The Rise of Visual Culture Notes

The Rise of Visual Culture Notes

Meaning is embedded/encoded into texts/artifacts.
That meaning can be added to further, dependent on its context or position in the environment.
The viewer decodes the embedded meaning.
That interpretation can be different to others dependent on;
  The beliefs of the viewer.
  The context in which it is viewed.

Sender    -   Message  -  Receiver
Encodes  -   Medium  -  Decodes

example
Artist     -    Painting  -  General Public

Man Ray's “Le Violon d’Ingres” 1924

Another example;
This photograph by Man Ray as I "decode" it, draws a similarity between the form of this woman and the shape of a violin. If you didn't know what a violin looked like, your interpretation/decoding of the image would be different.

Newspapers, television, radio, etc, these allow for the mass encoding and sending of messages, that you and I decode.
Again our interpretation of the message may be different depending on our experiences and beliefs.

Semiotics - the science/study of signs
Iconography - the study of visual symbols

The meaning of signs/messages is not a natural thing, it is something that we have learned or been taught by our parents/peers/culture.


Rene Magritte - The Treachery of Images.
Images are not real.
They are a representation or re-representation of reality. 

Rene Magritte's "La Trahison des Images" 1928

 

"The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe", I'd have been lying!"
Harry Torczyner. Rene Magritte: Ideas and Images. p71.