Semiotics analysis-The last assignment

This is my text:

1. Briefly describe the medium used, the genre to which the ‘text’ belongs and the context in which it was found.

The text is an Indoor graffiti artwork of Banksy- a well-known pseudo-anonymous English graffiti artist. He is believed to be a native of Yate, South Gloucestershire, near Bristol and born in 1974, but there is substantial public uncertainty about his identity and personal and biographical details

The text depicted a combination of fictional characters (Mickey mouse and McDonal’s clown) and real person (the little girl)

2. Why did you choose this ‘text’?

How does the ‘text’ relate to your own values?

I choose this text because I like what Banksy does, he brought street graffiti to a higher level and considered, recognised by public, government bodies as and actually some of his outdoor graffiti is protected against invasion.

This “text”, together with other “texts” from him containing a deep insight, expresses his philosophy, vision about life and all the things around him. I especially like this ‘text’ because of the creativeness he has put in it. With the Mickey Mouse and the Clown, the first impression we might have is some kind of happiness because of this two characters, but soon when look at the little girl in the middle, I recognised that happiness was not Banksy first intention while creating this text, especially I have seen the picture of this girl long time ago and it’s a part of Vietnam-America war’s history, where I come from…it’s world well known and named Vietnam Napalm, taken by photographer Nick Ut in 6/8/1972, in TRANG BANG Vietnam.

That is also the reason why I have such a strong feeling for this ‘text’, was born and grow up in Vietnam 8 years after the war ended, I know how miserable and tragedy a war could affect every person’s life. Then, I told my self I will try my best to help others, be responsible and respect each other...that I believe will make life better. This ‘text’ appeals to me with two different meaning (1) since the Mickey mouse and the clown are from America, I wondering is Banksy made this ironically targeting America or not (2) These characters also represent happiness for the children, and they are holding the little girl’s hands and walk her out of the past…Isn’t it nice?

3. What reality claims are made by the ‘text?’

War is bad and we should together make life better with all its meaning or children deserve happiness.

4. Does it allude to being fact or fiction?

I think it’s both, fact and fiction…In my opinion; this is always Banksy’s unique style of creating his texts

5. How might a change of medium affect the meanings generated?

I think if there is a change of medium, this will affect the meanings of the text...By using two colours black, white and graffiti-way to express this ‘text’, he want this to be acknowledge as a strong, simple artwork which will stay in their mind and make them think, rather than an striking painting then fade away

6. Describe the paradigm sets used (such as shot size: long shot, mid shot, close up). Why have you used this particular shot and not a different one?

The paradigm sets used is mid shot to capture all of the three characters and put them into the focus point, in which the central focus is the little girl.

It’s interesting that in the original photo “Vietnam napalm”, the girl was also captured in the central focus, also using mid-shot technique. By that, we can also have the overview about the background and the situation when the photo was taken.

7. How might a change of shot size affect the meanings generated?

I think if we change a shot size, meaning from mid-shot to long-shot or close up, we will limit and decrease the impact of the text to audiences.

8. How does the sequential or spatial arrangement of the elements influence meaning?

The only arrangement with the text here is the position of each character. If we change their position, push them backward or move them forward; the meaning of the text will be changed and doesn’t transfer the right message to audiences as it supposes to. For example, if we move the girl to the right hand side or left hand side, audience will loose their concentrate for her, instead of her, the focus now will be moved to Mickey mouse or the Clown, which I believe certainly is not what Bansy intend to create.

9. What relationships does the ‘text’ seek to establish with its readers?

In my opinion, the “text” is definitely constructing relationship with its readers. To the readers who already the story behind, it encourage them to think further about what they are having in life and what should they do to make things better in a good way. For those who are happening not to know the story, this I think will strike them with some question such as: who is that girl, why would she cry, why, why… These questions will encourage them to find the answer and soon lead them to the first situation. Therefore, the relationship between the text is a positive one, the text will not only lead readers to discover more about the text itself but also help them to cherish more what they have.

10. How direct is the mode of address and what is the significance of this?

In this case, I will say it is very direct, from the straight angle to the clear background, the colour back and white…very clear, direct and constructive.

11. What insights has a semiotic analysis of this ‘text’ offered?

From what I have perceived, this text has done its best job. It constructed deep meaning toward readers, made them think and lead them to gain their own perception about the text and the whole story about it. It also enables Banksy to once again, set his tone in the art of street graffiti.

Revision Visual Communication

In this 21st century, the September 11, 2001 attack in New York- US is the best example of Visual communication. On that day, terrorists -hijackers included a member who had gone under pilot training, intentionally crashed two 4-passengers-commercial airliners into World Trade Centre in New York city. The third airliner crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The attach killed 2998 victims in total, most of whom where civilians

I choose this attack to be the historical example of communication within a visual (e) culture because it gave everyone in the world an immediate shock feeling. Right after the airplanes had crashed into those buildings, the unbelievable scene has been broadcasted in all the TV stations, radio, press around the world, every minute, every hour. People was looking for information about this by all possibly communication channel, the internet, newspaper, TV, radio, from other people...you name it. Eventually, this affected almost everyone in the world; everyone was following all the latest news about the attack; one worry, mourning atmosphere was raised among other civilians. Unexpectedly, we some how have form negative thought about Muslim culture...apparently, it is still a very sensitive topic for any discussion. In addition, 911 was and is always be referred to the US emergency number, now it also reminds us about that tragedy. As a part of history, this literally has great affect in the visual (e) culture, America and the Muslim worlds are now visualize as non-spoken enemies...and anything related to this religion, culture has been placed under strict concern and policy; from film, cartoon, television program to radio, it's worth to be taken good care of since no one would want to provoke such a culture and no one would want to see once again the same tragedy

Semiotics and Semantics

Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.

So, it is not only the ‘ signs’ themselves we study but the process in which signs are being used for communication and meaning-making.

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Semantics is the study of meaning. It is a wide subject within the general study of language. An understanding of semantics is essential to the study of language acquisition (how language users acquire a sense of meaning, as speakers and writers, listeners and readers) and of language change (how meanings alter over time). It is important for understanding language in social contexts, as these are likely to affect meaning, and for understanding varieties of English and effects of style. It is thus one of the most fundamental concepts in linguistics. The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased.
(http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/semantics.htm)

I personally think semantics play an important role in the invention and develoment of visual communication, especially with sign language because of its combination of visual and linguistic. Through sign language, one with the mute problem can communicate visually with others and the world. I also believe that in the process of creating the sign language and the meaning for each hand-gesture, there had to be a lot of discussion in order to unify one last agreement.

And from here, we can call it's the time of semiotics. After the sign language is invented and finnally unified, it obviously became popular everywhere and intepret the same way as how it meant. Sign laguage then is not only for communication between the mute community but also in some other media for normal people to create some kind of special media effect

Visual Literacy | Visual Intelligence

Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be communicated through a process of reading.

Visual literacy is not limited to modern mass media and new technologies. Understanding Comics, a graphic novel discussing the history of the media as well as serving as a "how to" manual for interpreting comics by Scott McCloud, is an exemplar employing the use of visual literacy. Also, animal drawings in ancient caves, such as the one in Lascaux, France, are early forms of visual literacy. Hence, even though the name visual literacy itself as a label dates to the 1960s, the concept of reading signs and symbols is prehistoric. (wikipedia)

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Howard Gardner defines intelligence as the capacity to solve problems or to fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural settings. MI initially consisted of seven dimensions of intelligence (Visual/Spatial Intelligence, Musical Intelligence, Verbal/Linguistic Intelligence, Logical/Mathematical Intelligence, Interpersonal Intelligence, Intrapersonal Intelligence, and Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence). Since the publication of Frames of Mind, Gardner has additionally identified an 8th dimension of intelligence: Naturalist Intelligence, and is still considering a possible ninth: Existentialist Intelligence.

Visual Intelligence is the ability to accurately perceive the visual world and to re-create, manipulate and modify aspects of one's perceptions (even in the absence of the relevant visual stimuli).

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In my opinion, different peole has different reaction toward some trouble/challenge. It is mainly influenced by their nature, by the culture they were born and raised up in. Each of them will have different visual intelligence and literacy, it changes with their ages, with the environment they are living in, and the conditions of their life. Therefore, it is impossible to distinguish their level of intelligence and even the way different people will handle it. If we live the way they live, experience the same culture and social values; only then we might be able to compare the intelligences or figure out how people handle challenges

Visual Grammar

I do believe in visual grammar since there is no such coinccident that everyone from different cultures and countries can have the same definition interpreted from an image or a sign. There must be some agreements that accepted the whole wide world. We can see it clearly in instruction manual of technological products, or in any city map. Those agreements are grammar rules for visual communication, it obviously help audiences have the aorrect interpretation or at least very close to the correct one.

Here is an example of Japanese Origami technique in which we can clearly see the importance of the arrow symbol. That is the visual grammar and apparently it helps us to be able to follow and understand the instruction.

Visual E-culture

In order to know what is the meaning of Visual E-culture, we need to digg into Culture and Visual Culture first.

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Culture is literally means all the knowledge and values shared by a society. Thus, if someone is grown up in a specific culture for a long time, he/she will inherit and believe in the norms, value and spirit of that culture. By believe in it, that person will act as he was taught to, and interpret thing under that culture influences.

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Visual culture is basically concerned with everything we see, have seen, or may visualize-paintings, sculptures, movies, television, photographs, furniture, utensils, gardens, dance, buildings, artifacts, landscape, toys, advertising, jewellery, apparel, light, graphs, maps, websites, dreams-in short, all aspects of culture that communicate through visual means.

Therefore, visual culture study is a field of study that generally includes some combinations of cultural studies, art history and anthropology, by focusing on aspects of culture that rely on visual images. Among cultural studies theorists working with contemporary culture, this often overlaps with film studies, Psychoanalytic theory and the study of television, although it can also include video game studies, comics, traditional artistic media, advertising, the Internet, and any other medium that has a crucial visual component.

From this, we draw on methodologies from the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. We focus on production and on reception, on intention and on deployment. We consider institutional, economic, political, social, ideological, and market factors. We study the visual as a reflection of culture and as something that has cultural efficacy in its own right, contributing to the production, reproduction, and mutation of culture

In some cases this has meant empirical studies of consumption, rooted in the social sciences; in others, ethnographic participation has informed the study of visual materials.

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The word Visual E-culture wouldnt be able to exist without the contribution of Internet and digital media because of its great influence on the society and each individual development.

Besides, the Internet and digital media have an impact on how artists and culture-makers express themselves, how our cultural heritage is presented and made accessible, how libraries make information accessible to the public, and how the media present the news, public debate and culture. In short, digitalisation affects the entire spectrum of culture production, distribution and presentation. Moreover, it brings with it the promise of cultural renewal. The past five to ten years have shown that the digital domain gives rise to new forms of expression, reflection and exchange.
In addition, digitalisation paves the way for new interrelationships and cross-fertilisations between the different cultural domains (arts, media, information and cultural heritage), and between culture, education, the sciences, and the (knowledge) economy. And finally, digitalisation stimulates cultural institutions and culture-makers to reassess their work methods and roles.

(Netherlands council for culture)

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Obviously, Visual E-culture is the combination between Visual Culture and the digital technololy (here means the internet the digital media) because they all said "Seeing is believing". But we are not only "seeing", we are no longer merely consumers of culture or cultural artefacts.
We are instead – all of us – producers of our indicative cultural creations that exist for as long as we are experiencing them . This goes beyond what we typically think of as “interactive media.”
Where we once thought that we “interacted” with our various media by effecting some pre-programmed action clicking on a computer screen, or causing tableaux to shift in a museum exhibit when we push a button – we now give way to a new perception. These all-too-common
modes of consuming culture are essentially no different than the television remote

Here and now,we are living in an Visual Culture, studying it and by all means, we are contributing our knowledge and experiences in building and enriching it.

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I was born and raised up in Vietnam, was taugh and live in strong Asian culture which is a lot different comparing with Western culture. At that moment, I am merely consumer of what I have been told or seen as eastern philosophy and religions also play an important role. Culture influences also quite affect on other field of art such as music, movie and photography. The way artist portrait or visionize an image is not as open mind as we normally seen in Western countries.

ThenI came to Holland on 2003 and became a new culture participant. I participate and step by step integrate into the life and culture here. Still keep the Eastern culture influences in me, but living and coping with Western culture made me become more open minded and better adapted to the life here. From there, the way I communicate through visual medium and tools also changed, i know more about art, language and experience variety of visual communcation channels, supported by the technology, media and internet.

China, Russia and American leaders in Vietnamese tradition custom

Lunar new year (Chinese new year) has been celebrate among Asian communities around the world every year.

Everything has its own history

Yes, it is a fact that no one can deny and therefore Visual communication is not an exceptional case. Therefore, in order to have an throughout understanding and feel the necessary of Visual Communication, I think it is clever to going back history; at least to know what we are talking about now.

Since “Visual Communication is the conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or looked upon. Primarily associated with two dimensional images, it includes: art, signs, photography, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, color and electronic resources. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and graphic oriented usability. Graphic designers use methods of visual communication in their professional practice.” Wikipedia. We begin with the first art piece which are the cave paintings of shamen dating c40,000 years ago. Scientists are still doing research on it and looking for the true meanings of these paintings. However, as for now, the definition of the painting is interpreted: A current interpretation is that they were painted by shamen who retreated into the caves in a ‘trance like’ state and that the shamen derived some sort of strength from the cave itself.

Then it came the development of ideogram/ideograph which is the term itself common used to describe logographic language systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese charaters. However, symbols in logographic system generally represent words or morphemes rather than pure ideas. On the other hand, nowadays, an ideogram or ideograph is a graphical symbol that represents an idea, rather than a group of letters arranged according to the phonemes of a spoken language, as is done in alphabetic languages. Examples of ideograms include wayfinding signage, such as in airports and other environments where many people may not be familiar with the language of the place they are in, as well as Arabic numerals and mathematical notation, which are used worldwide regardless of how they are pronounced in different languages

Followed by the invention of language and number, other apllications also invented with the purpose of visual communication such as books, illuminated manuscrips, photography and film. Under influence of historic changes, for example the Renaissance, Industrial revolution, the collapse of Soviet Union, visual communication from time to time has been witnessed some revolutions it self, and some of them are really enriches the human knowledge by some art master pieces from great artists : Salvatore Dali, Michael Angelo, Van Gogh, Warhol...

Here below is the Timeline of art which I accidentally ran into while googling about Visual Communication. In my opinion, this table really gave me a clear vision of the history of art and visual communcation regarding some of the most importance events at that time.

Timeline of Art

Era	Artist	Style	Media	World
B.C.
15,000	Cave paintings	Ancient	Charcoal Dirt
5000		Ancient	Pictographic writing Pottery wheel Early paints	Civilizations of: -Mesopotamia -Egypt -Minoan
1000	Dipylon vase	Egyptian	Papyrus	Jerusalem founded
400	Acropolis Grecian urns	Greek		Greece's Golden Age Alexander the Great
200	Nike of Samothrace	Roman	Chinese invent paper Quill pen	Rome dominates Near East
100	Pompeii wall art	Roman		Peak of Roman Empire
A.D.
400	Pantheon	Byzantine		Rome falls
600	Lindisfarne Gospels	Byzantine	Papermaking introduced from China	Charlemagne
1000	Bayeux Tapestry	Romanesque	Paper first manufactured in Europe Tempera Fresco Ink	Normans invade England
1250	Chartres master builder Giotto Lorenzetti	Gothic	Revival of paintmaking	Magna Carta
1400	Botticelli da Vinci Piero Lippi	Early Renaissance	Printing press Oil paint Pastel	Holy Roman Empire de Medici rules Florence Colombus reaches Americas
1500	Michelangelo Raphael Titian El Greco Bruegel Arcimboldo	High Renaissance Northern Renaissance	First use of canvas	Elizabeth I Magellan circles globe
1600	Rubens Rembrandt Poussin Leyster	Baroque	Modern pencil invented	Galileo British colonize America
1700	Boucher Watteau Hogarth	Rococo		Steam engine invented Franklin experiments with electricity
1750	Fragonard David	Neoclassism		American Revolution French Revolution
1800	Goya Ingres Constable	Romanticism Realism	Photography Watercolors	Louisiana Purchase Queen Victoria Irish famine Railroads spread
1850	Bierstadt	Pre-Raphaelites	Tube paints Fountain pen	U.S. Civil War Evolution theory Sanford founded
1875	Cassatt Gauguin Van Gogh Monet Morisot Seurat	Impressionism Post-Impressionism	Ballpoint pen	Colonialism peaks Telephone invented Light bulb invented Automobile invented
1900	Hartley MacDonald-Wright Dalí Lange	Abstraction Fauvism Cubism Futurism Dada Surrealism	Acrylic paint Crayon	Airplane invented World War I Theory of Relativity Great Depression World War II Atomic bomb
1950	Albers Pollock de Kooning Rothko Stella Warhol	Abstract Expressionism Pop Art Op Art		Vietnam War Apollo moon landings Fall of Soviet Union AIDS virus
2000

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