DigitalPenny

McCloud, Scott. “From The Vocabulary of Comics.” Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Carolyn Handa. Bedford/St. Martins. SIU Press. (2004). 195-208

Summary:
McCloud seems to posit the idea that images, or icons as he would refer to them, are complexities that are drawn so well that they tend to imitate what we would consider real or realistic or reality. He argues that because our very existence hinges on the fact that we create everything to look like something else, we've seen or imagined, that we recall sketches or fragments of those things that are real (that we can touch, see, and feel). What gets lost in McCloud's theory is the attention that he gives to "voice." How real-like or real is the voice of the icon (character(s) illustrated within a comic)? He insists that the voice is established according to the simplicity or complexity of the illustration. That the voice that you hear while you read is just as much a part of the scene within a frame and is as much a part of the overall story, which enables the reader to unconsciously interact with the text. Yes, McCloud draws on the fact that cartoons are universal; that they evoke emotion; that the reader comes to it with a set of expectations; that the illustrator and story writer relies of the reader's experience. But how is it that McCloud gets his reader to read the text juxtaposing images? He attaches a simple drawing to a set of words that seem simple, but are complex in meaning.

Key Words:
icon (197); pictorial icons...meaning is fixed and absolute, invisible ideas, pictures...meaning is fluid and variable, abstract, real, real-life, realistic (198); amplification through simplification; essential meaning...can amplify (201); universality (202);

What Fascinated Me:
I just didn't realize that there was theory around cartooning.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Work Read:
Barry, Ann Marie Seward. "The Nature and Power of Images.” Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.

Summary:
All images embody a language; this is not a language that is man-made; instead, it is a language that is innate, evoked, sequential, and universal. This is the argument that Barry makes in this chapter, Chapter 3. She begins with cave art and comics, a discussion she continues with from Chapter 2. She warns that there is a problem when people assume that the visual needs the verbal in order for a person to construct meaning from the visual. Earlier, when I read Chapter 2, I felt that Barry argued that mentally, when we see an image, that image evokes emotion, which would not be as easily conjured, if we had not heard or read words (whether those words were abstract or concrete). Likewise, she argues that the more concrete the word, the better we are at envisioning an image. In this chapter, Barry takes up the theory of Scott McCloud from his, Understanding Comics (1993) and from Will Eisner’s, Comics and Sequential Art (1985). McCloud contends that icons or images impel a reader/viewer to make meaning of something that the illustrator has drawn to promote reality and simplicity. In other words, what is made simple for the reader/viewer tends to become a catalyst for meaning across universals because each reader/viewer, regardless of class, race, gender, or cultural preference, faces no boundaries when viewing or reading and attempting to create meaning based on what s/he sees in an image.

Continue reading ""The Language of Images"" »

Posted by Digitalpenny at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (9530)

Work Read:
Barry, Ann Marie Seward. "The Nature and Power of Images.” Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.

Summary:
Because of the manner in which we perceive images via motion and affordances, those particular characteristics that we remember about an object or event because we find them either useful or dangerous, we become what we see. This is the claim that Barry makes in Chapter 2 of Visual Intelligence. She does this by discussing how Chaos Theory plays a vital role in one’s ability to recognize patterns and how affordances have provided us with the means to remember specific characteristics about an object or event because of the way we are able to distinguish one task or tool from another. Barry insists that the visual is dynamic and not static.

Continue reading ""The Nature and Power of Images"" »

Posted by Digitalpenny at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Work Read:
Arnheim, Rudolph. “Pictures, Symbols, and Signs.” Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Carolyn Handa. Bedford/St. Martins. SIU Press. (2004).

Summary:
Arnheim extends the assertions that I've read in Eisner, McCloud, Barry, Kress and van Leeuwen, and Mitchell. It is that we locate meaning in images based on our expectations, experiences, and emotions. Feeding his readers with what he clearly defines as two levels of "abstractions," which is how the viewer of an image completes the image by providing information (expectations, experiences, and emotion) to make the image seem more realistic, Arnheim posits that there are two levels of abstraction, "Image Scale" and "Experience Scale." No matter how abstract the image, there must be some "complexity of form" (150) in the image that allows the viewer to locate a realistic presence whereby the viewer can bring to the image his/her experience; this is representative of the Image Scale. In addition to that, the Experienc Scale enables the viewer to cognitively produce factual information so that the image becomes real; that it is not just realistic.

Key Words:
visual qualities (139); abstractness (139); perception (141); abstract patterns (144); pictorial analogues (147); Image Scale, Experience Scale (150)

What Fascinated Me:
What is not clear to me is how Arnheim, toward the end of the text (149), in his drawing/explaination of abstractions, drops the emotional part. Absolutly nothing in this essay fascinated me, aside from the fact that Arnheim references a picture, drawn by Rene Magritte. It is the same picture that Scott McCloud references in his essay, "From the Vocabulary of Comics." The difference is that McCloud actually analyzes the picture, and he translates the French. So if you had not a French vocabulary, or a mental image of the picture itself, what Arnheim says becomes completely foreign aside from the fact that he tells you that the image is a pipe with an inscription, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" or as McCloud translates it, "This is not a pipe." I'm not sure why Arnheim begins his discussion by separating pictures, signs, and symbols; he all but drops references to these words after moving to the second subheading, "Images to Suit Thier Functions," after which, he takes up the word image.

Arnheim also has a way of using language to provoke sexual references when discussing images. My belief is that he wants to exploit, in some way, how images might conjur emotion, but he does not give enough attention to this.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Barry, Ann Marie Seward. Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. 1-68

SUMMARY:
In the "Introduction" Barry begins with a dictionary definition of intelligence. What she's found that complicates this simplistic, general knowledge definition is the idea of being able to *see* what we learn, reason, and manipulate in order to "survive" is also a form of intelligence. She believes images we see on TV, in magazines, newspapers, flyers, and so on, dictate how we see ourselves and how we live. That we are influenced by the social patterns passed on through images. That the visual is "replacing" (the tools we normally use to perform actions, e.g.,
cash registers in grocery stores are more visually intensive) how we see and synthesize our world. Barry insists the more we become reliant on the visual, the more proficient we become in perceiving the emotional and "cognitive aspects of the message" (6). Traditional ways of analyzing objects and events must include ways we observe, notice, and reason with what's before us. Seeing relationships between social patterns and visual problem-solving are our means of becoming visually intelligent. We must also address what visually moves us to action and how we are deceived by images for "commercial, social, and political purposes" (6). Her overarching question seems to be how do we become focused enough to reason using available images to communicate that which can easily be manipulated to distort reality?

In Chapter 1, "Perception and Visual 'Common Sense', Barry asserts that we can't just be visually literate, that we must also be visually intelligent. This means that we are to see images such that we understand what is meant by connecting parts and identifying how they relate to the whole. That many of us accept what we see as true without any further examination. Barry never identifies out right what she means by "common sense", but I will make the assumption after reading this chapter she wants her readers to realize that as visual learners, we see first, and what we see usually evokes emotion, and then meaning comes. What we don't take time to do is analyze what we see, and we don't question the truth in what we see.

WHAT FASCINATED ME:
I was really excited to see mention and discussion of the relationship of the visual to patterns (relative to software programming and social interactions amongst people) and fractals (a mathematical discussion of seeing patterns in images). It's a relief to know that I don't have to start this discussion from scratch. Its an on going discussion relative to Chaos theory, fluid dynamics, Gestalt theory, and Howard Gardner (Frames of Mind, 1983), a professor, at the time of publishing at Harvard University. This also ties back to Berkenkotter's book, The Reader, The Text, The Poem (?) that I read last semester in Louise's class.

What bored me was all of the scientific medical explanations of how one sees. This reminded me of another text that I read while in Louise's class about how a person (student) learns to read. I also thought that Chpt 1 was too long and contained more information than I could truly absorb in one reading.

QUESTIONS:

• How can our perceptual logic increase our aesthetic appreciation of our natural environment?


• Barry says that the more we are exposed to an object (seeing it) will result in our having a more positive attitude toward it. What if the object is something horrific (seeing it)--what's the positive in that? And what does something like that do to an individual or a society as a result?

KEYWORDS:
visual field, visual world, reality, perception, map, fractals, replacement, musical intelligence, bodily intelligence,
linguistic intelligence, spatial intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, patterning, raw patterning ability, gestalt, inner logic, Chaos theory, unconscious, perceptual biases, geons, primitives, textons, magno and parvo pathways, hologram, phi phenomenon, Apparent Movement, real motion (RM), truth

Posted by Digitalpenny at 09:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 11-34

Summary:
In this chapter Mitchell questions the shift of the "pictorial turn". In his mind the pictorial turn has to do with how philosophers theorize about events relative to the history of philosophy. For example, when new problems occur the old problems fade. It is in this shift that philosophers locate their theory. What makes this significant for Mitchell is that the shift involves what constitutes the bipolar rift between theories on image and language. In sorting these differences, Mitchell uses Edwin Panofsky's theory on "perspective", which discusses how the mind/body thinks on images and Althusser's theological theory of imagery in language to identify what Mitchell refers to as "common space" (33).That when theorizing image and language, one cannot avoid the fact that we recognize the scene (image and language juxtaposed/meshed) is at the "center of [our] reflections" (33). This "recognition" denotes the shift that links ideology and iconology. It moves the subject from knowing about an object to knowing about subjects.

Keywords:
iconoclasm, iconophobia, grammatology, phonocnetric (12); iconophilia, public memory (15); presence, pectatorship, reading, level of culture, visual literacy, visual culture (16); subject (18); Kunstwollen, spectator, object (19); iconomachias (23); cybervisual technologies, contemporary visual culture (24); critical iconology, fractal concept (28); visual-spatial culture (31)

Questions:

• What are pictures and how do we study them?


• How do images create presence?


• Why is computer-generated imagery thought to take the observer to a different visual level (outside the mind/body-phychophysiological experience)?


• How is the human constructed by language and image?

What Fascinated Me:
There was heavy discussion of Panofsky's book, Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher Wood (1991). Mitchell says that this book is extensively used and disputed in art history because of how Panofsky positions his theory of visual representation. Mitchell believes that anyone interested in the visual must read Panofsky's essay; that anyone theorizing about the visual usually ends up either discussing Panofsky or using his theory.

After reading Shirley Wilson Logan's, We are Coming, I enjoyed reading her discussion of presence (she uses theory from classical rhetoric to build her argument). She talks about the presence of how people perceived African American women and how they spoke during public engagements. One of her defining questions was, what available means of persuasion did these women use to captivate their audiences? Working in line with Panofsky's thoughts on how the subject acknowledges the object within the scene, I am curious to find out how presence works in images. What is it that the subject acknowledges about the objects within the scene? Mitchell proposes that we suspend reference to concrete for grounded images (like bodies, cars, etc.) and look at the landscape or the background, and then think about what's being socialized, politicized, and historicized. When we look at digital images or images in magazines and newspapers, what available means of persuasion do subjects
use to captivate subjects, and how are the subjects acknowledging the background of the image, or do they acknowledge the background? What makes digital or cybervisual images **more captivating** than one dimensional images? What is language is conveyed, and how does that language help to define and create presence for the image?

Posted by Digitalpenny at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the upcoming semester, I have been ineffectual in locating what I believe to be appropriate readings for teaching a first year composition (FYC) course where I'd like to engage my students in discussions and writings about argument and image (i.e., visual rhetoric). Personally I believe visuals amplify what we percieve to be truthful, but the truth carries different meanings for each of us because of the way we were socially calibrated into our world. We get a dose of this rhetoric when we watch television, or play video games, or read the newspaper, or look at family photos, or read a book, or as we watch someone walk toward us...and I could go on.

Anyhow, I haven't been able to locate what I would consider to be viable texts for FYC students to read. Much of what I'm running into are theory-based readings about visual communication, visual argument, image, and so forth. If I locate a good descriptive story (have lots), the stories have no images. If I locate a good mix of story and image, it's a graphic novel or cartoon. I'm finding that a written description is a powerful means for conjuring imagery. Any other texts that I've located are more business specific (instructions, brochures, white papers, etcetera), and are not what I'd like to promote in an introductory, "let me introduce you to academic writing" FYC. If you have ideas, please share.

On the contrary, what I'm beginning to realize is this: if we read and there are no pictures within the text, the descriptive parts of the text calls on us to use a kind of dexterity, by forcing us to visualize images, and it calls on us to use reasoning to make sense of what we are perceiving. In that moment, we are recalling fragmented patterns of objects, scenes, encounters and requiring them to help us solidify the description in order for that description to make sense. If we read, and an image is somehow juxtaposed in some relative relation to the text, we don't necessarily need to recall those fragments. What's before us has already been proven to exist, merely by the additive of the image. Sometimes, the text is made plain to us because of this, and sometimes we still struggle to recall those fragmented images that remain poised, waiting to be charged.

In my searching, I found that H. Allen Brizee, in his dissertation, Teaching Visual Literacy and Document Design in First-Year Composition, wanted to discuss the visual in one of his FYCs as well, but he also wanted to teach colonial and postcolonial literature of Africa. It seems that his ultimate goal was to have the students be able to write beyond the first year (i.e. prepare them to write business and civic documents), yet he still had to meet the reqirements implemented for teaching FYC. Although his course seemed to be geared toward a second year FYC, he managed to instruct his students from inquiry to argument to document design; thus ultimately, producing a report with visuals. I value his research and ideas here. We should do more of this kind of work in FYC. I'm planning to piggy back Brizee's idea, but I will be mellowing it out a bit for a first year FYC. And no, my focus will not be to teach and have students research colonial and postcolonial literature of Africa. My priority is to move my students from inquiry to analysis to argument. My plan is to implement the visual by introducing some genre and theory of visual rhetoric, some genre and theory in illustration, and yes, to proclaim some good old rhetorical theory. Now, I'll shoot my syllabus off to the approval board and see what happens.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This is a post that I've had in my written notes, but I wanted to add here so that I'll have them.

The image that I've incorporated at the end of this post was my initial synthesis of a few readings I had completed at the end of the summer, where I had begun to work on an independent study in Visual Rhetoric with Rebecca Moore Howard. What I was attempting to do was locate patterns and/or conversations across the fields of study (Composition-Rhetoric and Illustration, specifically Cartooning theory of graphic novels). But first, I had to locate the conversations within each field. The following graph is a networked attempt, which I learned during a course with Collin Brooke, of my understandings of the readings.

Before you select the link to view the map, allow me to provide you with some direction. The green circle shows my initial question; this was the burning question that got me started. I wanted to know something. The two golden yellow colored rectangles are people whom I consider as pioneers in providing some of the first theories on visual rhetoric, and as I have continued to read, these people are referenced by many of the other scholars in the field of visual rhetoric. You will see two words across the top of the chart (Meaning and Reading). Underneath each of the words is my conclusion about how I saw meaning—relative to how it has influenced our culture—working within these texts. I was also curious about how the way in which we read images has affected the shape of our culture and possibly how we socialize information.

Select this link to view the map.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kress, Gunther and Theo Van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Fast forward 23 years from Dondis (1973), who writes an introduction to visual literacy to Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996), who write about how the social aspects of one's experiences might influence one reads images for meaning. It's like going from visual literacy inception to visual literacy conception.

From exploring a child's scribbles on paper, to comparing a 1920's version of two culturally different newspapers, Kress and Van Leeuwen weighs heavily on the fact that reading text, and even more so, images is a natural progression in one's life, and that the culture we are a part of influences how we make meaning when we see images either standing alone or juxtaposed with text.

Meaning is also informed by our non-attentiveness to "compositional patterns" that are already a natural part of our tacit knowledge. Many people refer to this as verbal and non-verbal communication. In other words, we already associate symbols that help to define who we are, what we have experienced, and how we allow our experiences to create for us, social, geographical, and self-contained spaces, in order to communicate with one another. The non-verbal, is especially related to imagery.

By the end of the first chapter, they have defined three terms for what they will use to enable and represent a grammar of visual communication, using M.A.K. Halliday's (1978) "theoritical notion of 'metafunction'". These terms are:

• ideational metafunction, where A is like B or where A is equal to B; in other words, images can be universally associated from one culture to another, although eac culture may choose to represent the image differently.


• interperasonal metafunction, where the imae is used to establish a relationship between author and audience.


• textual metafunction, where an image "form[s] a text." In other words, the work must be created with a certain look and feel in mind, using all available means to produce meaning.

Sounds like rhetoric to me.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dondis, Donis A. A Primer of Visual Literacy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973.

The question that Dondis leads with is: "How many see?" This question can be understood **differently** by many people, who hold various points of view. Throughout her first chapter, Dondis cautions readers that becoming acquainted with the syntax and concepts associated with visual literacy can be complex, and that visual literacy is unlike verbal literacy¹. Dondis claims that verbal arguments are subordinate to visual ones, especially where it concerns modern media, and although printed text is not dormant, our culture is steadfastly moving toward the "iconic". The visual is an essential part of the communication process, which sometimes call for us to solve problems.

One way that we problem-solve is to trace or re-map images that are ingrained in our mind. Once we pull the images together by sequencing them, we find ways of making the past come into existance, by visual reception.

What really stood out for me as I read initially, was the simplicity in Dondis' use of language and image reception where she describes how we make meaning from our perception of an image. She believes that seeing meaning visually is accomplished by seeing the whole and then its parts. For example, if you were looking at a painting, you would first visually recognize the object as a painting, which is the whole. The object's parts would be in whether it is framed, if there is a canvas (the type of canvas), if different colors have been used, if certain lines or dots have been used to create movement, if you are able to identify an object (like a face or eyes being formed) within the canvas, and the list could go on, but you get my point. Dondis defines meaning in the "symbols" and "compositional forces that exist or coexist with the factual, [which makes a] visual statement".

Like Bernhardt (my post on July 27), she credits psychologists who developed the Gestalt Theory for how we perceive and process images.

Notes

¹ Dondis refers to verbal literacy as writing and reading.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)