What I Learned in this Class

This class has been the most challenging graduate level course I have taken. Most courses in this program are devoted to reading and writing, and they came fairly easily to me, since I am a verbal person. In visual communication, I felt out of my element. I was especially challenged when I needed to visually communicate using technology. The learning curve was steep, but it makes me prouder of the work that I produced, since I had to put in a lot of extra effort.

While I wouldn't say that I personally feel that a picture is worth a thousand words, I have a greater understanding of the importance of visual communication. I have to come back to the key principle of this program: the audience is key. Some people, like me, are verbal learners and need words (whether written or oral) to understand information. But others are visual learners, and for them pictures may be even more important than words. Since we may not know whether our audience members are visual or verbal learners, it's important to integrate words and images into our communications. This class has helped me develop the tools to create visuals to enhance my written communications. (I admit that I still feel visuals are there primarily to enhance words, although I know some people would argue that they can be forms of communication unto themselves or that words may serve to enhance images.)

Kress and Van Leeuwen, while they introduced a lot of terms that were sometimes hard to keep straight, really helped me with my understanding of images by relating them to language. My college career has mainly been focused on languages (I have a B.A. in French and this program is in the English department), so when this explanation of a "grammar of visual design" made me feel like I was in familiar territory. I would highly recommend this book to others who come to visual communication from a linguistic background.

Overall, this course has been challenging, but I feel that the knowledge I gained was well worth the effort. I am now much more conscious of visuals, and I have no doubt that the skills I learned will be valuable in my future career(s).

Media as Meaning

I'm surprised that chapter 7 didn't come earlier in the book, since it seems to me a fundamental principle that the means of creating a message, whether visual or verbal, affect the meaning of the message. Kress and Van Leeuwen mention three major classes of production technologies: technologies of the hand, technologies of the eye, and synthesizing technologies (p. 217). They also mention that we may be getting back to using the body. There is already technology for dictating into a computer instead of typing and using the hand instead of buttons, e.g. the iphone.

When I was in elementary school we spent several years learning to write in cursive, but I never use this medium today except when signing forms. I immediately reverted back to print once I was allowed, and now my main means of written communication involves typing. But perhaps in the future typing will become as obsolete as cursive writing as we get to the point where dictating into a computer becomes commonplace. There will probably be new production technologies that we can't even imagine today. I think it's important not to get too accustomed to one type of technology; instead we have to keep in mind that technology is constantly changing and may be cyclical (as we are using technologies of the hand in conjunction with computers.)

Modality and Reality

This idea of reality is something we have discussed in MAPC classes before. Kress and Van Leeuwen essentially say the same thing: "What is regarded as real depends on how reality is defined by a particular social group." In other words, reality is socially constructed. This was pretty simple for me to understand, but once the authors went into modality, I began to get confused.

The section on color made sense when I applied it to the work I did with the digital remix project. I was trying to combine bodies, and I had to play with the color hues and saturation to make the skin tone match (or come close to matching. I don't think I ever got an exact match.) I understood representation, illumination, and brightness fairly well, but the short section on depth confused me. I thought I understood the concept of depth fairly well (for someone who has not taken art classes since 8th grade), but the terminology was difficult. What is an angular-isometric perspective and how does it differ from a frontal-isometric perspective? Also, I have no idea what a fish eye perspective is. Could anyone help clear this up for me?

This chapter also made me think about reality when it comes to the media. People we see on TV tend to be far more attractive than those we encounter in real life. Female actresses, in particular, are often very skinny. Does this make their beauty unreal? In a sense it does, when you consider the airbrushing and digital remastering that is done. This creates an ideal that is impossible for a regular person to achieve.

In response to this, Dove has launched a campaign for real beauty. They depict larger, curvier women in their underwear in an attempt to show us that there is beauty to be found in different body types. Here is an example. Is this picture more realistic than the celebrity shots we see on the covers of magazines? What do you think?

Digital Remix Ideas

The last time we had class, I talked about my woman as steel magnolia idea. So when we talked about our digital remix, the first thing that came to mind was combining a magnolia with steel. I'm not sure quite how to do this yet, but I think I would start with a picture of a magnolia (or some other flower) and then try to make a kind of x-ray (like the pictures we were looking at in class last time) to show steel underneath.

Another idea is to use my avatar from second life. She has two distinct appearances: one as Jane Harvy, her delicate alter ego, and the other as Dixie, her superhero self. I could have Jane looking in a mirror and seeing Dixie as her reflection.

I also have a vague idea of doing something with androgyny. Dixie is a bit masculine with her large muscular frame, but she still has feminine curves. I might take a picture of a man and then make it more feminine or vice versa.

All these ideas are theoretical at the moment. I don't know much about the practical aspects of photoshop, but maybe y'all can help me and let me know which one seems most feasible.

We are what we buy

The advertising chapter rang true to me, especially when it explained how consumerism is so embedded in our culture that we define ourselves by the products we buy. This is the commodity self, "the idea that our selves...are mediated and constructed in part through our consumption and use of commodities" (Sturken and Cartwright 279). I've heard this idea expressed in different ways alone, such as a line from a song in the musical Rent. "When you're living in America at the end of the millennium, you're what you own." (Obviously, the song was written in the nineties, but the sentiment hasn't changed.)

The book also points out that advertisers constantly have to come up with new strategies to gain our attention, since we have the ability to ignore commercials. I don't have TiVo, but when a commercial comes on one channel, I flip to another. One effective technique is embedding products within TV shows. The WB, the teen network to which my peers and I were glued in high school, pioneered some of this product placement. It began with Felicity, a show about a sheltered girl who defies her parents' expectations by following a boy to a college across the country. Noel, Felicity's geeky but loveable RA, is a Mac guy. He loves computers and drools over Macs. (This was at the time that Apple came up with the colorful iMacs). This love of Macs factors into Noel's relationship. One clue that he and his high school girlfriend are no longer compatible is that she bought a PC. He meets a new love interest in the second season and helps her decide on a computer. When she picks a mac, Noel knows that there is a possible relationship there. He sums this up with the line, "I guess you're a Mac girl."

Although the Mac product placement was most blatant in Felicity, I noticed that every computer in every show was a Mac. The message was clear: Cool kids use Macs. This is the type of mixed message explained on page 277. Getting a Mac (especially one of the colorful ones) is a way to express your individuality while being like everyone else. This simultaneous desire to be an individual and pressure to conform is a constant struggle that adolescents face and is perfectly reflected in Mac advertising.

Visual Reproductions

The reading for today was about how visuals are used to reproduce what we see. But how accurate are these reproductions? While we take photos of ourselves in exotic places to "prove" we have been there, anyone with a basic knowledge of photoshop or similar program can alter an image, so that it is no longer a realistic portrayal of a moment in time. We've all seen people put their heads onto others' bodies as joke. Magazines are especially adept at "digital remastering." Before a model is put on the front of a magazine, her image is touched up to remove any imperfections, such as acne, wrinkles, and even pores. Clearly, photos are not accurate reflections of reality. Are there ethical implications to altering visuals?

A New Type of Female Superhero

I've been thinking about this ever since some of my friends took this class last year. What I would really like to do is create a superhero in Second Life. I want to create a female superhero who does not conform to our traditional ideas of beauty. Female superheroes have been prominent on television in the last decade: shows such as Xena, Warrior Princess; Buffy, the Vampire Slayer; and Charmed portrayed women as more powerful than men. While this may be a step in the right direction, characters on these shows had to look good while they did their fighting. They wore fashionable clothes and maintained perfect hair and make-up. It also seemed weird to me that they were such small women who managed to beat up monsters twice their size.

I want to create a superhero whose "civilian" identity is an ordinary girl next door type. I see her as very small and mousy. But when she needs to fight evil, she goes through a physical transformation. She grows both in height and girth and develops visible muscles, and she won't be afraid to get mussed when she fights. I'll need to have two avatars in Second Life, one as my hero and one as her alter ego. I've given some thought to this, but once I actually start working in Second Life, I'll be able to flesh out my ideas some more.