"The world told is a different world to the world shown"--(p.1)
I think it is easier to lure individuals into false beliefs through the written word. People tend to believe words that are written by "experts" as "gospel truth". Images are usually defined as up for wide interpretation. I think that through a program of critical thinking about media texts--that include both images and text--that we can teach our students to be more critical about their interpretation of both the words and the pictures. Critical media literacy strategies can enhance both image and text interpretation.
While humans have always "read" the world through imagery, traditional schooling has rarely focused on the power of the image. Only privileged individuals who chose to study journalism, film, graphic design, or other visual media were exposed to a real literacy of the techniques and strategies. Now with the advent of simple editing techniques for magazine like quality in computer applications, movie editing software, and simple web-page creation (like this blog) individuals can create their own multimodal "texts" that include both image and word.
Here are some Kress thoughts I find particularly significant in chapter one.
Page 1--speech or writing as a narrative genre. Writing-->logic of time-->logic of sequence in its elements of time-->temporally governed arrangements.
Page 1--image as display genre. Image--logic of space--logic of simultaneity of visual elements--spatially organized arrangements (center as central, above as superior)--recast as spatial relations.
Page 3-4--Reading Paths (this concept figures widely through Kress's work and is cited by many in the hypermedia world). Determined by the maker or the reader...or a combination of both. By creating salient elements, the maker guides the reader towarad a path. However, for the reader, reading images "out of order" is easy.
Page 3--Kress noted Reading Paths as one effect of new media. Here are some others...1) use a multiplicity of modes (image still, moving,music, sound effects) 2) interactivity--interpersonal (write back)=social power, hypertextual =semiotic power.
Page 8--in the era of dominence of writing the image was subject to the logic of writing. Now in an era of hte dominance of the screen, writing appears as subject to the logic of images. (think of captions for images--increasingly sophisticated picture books employ images outside of the text to tell stories within/outside of stories).
CHAPTER 3
Font, embolden, italicise, bullet points (bullets, quick, fired at us)
3 comments:
Well the first part of media literacy is becoming blog worthy. I am going to post what I can glean from marginal notes and then see how what I am thinking matches with what you two have already written.
Dichotomies, binaries, this vs. that: As we talked about binaries are central to the thinking and analysis of Kress. (Later on he references Saussure (Ferdinan de) of the Prague School of linguistics as the source of the thinking. While I also think this way, it is important for me to realize that these binaries are not "natural". We make them up. and because of that, contrasts such as reading/writing, page/screen can be realligned, revisioned, reorganized for different kinds of understandings, Disloging the preconcieved binaries is the work of poststructuralism. All recieved social structure is up for grabs. It is also curious that Kress mentions both Saussure and Foucault. Foucault (along with other French philosophers such as Barthes) might be considered the first of the poststructualists. At any rate, the use of binary thinking by Kress is something that we should make a prime point of interrogation.
An interesting contrast is presented on page 3 where Kress suggests that writing (and presumably speaking) insist on a naming or labeling of what the action was (action being required), whereas images do not. (told vs. shown?) From a more traditional literacy perspective, this could a reason why media and visual literacies appear to some to be less rigorous, more surface. Presuambly without the commitment to label, to categorize, the meaning maker can be seen as getting off easy, as it were.
On page 4, another interesting bit. Linguistically based text necessarily nas order, sequence which Kress says implies causality. Sequence is syntagmatic analysis. I think that this is what he is talking about. Language has rules that stipulate what can come next in a string. It also, by the way has variability in what can be inserted in a given slot in the sequence (paradigmatic analysis). But if one looks at this point from a visual, new literacy perspective, the sentence was already using space as a way of delivering meaning. a declarative sentence could be trusted to present its information in a certain visual array (call it a sequence across the page) just because written language failed to exploit the various way that the visual field of the page could be used, it was/is non the less visual in the way that it presents its message. TA Da, one assault on false dichotomies.
Kress contrasts the inherent meaning of the word and the image along with the definitiveness of the reading path for each. It is a set piece of complementary binaries. Words are inherently ambiguous, vague, and must be instantiated by the reader. Whereas images are distinct, filled with meaning. In contrast, the reading path of written langage is so constrained by syntax, sequence and other conventions that we are forced into a somewhat conventional meaning. In contrast, the reading path of the image is relatively unconstrained. One can look any way they think that they desire. First, doesn't this claim for free viewing run counter to the visual analysis and viewing strategies that he developed with vanL? Second, it just seems so pat, convenient, too perfect. How can reading be seen as disruptive when we must follow the rules of syntax? Note: while i will later bitch about the lack of punch in the later chapters, there is a cool bit on teh way that syntax is a social convention that was gradually applied to written English, and Kress's comparison of texts from the time reveal the variation in syntactic pressure. Thinking about this, however, isn't syntactic complexity also profoundly influenced by language competence, reading comprehension etc. the reason I mention this is that Kress's example LATER
So I'll continuewith this am post. Sorry about the abrupt stop, had to take off for a school. Since I lost the train of thought from this am (which could be a good thing) I'll go back to the text for some more gems.
On page 5 is intertextuality light: Kress calls it hypertextuality and writes that all texts can be related to other texts through connections. On page 6, he refernces something more deterministic, or what I see as his unacknowledged borrowing from Kristeva (who stole from Derrida) "Our use language in the making of texts canot be other than the quotation of of the fragments of texts, previously encountered, in the making of new texts. I happen to agree. But the important point for me here is that Kress uses this extant thinking on intertextuality to make a case for "assembling according to design."
I think that there is coincidence with our work on page 7 where Kress mentions that there is a sense that the issue now is to involve students in action around topics, learning by doing. And we would add the necessity of texts, tradional and fast literacies, as a mediating version of the project in order to enhance reading and writing pedagog (not to mention other media based competencies)
In chapter 2, Kress establishes some tendencies that sound rule like. did I misread, or does he suggests that when images are used within traditional texts, the image is suborndinant to the alphabetic text? But for visual, or media text, writing enhances the consumption of the image (dare we say narrows the reading path for the image??) i think of the writing that is used in media text as a metatext for the image. You know, the voice over that is telling what the pic means (or should mean to you, how it is to be perceived, consumed, used)
On page 12, Kress discusses at some length the idea of affordances. At this point in time writing still retains some of its hegemonic power as the authority discourse. However, when all communication is binary code, and we simply switch modes, then writing may be one of many more democratic modes of representation. The code might also have been realized as a song, a sound, an image, etc.
I hope that I am not making you angry with this disconnected drivvel.
So regarding the democratization of codes or modes, When all modes of discourse are possible as rpresentations for a set of binary code data, then we get to ask which mode provides which special conditions (affordances). At that point the evaluations must change from something that we do in schools now (Well, its not writing so its not academic, but how can I make it sound like it should be ok. images are this, media is that...) like an apologia for having dared not use print media. However, once th hierarchy of print is destabilized, the questions should sound like what can writing, as one of the possible modes, add to this argument?
On to Chapter 3:
Control of mass media used to be possible through acts of hegemony. Howeever, when all can publish to all (p. 17), iit decreases the value (or at least the cachet) of the media itself. According to Landshear and Knobel the increase in attention as a commodity increases the value. but according to the (precious principle ) making media production democratic makes it worthless.
On page 17 there is some voodoo going on about globalization. Kress seems to believe that globaalization, howeverr it is understood, would "disolve both the frames which had held structures of power in place" According to Ulrich Beck globalization has surrendered the world to the control of the multinational corps. It gets interesting when we look at income , taxes, labor costs. Incorporation takes place in the nation state that gives the best breaks or even incentives. Material products are produced in nation states with the cheapest labor costs, and taxes are paid (or not paid) where the best deal can be made. What this leaves is the tax base for the nation state is diminished, and yet the cost of care for the indigent, the social costs are still borne by the nation state without the resources it needs.
From a class, world economy perspective, I believe that "globalization" is the move that promotes this dadfly citizenship. Further, 3rd world peoples are worse off than they were relative to the rest of the world, as they are the labor force that carries the new imperialism into the homes of the industrialized nations.
On page 18, there is an obvious little comment that I think bears repeating: formality of writing and language is a matter of observance of the power differential between participants.
Page 20: We need a grammar of display.
On to Chapter 4:
Page 36: signs are motivated and conventional....This is big stuff. the motivated part relates to Kress's grounding in socio-semiotics. For him, every sign has an intention behind it. this axiomatically means that it can be critiqued. and I think that is is his plan. Cool mine too. this is something that I will keep reminding myself in analysis of media of all kinds -- what did the author want to express when s/he did X. and the key word in my interpretation is want. Want = desire. We can therefore learn about the psychology of the author by deconstructing what they presented us with. This is deconstruction from an psychoanalytic standpoint.
On page 30, under the heading of A 'toolkit', Kress alludes to transformational grammar, as formulated by Chomsky. \in this approach, Chomsky only delt with syntax, transformations of kernel sentences. For Chomsky, meaning was housed in a black box and re-attached to teh sentence string. Essentially, he doged the issue of meaning all together. Unfortunately, the generative semanticists did little else with meaning. For Kress, the meaning resides in the intent of the sender. \i think he is saying theat representation in differing modes does not change the essential meaning (What Chomsky would call deep structure). \i think that this is a pwerful analogy that we may be able to exploit in data alnalysis. think about a student who talks, writess, films, critiques the film: could these different products (modes) be said to have the same basic meaning and only differ by virtue of the transformation (doesn't Kress call this transduction?)
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