Resume
Samenvatting TVC
- Établissement
- Universiteit Antwerpen (UA)
summary of Theory of visual communication P.Favero
[Montrer plus]
Vendeur
S'abonner
Aperçu du contenu
TVC: SAMENVATTINGINFO EXAMEN: 50% EXAM, 40% PORTFOLIO AND 10% PARTICIPATION
• 12 mpc with multiple select: more answers are possible
o Partial points if you don’t select all the correct answers when more answers possible
• 1 open question: short essay max 1,5p: you don’t have to cite exactly from what you’ve read
• Readings are the base: you should know what the author writes about and who the author is
• Task 3: “explain why and how images can be political in a 500-word report”= possible exam question
PART 1: VISUALITY
INTRODUCTION
Why is visual culture much more than just the study of images?
• Back in time & travel in space: trying to understand how humas have historically tried to make sense
of the concept of vision
• Various theories: ancient Greece to the Arab Golden Age and European Renaissance)
• Key approaches that inspired the work of scientists and artists in different epochs and cultures
• Enquire the meaning of visual culture and visuality
DISCUSSION TASK 1: PLATO AND FANON READINGS
Discuss the following questions:
1. As a group, what are your takeaways from the texts?
2. What are the key concepts discussed in the texts?
3. Why are these readings meaningful for visual communication?
• What we see isn’t necessarily reality: everyone has their own reality (f.e. black vs white, the conflict
Russia vs Ukraine)
• Seeing the light = escaping ignorance
• There is no real reality but only interpretations of the reality: this is based on how we see things and is
influenced by our identity
• “How we see, how we are able/allowed or made to see and how we see this seeing or the unseen
therein”
o How: vision based on our own background/context = own point of view
o Able: physical abilities
o Allowed/made politics and forced to see things by power structures
o How we see this: cultural interpretation of vision and how we think about seeing
o Unseen: things we can’t see/ are hidden (by power structures)
• There is diversity in how we see things due to factors like culture and politics (= power structures)
• Seeing is a natural thing but how we see depends on other factors:
o Our mind sees faster than our eyes:
▪ What we see is influenced by our mind
▪ Vision and imagination go hand in hand
o The surface and what’s under the surface:
▪ We believe that the truth is deeper and hidden from us
▪ Everyone has a different perception due to context (f.e culture) or because our
bodies work differently
pag. 1
, o Two visions about vision:
▪ Materialism: everything we see is real
▪ Nihilism: nothing we see is real
▪ Prof places himself in between these two
o Intersectionality:
▪ The way people perceive and move around the world is determined by different
aspects such as skin colour, gender, …
▪ We can use different things to interpret things
o Objectiveness:
▪ Vision= always subjective to a certain extent because of intersectionality (=the ways
in which different aspects of a person's identity can expose them to overlapping
forms of discrimination and marginalisation)
Fanon: People internalise someone else’s gaze, you become what other people
see you as (self-fulfilling prophecy). Individuality doesn’t exist, we are taking
on a different role depending on the situation, we are “individuals”.
WHY DO VISUALS MATTER
• World map: We are conditioned to see the world with Europe in the middle but in other countries this
is not always the same. School and history books or visuals are a mirror of politics and beliefs, so not
neutral.
• Visual Hypertrophy: We tend to think we live in the most visual time but Baroque, Tuscan,…
architecture was also visual
o Visuality is of all times and cultures
o Approaches to visual differ between time and space
▪ Tuscans used a lot of contrasting colours, Muslims us shadows in Mosques
• Visuals are central in our daily lives: thanks to the digital world there is more visual
• Space is constructed visually: Cities are often built around certain key visual references (f.e. church)
o We socialise our social lives around visual references
o F.e. Palace of justice Brussel: is higher and looking down on the city
• Time is constructed visually: We refer to time in directions
• The functioning of our bodies and minds comes to us visually:
o Information comes visually (f.e. scans)
o Vision is part of many aspects in life, that’s why it’s important to study it
• Vision is power (Politics)
o Power sees: having vision is having control and power, being seen is not
▪ Design of modern jail: central point to overlook the prisoners
o A centralised power that sees others instead of a central power that we see (<> kinds in the
dark ages)
• Power today?
o Big tech companies: get info about all of us all the time and gain power by it
o Vision is strictly political
pag. 2
,WHAT IS VISUAL CULTURE?
INTRODUCTION
The Tibetan mediation:
• Use in neuroscience
• How: look at image, close your eyes, let the image appear to you and repeat
• Experience: image gets clearer after you repeat → more details become visible
• Why useful?
o Because you analyse it you realise you do not control the image but our vision forms an
image of different elements. This doesn’t mean that what you see is complete/ correct
Indian approach to images: Images looks at you
Images are often a connection we have to something:
• F.e. pictures of war
• Images aren’t separate of the reality, they are portraying and represent different things
Our Eyes:
• Focus and defocus all the time
• Natural frame: rounded
o Things on the edge of the scope are out of our focus
• Functioning of the eyes (history starts at Greeks and Egyptians)
GREEKS AND EGYPTIANS
Alexandria- Egypt-The Arabs: Eyes are scanning for information: what is there to be known?
• First idea of the eye:
o Eye= a hunter
o Focus and defocus
o Contextualise what we see in the broader space
o Simon Ings: The eye is always on the hunt (build upon the theory of Theon from Alexandria)
Two visions:
1. Extramission (= looking for control)
• Dominant in neuroscience
• Plato: eye is an active agent that conquers what it sees. It reduces objects in size and brings them into
the eyes.
o All objects have a pure, universal form (archetypes: basic, minimal shapes)
o All objects and elements that make up the world must adhere to a certain extent
• Democritus: Matter composed of atoms that are carried to the soul to be viewed
o Objects make copies of themselves which contracts in size until it is sucked up by the pupil
o Objects emanated a thin pellicle (the eidola) that would enter the mind by travelling through
the eye
o He believed: eyes reduce what we see to something our eyes can see. Our eyes are limited
and this is a problem (tegenstrijd met Plato)
• Empedocles: 4 elements (water, air, fire, earth) → first to relate light to seeing
o Vision is related to fire because of light that radiates from the fire within the eye
o Combo of Plato’s hunt and Democritus materiality
• Galen: spiritual turn
o Founder of optical nerve= nerve that connects the eye to the brain
▪ Research on dead people
o Base of connection between eye and brain in spiritual way
▪ Explanation of how info could travel from the eye to the brain: “This is because of
spirits that live in the world that go inside of the eye and travel to the brain through
the nerve.”→ Nerve is hollow and conducts visual spirits
▪ Brain = soul and make people into what they are
▪ Pneuma: liquid that transfers air by making contact with blood to images
➢ Physic and spiritual
➢ Key aspect of capacity to perceive colours, shapes, cognition and acquire
knowledge
pag. 3
, 2. Intramission: (= image are in control over us)
• Aristotle: objects need light to be seen → closer to light= clearer
o Eye= receiving organ
o We can’t see at night so the eye doesn’t emanate light
o Humans exist as a unified whole body-soul complex (tegenstrijd Phantasm and Plato)
o Euclid: lights emanate in straight lines
GENERAL: THE EYE IS AN ACTIVE AGENT LOOKING FOR CONTROL (EXTRAMISSION) BUT IMAGES ARE ALSO
IN CONTROL OVER US IN A CERTAIN WAY (INTROMISSION)
• Hoffman (today’s time): Humans have developed to not question what’s real and what isn’t
o Emanating information: Evolution has conditioned to see things and scan information we
already know something about to help us survive
The debate about eyes as an organ sparks a debate about representation
Representation
• Plato’s cave:
o Things in the cave appear in a different way from what they actually are
o People in cave:
▪ only see the surface of things but not in pure forms
▪ only see past the surface once the escape forms the cave
o Philosophers: are able to see beyond the illusion of the surface
o The cave is a metaphor for the way humans are caught in a phenomenal state because of our
senses
o Liberation is possible thanks to the workings of our mind: shows the divide between mind,
soul and boy = Phantasm
MEDIEVAL ISLAM
Bagdad Golden Age (8th to 14th century AD): Strong base for science, philosophy and art
• Al- Kindi (801-873 AD):
o Active in many disciplines
o Eye emanated rays: When we read, we only read what we focus on (focus-defocus:
extramission)
o First theory about radiation: The importance of light for a functioning vision is the base of
today’s knowledge
• Alhazen Basra/ Ibn al-Haythal (1021 AD):
o “An afterimage is an optical illusion that refers to an image continuing to appear in one's
vision after the exposure to the original image has ceased.”
o Created the first camera obscura while experimenting with lights
o Discovered afterimages:
▪ Illusion you see when you can still see images after exposure to the original image
has been ceased → the eyes have the capacity to retain light after exposure
▪ “The shadow image left in the consciousness whenever a human being closes the
eyes after having observed an intense light”
o Concluded: light enters the body (Intromission)
o Correspondence between working of the eye and lenses in a camera
▪ Dark room with small hole: projects image upside down
➢ Confirms that light emanates in straight lines (Aristotle Intromission)
▪ Wondered why we don’t see the world upside down → because of the brain and the
optic nerve that connects eye and brain
o Light produces images and humans produce machines that do what the eye can do
o Second discovery/ contribution: Visual pyramid
▪ Our eye views things as a pyramid: we have 2 lenses, camera has 1
➢ Pyramid is the foundation of the Renaissance and the camera
o Drawing images of the eye that are accurate
pag. 4
Les avantages d'acheter des résumés chez Stuvia:
Qualité garantie par les avis des clients
Les clients de Stuvia ont évalués plus de 700 000 résumés. C'est comme ça que vous savez que vous achetez les meilleurs documents.
L’achat facile et rapide
Vous pouvez payer rapidement avec iDeal, carte de crédit ou Stuvia-crédit pour les résumés. Il n'y a pas d'adhésion nécessaire.
Focus sur l’essentiel
Vos camarades écrivent eux-mêmes les notes d’étude, c’est pourquoi les documents sont toujours fiables et à jour. Cela garantit que vous arrivez rapidement au coeur du matériel.
Foire aux questions
Qu'est-ce que j'obtiens en achetant ce document ?
Vous obtenez un PDF, disponible immédiatement après votre achat. Le document acheté est accessible à tout moment, n'importe où et indéfiniment via votre profil.
Garantie de remboursement : comment ça marche ?
Notre garantie de satisfaction garantit que vous trouverez toujours un document d'étude qui vous convient. Vous remplissez un formulaire et notre équipe du service client s'occupe du reste.
Auprès de qui est-ce que j'achète ce résumé ?
Stuvia est une place de marché. Alors, vous n'achetez donc pas ce document chez nous, mais auprès du vendeur XW. Stuvia facilite les paiements au vendeur.
Est-ce que j'aurai un abonnement?
Non, vous n'achetez ce résumé que pour €6,99. Vous n'êtes lié à rien après votre achat.
Peut-on faire confiance à Stuvia ?
4.6 étoiles sur Google & Trustpilot (+1000 avis)
80467 résumés ont été vendus ces 30 derniers jours
Fondée en 2010, la référence pour acheter des résumés depuis déjà 14 ans