barebones communication

Picturing the communication proces. It that possible? Why not?

The picture below has already been posted to this site once. I seem to revert to it from time to time. It has something to it that not easily can be described. A couple of days ago I finally grasped what is was. Or “some of” what it was. It is a picture illustrating the communication process. Easy as that, and I really wonder why it took me so long to realise it.

Here comes the picture.

Let’s look at this pictures in more detail using some of the tools laid bare on this blog in earlies posts.

Denotations:

Denotations are the picture basics. That content that we all are likely to agree on. The basic stepping stones of the image. What, literally, do we have? We have parts of a large room. The wall framing the image left hand and right hand sides. The roof is indicated, and the floor is clearly a major part of the physical spread of the photograph.

At the back of the room there is a large class wall leading out to the exterior. A lake, trees and more trees. Laves and trunks. The glass wall, which is floor-to-ceiling high is bloken by vertical (wooden) poles to enhance the vertical impression.

In the middle some kind of cylinder.  Glass of plastic cylinder. In both cases transparent. Two people look into the cylinder from opposite sides. Facing each other. The closes persons seems to have oversized shoes on. The other person is blurred by the glass or plastic so you can only guess that this is a person. It is more of an indication than a precise outline, but we are not in doubt that it is a person. The second person is intended.

The camera angle is downwards, and the lens clearly a wide one that distorts the natural perspective making the parts of the foreground look bigger than the objects further away.

These are the most obvious denotations. There are more, and they could all be described in greater detail, but this is sufficient for what is need here.

Connotations:

And now to the connotations. Those second layer contents that always are there to add to the reading and understanding of a message. As shown elsewhere on the blog, and in the wording of Roland Barthes, you can talk about connotation procedures to get a grip of how you deliberately can try to work specific connotations into a message.

I will treat them pretty overall here only stating that to me this photograph comes with a content of life, playfulness, curiosity and ambiguity. It is a happy and youthful picture, as well.

I am sure that you will read, if not identical, then somewhat similar connotations into the image. And maybe even a greater number, since the shift of layer from denotation to connotation brings with it a shift from objective reading to subjective reading. Personal taste, understanding and preferences are to a larger extent at play here.

So far so good.

Symbolism:

Are there more to it? As indicated in the blog title there should be: picturing the communications process. Call this a third layer, call it a level inherent in the denotations and connotations combined. Call is basically whatever you like since labelling is not the name of the game here. The more I looked at the picture I found it to be a good illustration of the communication process. To me it symbolises the communication process. Why? And how?

One way of defining communication is by pointing to a sender and a receiver of a message. This is communication defined in its simplest form and it makes the point needed here. The person in the foreground of the photograph is the sender of the message, and he is also the receiver of a message. So is the person on the far side of the cylinder. Thus the transmission and receiving of a message is a circular affair always in motion. Partly transparent to the observer. This continuous movement is filtered by the individual’s outlook of the world. The way he or she, in phenomenological terms, intends the world.

When using the word intention here it is not in the ordinary sense of the word. I am not talking about intent as in the intention of going to the movies. In the phenomenological world view the meaning of the word intention differs from that, and the term really brings us to the core theme of phenomenology. It is called intentionality, and is that core notion that sets phenomenology apart from anything else that you have ever read about or heard about. Intentionality is all embracing. That is why, when you look at the basic barebones resource diagram below you will find phenomenology is the rock that everything rests on. Including phenomenology itself.

Speaking about different theoretical frameworks phenomenology embraces gestalt psychology, semiology/semiotics, naturalism, experiential results, hermeneutics and whatever framework you can think of. By that, and this is important, the barebones communication universe constitutes a completely new and integreted way of combining, handling and analysing bits and pieces of communication. And of construction such pieces. Like in this case: a simple, maybe not so simple, photography. 

For a shoutcut to barebones communication resources, please go here.

What is intentionality?

Intentionality is the basic idea that consciuosness always is the consciousness of something. The implication is that consciousness never operated in a vacuum or towards blank spots. When I, or you, look at the picture above we always grasps something. That something might be the overall picture, a detail in it, or simply something that are not directly present in the picture.

Alas, when the two guys in the picture stare at each other they stare at something. That something may be specifically present like the guy on the other side of the tube, or it may not be present. It could for instance be an imaginary guy only present in the viewers phantasy. As a mental picture.

That something, that is always there, will be dependent upon a set of social and phychological or physical factors. Things are filtered based on factors just mentioned.  So the glass tube, the glass or plastic cylinder, reflects the idea of looking through filters. There are, as you can see in the picture, a senders filter, and there are a receivers filter.  Things are communication your way, and are received your way as well. This filtering sometimes makes communication difficult, as we all know.

Presence and absence

When there is presence there is always also absence, and as there always are presence there will always be absence. It is one of the major benefits of phenomenology to have shown this. Does this sound cryptic to you? It should not. Just take a look at the picture once more.

What do you see this time? Well, here are some of the things I see. I see a wall, I see a window, I see some trees, I see two people staring into a glass tube. This must then be the present elements.

On the other hand here is what I don’t see: I don’t see the back of the walls, I don’t see the fishes in the water, I don’t see the birds in the trees, I don’t see the feet in the shoes, I don’t see the surrounding landscape. These are then the absent elements that makes this picture understandible to me. As they will to you. There is no way of escaping this.

I will dwell on this aspect to a larger extent in later posts. My point here is simply this: when you communicate what you don’t say is as important as what you do say. When you show, like in  a picture, what you don’t show is a strong contender for meaning. Everyone knows how loud a silence can sound, how speaking a white wall can be.

However, and this is my postulate, very few of us are really good in controlling absent elements in the same way we think that we control present elements.

Apart from a short sum-up I will, accordingly, say no more, and leave you to filter in or to filter out the vaste areas of absences in the continuation of this blog post :-)  Only you can do that.

Cheers.

Illustration and photograph on this blog are copyrighted by the blog author Knut Skjærven. Must not be copied, downloaded or used in any form without the prior, written consent of the copyright holder.

Sometimes things turns out a little different. You get a bit more that you bargained for. At least a little more then you dared hope for. 

This can happen in every type of communication. In texts as well as in visuals. In other forms of communication as well, I would say. In commercial and non commercial communication 

We know that there are at least two levels involved in every act of communication. The first one being that content that we all can agree on. The manifest that is there for everyone to see. The horse in the field, the car on the road, the couple on the bench. This is the denotative level.

Second there is the connotative level. That overlay that always comes with denotations in the ways that denotations are presented to us. The horse that is running and connotes speed, the car that is broken and connotes damage, the people on the bench that sit close and connotes intimacy.

Are there levels beyond that. Ask Roland Barthes and he will say yes and point to at least one more level. He talks about an obtuse meaning as the third level. This is highly subjective and therefore hard to speak about in objective terms (I will have a specific post on that some other time). And Barthes even talks about a punctum as a specific item within a visual. The punctum attracts special attention.

Leave Barthes’ third meaning and his punctum aside in this post. The questions is then if there could be a third meaning other than that indicates by Barthes. I think thet there could be such an alternative third meaning. It occurs when the obvious meaning content of an image, or any other act of communication, transcends itself and move the spectator from specifics to generals. When the pair on the bench, the horse in the field and the car in the street contentwise moves beyond that of a specific pair, a specific horse and a specific car and tells a story of pairs, horses and cars in general. This is when you get that bit extra. Something more than you could hope to expect. 

I call this third level for the iconic level. Combine the word icon with that of notation and you will get icon + notation: iconnotation.

Let me show you a photograph to illustrate what I mean. It is a portrait of two sisters sitting on a bench (what coindence :-)).

As a picture of these sisters it is rather saying for those who know them. The more, however, I looked at the picture it took on an extra dimension. I know these people well, but the more I looked at the picture the sisters disappeared as people that I know, and took on a dimension on simply “sisters”. They could be any pair of sisters. The image turned into an icon for the notion sisters.

So here is the deal then. Pictures (let’s limit the discussion to that) consists at least of three possible levels of meaning:

1. Denotation, 2. Connotation, 3. Iconnotation

Do I hear you say that these two people does not have to be sisters? They could be anyone. Could just be friends. Well, that does not really of matter. The important thing is that their likenesses; both facial likeness and likeness of bodily position indicates strongly (connotes) they they have some kind of intimacy beyond sitting on the same bench. Right? So, if your prefer the picture be be an icon on intimacy, that would be quite ok with me. Please remark that hand that turns out behind the back of the right hand sister. It wraps up the ideas of intimacy very well, in my opinion.

Of course all of this can be contested. Please do. The good thing with blogs, however, are that they very seldom are contested.

Should I mention that denotations and connotations are default levels in all images, and all types of communication, and that iconnotations are not. The two first are a question of quantity and the latter a question of quality. As sloppy image will hardly ever aspire for iconic status, since e. g visual distractions will not likely help concentrating the message. Any message.

Stay tunes and I will return to that

Well, you will be surprised. I was.

Up till a month ago I had no idea that Edmund Husserl has written much about images. Not to speak about photography. Until I had a closer look in my bookcase and found this book: Edmund Husserl: Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerungen, herausgeben von Eduard Marbach, Husserliana Band XXIII, Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. 

I am ashamed that I have to admit that I have had this book since April 22, 1980. On the other hand it might have gained considerably in value since it is still in mint condition. I paid Deutsche Mark 255,00 for it at that time. And that is a small fortune. It is a brick on 724 pages written with an obscure philosophical pen. Husserl’s pen. The major parts of it about 100 years back. Don’t let that disturb you.

The good thing is, that is was translated (yes, it was) by John B. Brough in 2005 and published in a paperback edition by German publisher Springer. Goes by the title: Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898 -1925). And it comes at a much better price. It’s a good read.

What is even better is that the book is absolutely amazing for anyone that intents to dig into the ontology and images and photography. So, it you plan to have a career as a university professor, or simply settle for a Ph.D., or have an interest in the arts in general, you should simply start with this book. It leaves Roland Barthes and Susan Sonntag in the back row. And it does so in a couple of pages into the book.

You should move NOW, since this book and this branch of research have hardly picked up yet. But it will. You could really take the drivers seat for a while even if it will probably leave you with a 700+ pages headache. That will pass over time.

You don’t have to thank me for this recommendation now. You can pay me later. When I loaded both books to Library Thing a little while ago it turned out that I, so far, am the only one that have pointed to these books. And there are tons of books in there already. So the show is yours for the taking.

And as I said. You can pay me later, but if you are into this areas either as a researcher, student or just out of plain interest: GO FOR IT. I will - with some delay

You will find the precise references to both the original version from 1980, and to the translation from 2005 by following the links. Both ways you are in for a brick of pages. 

NB: When you are done with Husserl’s theory on images and photographs you could always send me a quick word as to why the image below might have a certain phenomenological affinity And, add a bit of semiological and gestalt psychological analysis while you are at it.

Good luck with both the books, and the picture. 

All rights reserved.

Buy the English translation of Husserl’s work. Follow the link and support the site:
Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898-1925) (Husserliana: Edmund Husserl Collected Works)

5. Aestheticism

Obscurity is not a world unknown to Barthes. Or to his readers or his critics.

Particularly if you want to venture into his world of photography. Barthes is famous for his article on the Third Meaning, that he wrote for the French periodical Cahiers du Cinéma in 1970. Here he introduces the notion of the obtuse meaning of an image. Some would rather call this the obscure meaning of an image (I will handle this issue in a separate post). 

I have to admit though, that already in 1961 when introducing his fifth connotation of aestheticism obscurity is present. To me it is, anyway.

Barthes states: “when photography turns painting, composition or visual substance treated with deliberation in its very material “texture”, it is either so as to signify itself as “art” (which was the case with the “pictorialism” of the beginning of the century) or to impose a general more subtle and complex signifier than would be possible with other connotation procedures”.

I’m am not sure what Barthes means with “a general more subtle and complex signifier”. So I am not in a position to be very helpful here. Sorry about that, but I urge you to pick up Barthes’ text directly, and tell me what this is all about. I will be more than happy to be educated here :-). How his connotation procedure of aestheticism can act as a mean of laying content into an photography, obscures me. Simple as that.

Here is an example of what I would call aestheticism in Barthes’ meaning “photography turns painting”. Or at least such a trial. This image, that is shot in Barthes’ own country, France, are overly saturated and filtered to make it look more like a painting than a photography.

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

Buy the English translation of Barthes’ work. Follow the link and support the site:
Image-Music-Text

Again I am referring to a recent post for an overview of what Roland Barthes has to say about connotation procedures in his article The Photographic Message from 1961.

Let me also explain the rather technical syntax for the titles of these posts. Barthes used the name connocations procedures (in the English translation that is). Each have a additional title and a number. The first precedure he actually talks about is trick effects, or how you can change the overall meaning content of a photography by “tricking” your way around. In my post chronology this is post 4 (of 6).

1. Trick effects

Imagine that a certain politician fell out of grace. You could simply remove him from the photograph without anyone noticing and still present the photo as a historical fact. Or you could add a person or two, change the background from indoor to outdoor. There are many ways that you can go about such a intent.

Trick effects can be crude like in the instances mentioned, or they can be minor when you change the saturation of a colour, do a simple straightening of a horizon, or just add a bit of contrast to the final image.

Barthes does not mention these last option in his article, but I will add them here, since image manipulation of this sort have increased severely over the years. With photo editor software, this is a piece of cake nowadays. Even removing or adding a person is fairly easy.

Go to any photo site on the internet, you will find heavily manipulated stuff all over. In fact you will find much more manipulated stuff then straight photography. Nothing wrong in that, as long as you are aware of what is going on. It is not always there for you to see at first glance. You may not like this, since it blurs the borders between “reality” and “fiction”, but I am afraid that you have to live with it. 

Bringing it down to basics; image manipulation might alter both the denotative and the connotative content of an image. Thus it is in Barthes’ term a connotation procedure.

In the picture you find below, you’ll see such a trick that Barthes is intending in his article. I have inserted the head of a woman into the lens this gentleman (whom I know well) looks through. Just for the fun of it

I am sure that the effect does not escape you. Is the red lady “a picture in his mind”, or is it “something he looks for or desire?” Or something quite different, maybe. I will leave you do decide. Under any circumstance this insert has altered the meaning content of this image, would you not say? It is an example of Barthes trick effects in photography as a way to manipulate communication content.

Copyright 2003: Knut Skjærven. 

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

Buy the English translation of Barthes’ work. Follow the link and support the site:
Image-Music-Text

As mentioned in a recent post I will elaborate on Barthes’ connotation procedures in separate posts. Here comes then the second of Barthes’ procedures: pose.

There are, according to Barthes, 6 areas of procedures in total. For Barthes’ wording you have to read his article. Reference is made at the bottom of the post.

2. Pose

Barthes: “… it is the very pose of the subject which prepares the reading of the signifieds of connotation: youthfulness, spirituality, purity”. He says this in a discussion on a specific portrait of President John F. Kennedy from the beginning of the sixties.

Obviously a person’s, or an object’s, pose can change the meaning of a shot. Particularly on the connotative level. Does it change the impression if the person looks happy or sad, if he/her smiles or not, if he/she looks distantly up in the air, or keep eyes towards the ground? Of course it does, as do any other compositional change in the picture.

Pose then, or in more general terms, composition, is a connotation procedure. It is one of the element that you can use for inducing a specific set of meanings in a photographic message.

Here is an example. In this shot the denotative elements are the two young people, the glass cylinder, the large window in the back of the image, the brick walls, et cetera. By placing themselves, as they did, around the glass cylinder the young couple added greatly to the content of this shot by inducing playfulness, joy, happiness just to mention a few such attributes. These are the picture’s connotations. For more on connotations (and denotations) you could go here.

Copyright 2008: Knut Skjærven. 

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

Buy the English translation of Barthes’ work. Follow the link and support the site:
Image-Music-Text

As mentioned in a recent post I will elaborate on Barthes’ connotation procedures in separate posts. Here comes the first one starting with Barthes’ third procedure: objects.  There are, according to Barthes in his article, 6 areas for procedures in total.

3. Objects

Objects in themselves have connotative content. Barthes uses an example with a book case that might connote intellectualism. He states that “The interest lies in the fact that the objects are accepted inducers of associations of ideas (book-case = intellectual).. ” They can also work as symbols, he argues.

Some other examples; when you see an image of a big man in a close up, such a shot might connote power or dominance. When you have an image of a tiny woman that might connote fragility or fright. Obviously all object have second meaning connotations moving from neutral (in a neutral shot) to excessive in a more deliberately composed photograph.

Take a look at the “object” below. It is the rear of a car, but not any other car. It is the rear of a Bugatti Veyron at display in Berlin. Depending on the degree of car enthusiast you may or may not be, this picture will connote extreme wealth, extreme speed and excessive luxury to you. If you are not into cars at all, you might accept that this is indeed a stylish object of some class.

It is pretty clear from this picture (to me anyway), that images indeed contain second level contents; read connotations. This image does not only denote: rear of a car, but it strongly connote things like wealth and luxury, as well. 

For more on connotations (and denotations) you could go here.

Copyright 2008: Knut Skjærven.  

 Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

Buy the English translation of Barthes’ work. Follow the link and support the site:
Image-Music-Text

Elements of Semiology.

And that is just what I had in mind. It will be elements of semiology. No more than that.

This is also the title of a famous little book written by French philosopher Roland Barthes in 1964. Translated into English 3 years later. 

I will refer to the English translation. And I will use the book as the steppingstone to the semiological tools that will go into the barebones toolbox. As you remember, semiology, or the American cousin semiotics, are one of the main resources for the barebones project. As I used Wertheimer’s early article as the door to gestalt theory, I will use Barthes book as the opening door to semiology.

Some of you may argue that this is a shift of source “sincerity”: Wertheimer was a primary source. Barthes is not. In particularly not in this book where he first and foremost refers to the Swiss scientist Ferninand de Saussure, and his “Course on General Linguistics”, published in 1916.

And yes, you are right, maybe I should have walked straight back to Saussure? But that will not be.

Barthes makes and excellent and brief introduction to the area, and since his book is written about half a century later, he has an historical outlook on semiology, that was not possible for Saussure to have in the beginning of the century. And besides, Barthes talks about the wider notion of semiology, as opposed to the more narrow linguistics.

Barthes operates with 4 main themes in his book. Those are:

1. Language and Speech

2. Signified and Signifier

3. Syntagme and System 

4. Denotation and Connotation

These 4 areas will be the headlines for the semiology themes, that I will cover in the blog.  Some words have already been said about denotations and connotations. The light version that is, because Barthes text in the book are much more troublesome to get through.

As always, I will do my best to illustrate the themes in question.

Let me just warn you that it is not my intention to write a summary of the book, or even stay very faithful to it. I will simply use it, as I already said, as a first steppingstone to semiology. Or rather; I will use elements of it, since what I am interested in here, as elsewhere, are the bits and pieces of semiology that are handy as communications instruments in the barebones project. 

And is was my intention, actually, to move beyond  Roland Barthes, but again with offset in  his book.

If you want to precede me in this project, please be my guest, since the first half of the book is to be found right here. 

May I add, there is also another very good reason for spending time in the company of Roland Barthes. He is heavy into visual communication. He writes a lot about photography - and I am a fan of Barthes’ trials in this fields. That much for my personal bias . 

Please be aware that I am still in the process of gearing up the garage.  

As usual, stay tuned.