Monday, August 30, 2010

Week 3: Semiotics Revisited.

Imagine walking into a night market engulfed by a selection of smells, automatically images of food pops up in your head. Or maybe, hear a particular word such as vacation and immediately visualize yourself sipping on a tropical drink in an island resort. Why do we do that you asked?

Well, according to semiologist, these are ‘signs’ in everyday life. Every sign consist of its signifier and signified.  (Chandler)

Signifier: The physical form of the sign (part of the overall sign) as we perceive it through our senses; an image.
  
Signified: The meaning we associated with the sign. (The mental concept generated from the signifier.)  (Barthes.)


For example: 
                    
                    CHOCOLATE                                          =        Signifier

                                                                                              


                  =        Signified
















        Heart-shaped chocolates



A signifier not necessary has only one signified but many such as . . .

Chocolate sundae.



Chocolate fudge cake.


Chocolate Chips.


And so, a sign has an inter-relationship (an inseparable bond) between the image of the signifier and the content of the signified.


Roland Barthes,
“Semiotics is the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie, because if something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth; it cannot, in fact, be used to tell at all.”


Basing from this, it is possible to tweak a neutral sign into an ideological tool.

Let’s take the heart-shaped chocolate (signified) as to further my explanation.


What are the connotations of the above photo?

Just to name a few, it signifies. . .

Love. When things are shaped like a heart, it often relates to love. This concept is planted in our head because we know that the heart is where we feel emotions such as love, tenderness, pain and affection.

Passion. Color also contributes to connotation. As you can see above, the chocolates are wrapped in red color aluminium. The color red is often associated with passion possibly to the use of red roses that symbolizes love.

However, some people may not think that red signifies passion and that heart isn’t always associated to love. Connotations are fluid as each individual has different perspectives on different things. Thus, this is when anchorage comes in. Before going through a deeper understanding, let’s take a look at this video clip. 


What we can deduce from the first half of the video, is a woman trying to break the non-blinking world record. However, what we didn’t know until the second half that it was actually an advert on Carre de chocolat when she couldn’t resist the goodness of chocolate as it melts in her mouth which – unfortunately - made her blink.

The message therefore finally sinks in as the advert uses ‘anchorage’ at the end of the commercial. It ‘anchor’ the commercial by channeling a specific interpretation. – without anchorage, the whole interpretation will end up in all direction and this may not deliver the right message across.

With that being said, semiotics is a powerful tool of analysis as it helps us to be familiar with the works of visual images. It helps us answer what isn’t seen or mentioned rather than what is.          





 

Works Cited

Barthes., R. chapter 25: Semiotics. In E. Griffin., A first look at communication theory. (p. 324). New York, NY.: McGraw-Hill.

Chandler, D. Semiotics for beginners. In Analyzing visual communication reader. University of Brunei Darussalam.

red. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2010, from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red#Sin.2C_guilt.2C_pain.2C_passion.2C_blood.2C_and_anger

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Week 2: Seeing and Perception.

Seeing is believing – maybe not.

Have you ever fall into a state of awe when a magician performs his magic trick? And the next thing you know, you start questioning yourself whether if what he did was true or was it just an illusion or a paradox. Before you answer, let’s watch the video clip.


So what did you see? Okay, probably I shouldn’t be asking you that because I’m sure none of you could see how it happened. – Not just you guys, heck, I can’t even see the trick, unless you’re a magician yourself then that’s exceptional. At this point, you can’t trust your interpretation of what’s going on around you. Our perceptions are being fooled. It looks like he placed the bandana in the fabric but what you (and I) didn’t see is that he never really put the bandana in the fabric at all.

After doing a couple of research, I found out that we humans have limited/narrow bandwidth of perception. (Bandwidth is the amount of data we collect through our brain cells correlation to time). This is called a selective perception. Thus, the tricks he performed gave us an illusion and this proves to you how limited the power of observation (seeing) can be. However, if you are able to master it then you will definitely have the ability to see what other people can’t see with their naked eyes.

I encounter a couple of magic tricks shown by a friend of mine and every single time I’ll be quoting “IT’S A LIE!” This is because I don’t buy it and I either find it bogus or fake. But then again, ask yourself this. What is real? Is seeing with your naked eyes revealing the reality? The truth is, no. we can’t judge whether one’s interpretation of reality is more true or false than the other. You are what’s different. The way you’re observing reality is different; not reality itself. Hence, reality is in the mind of the observer. – When observation change, reality change.


Optical illusions can distort our perception by manipulating parts of an entity such as motion, color, geometric designs and luminance. Our eyes can deceive us in ways you can’t imagine. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the examples below.

Most of the illusions have been commonly used by psychologists and artists.


There are no gray spots at the corners of the squares.



shifting gears
Afterimages of complementary colors create apparent movement in our peripheral vision
as our eyes shift across the page.




Word Color Test
In this test DO NOT READ the words, say aloud the COLOR of each word.



These have been taken from http://www.scientificpsychic.com/graphics/



In summary, as a professional communication student, we need to understand the purpose of seeing so that we can channel this knowledge and mould it to fit into a particular text correlation to our aims and objectives. Also, we should take note that our minds are constantly affected by the limited ability of our eyes – just like the magic trick shown earlier which illustrated the limits and deception of human perception. Now, is seeing still believing to you? Maybe not after all.

Friday, August 13, 2010

week 1: Visual Culture



What is visual culture? From my simplified version:
“It’s Reading a story with our eyes”

When we read, we try to understand the story as a whole by analyzing the context itself. It focuses on aspects of culture that rely very much on visual images.

According to Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture, London: Routledge, 2000, p. 14
“Visual culture works towards a social theory of visuality, focusing on questions of what is made visible, who sees what, how seeing, knowing and power are interrelated. It examines the act of seeing as a product of the tensions between external images or objects, and internal thought processes.”


PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is one good illustration on visual culture. It’s an activist group that is against cruel treatment of animals. They rely a lot on visual work. They carry out protest campaign on fur in fashion shows, meat eaters and investigate on animal cruelty such as animal testing, rodeo, cock fighting and abuse of backyard dogs.

PETA uses Photography as one of the medium to convey their message. A lot of celebrities team up with the organization to raise awareness by the means of posing nude or nearly nude demonstrations and campaigns. However, some people may see the images and represent them as pornography.



The discourse of Khloe Kardashian in this photo is linked now with the ideology of sexual objectification.
However, when it comes to counter discourse, we cannot assume that just by looking at a nude image of these women, it represents pornography or objectification. This image is trying to get across people around the globe that we shouldn’t be wearing fur because it leads to animal cruelty. To me, I find this empowering because it’s not easy to go all bare in front of a camera and be so passionate about what you’re doing. - And also, it’s for a good cause.  


















Meat is Murder

The photos speak for itself. It’s generally transmitting the idea that eating meat is just morally wrong. -  It is animal slaughter. Animal feel pain just like we do so we should take their feelings into consideration. And if you eat meat, you are automatically labeled as deviant/murderer. The politics of discrimination against people eating meat is produced in this representation.  They use the induction of guilt to plant such ideas in our head to change the way we think and view things. 


And so, this definitely shows how powerful the work of visual culture and the media can be as it creates identities. Thus as a professional communication student, it is important to study such context as it plays a major part in our daily lives.