.
-IMAGE- Benetton Clothing Co. ad/ denotes a car on fire on a city street/ sets an overall tone of danger and tension/ Since it appears to take place in the 1990s, it could be said that it is meant to invoke the feeling that the company is concerned about terrorism.

*Semiotics- a theory of signs, sometimes called semiology, concerned with the ways in which things (words, images, and objects) are vehicles for meaning. A tool for analyzing the signs of a particular culture and how meaning is produced with in a particular cultural context.

-Charles Pierce- American philosopher/ influenced principles of semiotics in 19th century/ language and thought are processes of sign interpretation.
-Ferdinand de Saussure- influenced semiotics in 20th century. Influenced structuralism. He felt that meanings change according to context and rules of language.
*Structuralism- a set of theories that came into prominence in the 1960s that emphasized the laws, codes, rules, formulas, and conventions that structure human behavior and systems of meaning.

-Barthe has expanded Saussure’s model. In addition to denotation and connotation, there is the sign, which is composed of the signifier (a sound, written word, or image) and the signified (the concept evoked by that word/image)
-The image (or word) and its meaning together (the signifier and signified together) form the sign. For example, Benetton Ad= burning car is signifier and terrorism is signified.
*Sign- a semiotic term that defines the relationship between a vehicle of meaning such as a word, image, or object, and it specific meaning in a particular context. Bringing together of a signified and signifier to make meaning.
*Signifier- the word, image, or object with in a sign that conveys meaning.
*Signified- the element of meaning within a sign, so called because it was what is signified by a signifier.
Ex) Marlboro + Masculinity= Marlboro as masculinity
*Referent- the object itself.

-Charles Pierce divided signs into different categories (indexical, iconic, and symbolic signs)
*Indexical sign- a term used to indicate those signs in which there is a physical causal connection between the signifier and the thing signified.
*Iconic sign- a term used to indicate those signs in which there is a resemblance between the signifier and the thing signified.
*Symbolic sign- a term used to indicate those signs in which there is not connection between the signifier and the thing signified except that imposed by convention.

The value of Images
-IMAGE- “Irises” by Van Gogh/painting sold in 1991 for $53.8 million/ shows that we determine the worth of something.
*Authenticity- the quality of being genuine or unique.
-Authenticity, uniqueness, and aesthetic style are important for determining value
*Modernism- A term with meanings in culture, art, literature, and music. Refers both to a particular time period and a set of styles associated with that time.

*Dada- a movement that reflexively poked fun at the conventions of high art and museum display conventions.
*Image- student protest at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989/ t.v. image/ important because it is special and displays courage of one student.

Image Icons
*Icon- an image that refers to something outside of its individual components, something (or someone) that has great symbolic meaning for many people. Ex) painting of mother and child show the importance of motherhood throughout human history.
-IMAGE- Dorthea Lange/ “Migrant Mother”/ shows height of great depression, but also hardships of motherhood.
*Irony- the deliberate contradiction between the literal meaning of something and its intended meaning.

Key Terms
*Art- Involves a degree of human involvement (through manual skills or thought). “High art” was traditionally the focus of scholars (classic works or painting, literature, music, and philosophy). However, other art forms, such as movies, and now also appreciated by scholars.
*Culture- expressive life as it is lived daily. The anthropological definition of culture is defined as the shared practices of a group, community, or society, through which meaning is made out of the visual, aural, and textual world of representations.
*Representation- refers to the use of language and images to create meaning about the world around us. Literally defined as the act of portraying, depicting, symbolizing, or presenting the likeness of something.
*Meaning- What is conveyed or signified by something; its sense or significance. It is the viewer who creates meaning in each and every image.
*Ideology- the shared set of values and beliefs that exist with in a given society and through which individuals live out their relations to social institutions and structures.
*Visual Culture- those aspects of culture that are manifested in visual form (paintings, prints, photographs, film, television, video, advertisements, news images, and science images).
*Edward Burne-Jones- An English artist and designer closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the 19th century. “Depths of the Sea” is one of his unique works of art.
*Calvin Klein- an American clothing company founded in 1968 by Calvin Klein. The company also produces fragrances and is has a number of well-known advertisements.
*Leonardo da Vinci- was a Tuscan polymath who lived from 1452 to 1519. Among his talents, he was a well-known painter. By far, the Mona Lisa is one of his most famous works and has become an icon.

My Reaction to Today’s Readings/Class Discussion
-I found today’s readings to be very informative. Being a political science major, I have not studied a great deal about visual culture. Thus, most of this information was new to me. I found the “myth of the photographic truth” to be particularly interesting. I had no idea why the camera was actually developed, and I will now think about cameras/photos in a totally different way. Quite honestly, I usually just take images/ads for face-value and don’t “decode” them. Now, I find myself trying to figure out the meaning of images. I look forward to the rest of this class!

My Reaction to Today’s Images
“The Depths of the Sea”- This image is clearly open to interpretation, but I believe that the woman/mermaid is pulling the man down. I’m not positive of its meaning, but perhaps it has a feminist theme (the power of the woman to dominate the man). A very interesting image!
“Escape”- I also believe that this image has a feminist theme and is likely geared towards women due to the fact that, much like “Depths of the Sea”, the woman appears to be in control.
“La Giocanda”- The Mona Lisa is clearly an excellent example of the book’s explanation of the power of iconic images. The Mona Lisa is unique, has an aesthetic value, and is authentic.