Visible signs (book)

Author : David crow

Publisher : Ava publishing sa 2003 Singapore 

Distributer : Thames and Hudson 

In London 

"as consumers of visual art we have become highly sophisticated readers of signs and signals. We decode meaning from compositions with subconscious ease. It is important for artists and designers to have an understanding of how meaning is formed and the way that readers can be led to meaning through juxtaposition of words and images, our visual language."

Page 8/9

"a sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity"

Page 25

"the meaning of any sign is affected by who is reading that sign. Pierce recognised a creative process of exchange between the sign and the reader." 

Page 54

"the consistent use of soft focus for example in film and advertising has found it's way into our consciousness to a degree that it is universally read as sentimental or soft-hearted"

Page 57

 Jefkins, F. Advertising Writing (1976)

Brooklyn Princess | AW14 TV advert | boohoo.com (possible artefact)

Lindt LINDOR: Mastering Irresistibly Smooth (possible artefact)

Reading Images (book)

Reading Images The Grammar of Visual Design
Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen



"We believe that visual communication is coming to be less the domain of specialists, and more and more crucial in the domains of public communications."
page 3


"Visual language is not transparent and universally understood but culturally specific."
page 3

The Photography Reader (book)

Index pages :

semiotics :

109-45 : Semiotics
112, 138-45 : photography and fetish
111, 114-25 :Rhetoric of the image
112, 130-7 :Structure of representation
111, 126-9  Symbolic power of the image

115-16, 166-7, 175-6 : signs



Codes and Rhetoric :
(Part Three)

Victor Burgin wrote an essay "Thinking photography"

Bignell, J. (1997) Media Semiotics, an introduction



Roland Barthes
Rhetoric of the image

" because in advertising the signification of the image is undoubtedly intentional "
page 114

Victor Burgin
Looking at photographs 

"With most photographs we see, this decoding and investiture takes place instantaneously, unselfconsciously, 'naturally' ; but it does take place "
page 133


Andy Grundberg
The Crisis of the real

"What structuralist linguistic theory and semiotic sign theory have in common is the belief that things in the world - literary texts, images, what have you - do not wear their meanings on their sleeves. They must be deciphered, or decoded, in order to be  understood. "
page 166

Bibliography

Books :

Semiotics The Basics 2nd Edition
Daniel Chandler
Routledge Taylor and Francis Group London and New York
2002


Introducing Semiotics
Paul Cobley and Litza Jansz (author / artist )
Icon books Cambridge, UK
1999


Pictograms Icons and Signs A Guide to information graphics
Rayan Abdullah and Roger Hubner
Thames and Hudson London
2006


Mythologies
Roland Barthes
Paladin London
1973


On Photography
Susan Sontag
Penguin Books London
1978 (?)


The Objects of Affection Semiotics and Consumer Culture
Arthur Asa Berger
Palgrave Macmillan New York
2010


Researching the Visual Image, Objects, Contents and Interactions in Social and Cultural Inquiry
Micheal Emmison and Philip Smith
SAGE Publications London
2002


The Photography Reader
Liz Wells
Routledge London
2003


Visible Signs An Introduction to Semiotics
David Crow
AVA London
2003

Symbols and allegories in Art
Matilde Battistini
Getty Publications
2005


Reading Ads Socially
Robert Goldman
Routledge Oxfordshire
1992


Reading Images The Grammar of Visual Design
Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen
Routledge London
1996


Deconstruction and the Visual Arts
Peter Brunette and David Wills
Cambridge University Press Cambridge
1994


Signs and Symbols Their Design and Meaning
Adrian Frutiger
Ebury Press London
1998

Symbols and Allegories in Art (book)

Symbols and Allegories in Art
Matilde Battistini
Getty Publications America 2005

"carnation, symbol of fidelity in love."
page 19
check out the language of flowers

"The mirror, which represents sight"
page 38
painting : allegory of the five senses, by Sebastian Stoskopff


"the soap bubbles symbolize the fleeting nature of earthly existence"
page 78

"Youth is represented by a happy young couple"
page 95
painting : the three ages of man by Titian

"the wolf, endowed with very keen visions, forms the figures eye."
"the lion symbolizes strength and virtue attained through effort"
page 106
painting : Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Earth,1570


"the snake symbolizes evil."
page 119


"the rose petals are symbols of love"
page 131

"the peacock is a symbol of rebirth and redemption."
page 147

"the pearl necklace and earring give the portrait a sexual connotation: we recognize the figure to be female"
page 206
painting : Water  by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

"the sea of clouds is a symbol of the Sublime, that peculiar "feeling" one gets when contemplating nature"
page 231

"the masks symbolize falsehood and lies"
page 234

"the strawberry and cherry are traditional symbols of lust"
page 257

"the mirror, principal attribute of the proud"
"the chest contains gold and jewelry. The iconography of this vice partly follows that for vanity."
page 279

"the red dress embroidered in black is another distinct attribute of Wrath, which brings grief and tragedy."
page 281

"gold coins are a typical attribute of greed."
page 285

"the feather, jewels, vials of perfume, and cut flowers are typical attributes of Vanitas."
page 292

"the jewels on the table are symbols of the Blessed Virgin's purity"
page 302
painting : Woman Weighing Pearls by Jan Vermeer

"the scepter alludes to royal power"
page 332
sculpture : Giuliano de' Medici by Michelangelo

"the bowl of jewels has been interpreted as an allusion to fleeting happiness, the only kind that can be attained on Earth."
page 344

"Precious objects, gold coins, and jewels are clear reminders of the vanity of external wealth"
page 365

Paco Rabanne (artefact)

Director : Alexandre Courtes  (french film director)

Music:     Kanye West "Power"

Model:     Nick Youngquest (Australian model and rugby player)

Link to the advert on Youtube  

"epic saga and an allegory for victory"

"metaphorical and yet hyper-realistic. The film brings to life a fantasy in flesh, blood and muscle"

quotes taken from the description box attached to the video 

Link to the song on Youtube

The advert features two splices from Kanye West's song 'Power' it has been spliced so that the swearing in the original song does not feature in the advert as they would not be able to show the advert so as not to offend anybody.

Lyrics:

I'm living in the 21st century doin' something mean to it

Do it better then anybody you ever seen do it

Screams from the haters, got a nice ring to it

I guess every superhero need his theme music

[Chorus:]

No one man should have all that power

The clocks tickin' I just count the hours

Stop trippin' I'm tripping off the power

(21st century Schizoid Man)

The system broken, the school's closed, the prison's open

We ain't got nothing to lose motherf*r we rollin',

Huh? motherf*r we rollin'

With some light skinned girls and some Kelly Rowland's

In this white man's world we the ones chosen

So goodnight cruel world I'll see you in the mornin',

Huh? I see you in the mornin'

This is way too much, I need a moment.

[Chorus:]

No one man should have all that power

The clocks tickin' I just count the hours

Stop trippin' I'm tripping off the power

Till then, f*k that the world's ours

(21st Century Schizoid Man)

Lyrics from A-Z 

(but compared with other websites as well)

Voice Over:

Invictus the new fragrance for men by Paco Rabanne

Interview with Nick Youngquest

Signs and Symbols (book)

Signs and Symbols Their Design and Meaning
Adrian Frutiger


Optical Illusions

page 95

this image shows us three figures with the same height, however our eyes read the image as though they are different sizes. this can also happen with images/ photographs


Sign Symbol, Emblem, Signal

"it is felt to be less trouble to look at a picture than to attend to and understand a spoken message"
page 224

The Symbol

"This symbolic element in picture is an implied value, a mediator between recognizable reality and the mystical, invisible realm religion, philosophy, and magic, extending from the consciously understandable into the field of the unconscious."
page 235/ 236

Fauna Symbols

"The fact that birds are associated with the "heavenly" as well as the earthly"
page 246

"The serpent figure can be seen as a symbolic archetype"
page 248

Flowers :

Lily : "purity and innocence but also regarded as a sign of procreation"
Tulip : "a sign of fertility"
Rose : "all rose motifs are a symbolic expression of love"
Sunflower : "a symbol of constancy of love"
Mushroom : "both "lucky mushroom" and a warning of poison"
page 254

Signs symbolising movement

"The spiral is a very ancient sign of the sun and life, its constant rotation symbolising the pulsation and periodicity of all life."
page 277

Researching the Visual (book)

Researching the Visual Images, Objects, Contexts and Interactions in Social and Cultural Inquiry
Michael Emmison and Philip Smith
Sage Publications London 2000


"the primary issue is the interpretation of the photograph and its place in a system of cultural representation."
page 46

"Hall argues we should decode images in terms of connotation and denotation."
page 46
(Stuart Hall)

"Hall suggests that in determining which connotation is valid we have to draw upon our stock of common sense knowledge in order to make a reading of the image in terms of its expressive content."
page 47

"Selection and framing decisions made by photographers and editors are ignored... and no we tend to read such photographs as a truthful document of what really happened, ignoring the possibility of other interpretations of the event."
page 48
(... section = mentions a photo within the book, wont be in my essay)

Objects of Affection (book)

Objects of Affection Semiotics and Consumer Culture
Arthur ASA Berger
Palgrave Macmillan 2010 New York

Chapter One
The Science of Signs


Marshall McLuhan
wrote "The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man"
its a "study of american commercial culture"
he analyzes product adverts
page 12


Marshall Blonsky
wrote "American Mythologies"
same as Roland Barthes but instead of French ads he did American ones
page 12/13


"Saussure believed that symbols are never completely arbitrary, suggesting that there is usually some kind of quasi-arbitray or rudimentary bond between symbolic signifiers and what they signify"
page 14


"Advertising works by generating dissatisfactions and anxieties in people and feeds on the alienation that pervades capitalist societies. It assuages these feelings by focusing attention on private consumption. "
page 45

"Another thing advertising does is promote narcissism; it leads people to focus on their own wants and desires "
page 45

Jean Baudrillard
wrote " The System of Objects"
France 1968
translated to English 1996


"signs are all important, and for Baudrillard they create a "hyper reality" that seems more real than reality"
page 50

"things we purchase are no longer evaluated in terms of their use or functionality but rather in terms of what they signify about us - what they reveal about us, such as our taste, our style, our socioeconomic level, and our attitudes towards authority. This means that it is their semiotic meaning that is now all-important. "
page 50

"people who wear a brand-name fragrance are identifying with the brand more than with the name of the product. "
page 98

"many people are careful in their choices of perfumes and other fashion products"
page 98

"many perfumes are given french or Italian names because in the popular imagination, italian products suggest luxury and refinement and french names suggest sophistication, sex and elite culture"
page 98

"In his book, Media Semiotics, Marcel Danesi explains the importance of brands to people who purchase them. He says that brands function at two levels. At the denotative level, a brand indicates a particular product. But brands function mostly at the connotative level"
page 111

Peugeot (artefact)

http://peugeotofficial.tumblr.com/tagged/gtilegend


http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2014/peugeot-legend-returns/


http://reservations.banffhotels.org/hotels/hotel/?hotel_id=700139630&check_in=10%2F12%2F2015&check_out=10%2F16%2F2015&rooms=1&adults=2&refid=4017

http://famouslogos.net/peugeot-logo/

Essay Question Analysis

Semiotics is known as "the science of signs" and has evolved to infiltrate all aspects of visual culture. Choose four popular cultural artifacts such as advertisements, posters, fashion campaigns, or designs, and offer an in depth semiotics analysis of their meanings via the use of sign, dialogic, symbol and index. Discuss in terms of symbolism, and/or a fragment standing for the whole.



Key elements of the question :

Semiotics
I need to show I understand this term with research and application

four popular cultural artifacts 
I need to have at least FOUR artifacts eg. advertisments, fashion campaigns, designs, posters,

in depth semiotics analysis 
500 words at least on each artifact, I will need to go into specific detailing

use of sign
how and why have they been used?

dialogic
(dialogue) words/slogans/song lyrics and how they affect the consumer

symbol
how/what is used? why?

index
what helps connote the message

discuss
a written debate in which i talk about two different sides and form a conclusion on the sides

terms of symbolism
what is representing the ideals and abstract entities (ie love, time, racism)

Possible Pop Culture Artefacts

Definition of artifact

3. any mass-produced, usually inexpensive object reflecting contemporary society or popular culture: artifacts of the pop rock generation.
4. a substance or structure not naturally present in the matter being observed but formed by artificial means, as during preparation of a microscope slide. Here

Definition of artefact

n.

1821, artefact, "anything made by human art," from Italian artefatto, from Latin arte "by skill" (ablative of ars "art;" see art (n.)) + factum "thing made," from facere "to make, do" (see factitious ). The spelling with -i- is by 1884, by influence of the Latin stem. Archaeological application dates from 1890. Here

Possible subjects:

(images courtesy of google images)

Boohoo winter campaign

Diet coke ad

Jean Paul Gautier perfume

Wayne Rooney advert for Nike

Beckham pants for H&M

Invictus - Paco Rabanne

Asda - comparison 

On Photography (book)

In Plato's Cave

"photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern"
page three


"photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire."
page four

Chris Marker
film : Si j'avais quatre dromadaires (1966)

"images which idealize (like most fashion and animal photography) are no less agressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness (like class picture, still lifes of the bleaker sort, and mug shots)

Dziga Vertov
film : Man with a movie camera (1929)

Hitchcock
film : rear window (1954)

Michael Powell
film : peeping tom (1960)
not research

"photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one - and can help build a nascent one. "
page 17
nascent - a new organization with future potential

" Any photograph has multiple meanings; indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: "There is the surface. Now think - or feel, intuit - what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way." Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation and fantasy "
page 23

" strictly speaking one never understands anything from a photograph. Of course, photographs fill in blanks in our mental pictures of the present and the past"
page 23


America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly


" In the normal rhetoric of the photographic portrait, facing the camera signifies solemnity, frankness, the disclosure of the subjects essence. That is why frontality seems right for ceremonial pictures (like weddings, graduations) but less apt for photographs used on billboards to advertise political candidates (For politicians the three-quarter gaze is more common: a gaze that soars rather than confronts, suggesting instead of the relation to viewer, to the present, the more ennobling abstract relation to the future.)   "
page 37 / 38

The Heroism of Vision

" People want the idealized image: a photograph of themselves looking their best. "
page 85

"The news that the camera could lie made getting photographed much more popular "
page 86

" the daguerrotype portrait that "while we give it credit only for depicting the merest surface, it actually brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even could he detect it."
page 87

" Thus, while fashion photography is based on the fact that something can be more beautiful in a photograph than in real life; it is not surprising that some photographers who serve fashion as also drawn to the non-photogenic. "
page 104

"The traditional function of the portrait painting, to embellish or idealize the subject, remains the aim of everyday and of commercial photography, but it is has a much more limited career in photography considered as an art "
page 105

"photography has served to enlarge vastly our notion of what is aesthetically pleasing"
page 105


Photographic Evangels

"photographic realism can be - is more and more - defined not as what is "really" there but as what I "really" perceive. "
page 120

Elements of Semiology (internet source)

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/barthes.htm


date first visited : 5th of Dec at 23:29
author of the extract : Roland Barthes in 1964

Introducing Semiotics (book)

"natural signs"  (freely occurring throughout nature)
"conventional" signs (those designed precisely for the purpose of communication)
page 5


teachings of St. Augustine (354-440)
William of Ockham (c. 1285 - 1349)
John Locke (1632-1704) Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
page 6 / 7


Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

published a paper : "Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages"
his students started the course "Cours de linguistique generale."


diachronic - linguistics which looks at the changes which take place over time in specific languages
synchronic "the state of language in general, an understanding of the conditions for existence of any language"
page 9

"Saussure defined the linguistic sign as a two-sided entity, a dyad. One side of the sign was what he called the signifier. A signifier is the thoroughly material aspect of a sign"
"Saussure described the verbal signifier as a sound image"
page 10

"inseparable from the signifier in any sign - and, indeed, engendered by the signifier - is what Saussure calls the signified"
page 11

(my notes : the signifier is the material used with the codes in it and the signified is the person receiving the codes who has the mental reaction)


Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)

paper "On a New List of Categories" 1867

"a triadic theory of the sign"
insert pic from phone (page 21)


"firstness, secondness and thirdness"
page 27



Roland Barthes

1915-80 he wrote essays in a French mag.
Les Lettres nouvelles
" set out to expose a "mythology of the month" , largely by showing how the denotations in signs of popular culture betray the connotation which are themselves "myths" generated by the larger sign system that makes up society. "

published book called Mythologies in 1957

published essay The Rhetoric of the image in 1964

A linguistic message - all the words
a "coded iconic"message - the connotations in the photograph
a non-coded iconic" message - the denotations in the photograph
page 47

Charles Morris

"Foundation of the Theory of Signs" 1938

Semiotics The Basics (book)

Semiotics : the basics
2nd edition
Daniel Chandler
Routledge Taylor and Francis Group London and New York
first published in 2007
2nd edition published on 2007

Otherness and the Gaze

'sex' is the physical anatomy of the person
'gender' is socially defined by what society expects to see
'essential-ism' is the standards that are expected
'The gaze' is what / how we look at things in mainstream society
'Otherness' is what is outside of mainstream and the minority group

Nan Goldin
she questions gender and sexuality
she believes cross gender is a 3rd gender

The Gaze
this is a cutlurally loaded look
we look at everything with preconceptions
the person who is looking has all the power

Male Gaze
this is about men's attitude to women and how women get represented.
there are preconceptions that are in place, typically women get represented as a 'damsel in distress' style character whereas the man is dominant in his role and he has the power. Women become objectified in their roles and are usually there for the men's visual pleasure

Stereotypes

- The War Hero
           This is the stereotypical genre of the guy rescuing the woman

- The Cowboy
          A pioneer of the western front this shows a glamorous version of events as history was very different to what is being shown

- WW2
         This brought upon the new feeling that women are not damsels and that they can do what the men do, this was brought on by the women going into the workplace while the men were away

- The HomeMaker
          This stereotype was forced to the forefront of society as after the war the men wanted their jobs back but the women did not want to leave, this stereotype showed women all the positive aspects of becoming a stay at home mum again


Laura Mulvey

A theorist who examines the gender in society, she says that women are being used as 'decorative' objects and that this is shown through the likes of the 'Miss World' competitions where the women shows off their physical attributes and represent themselves as perfect women.

Ideology

Marxist Terms - Karl Marx
what you know isnt real - you are told to know it
false consiousness
Das Kapital (1848)
commodity fetishism

cigarette ad / perfume ad
what is it selling? = the lifestyle, not just the product

Ads create mythical worlds
celebration, in florida

Victor Burgin
anti campaign
hollowness of mass media

John Berger
ways of seeing
ads and documentary are becoming tangled = hard to now tell difference

Paul Wombell
Han Haacke
Adbuster
these all use established channels to deliver new messages / they take existing adverts and change to images and text to create new meanings and show messages that people are going to understand because they understand the original context

Everthing is a product of its time
cultural factors, inside jokes = only make sense because people understand the history and the background info hidden within the images

Mini Task :

What happened in the 70's ?

This is a list me and the group I was with came up with:

Disco
Punk
Womens Lib
Cold war was ongoing
Vietnam War
Fashion = flares / afros / perms
Rocky Horror Picture show
Willy Wonka
Chainsaw massacre - the first one
Star wars - highest grossing film of decade
Grease - was made
Margaret Thatcher - first woman prime minister
Twin towers- tallest buildings
Stephen Hawking - discovered black holes
Protesting - image of the girl who puts the flower in the gun
Jimi Hendrix died
Floppy disc invented
Walkman invented
People were taking drugs
Revolutions

This was the decade of the lower classes pushing back against the government, political unrest and anger.