It might as well have been an abyss over which my relatives sailed from Eastern Europe to here. Only they themselves made it across. No chairs, no jewelry, no books, no clothing even made it over; all dropped into that hole. Even their thoughts from before that moment dropped into that hole.
They came across and nothing came with them.
This is my history.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
“It's thoroughly depressing to see how not-far we've come in the last 30 years.”
Washington Monthly had a little discussion Thursday about Wimbledon's announcement that women would now play for the same amount of prize money as men. The comments read as though it is 1960: "This is not about men and women, this is just about economics!" "But men are objectively better athletes!" "Men play 3 out of 5; the women don't." "It's the men that the audiences come to watch (except for the short skirts on the women)."
The title comment above was one of the few voices responding to the night-at-the-bar chest-thumping that characterized the conversation.
The title comment above was one of the few voices responding to the night-at-the-bar chest-thumping that characterized the conversation.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
discussing Decoding Advertisements
We started with a little background in structuralism, as a way into understanding where semiotics comes from and the matters it considers important: structures. Yes, well.
And then we looked at how Williamson introduces semiotic terminology bit by bit, building a complex system of relations among the terms but also then, necessarily, building more and more complex systems for analysis -- which leads into the question of how much the system itself calls into play the dense ideological structures Williamson says we can never escape.
But that may be moving too quickly to the end of our discussion.
From the beginning, we all could see that the Williamson book does build, does have its own structure: Williams starts from the notion of difference as the base semiotic notion -- that we have language only because we define terms by considering something in its differences from other things -- to the notion of sign, to sign as signifier and signified, to the idea that a signifier-signified pair can itself be a signifier for another signified, to the idea that such layering become referent systems, all of which only point within or to each other. And so what is denoted is never "natural" or "real," but only ever, finally, the product being sold. We are caught up, then, in formal structures that only ever point at, circle about and within, other structures.
As we talked, we came to see and understand that Williamson's initial set of example ads depend completely on a particular type of ad, one in which there are two objects, with the qualities of one object transferring to another. In questioning how Williamson's structural analyses might work on more recent advertising (Alexa brought up the ongoing Absolut series of ads, for example, which depend on audience knowledge of the series) we talked about how Williamson's system of 1978 relied on then-available ads -- but Williamson would be ready with reply to newer ads: she could extend aspects of the structure she builds (such as the notion of how hermeneutics works in advertising ["by being given something to decipher, our comprehension is channeled in one direction only" 78], as well as her understanding of the purposes of advertising to build always internally-facing referent systems, to speak of the referent system of Absolut ads as building off audience desire to be in the know -- but the know is not something outside the system, and instead is completely inside the system, completely self-referential. Williamson would probably have a field day.
But it was questioning like that that led us to name a concern with Williamson's approach. Williamson acknowledges the powers of advertising because of these self-referential systems she describes, these systems that hold us within them so that there seems to be no outside, such that we "become signified by, and then summarized by, things": we become -- we are -- the "sum of [our] consumer goods" (179). Williamson also acknowledges the "danger in structural analysis, because of its introversion and lack of context" (178). That is, structural analysis (as Williamson presents it) is just as circular, system-building, and therefore all-inclusive of itself, as advertising: which begets the other?
There is a sense of defeat about the book, a pessimistic giving-in to the all inclusiveness of the system: Williamson ends by saying that the value of learning to decode isn't learning the code but learning to change the system. How is that ever possible if the system is -- by its very definition -- all-encompassing? But Alexa's question also led us to question how changes in ads come about, how changes in -- for example -- conceptions of male and female come about (because the first perfume ad we could find was for man scents), or changes in technological systems that shift what is advertised and how. The system of advertising is *not* cut off from other systems -- technological, cultural, geographic, gender, ethnicities -- and so ought not be discussed outside those other systems. What sort of semiotic analyses would help us with such extensions? (And would they only build bigger and even more inescapable structures?)
Other questions that appeared as we discussed, and to which we ought to return:
And then we looked at how Williamson introduces semiotic terminology bit by bit, building a complex system of relations among the terms but also then, necessarily, building more and more complex systems for analysis -- which leads into the question of how much the system itself calls into play the dense ideological structures Williamson says we can never escape.
But that may be moving too quickly to the end of our discussion.
From the beginning, we all could see that the Williamson book does build, does have its own structure: Williams starts from the notion of difference as the base semiotic notion -- that we have language only because we define terms by considering something in its differences from other things -- to the notion of sign, to sign as signifier and signified, to the idea that a signifier-signified pair can itself be a signifier for another signified, to the idea that such layering become referent systems, all of which only point within or to each other. And so what is denoted is never "natural" or "real," but only ever, finally, the product being sold. We are caught up, then, in formal structures that only ever point at, circle about and within, other structures.
As we talked, we came to see and understand that Williamson's initial set of example ads depend completely on a particular type of ad, one in which there are two objects, with the qualities of one object transferring to another. In questioning how Williamson's structural analyses might work on more recent advertising (Alexa brought up the ongoing Absolut series of ads, for example, which depend on audience knowledge of the series) we talked about how Williamson's system of 1978 relied on then-available ads -- but Williamson would be ready with reply to newer ads: she could extend aspects of the structure she builds (such as the notion of how hermeneutics works in advertising ["by being given something to decipher, our comprehension is channeled in one direction only" 78], as well as her understanding of the purposes of advertising to build always internally-facing referent systems, to speak of the referent system of Absolut ads as building off audience desire to be in the know -- but the know is not something outside the system, and instead is completely inside the system, completely self-referential. Williamson would probably have a field day.
But it was questioning like that that led us to name a concern with Williamson's approach. Williamson acknowledges the powers of advertising because of these self-referential systems she describes, these systems that hold us within them so that there seems to be no outside, such that we "become signified by, and then summarized by, things": we become -- we are -- the "sum of [our] consumer goods" (179). Williamson also acknowledges the "danger in structural analysis, because of its introversion and lack of context" (178). That is, structural analysis (as Williamson presents it) is just as circular, system-building, and therefore all-inclusive of itself, as advertising: which begets the other?
There is a sense of defeat about the book, a pessimistic giving-in to the all inclusiveness of the system: Williamson ends by saying that the value of learning to decode isn't learning the code but learning to change the system. How is that ever possible if the system is -- by its very definition -- all-encompassing? But Alexa's question also led us to question how changes in ads come about, how changes in -- for example -- conceptions of male and female come about (because the first perfume ad we could find was for man scents), or changes in technological systems that shift what is advertised and how. The system of advertising is *not* cut off from other systems -- technological, cultural, geographic, gender, ethnicities -- and so ought not be discussed outside those other systems. What sort of semiotic analyses would help us with such extensions? (And would they only build bigger and even more inescapable structures?)
Other questions that appeared as we discussed, and to which we ought to return:
- How would you use a semiotic visual methodology in teaching undergraduate courses like Revisions or Tech Comm? What use would there be for people in your classes in such teaching? What would you emphasize? What cautions would you give?
- Semiotic analysis (as Williamson presents it) is a form of compositional analysis, by definition: it focuses on how ads are composed. Whereas Bang, Dondis, or Arnheim appeal to (an ideology of) the universal body as the explanation of why visual compositions work, Williamson appeals to ideology itself. How is Williamson's approach NOT an example of teaching people to have a "good eye" (to follow Rose's critique) -- with the "good eye" here being one that judges visuals not in terms of beauty but rather in terms of late twentieth century academic critiques of bad consciousness?
- Given that Williamson's system depends on transfer of meaning among different signifier/signified pairs, how applicable is such a system to other kinds of visual genres (film, plays, TV shows) where there rarely are -- as in advertising -- present at the same time such sr-sd pairs? Or do we need to shift what we consider to be the sr-sd pairs?
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Happy Woman Professor Day
Okay, yes, this is most often what it is, as Barbara Ras writes it: "I want to shake the magnolia tree to see if I'm strong enough / to move any of the darkness inside its tangle of branches."
This morning at school began with Shannon, talking about teaching, coming up with strategies for moving an 8am class. Shannon is sick but is there and (as always) thoughtful and quick, and as she speaks of different people in her classes my office fills with them. We talk about the exact wording of what you say at the beginning of a class and whether you put something on the board or ask people to write about it. How all our small moves build larger patterns, and what single parts of the weave you can pluck all at once to have another pattern that morning and you only realize it afterwards as you walk away grinning. Shannon is smart about all of this, and I learn.
Then Shawn and I talk about his comps: he's moving back and forth between two-dimensional visual design and immersive games, asking about the entanglements of engagement and persuasion (how are they different?) in those differing visual objects. We figure out a few new things together about the library's database and e-journals, and find some new articles, and we talk about the connections you make with the people with whom you work and how they become really visible at a daughter's first birthday party while the wrapping paper is flying through giggling fingers. (Well, that later part is how I am remembering it later, how I will remember these meetings, as though Lily was there so graciously helping Christy and Hina with the presents on my office floor while Shawn's ideas glittered about the room with his grace and smarts like the light off the wrapping paper.)
Professor Hawhee came to the phone from snow shoveling or pushing but I got to speak to her twice today because during that first call Marilyn knocked on my door to remind me of our noon meeting. Our noon meeting is our writing group: Vicky, Marilyn, and I had read one of Marika's conference presentations, and we were talking about all the different article possibilities in the presentation. Marika makes sentences like magnifying lenses and Marilyn and Vicky are *smart* and the hour disappeared. Delightfully. Next week we read from Vicky's book and the week after we read from Marilyn's book, and then it's my CCCC presentation, which I've started writing, at least the first sentences that make me laugh and that chances are will be nowhere near the final version.
In our weekly meeting about the writing program, Christy, Moe, and I... well. I look forward to that meeting. Christy thinks about teaching with ethical rigor, gently teasing apart situations with such respect for who people are that I sometimes am tempted to make up problems so I can just keep listening and being made smarter. And Moe is Mr. Magic-out-of-the-Hat, so creative in coming up with assignments and workarounds it's as though he lives inside his collections of old ads, magazines, and costumes. And he is human, and styling, and way smart; his dissertation is going to be a genre-bending wonder, to which I am looking forward oh so selfishly. (And he comes with Liz, who is a gift to the world of textures, generosity, animations, and delight.)
Lynn came to office hours, to talk about science writing and snowboarding. This is a woman who makes me happy to think about the emails of 2 or 5 or 10 years from now -- like emails from Jana, davina, Kristin, Anna, Mavis, Jessie, Lisa, Vicki, Asha, Karen, Becky, Jess, Hannah, Pavi Elle, Jen, Amy, Diane, Emily, Erica, Erin, Nia, Katie, Eve, Orsolya, Evelyn, Josh, Aaron, Donovan -- emails about success and work and thinking and life and families after undergrad studying, emails that fall out of the morning inbox like petals, emails from friends.
Then I got to talk with Professor Hawhee again, laughing. Her warmth and piercing smartness made me think about talking -- just the talks of this past week -- with the ever graciously thoughtful Professor Hawisher, the ever sharpfunny Professor Ball, the bright and generous Professor Hocks, the Manta-wearing Professor Grabill who cracks me up and makes me think we can be f-ing brilliant together with Professors Sidler, Hart-Davidson, and to-be Lackey.
And I haven't even begun to mention the gifts of Professor Arola and Professor Jasken, and that Sajdyk woman. And Teacher-Kitchen Master Buchanan and Teacher-Dean-to-Be Corbin.
Why am I a Happy Woman Professor?
All that is above is just the today and some-of-this-week part; I need to add into the longer mix Johndan, Kate, Stuart, Geoff, Karla, Ellen, Linda, Cindy, Diana, Scott, Heidi, Barclay, Dickie, Madeleine, Marcia, Alice, Chuck, Brent, Matt, Paul, Anne, Jackie, Mary, Michelle, Collin, Eva, Amy, Joyce, Susan, Carrie, Martha, Derek, Jonathan... Any writing I do is thanks to every name here -- and many I have missed -- and all their ideas and generosity.
Oh, and the classes I get to teach.
Off, laughing.
........
But wait, there's more:
blogos
first efforts
see jane compute
blog her
neither necessary nor sufficient
lilysea
the most cake
This morning at school began with Shannon, talking about teaching, coming up with strategies for moving an 8am class. Shannon is sick but is there and (as always) thoughtful and quick, and as she speaks of different people in her classes my office fills with them. We talk about the exact wording of what you say at the beginning of a class and whether you put something on the board or ask people to write about it. How all our small moves build larger patterns, and what single parts of the weave you can pluck all at once to have another pattern that morning and you only realize it afterwards as you walk away grinning. Shannon is smart about all of this, and I learn.
Then Shawn and I talk about his comps: he's moving back and forth between two-dimensional visual design and immersive games, asking about the entanglements of engagement and persuasion (how are they different?) in those differing visual objects. We figure out a few new things together about the library's database and e-journals, and find some new articles, and we talk about the connections you make with the people with whom you work and how they become really visible at a daughter's first birthday party while the wrapping paper is flying through giggling fingers. (Well, that later part is how I am remembering it later, how I will remember these meetings, as though Lily was there so graciously helping Christy and Hina with the presents on my office floor while Shawn's ideas glittered about the room with his grace and smarts like the light off the wrapping paper.)
Professor Hawhee came to the phone from snow shoveling or pushing but I got to speak to her twice today because during that first call Marilyn knocked on my door to remind me of our noon meeting. Our noon meeting is our writing group: Vicky, Marilyn, and I had read one of Marika's conference presentations, and we were talking about all the different article possibilities in the presentation. Marika makes sentences like magnifying lenses and Marilyn and Vicky are *smart* and the hour disappeared. Delightfully. Next week we read from Vicky's book and the week after we read from Marilyn's book, and then it's my CCCC presentation, which I've started writing, at least the first sentences that make me laugh and that chances are will be nowhere near the final version.
In our weekly meeting about the writing program, Christy, Moe, and I... well. I look forward to that meeting. Christy thinks about teaching with ethical rigor, gently teasing apart situations with such respect for who people are that I sometimes am tempted to make up problems so I can just keep listening and being made smarter. And Moe is Mr. Magic-out-of-the-Hat, so creative in coming up with assignments and workarounds it's as though he lives inside his collections of old ads, magazines, and costumes. And he is human, and styling, and way smart; his dissertation is going to be a genre-bending wonder, to which I am looking forward oh so selfishly. (And he comes with Liz, who is a gift to the world of textures, generosity, animations, and delight.)
Lynn came to office hours, to talk about science writing and snowboarding. This is a woman who makes me happy to think about the emails of 2 or 5 or 10 years from now -- like emails from Jana, davina, Kristin, Anna, Mavis, Jessie, Lisa, Vicki, Asha, Karen, Becky, Jess, Hannah, Pavi Elle, Jen, Amy, Diane, Emily, Erica, Erin, Nia, Katie, Eve, Orsolya, Evelyn, Josh, Aaron, Donovan -- emails about success and work and thinking and life and families after undergrad studying, emails that fall out of the morning inbox like petals, emails from friends.
Then I got to talk with Professor Hawhee again, laughing. Her warmth and piercing smartness made me think about talking -- just the talks of this past week -- with the ever graciously thoughtful Professor Hawisher, the ever sharpfunny Professor Ball, the bright and generous Professor Hocks, the Manta-wearing Professor Grabill who cracks me up and makes me think we can be f-ing brilliant together with Professors Sidler, Hart-Davidson, and to-be Lackey.
And I haven't even begun to mention the gifts of Professor Arola and Professor Jasken, and that Sajdyk woman. And Teacher-Kitchen Master Buchanan and Teacher-Dean-to-Be Corbin.
Why am I a Happy Woman Professor?
All that is above is just the today and some-of-this-week part; I need to add into the longer mix Johndan, Kate, Stuart, Geoff, Karla, Ellen, Linda, Cindy, Diana, Scott, Heidi, Barclay, Dickie, Madeleine, Marcia, Alice, Chuck, Brent, Matt, Paul, Anne, Jackie, Mary, Michelle, Collin, Eva, Amy, Joyce, Susan, Carrie, Martha, Derek, Jonathan... Any writing I do is thanks to every name here -- and many I have missed -- and all their ideas and generosity.
Oh, and the classes I get to teach.
Off, laughing.
........
But wait, there's more:
blogos
first efforts
see jane compute
blog her
neither necessary nor sufficient
lilysea
the most cake
Monday, February 12, 2007
et tu, Google?
Really, why should it be a surprise that Google has used the same techniques in North Carolina as Walmart used here in Houghton?
See Rough Type on Google's massive tax breaks -- and on elderly people being "persuaded" out of their homes.
See Rough Type on Google's massive tax breaks -- and on elderly people being "persuaded" out of their homes.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
our last 6112 discussion
We started our discussion of Donis A. Dondis's Visual Literacy by looking at a range of two-dimensional art pieces, asking what Dondis's approach encouraged or allowed us to say about the objects. We quickly ran up against the absence of the social / cultural in her approach. For example, when looking at Raphael's painting of Galatea we could talk about the arrangement and relationship of abstract elements and how they directed our eyes and attentions around the picture, and we could name (because they are represented) -- but not talk about -- humans, water, and animals. We were also very aware that could not speak much of gender, ethnicity, mythology, frescoes, the Renaissance; we knew from our experiences outside the painting that those factors and more shaped our viewing, but we needed to turn to other sources to inform our talk.
We looked at a Chinese painting and could apply Dondis's analytic frame to it: we could say that the colors are equally subdued, with little contrast except for the red; this is a landscape with few objects in it, and the boats are painted to blend into what is around them, as is the body of the flutist who stands out only subtly in the lower middle because of a shift in line. Most of us were uncomfortable with going any further, with coming to any judgments about the painting (for example, "This is about the smallness of humans in the landscape" or "This is about the passing of time in fall, about grabbing hold of the gentle moments of enjoyment"): we could see that it has been painted in a tradition unknown to most of us. Yang was able to tell us that this painting was probably a response to or illustration of a poem, a traditional Chinese use of painting. (Am I getting that right, Yang?)
We acknowledged that Rose's critique of compositional visual methodologies -- that they "do not encourage discussion of the production of an image…. nor of how it might be used and interpreted by various viewers" -- seemed an accurate critique for Dondis's approach. We raised but did not discuss much, however, our concern that Rose lays the blame for this lack of social-cultural reflexivity on how compositional approaches can be tied to the notion of the great artist or "the good eye" -- when Dondis's reasons for her system are different. The implication of Rose's critique is that compositional methodologies are used by critics to establish what are the best and most beautiful or otherwise worthy art objects; they are used, that is, to establish the tastes and so hierarchical placements of some people (I am thinking of Bourdieu and Distinction here). But Dondis is interested in larger cultural participation; she is interested in the thoughtful consumption AND production of visual objects by a wider range of people. Rose approaches visual methodologies as occuring strictly after the fact: they are, for her, to help with analysis of existing objects; she does not discuss them as possible approaches for anyone wishing to participate in the production of visual objects. Dondis sees production as a necessary part of cultural participation. Are compositional methodologies necessary -- or necessary and sufficient -- for producing thoughtful visual productions? Are visual productions necessary for -- and useful for -- cultural participation?
In our discussion, however, that thread about different understandings of the purposes of compositional methodologies very quickly led into something more compelling for our particular backgrounds and interests, and that is Dondis's definition of "literacy." Dondis uses her notion of "literacy" as the grounding for her arguments about how we should approach the visual (although she does reiterate, initially, that for her there are shortcomings with her approach because the verbal is more conventionalized than the visual). Steve pointed out that Dondis's definition of verbal literacy -- "To be considered verbally literate, one must learn the basic components of written language: the letters, words, spelling, grammar, syntax." (x) -- seems equivalent to Street's notion of "autonomous literacy" (which was published approximately 10 years after Dondis's book). While Dondis acknowledges that there are varying degrees of verbal literacy (from the ability to write "simple messages" to "increasingly complex and artistic forms" [10]) and so, comparably, "visual literacy" "means increased visual intelligence" (185), this does not change how she sets out to build a model of visual literacy parallel to her understanding of verbal literacy.
And so Dondis offers the visual equivalent of letters: for visual production, there are the "basic elements" of dot, line, shape, direction, tone, color, texture, scale, dimension, and movement. Syntax is covered through what Dondis describes as "the potential of structure in visual literacy" through denotative "psychophysiological" perceptions of balance, stress, leveling and sharpening, a preference for the lower left of a picture plane, attraction and grouping, and positive and negative; the meaning of these latter "short circuits the intellect, making contact directly with the emotions and feelings" (22); these contribute to our ability to build meaning through the techniques of kinds of contrast that Dondis describes in one chapter.
Dondis also claims that there are three levels to visual meaning: the representational, the abstract, and the symbolic (and these would be worth comparing to Pierce's index, icon, and symbol). The first arises out of "reality," "the basic and dominating visual experience" (68): it is the attempt to faithful recreate direct visual observation of the world. The second is "the reduction of multiple visual factors to only the most essential and most typical features of what is being represented" (71), and it
The symbolic "is an information-packed means of visual communication, universal in meaning" (72). It is not clear whether these levels are meant to correspond to some some aspect of verbal literacy, as the basic elements and techniques correspond to letters and syntax, but for Dondis both producers and receivers of visual compositions -- if the producers and receivers are to be considered visually literate -- have to be able to work with all three levels separately and entwined.
It is when she moves on to discuss style, that Dondis begins to address social and cultural aspects of visual composition. As with the levels, Dondis does not describe a verbal equivalent to style; instead, style is for her an unconscious cultural background that exerts influence over the choices composers make in working with elements and techniques of visual composition. Although Dondis acknowledges that there are and have been many different styles historically and geographically, she argues that all styles can be fit into five categories: primitivism, expressionism, classicism, the embellished, and functionality.
The last categorization is a symptom of what everyone in class noted as being a feature of every level of Dondis's arguments: she claims universalism for all aspects of visual composition -- for production and analysis -- and none of us were comfortable accepting that universalism. Dondis offers few non-Western, non-canonical examples, and offers no analysis of the material conditions of production (the marketing of art, the historic gendering of artistic production, and so on) that we know shape how we understand what we see. There is no discussion of advertising, of other than the fine arts.
In spite of our complaints, I think that following Rose and Dondis we have questions like these remaining:
Anything I missed?
We looked at a Chinese painting and could apply Dondis's analytic frame to it: we could say that the colors are equally subdued, with little contrast except for the red; this is a landscape with few objects in it, and the boats are painted to blend into what is around them, as is the body of the flutist who stands out only subtly in the lower middle because of a shift in line. Most of us were uncomfortable with going any further, with coming to any judgments about the painting (for example, "This is about the smallness of humans in the landscape" or "This is about the passing of time in fall, about grabbing hold of the gentle moments of enjoyment"): we could see that it has been painted in a tradition unknown to most of us. Yang was able to tell us that this painting was probably a response to or illustration of a poem, a traditional Chinese use of painting. (Am I getting that right, Yang?)
We acknowledged that Rose's critique of compositional visual methodologies -- that they "do not encourage discussion of the production of an image…. nor of how it might be used and interpreted by various viewers" -- seemed an accurate critique for Dondis's approach. We raised but did not discuss much, however, our concern that Rose lays the blame for this lack of social-cultural reflexivity on how compositional approaches can be tied to the notion of the great artist or "the good eye" -- when Dondis's reasons for her system are different. The implication of Rose's critique is that compositional methodologies are used by critics to establish what are the best and most beautiful or otherwise worthy art objects; they are used, that is, to establish the tastes and so hierarchical placements of some people (I am thinking of Bourdieu and Distinction here). But Dondis is interested in larger cultural participation; she is interested in the thoughtful consumption AND production of visual objects by a wider range of people. Rose approaches visual methodologies as occuring strictly after the fact: they are, for her, to help with analysis of existing objects; she does not discuss them as possible approaches for anyone wishing to participate in the production of visual objects. Dondis sees production as a necessary part of cultural participation. Are compositional methodologies necessary -- or necessary and sufficient -- for producing thoughtful visual productions? Are visual productions necessary for -- and useful for -- cultural participation?
In our discussion, however, that thread about different understandings of the purposes of compositional methodologies very quickly led into something more compelling for our particular backgrounds and interests, and that is Dondis's definition of "literacy." Dondis uses her notion of "literacy" as the grounding for her arguments about how we should approach the visual (although she does reiterate, initially, that for her there are shortcomings with her approach because the verbal is more conventionalized than the visual). Steve pointed out that Dondis's definition of verbal literacy -- "To be considered verbally literate, one must learn the basic components of written language: the letters, words, spelling, grammar, syntax." (x) -- seems equivalent to Street's notion of "autonomous literacy" (which was published approximately 10 years after Dondis's book). While Dondis acknowledges that there are varying degrees of verbal literacy (from the ability to write "simple messages" to "increasingly complex and artistic forms" [10]) and so, comparably, "visual literacy" "means increased visual intelligence" (185), this does not change how she sets out to build a model of visual literacy parallel to her understanding of verbal literacy.
And so Dondis offers the visual equivalent of letters: for visual production, there are the "basic elements" of dot, line, shape, direction, tone, color, texture, scale, dimension, and movement. Syntax is covered through what Dondis describes as "the potential of structure in visual literacy" through denotative "psychophysiological" perceptions of balance, stress, leveling and sharpening, a preference for the lower left of a picture plane, attraction and grouping, and positive and negative; the meaning of these latter "short circuits the intellect, making contact directly with the emotions and feelings" (22); these contribute to our ability to build meaning through the techniques of kinds of contrast that Dondis describes in one chapter.
Dondis also claims that there are three levels to visual meaning: the representational, the abstract, and the symbolic (and these would be worth comparing to Pierce's index, icon, and symbol). The first arises out of "reality," "the basic and dominating visual experience" (68): it is the attempt to faithful recreate direct visual observation of the world. The second is "the reduction of multiple visual factors to only the most essential and most typical features of what is being represented" (71), and it
conveys the essential meaning, cutting through the conscious to the unconscious, from the experience of the substance in the sensory field directly to the nervous system. (81)
The symbolic "is an information-packed means of visual communication, universal in meaning" (72). It is not clear whether these levels are meant to correspond to some some aspect of verbal literacy, as the basic elements and techniques correspond to letters and syntax, but for Dondis both producers and receivers of visual compositions -- if the producers and receivers are to be considered visually literate -- have to be able to work with all three levels separately and entwined.
It is when she moves on to discuss style, that Dondis begins to address social and cultural aspects of visual composition. As with the levels, Dondis does not describe a verbal equivalent to style; instead, style is for her an unconscious cultural background that exerts influence over the choices composers make in working with elements and techniques of visual composition. Although Dondis acknowledges that there are and have been many different styles historically and geographically, she argues that all styles can be fit into five categories: primitivism, expressionism, classicism, the embellished, and functionality.
The last categorization is a symptom of what everyone in class noted as being a feature of every level of Dondis's arguments: she claims universalism for all aspects of visual composition -- for production and analysis -- and none of us were comfortable accepting that universalism. Dondis offers few non-Western, non-canonical examples, and offers no analysis of the material conditions of production (the marketing of art, the historic gendering of artistic production, and so on) that we know shape how we understand what we see. There is no discussion of advertising, of other than the fine arts.
In spite of our complaints, I think that following Rose and Dondis we have questions like these remaining:
- Are compositional methodologies always necessary for starting analysis (especially if we take seriously Rose's arguments that all visual methodologies must "take seriously" "the image itself")?
- Is something like visual literacy necessary for full cultural participation?
- How can we know the limits of our methods of visual analysis, in terms of being reflexive about our geographical and cultural positioning?
Anything I missed?
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