Reading the visual
September 4th 2010 09:17
Original Creative Writing:
Tony Schirato and Jen Webb
Link: www.allenandunwin.com
Reading the visual
by Tony Schirato and Jen Webb
Everyone (even you) is reading the visual, more than ever before in fact. This current generation of youngsters will be entering a world so rapidly and radically altered to the world of their grandparents - whoops - a generation gap is just quietly yawning now and plenty will find the chasm too big to deal with. 3D TV, 3D in the cinema, virtual realities, computer generated images (CGI); advertising being delivered to your ear and eyes from just about every conceivable electronic appliance.
It is both an amazing and slightly worrying time in history for many of us who appreciate the visual and consciously work with it regularly. Being born into a world of colour television is one thing, being born into a world where the colour television is stretched into a three dimensional experience is another. Those of us whose favourite baby-sitter was the television should think about it.
Reading the visual is a useful book for students studying sociology, communications, social sciences and futurism to start with. It's quite an academic tome, set out with an introduction and conclusion in each of its chapters. The content looks at reading visual technologies, normalising vision, advertising media, visual art and culture.
Some may find the terminology a little confusing, but persistence will reward. If you don't know, and are interested - try reading about it and getting some insight into it. This book is a good place to go; maybe not the best place to start depending on your education level, but eventually as you get better at comprehension, this is a great read. As academic and potentially mind-blowing as it is, the book is written in clear and easy to understand language.
The ideas are more or less easy to grasp, and there are many question, food for thought, posed along the way that will get you thinking. How do we understand what an advertiser is trying to tell us? How do we differentiate between the real, the contrived and the uncategorised? Our brain stores a great amount of information - usually things we intend on using frequently, like language and verbal communication guidelines (I am English, I speak English, it's useful having English words in my head) that assist us in our day to day life. Negotiating our way through a supermarket is just as demanding on the brain as is trying to randomly surf the web in order to collect some information. On which stored references are we drawing as we work out directions through a computer game? What do we need in an interface to help us understand our role in a game? Or indeed, in reality? Is the imagery we are exposed to as a youngster setting any precedents for our thinking and ability to communicate?
We use intertextuality to make sense of what we are reading - it is a way of saying "everything you have read so far informs your ability and choice to read whatever yu are seeking to read" - so is there an equivalent with visual reading, the reading of images...? Yes there certainly is. You store images in your mind that somehow mean something to you.
The stop sign is a great example because it is quite an important visual image to all of us. The fact that a stop sign is read and has the word stop (usually in white) emblazoned upon it speaks volumes. The association we make is so important to us that we recognise the red in a traffic light as meaning stop with or without the word. Likewise with green and go. Amber says 'caution', and transition between stopping and moving forward.
So even though the descriptive language of visual communication can be quite high-end and hard to grasp, the principles are not too difficult. The book draws on the wisdom many academics, but it doesn't stick to their descriptions so much as use them to break things down clearly for the student.
If you are studying at a university level this book will be very useful, if you are in college or high school it will appear to be intimidating to some, but if you persevere you will start to crack the code as it were and the book will really open your eyes.
It is not going to bamboozle you, it is going to help you comprehend things that you already know, but simply don't have the words for. It is going to provide you with a variety of insights from many people who have really gone into great detail in their quest to unpack and ravel out the whole idea of visual communication. Worth a look!!
by Tony Schirato and Jen Webb
Everyone (even you) is reading the visual, more than ever before in fact. This current generation of youngsters will be entering a world so rapidly and radically altered to the world of their grandparents - whoops - a generation gap is just quietly yawning now and plenty will find the chasm too big to deal with. 3D TV, 3D in the cinema, virtual realities, computer generated images (CGI); advertising being delivered to your ear and eyes from just about every conceivable electronic appliance.
It is both an amazing and slightly worrying time in history for many of us who appreciate the visual and consciously work with it regularly. Being born into a world of colour television is one thing, being born into a world where the colour television is stretched into a three dimensional experience is another. Those of us whose favourite baby-sitter was the television should think about it.
Some may find the terminology a little confusing, but persistence will reward. If you don't know, and are interested - try reading about it and getting some insight into it. This book is a good place to go; maybe not the best place to start depending on your education level, but eventually as you get better at comprehension, this is a great read. As academic and potentially mind-blowing as it is, the book is written in clear and easy to understand language.
The ideas are more or less easy to grasp, and there are many question, food for thought, posed along the way that will get you thinking. How do we understand what an advertiser is trying to tell us? How do we differentiate between the real, the contrived and the uncategorised? Our brain stores a great amount of information - usually things we intend on using frequently, like language and verbal communication guidelines (I am English, I speak English, it's useful having English words in my head) that assist us in our day to day life. Negotiating our way through a supermarket is just as demanding on the brain as is trying to randomly surf the web in order to collect some information. On which stored references are we drawing as we work out directions through a computer game? What do we need in an interface to help us understand our role in a game? Or indeed, in reality? Is the imagery we are exposed to as a youngster setting any precedents for our thinking and ability to communicate?
We use intertextuality to make sense of what we are reading - it is a way of saying "everything you have read so far informs your ability and choice to read whatever yu are seeking to read" - so is there an equivalent with visual reading, the reading of images...? Yes there certainly is. You store images in your mind that somehow mean something to you.
The stop sign is a great example because it is quite an important visual image to all of us. The fact that a stop sign is read and has the word stop (usually in white) emblazoned upon it speaks volumes. The association we make is so important to us that we recognise the red in a traffic light as meaning stop with or without the word. Likewise with green and go. Amber says 'caution', and transition between stopping and moving forward.
So even though the descriptive language of visual communication can be quite high-end and hard to grasp, the principles are not too difficult. The book draws on the wisdom many academics, but it doesn't stick to their descriptions so much as use them to break things down clearly for the student.
If you are studying at a university level this book will be very useful, if you are in college or high school it will appear to be intimidating to some, but if you persevere you will start to crack the code as it were and the book will really open your eyes.
It is not going to bamboozle you, it is going to help you comprehend things that you already know, but simply don't have the words for. It is going to provide you with a variety of insights from many people who have really gone into great detail in their quest to unpack and ravel out the whole idea of visual communication. Worth a look!!
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David Jobling
