Understanding Visual Culture

Biopower (Scientific Gaze)

"Biopower refers to the way that power is enacted on a collective social body through the regulation and discipline of individual bodies in realms such as social hygiene, public health, education, demography, census taking, and reproductive practices, among others. These processes and practices produce particular kinds of knowledge about bodies and produce bodies with particular kinds of meanings and capacities".

Ideology

"The shared set of values and beliefs that exist within a given society and through which individuals lives out their relations with societies, institutions, and structures" (Sturken & Cartwright, p.445)

Culture

- "Culture [...] is not just so much a set of things [...] as a process, a set of practices. Primarily culture is concerned with the giving and taking of meaning' - between members of a society or group" (Hall, Representation, p.2) - Refers to sets of common everyday activities & processes through which meaning is made.

Centre of the world

- "Every drawing or painting that used perspective", argued John Berger, "proposed to the spectator that he was the unique...":

Scientific Gaze

- "Scientific looking does not occur in isolation from other cultural contexts ... [and] the idea that science is a separate social realm, dedicated to discovering laws of nature unaffected by ideologies or politics, has been a myth surrounding the hard sciences" (Sturken, 34)

Politics in film (Commoli & Narboni)

- "every film is political, inasmuch as it is determined by the ideology which produces it (or within which it is produced)" (30) - In other words, each & every film that is produced is inescapably tied to the political field by virtue of the fact that it is both an ideological product and a product of ideology.

Broadcast Media

- (Like TV & Radio) : Refers to media that are transmitted from one central to many different receiving points, networked media are essentially non-centralised or decentralised technologies. - Networked media are considered more democratic than broadcast media, due to their collaborative nature, whereby the audience can also be the producers.

Cultural Homogenisation

- (OR 'McDonaldisation') refers to the reduction in cultural diversity through the popularisation & diffusion of cultural symbols (including physical objects, customs, ideas & values) throughout the world.

3 Genetic Positions

- 1. Dominant/ Hegemonic Position - 2. Negotiated position . - 3. Oppositional Position

Parole

- A particular use of a sign or set of signs

Modernism

- A set of styles at work in literature, architecture, film & art that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (partly in response to the impact of modernity), which challenge and/or question the traditions & conventions of representation in art.

Signs

- A sign is a representational unit of language; it is a word, sound or image which carries meaning. - Signs stand for (or represent) concepts and the conceptual relationships we carry around in our heads. - The relationship between the sign, the concept and the referrent is ArbItrary ( no reasoning or system)

Aura (Walter Benjamin)

- A work's aura is tied to its' singular 'presence in time and space', a presence which is unique and un-reproducible: "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" (73)

Camera

- According to Benjamin, what invention is most emblematic of the art of mechanical reproduction?

signifier + signified = sign (object) + (meanings) = sign

- According to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, a 'sign' is composed of:

Myth (Roland Barthes)

- All the connotative meaning of a particular image appears to be denotative or natural - Myth - hidden set of rules and conventions through which meanings specific to a certain group are made to appear universal and a given.

Connotative Meaning

- All the social, cultural, and historical meanings that are added to a signs literal (denotative) meaning. - A sign's connotative meaning will always be in excess of its denotative meaning...

The Frenzy of the Visible (Jean-Luc Comolli)

- By the late 19th century the world seemed to become entirely visually accessible as a direct result of both the increased mobility afforded by new technologies (e.g. the train and the motorcar), and through advances in visual media (such as new printing techniques, the invention of photography and cinema, and so on). - The life of sciences (and medicine in particular) took part in this frenzy, with an astonishing increase in the production, dissemination & consumption of visual images across practice & biological disciplines more broadly.

Secularisation

- By throwing into question the ideas of 'originality', 'authenticity', and 'uniqueness', the introduction of mechanical forms of image reproduction leads to a weakening of aura ("that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art" (74) together with a secularisation of art on a grand scale (the weakening of the 'aura' freeing art from its religious status as unique ritual artefact).

Cinema

- Cinema is foremost a technological or reproductive art: film is nothing but the mechanical reproduction & re-articulation of the images & sounds that populate the world. In other words, cinema is the art of mechanical reproduction (even its mode of production is based on Fordist Principles of industrial organisation...) - First mass art/ First mass-produced art, brings it a "tremendous shattering of tradition" (Benjamin,74), namely, a dismantling of artistic hierarchies & erosion of the distinction between 'high' and 'low' art.

- Signification and Representation

- Clarke argues that photographs are intrinsically part of a process of:

Arbitrary

- Constructionists argue that the relationship between a sign and the concept it invokes is:

Negotiated Position

- Consumer accepts some aspects of the dominant reading & rejects others

Oppositional Position

- Consumers fully reject the dominant meaning of a cultural product.

Dominant/ Hegemonic Position

- Consumers unquestioningly accept the message that the producers are transmitting to them

Space-Time Compression

- David Harvey refers to . the process by which experience of time appears to accelerate while the significance of distance is reduced during the period of advanced globalisation.

Cultural Imperialism

- Describes the global flow of culture whereby an ideology, a politics or a way of life is 'exported' into other countries trough the export of cultural products. It is a form of imperialism using soft power (as opposed to hard power).

3 viewing positions (Stuart Hall)

- Dominant - hegemonic reading - passive reading - we as viewers decoded the dominant intended meaning encoded by the producer. - Negotiated - we negotiate or haggle with the embedded meaning - the viewer may override the producer's intended meaning. - Oppositional - we disagree with the dominant ideological position - reject the producers encoded meaning

Binary Structure Regarding Gender (Laura Mulvey)

- Dominant cinema effectively establishes a binary structure regarding gender: -Man -> Subject-> Active-> Vouyeuristic-> looks-> sadistic-> phallic-> witness... -Woman-> object-> passive-> exhibitionistic-> looked at-> masochistic-> castrated-> spectacle... -These phallocentric binaries are constructed through ostensibly politically 'neutral' codes and conventions., e.g. long shot, dissolve, pan, close-up, voice-over, use of harsh/ diffuse lighting, shot angles, framing, mise se-scene, depth of field, etc.)

Polysemy

- Every text is inherently polysemic ( it carries large number of different meanings) - This can however be controlled by juxtaposing the image with written text ,e.g. through anchorage or relay

Scopophilia (Voyeurism)

- Following Freud, Mulvey uses the term __________ to designate the drive to look and the derivation of pleasure from looking.

A sign is composed of 2 elements (Ferdinand de Saussure)

- Form - signifier = word/image/object - idea - signified = concept/ image you mentally construct *Both of the above are needed to produce a sign, meaning is fixed by culturally defined codes.

Scientific Truth

- Foucault also demonstrates how the scientific gaze served to create a certain type of 'truth' in science, a peculiarly scientific truth (over and above other forms of truth, and introduced "a new (clinical) regime of knowledge in which vision plays a distinctive roe in our regard to bodies and subjects" (Sturken, 370) - By collapsing boarders between science & popular media, today's postmodern culture works to establish an equation between visualisation techniques & scientific truths, and today scientific images no longer necessarily spell out self-evident truths.

Foucault

- Gaze a form of power - race - gender - class

3 Classes of Signs (C.S. Peirce)

- Icon - Index - Symbol

Medical Gaze

- In the Brith of the Clinic, Foucault presents a history of 19th century medicine as one defined by the gradual domination of the eye- or vision- over the other senses, describing in a particular a shift in scientific looking, away from what he calls the medical glance toward a more sustained & intense medical gaze. - The advance of imaging technologies (X-Ray/ CT/PET/MRI scans etc.) means the eye becomes even more isolated from (& promoted above) the other senses, as it becomes possible to visually open up the body to the scientist's eye (without having to open it up physically)

Media Convergence

- Increased concentration of media ownership into the hands of smaller and smaller number of transmedia and transnational conglomerates. - Connected to BUT distinctly different from 'Technological Convergence'

medium

- Is the World Wide Web (WWW) a medium or a text?

Decoding

- Is the process by which we interpret & give meaning to cultural products

Encoding

- Is the production of meaning in cultural products. It refers to the way images are coded & shaped so as to ensure a specific "preferred" connotation

Instantaneous Communication

- Isn't simply a way in which news or information is conveyed more quickly; rather, its mere existence alters the very texture of our lives changing the nature of our everyday experience, rich and poor alike.

Rhetoric of the Image (Roland Barthes)

- Just as in language, where 'rhetoric' refers to the art of using language in order to persuade (or to get across the right meaning), so too images can be said to have a rhetorical composition (Barthes, 1977) -The art of useful language in order to persuade -Language draws attention to itself in order to attract & retain the attention of the listener or reader - form is manipulated to engage interest in the contents. (Burgin, 46)

Language

- Made up of signs which are organised into various relationships

Art, Common Sense and Photograph (Victor Burgin)

- Manipulation; often done for ideological or political advantage essence of photography - Rhetoric; produces a persuasive argument from a certain political agenda - Anchorage; caption which provides context to the image - Juxtaposition; meaning produced through the 2 opposing images

Media

- Media (plural of medium) = forms in which artistic or cultural products are made or though which messages pass -forms through which we amplify, accelerate, and prosthetically extend our bodies in processes of communication.

Medium

- Medium = any extension of ourselves through a technological form. - The medium itself isn't a neutral conduit through which meanings, messages and information pass unmodified, but rather has a major impact on the meaning it conveys: every message is affected by its mediation - There is no message without a medium, nor is any message left 'untouched' or unaffected in its potential meanings by the form of its mediation.

Modernists

- Modernists emphasised things like the materiality of form, the insufficiency of representation, the conditions of production (which are generally hidden or covered over in works of cultural and the role of the 'author' as producer.

Modernity Vs Modernism

- Modernity refers to a time period which was characterised by dramatic social & technological change - Modernism is rather the name we give to the specifically artistic response to this period of intense advancement, and in particular the rejection of established artistic codes and conventions (like narrativity & perspective) in favour of an intense interrogation of form itself.

men

- Mulvey claims that, according to the principles of the dominant ideology, "__________ cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification."

Male Gaze (Laura Mulvey)

- Mulvey outlines a set of codes & conventions (surrounding the gaze in particular) at work in dominant cinema which effectively place 'man' in the active centre of the narrative universe, while positioning 'woman' at its fringes, reducing her to a passive object connoting what she calls 'to-be-looked-at-ness' (383)

Globalisation

- Not a single process, but rather complex set of processes (which can operate in a contradictory or oppositional fashion), that cannot be reduced to any particular one. Moreover, the economic influences that shape & propel globalisation have in truth been shaped by technology and cultural diffusion. -Describes a set of conditions that have escalated since the post war period: 1. Increased rates of migration 2. Rise of multinational corporations 3. International trade liberalisation initiatives 4. Development of global communications & transportation systems 5. Increased post-industrialisation 6. Decline of the nation-state 7. 'Shrinking' of world through commerce & communication

Meaning

- Not found in the object, nor is it located in the world itself. Rather meaning is constructed by systems of representation through codes & conventions that (arbitrarily) fix the relationships between concepts and signs. - "Meaning does not inhere in things, in the world. It is constructed, produced. It is the result of a signifying practice - a practice that produces meaning, that makes things mean" (Hall, Representation, p.24)

Realism and Perspective

- Objects as seen with the naked eye - Mirror representation of an object -Stand in for the real object - for example - terracotta warriors in China. -Within the context of art history has many agendas relating to 'episteme' or era of creation -Realism in art indication of changing political and social practices

Modernity

- Period beginning in the 18th century & reaching its height in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which refers to the historical, cultural, political and economic conditions coming out of the cultural and philosophical movement known as 'the Enlightenment', These conditions related in particular to the rise of industrial society & scientific rationalism; and the idea of controlling nature itself through technology, science & rationalism. - Modernity was a time of dramatic social and technological change, a period which embraced a linear view of progress as crucial to humankind's prosperity & as essentially optimistic view of the future (while simultaneously embodying an anxiety about change & social upheaval)

The myth of photographic truth (Roland Barthes)

- Photographs are not objective records of reality, rather they are just as much the product of human choice, selective composition & manipulation as are other forms of representation . - Photographic truth is a myth, not because photographs deliberately lie (in the sense that they can be manipulated or misused), but rather because 'truth' is itself always culturally inflected, i.e. ideological

Voyeurism (Laura Mulvey)

- Pleasure of looking without being seen - For Mulvey, Voyuerism and narcissistic 'satisfies the primordial pleasure of looking'. Freudian basis to theory.

Discourse (Foucault)

- Produces subjects in the sense that the viewer/ reader comes to personify the particular forms of knowledge the discourse produces . - Also produces a place for the subject or a subject - position, from which its particular knowledge & meaning most makes sense . - Regardless of our individual differences, we cannot make meaning until we have identified in some way with the positions that the discourse constructs

Realism

- Refers to a set of conventions in art unerstood at a given historical moment to represent subject matter truthfully, eschewing artificially & implausible scenarios. - Realist art seeks to copy, or reproduce the real: it aims to reproduce reality as it really is.

Networked Media

- Refers to content which is created, distributed, and used on networked computers or mobile devices (e.g. via the internet). It incorporates interactive digital media, networked information, emerging & innovative technological forms and non-broadcast communicated technologies.

Web 2.0

- Refers to the 2nd generation sites that allow users to interact & collaborate with each other as creators of user-generated content in virtual community (e.g., social networking sites, blogs, wikis, videosharing sites, etc.)

Technological Convergence

- Refers to the combination of media together into a single point of access or one conglomerate form.

Studium

- Refers to the common, banal meaning of the photographic image.

Punctum

- Refers to the effective or emotional component of photographs, i.e. the way that certain aspects of an image can 'punctuate' the studium. It pulls us into the frame and forces us to survey its contents with a critical eye. - It is the punctum that signifies to us that far from being 'innocent' the photograph is, in fact, complicit in a complex process of signification and representation.

Myth (Roland Barthes)

- Refers to the ideological meaning of a sign that is expressed through its connotation. It is the hidden set of rules, codes, and conventions through which particular meanings are rendered universal and given for a whole society - Myth allows the connotative meaning of a sign to appear to be denotative (and thus literal or natural) -Myth thus supplies ideology with a naturalising function: it allows for ideology to appear as natural' and not culturally determined.

Participatory Culture

- Refers to the new cycle of consumerism that emerges with the development of "new media technologies that enable average citizens to participate in the archiving, annotation, appropriation, transformation and recirculation of media content" (Jenkins, 554)

The Medium is the Message (MArshall McLuhan)

- Refers to the way that media forms themselves hold meanings independent of their messages. The form of a 'medium' embeds itself in the message, influencing how the message is perceived.

Visual Culture

- Refers to the way that we make meaning out of visual representations & practices of looking. - Involves the relation between what is visible and the names we give to what is seen - Also involves the invisible

Representation

- Representation = Power - Is the production of meaning through language (Hall, p.26) - Involves the use of language & images ... In order to create meaning about the world around us - Refers to the act of portraying, depicting, symbolising, or presenting the likeness of something - Not simply describing, but also defining it - delimiting it

Reproducibility

- Reproducibility also alters the way we conceive of the value of works that possesses an identifiable 'original', as value is no longer derived from the 'uniqueness' of the image but rather its status as the original of many copies.

Punctum

- Roland Barthes refers to the way that certain aspects of an image can disrupt its banal surface unity and allow for the formation of a critical reading as its:

A system of symbols or meaningful signs

- Semioticians understand culture as constituting a kind of:

The study of signs and symbols

- Semiotics can be defined as:

Perspective produces Realism

- Shifting role of the subject position - 'particular discourse asks a human subject to adopt within it' (p. 462) - "Each style of realism expresses a particular worldview that vies with other realisms and other worldviews in particular social context". (Sturken & Cartwright, p.149)

There is no system or reason

- Signs are 'arbitrary' because:

Symbol

- Signs in which there are no connection between the signifier and the thing signified, except that established by convention.

Index

- Signs in which there is a physical causal connection between the signifier and the thing signified (E.g. 'Smoke is an index of 'fire')

Icon

- Signs where there is a resemblance between the signifier and the thing signified ( E.g. Portrait is iconic of the person painted)

Spectatorship

- Spectators are strongly encouraged to identify with - & thereby reproduce - this phallocentric structure, identifying with the (male) protagonist & taking up an essentially 'masculine' position (regardless of their actual gender) in order to find pleasure in the text. - Thus, cinema through 'invisible means' reproduces both in text and in the audience, certain pre-formed political positions.

Image Analysis Tools

- TEXT; is there any written text in the image? What effect does it have? - DOMINANT; where is our eye attracted to first? - COLOUR? TONAL VALUES; what is the dominant colour? Are there any contrasting colours? - SPACE/ COMPOSITION; how is the space segmented & organised? Is there any underlying design? how are key objects positioned? -DEPTH; On how many planes is the image composed? does the background/ foreground comment on the middle ground? - DENSITY; how much visual information is packed into the image? Is the texture stark, moderate, or highly detailed?

System of Linear Perspective

- Technique of visualisation that uses geometric procedure to project space onto a two dimensional plane. Establishes a vanishing point/s with all objects receding in size toward that point, creating a sense of depth & directing our eye of the viewer into that space . - In portraying a scene if we were looking at it through a window, perspective concurrently designates the viewing subject as a single, unmoving spectator

Mechanical Reproduction

- Technological or mechanical reproducibility as inherent qualities of the medium (e.g. in film & photography) alters the way we conceive of an artwork's value, shifting it away from residing in its 'uniqueness' & 'authenticity' & toward its aesthetic, cultural, and social worth.

Raymond Williams

- Television allows images to be projected to mass audiences directly into their homes - Two modalities rapidly accelerate global flow of images: satellites and the internet. - Television companies have created complex sequencing patterns to ensure viewers stay loyal to their stations

Television (Raymond Williams)

- Television is a medium of distraction: it is an ongoing electronic presence that is set to a timetable & transmitted continuously -'Television Flow' describes the way that viewers' experience of television involves an ongoing rhythm that incorporates interruptions (e.g. commercials & program/ channel changes) into a seemingly continuous flow'

Laura Mulvey

- The Male Gaze - "Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at." (John Berger, Ways of Seeing, p.47)

Soft Power

- The ability to influence & obtain things through cultural or ideological appropriation

Hard Power

- The aggressive use of military & economic means to influence the behaviour or interests of other political bodies.

Cinematic Apparatus

- The cinematic apparatus is a distinctly 20th century technology, being like modernity itself, the result of a specific set of cultural, aesthetic, technological, economic, social, as well as political transformations. - Indeed, there is arguably no greater 'emblem' of modernity than the cinematograph. (Walter Benjamin)

Langue

- The general system of implicit differentiations & rules of a combination which underlie & make possible a particular use of signs.

Walter Benjamin

- The idea of authenticity and originality is radically problematised by the introduction of mechanical forms of image reproduction like the camera.

Connotative Meaning

- The level at which various social, cultural and historical meanings are added to a sign's literal meaning is referred to as its:

Denotative Meaning

- The literal, face-value meaning of a sign.

Denotative Meaning

- The literal, immediately-apparent meaning of a sign is called its:

Moore's Law

- The observation that over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every 2 years.

- Polysemy

- The quality of having many potential meanings is known as:

Photographic Discourse

- The rules and conventions according to which different signs are organised and meaning gets put into social practice are referred to as:

Semiotics (or Semiology)

- The science or theory of signs. It concerns the ways in which signs function as vehicles for meaning. - The principles of semiotics were independently formulated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the American logician & philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce & the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure

Ideology

- The shared set of values & beliefs that exist within a given society and through which individuals live out of their relations to social institutions and structures. - Has a naturalising function: it refers to the way that certain concepts & values are made to seem like natural, inevitable aspects of everyday life.

- Index - Symbol - Icon

- The three different kinds of signs outlined by C. S. Peirce are:

Verbal Text ; E.g. Anchorage & Relay

- Victor Burgin argues that the inherent polysemy of an image can be controlled by its juxtaposition with verbal text through the function of:

aura

- Walter Benjamin refers to the special quality that seems to emanate from unique works of art as its:

Myth; Example (Roland Barthes)

- We often associate certain foods with countries - pasta, basil and tinned tomatoes, are generally associated with Italian food. We are programmed by the cultural meaning encoded in these food items, and do not question their originality or authenticity.

originality

- What, according to Benjamin, is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity?

Relay

- Where the written text 'compliments' the image by explaining or developing its significance

Anchorage

- Where written text is used to select a single meaning out of the multiplicity of connotations available

Science

- While science is generally imagined to be the opposite of culture (science= static, absolute & objective; Culture = flexible, relative & subjective), the fact is that science and culture are always mutually engaged. - Science is itself ultimately "a set of cultures, and its practices are culturally specific. Science intersects with other areas of knowledge and culture and draws on those systems in its day-today practices." (Sturken, 350)

The Female form is threatening (Laura Mulvey)

- While the form and figure of woman is displayed for the enjoyment of the male protagonist (& by extension, the spectator) her form is also threatening because it invokes man's unconscious anxieties about sexual difference & castration: "the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men... always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified" (385-6) - The male protagonist deals with this threat by either subjecting woman to his sadistic gaze and punishing her for being different, or by denying fer difference & fetishising her by overvaluing a part of her body.

Mechanical Forms of Image Reproduction (Walter Benjamin)

- With the introduction of mechanical forms of image reproduction like the camera in the late 19th century, the idea of authenticity and originality is problematised, as there is no longer any original work to speak of but rather 'a series of copies that stand equally in the place of the singular original work'

Visual Culture (Mirzeoff)

-" [Visual Culture] is not just a part of our everyday life, it is your everyday life." (p.3)

Scientific Gaze

-"Scientific images and looking practices are as dependent on cultural context and culturally informed interpretations as images from popular culture, art and the news." (Sturken and Cartwright, p.347) - Doctors gain power through the 'medical gaze' - Status/power/knowledge/ - Patients experience less important than doctor's judgement

4 key points semiological system (Saussure)

-1. Signs consist of a signifier and a signified -2. Signs are arbitrary: there is no inherent connection between a signified and what it signifies. -3. The identity of the elements of a language are determined by differences, i.e. by a network of relationships consisting of distinctions & oppositional from other elements of language. -4. Semiotics examine the parole as only manifestation of the broader langue

Authenticity & Originality (Walter Benjamin)

-For Benjamin, authenticity inexorably tied to the presence of an 'original'. More over, this traditional 'unique' artwork has a particular aura attached to it, which involves "all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced" (74)

Globalisation (Raymond Williams)

-Globalisation - transmission of information is no longer confined by geographical borders - resulting in loss of cultural identity. -Cultural imperialism and "soft power."

Freudian Theory

-Whereas Freudian theory argued that the castration complex was a universal formation explaining the origins & perpetuation of patriarchy, Mulvey demonstrates how the unconscious of patriarchal society organises its own signifying practices - like film - to reinforce myths about women & to offer the male viewer pleasure

2 systems of representation (Stuart Hall)

1. Mental - learned, culturally specific 2. Shared language - Written, spoken, sounds, and visual

Representation (Stuart Hall)

Act of portraying, depictin, symbolising, presenting a likeness - traditionally objects represented in paintings and photography - as standing in for or representing 'real life'

All signs are decoded

All signs are decoded using socially constructed codes - based on ideologies - all are arbitrary

Ideologies

Are socially constructed - not natural - they influence the way we view and decode visual images.

Power (Walter Benjamin)

Authenticity or the original holds the power

Signs

Convey meaning which represents concepts

Context

Historical/social background - who, what, where, when

Paradox (Walter Benjamin)

Mass production of images according to Benjamin was going to reduce the 'aura' of original artworks, but instead the value of many famous works has increased.

Signifier + signified = sign

Objects/image/sound + the mental concept produces a sign

Binary Opposites (Ferdinand de Saussure)

Opposing meanings are the way we decode and produce meaning through identification of the differences. For example "The historical reliance on binary oppositions points to the way that difference is essential to meaning and how we understand things ... such as nature/ culture, male/female." (Sturken & Cartwright, p.432)

We look before we speak

Our world is primarily visual and we constantly decode signs based on socially constructed codes

Scopophilia (Laura Mulvey)

Relates to Cinema - "pleasure of looking" for Mulvey women in cinema are the passive object - while men are the active subject.

Signified (Roland Barthes)

Signified = connotative - cultural/contextual meaning

Signifier (Roland Barthes)

Signifier = denotative - literal meaning

The process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture through the use of language, signs and images which stand for or represent things

Stuart Hall defines 'representation' as the production of:

Semiotics

Study of Signs

Aura (Walter Benjamin)

The special quality that emanates from an original work of art "The aura of unique works give them the quality of authenticity, which cannot be produced."

Codes (Stuart Hall)

organisation of signs - codes stabilises the meaning with a certain cultural/language context. Some are universal, other culturally specific.

Signs (Roland Barthes)

signs are produced by the denotative and connotative For Barthes, visual images are read as texts of cultural events.