Book 4 - Avant-Garde Film

Note

• 'As a film, it is one of complex visual patterns and rhythms - of film image, of nature, of machines, of actions, of social behaviour, of bodies. It is also one of rhymes and metaphors and of the film-maker as a magician (revealing his tricks). It is in the film's inseparable aspects of graphic forms, editing and visual semantics that it stands apart.' (pg. 35) - Look at patterns in compositions, evoking certain messages.

Book 3 - Visual Communication: More than meets the eye

Notes
Introduction

• 'The world presents itself in manifold ways to the sense of vision.' (pg. 11)
• Innocence - '..pre-verbal state of the infant whose world had an immediacy between cause and effect, a world where form and content are fused, where no distinction is perceived between message and meaning.' (pg. 11)

The Perceptual Connection

• 'The issue of illusion is central to much of visual representation, it plays a part in, for example, perspective, photography, film, and computer-generated imagery.' (pg. 13)
• 'Through illusion a world of make-believe or of pseudo-reality is open to manipulation when the media is one that centres upon vision.' (pg. 13)

Framing and Context

• 'The eye is naturally given to framing, to seeing things in relationships within frames which we call contexts; because it is uni-directional it provides, at any single moment, only one frame from a wider field.' (pg. 23)
• 'such definitions stem from the nature of vision itself, from its focusing and framing.. meditated images become proxy for reality.' (pg. 23)
• 'the viewer is put more closely to into relation with the natural order of things; as we might say, closer to things; and, of course, cinema-verite is founded upon inclusion of the apparently irrelevant, of peripheral information, of fulsomeness in the attempt to portray real-life.' (pg. 23) - this is a great point. Look more into this!

The Inclusiveness of Vision

• 'Vision is grounded in frames, the forward-looking eye guarantees this. Everything seen is perceived in relationship to something else within the frame of vision.' (pg. 39)
• 'This inclusiveness of vision, in which even the least significant items and their relationships within the field of vision contribute to the image received on the retina, is the natural order of things, the ultimate reality. And it is within this province of excessive detail, of extraneous information serving no apparent utility to the observer, that artists and image makers in general can generate a feeling of reality in their work.' (pg. 40)

Book 2 - Reading Images

Notes
Introduction, by Julia Thomas

• Lucan - 'refers to this phase as taking place within the realm of the 'Imaginary', a term that stresses the connection between the image and deception' (pg. 3)
• 'Language and vision, it seems, are intimately connected, an idea promoted by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who argued that the process of differentiation at work in the act of looking occurs with the emergence of language itself.' (pg. 4)
• 'Such methods of interpreting the visual world were brought to the fore by critics like Roland Barthes, who drew on the structuralist ideas of Saussure to formulate a science of signs known as semiotics or semiology. Barthes 'read' social rituals like eating meals, or visual signs such as clothes or architecture..' (pg. 5)

Perspective, by Richard L. Gregory

• 'People living in the Western world have a visual environment rich in perspective cues to distance.. subject to the illusions which we believe to be associated with perspective.' (pg. 11)

The Look, by Rosalind Coward (If linking to patriarchy?) - More on this in the book, if I decide to go in this direction

• 'The dominance of the visual regime has been augmented by the media surrounding us. Film, photography and television all offer forms of entertainment and communication based on the circulation of visual images, on the sale of the images and the meanings conveyed by them.' (pg. 33)
• 'In this culture, the look is largely controlled by men. Privileged in general in this society, men also control the visual media. The film and television industries are dominated by men, as is the advertising industry.' (pg. 33)

Semiology and Visual Interpretation, by Norman Bryson

• 'Semiology approaches painting as a system of signs.' (pg. 89)
• 'The conception of image-making, with its key terms of schema, observation and testing, can be called the Perceptualist account, because the essential transaction concerns the eye, and the accommodations the schema must make to new observations coming into the eye.' (pg. 91)

Imaging, by Teresa de Lauretis (also linking to feminism further into the chapter)

• 'Cinema has been studied as an apparatus of representation, an image machine developed to construct images or visions of social reality and the spectators' place in it. But, insofar as cinema is directly implicated in the production and reproduction of meanings, values, and ideology in both sociality and subjectivity, it should be better understood as a signifying practice, a work of semiosis: a work that produces effects of meaning and perception, self-images and subject positions for all those involved..' (pg. 102)
• 'The term 'mapping', interestingly enough, is also used by Eco to define the process of semiosis, sign-making, the production of signs and meanings..' (pg. 105)

Book 1 - A Theory of Narrative

Notes

What is Narrative?

• 'Not only are stories universally told, stored, and analysed, but also they regularly occupy a place of honour in society.' (pg. 1)
• 'However different the media that serve as a given story's vehicles - however distinct the oral, written, illustrated, or film versions of a particular narrative - we readily recognise a story's ability to be translated into different forms and yet somehow to remain the 'same' story.' (pg. 1)
• 'An essential strategy of human expression and thus a basic aspect of human life, narrative commands our attention. If we would understand the ways in which humans interact, we must take up the challenge of narrative. What is it? How does it make meaning?' (pg. 1)
• 'The importance of narrative has long been recognised. From Aristotle to the present, virtually every major critic and theorist has had something to say about the art of narrative.' (pg. 1)
• Following - 'One of the most characteristic aspects of narrative involves the reader's sense of following a character from action to action and scene to scene. A bird's eye view of a city, or detailed description of a battle, no matter how many individual actors and activities are visible, will provide at most the material for the narrative. Not until the narrator begins to follow a particular character will the text be recognisable as narrative.' (pg. 16)

Framing

• 'From Aristotle to Branigan, theorists insist that narratives always have a beginning, middle and end..' (pg. 17)
• 'Texts lacking this structure are thus commonly not accepted as narratives. The contradiction here is quite clear. If it is necessary to observe the entirety of a text in order to acknowledge it as narrative, then what is it that channel surfers are recognising? How can narrative be at the same time something that is identifiable piecemeal and something requiring the experience of complete texts?' (pg. 17)

Imaging the World

• 'Applicable wherever humans tell stories or implicitly refer to previously told tales, the theory presented in this volume offers powerful potential for describing human activities.. theory might be used to image and explain such varied phenomena as individual texts, literary and film history, social organisation, religion, and political life.' (pg. 338)
• Cause-and-effect model 'When energy and matter, action and character, are reduced to the same entity, can the end of narrative be far behind?' (pg. 340)

Allegory of the Cave

https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm

Plato's Cave

1. Plato realizes that the general run of humankind can think, and speak, etc., without (so far as they acknowledge) any awareness of his realm of Forms.
2. The allegory of the cave is supposed to explain this.
3. In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see.
4. Such prisoners would mistake appearance for reality. They would think the things they see on the wall (the shadows) were real; they would know nothing of the real causes of the shadows.
5. So when the prisoners talk, what are they talking about? If an object (a book, let us say) is carried past behind them, and it casts a shadow on the wall, and a prisoner says “I see a book,” what is he talking about?
6. He thinks he is talking about a book, but he is really talking about a shadow. But he uses the word “book.” What does that refer to?
   
7. Plato gives his answer at line (515b2). The text here has puzzled many editors, and it has been frequently emended. The translation in Grube/Reeve gets the point correctly:

   “And if they could talk to one another, don’t you think they’d suppose that the names they used applied to the things they see passing before them?”

8. Plato’s point is that the prisoners would be mistaken. For they would be taking the terms in their language to refer to the shadows that pass before their eyes, rather than (as is correct, in Plato’s view) to the real things that cast the shadows.If a prisoner says “That’s a book” he thinks that the word “book” refers to the very thing he is looking at. But he would be wrong. He’s only looking at a shadow. The real referent of the word “book” he cannot see. To see it, he would have to turn his head around.
   
9. Plato’s point: the general terms of our language are not “names” of the physical objects that we can see. They are actually names of things that we cannot see, things that we can only grasp with the mind.
10. When the prisoners are released, they can turn their heads and see the real objects. Then they realise their error. What can we do that is analogous to turning our heads and seeing the causes of the shadows? We can come to grasp the Forms with our minds.
11. Plato’s aim in the Republic is to describe what is necessary for us to achieve this reflective understanding. But even without it, it remains true that our very ability to think and to speak depends on the Forms. For the terms of the language we use get their meaning by “naming” the Forms that the objects we perceive participate in.
12. The prisoners may learn what a book is by their experience with shadows of books. But they would be mistaken if they thought that the word “book” refers to something that any of them has ever seen.

Proposal - COP3

Initial Thoughts - Wordless Narrative

Where to start

Although I am not completely certain as to where my investigation will go, in terms of the focus of my dissertation, the themes I want to start researching initially link to pictorial narratives, the elimination of language (words) and the structures of composition.

Potential Questions
What is the impact of establishing a narrative within a single image?

What is the impact of a single frame as an indication of wordless narrative?

How can wordless image narrative impact an audience's perception of a story?

How do scenes found in a single image reflect a wordless narrative?

How far does a single frame influence the narrative of a story?

Link to my current practice
My practice generally centres around narrative, mainly constituting of scenes and moments of action within a composition to best portray a topic/story. I want my investigation for COP3 to coincide with this, to further develop my understanding in this area - both theoretically and in my practical work.