Start of Year 2!
Our first session was to 'understand a peice of text', something that sounds obvious and yet is harder than it seems. This can be due, for example the amount of text morphing into one another due to the length of the paragraphs written, or the words being too technical and therefore the reader struggles to understand them. Thus this session was to help break down more complicated papers in order for us to read and understand them better.
One technique you can use in order to break down the meaning in a paragraph is by first reading it and then afterwards writing next to it a sentence (or word if you can think of one) to sum up what it meant. Thus making it clearer, but also making it easier to remember key points.
Our lecturer also asked us what the term 'Viewers make meaning' means?
Some of us answered 'How an audience interprets something?'.
And others answered 'The Viewers interactions create meaning?'.
With these different responses we were then asked to read the paper 'Viewers Make Meaning' and write down our thoughts.
The following is what I made of it.
The emotions felt by the on-looker of an image affects the way a certain group or an individual reacts to the image. For example, it may be happiness from a past memory contained in a personal photograph that another wouldn't understand if it was not there own. Likewise, it could be sadness that no one else could feel as they don't have the memories to evoke that emotion. Thus, memories help determine our feelings when looking at things that provoke them. This might be a visual image, but it could also be triggered by smell, taste, sound or touch.
For example, what do you feel when you look at the image of the apple below? Apple pie? Adam and Eve? "An apple a day keeps the doctor away"? The poison apple in Snow White? It would be interesting to discus this with others as the amount of responses could be huge.
Fig 1:
Groups of individuals can also experience the same emotions and similar memories. Whether it be family related or fan related. For example, myself and others may despise the 'Twilight' movies, but there is also a fan base that will defend them and enjoy them. What we see as idiotic, they see as beautiful and so on.
One thing the lecturer mentioned, which I have mixed feelings about, is 'its not up to the artist to come up with the meaning for their work as others will always see it in another way'. Thus even though one may want their work to convey happiness, a viewer may see it as sadness. This could be due to connected memories as mentioned above.
Things can also be lost on a viewer. For example, people with delicate skin may appreciate/recognise an ad like Olay, whereas others won't. They may know what Olay is (fig 2), but not feel a connection to it. The same can also be said for those that play games and those that don't as seen with the recent advertisements for 'Grand Theft Auto V' (fig 3). Players will most likely recognise the ads due to their art style and not their title which is often in small print on the ads. Because of this often non gamers don't understand what the advertisements are for, and thus like the Olay posters do not relate to them.
Fig 2 and 3:
On a side note, I was wondering what would happen if you gave memories to someone who didn't have the experience themselves. Would they be affected by such a memory? And could you perhaps use emotions in order to manipulate someone? It could be something as simple as turning a bad experience at a restaurant into a good one from someone else's experience. Or maybe something medically useful, such as curing depression by making almost everything bring back natural happiness. Then ofcourse this would bring up the most profitable use, weapons. Yes, emotions could perhaps be used as a means of fighting. It could be a new age of emotional warfare where you could avoid death by simply altering the mood and feelings of your opposition.
Such an idea has already been touched upon in 'Metal Gear Solid 4' where soldiers would have their fears and guilt suppressed by nano-machines, and in the same game this strategy was used against them. Therefore, seeing this actually come about one day wouldn't surprise me, especially considering how effective emotions are at affecting not only a person's decisions, but also their entire personalty!
Fig 4:
Finally we were told that we would eventually be putting together a project so we needed to think about what content we would want to write about e.g. sexuality, gender, ethnicity, religion etc.
Also, we were given another similar paper to the last one that we were asked to read and write our thoughts about for the next session, this one being named 'The Death of the Author' by Roland Bathes (1968).
Harvard Referencing:
- Fig 1: Johnson, S (2013) Supply Chain Excellence, that's a good Apple! Available at: http://www.uandu.com/tech-ops/supply-chain-excellence-thats-a-good-apple/ (Accessed: 3/10/2013).
- Fig 2: muttonbones (2012) Olay - Alexa & Dennie [Online Image]. Available at: http://www.muttonbones.co.uk/blog/home/olay-for-saatchi-dubai-shot-by-alexa-singer-with-hairmake-up-by-dennie-pasion/attachment/olay-theia2/ (Accessed: 3/10/2013).
- Fig 3: Vas, G (2013) The Largest Grand Theft Auto V Ad Stares Down The Streets Of L.A [Online Image]. Available at: http://kotaku.com/the-largest-grand-theft-auto-v-ad-stares-down-the-stree-1133191511 (Accessed: 3/10/2013).
- Fig 4: Richardson, B (2012) Metal Gear Solid 4: 10 Predictions [Online Image]. Available at: http://www.gamesradar.com/metal-gear-solid-4-10-predictions/ (Accessed: 3/10/2013).
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