Oct
21
Week four: The eye of the beholder…..
October 21, 2011 | 52 Comments
The latter half of week 4 has been taken up with the posting of and commenting on our visual artefacts. What has become clear, if it wasn’t before, is just how much a visual representation of any kind is not, as Kress (2005) suggested, a specific symbol, but has as much interpretation involved in its ‘reading’ as do written texts (if not more). As Rose (2007) convincingly argues, the images of the world that are rendered visually are ‘never innocent. These images are never transparent windows onto the world’ (2). The use of the word windows is an interesting one, I think, as it makes me think of the way in which our eyes/minds are considered as receivers of images, with all the implications of perception running from, for example, a physical, and passive, reception of images via the eye (Locke et al) to that which we see as constructs of the mind (Berkeley). As with previous weeks on this course, the themes of relation between the signifier and signified (whether word or image) and of authenticity are raised by considering perception. What is the relation between how we see and how we think? Rose’s paper (2007) provides a really good framework at least for starting to think of how images are produced and viewed and reinforces that intention, interpretation and cultural/social contexts and constructions all combine to inform how we view an image. I particularly like Rose’s categories of ‘the site of production’, ‘the site of the image’ and ‘the site of audiencing’ alongside the three modalities of ‘technological’, ‘compositional’ and ‘social’. To a certain extent this systematic approach reminds me of how I might consider a written text and that made me think about whether we ‘read’ pictures, or rather ‘rede’ (to interpret or explain). Looking at all our visual artefacts, we all brought different comments to the discussion, so does that mean that ‘the modern connection between seeing and knowledge is stretched to breaking point in postmodernity’ (Rose, 2007, 4)? I think no more than in any other area of interpretation but that is part of the relativist project that has arisen from postmodernity. At some point though we do interpret and that interpretation has to be based on a critical foundation, as Rose provides.
I am now finding the process of the Lifestream has become, not easy, but a process that I enjoy – particularly true of this and last week’s visual theme. One of the things I find with the internet is that, often there is really good stuff out there but finding it is happy coincidence or recommendation (the latter, a particularly good part of this course I’ve found). What I think I haven’t done so seamlessly (and obviously with the tardiness of this week 4 summary) is coordinate my Lifestream with the writing of my weekly post. There has been some slippage between weeks and, often my blog has been left in the slipstream of my lifestream 
.