Images, Power, and Politics, Part 2

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# Images, Power, &amp; Politics
### Part 2 September 5, 2022

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# Looking and Power

* The "right to look"
* Visibility: Power may be negotiated by making things visible
    * "Shining a light on injustice" 
    * Recognition and democracy
* Invisibility
    * Eluding surveillance
* Images themselves have power (to persuade, to inspire, to injure)

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# Keywords Review

* Culture
* Representation
    * Mimetic
    * Constructed
* Myth of Photographic Truth
* Intertextuality
* Indeterminacy
* Polysemy

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# Ekphrasis

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# An Exercise in Ekphrasis

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A reveler plays in tomato pulp during the annual "La Tomatina" food fight festival in Bunol, Spain, August 31. REUTERS/Juan Medina

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background-image: url(indigenous_womens_day.png)

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A Guarani indigenous woman covers a Brazilian flag in red paint during a protest marking International Indigenous Women's Day and Amazon Day, celebrated on September 5, and in defense of the Amazon and the Brazilian biomes, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli
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Micaela Montelara plays in the fountain at Georgetown Waterfront Park during a heatwave in Washington, D.C. on August 13, 2021. Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty

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The meaning of an image is:

* contextual 
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* polysemic 
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* contested

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# Semiotics

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# Ferdinand de Saussure

![Portrait of Saussures](saussure.png)
![Cover of Cours Linguistique](cours_linguistique.png)

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# The Signifier (Sr)

* The _physical form_ of the sign. 
 * pencil marks 
 * vocal sounds 
 * pixels on a screen 
* The part of the sign that we perceive with our senses.

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## SNOW

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![snow](snow_icon.png)

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# The Signified (Sd)

* The Signified is not the REFERENT (the "Thing Itself") 
* Instead, the signified is the thought, concept, or mental image we may have of the referent. 
* The signified is attached to or “conjured up” by the signifier.

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# Wasp!!!!!!
![Wasp!](wasp.jpg)

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* We can call physical marks by the name “signifier” _only when and if_ they conjure a signified to form a sign.

* If they don’t, then they are NOT signifiers.

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![Contour Line Drawing](contour_line.png)
### Is this a signifier?

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It is, _**if**_ and only if, it conjures a mental concept (signified), such as:

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* A map to my apartment.

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* A woman reclining on a chair.

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# A Quick Game of PICTIONARY©

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* Pictionary is the joint struggle to create a sign, such that the marks you make on the page become a signifier that “conjures up” the appropriate signified in the mind of your partner.

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* You may just end up making marks on the page that never become signifiers…

e.g. WHAT THE _*&%!!#_ ARE YOU DRAWING??!!??

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## Signs are:

* Abstract 
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* Arbitrary *and* Conventional 
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* Ambiguous

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# Signs are NOT the concrete things that they represent…

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#### There is no _necessary_ relationship between the signifier and the signified.

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* For example, there is no reason why we use “d” “o” “g” to refer to that cute fuzzy thing that’s yapping at the door.

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* Instead, we use “dog” because of our CONVENTIONS...

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# Adrian Piper, Catalysis III & IV (1971)

![Adrian Piper, Catalysis III & IV (1971)](piper_catalysis3-4.jpg)

Denotative vs Connotative Meaning (Barthes)

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Charles Sanders Peirce developed a schema for understanding the different ways a sign can relate to its referent, asking:

>How _MOTIVATED_ is the sign by the 'thing itself'?

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# Degrees of Motivation

(A continuum)

## Symbol &harr; Icon &harr; Index

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# Symbol
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* _**LOW**_ Degree of Motivation 
* The relationship between the sign and its referent is completely ARBITRARY or based on SOCIAL CONVENTION.

Ex. The word “Spoon” or . . . ![Stop Sign](stop_sign.png)

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# Icon
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* _**MODERATE**_ Degree of Motivation 
* A sign which RESEMBLES or LOOKS LIKE its referent.

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![Degrees of Iconicity](iconicity.png)

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# [“Things I Have Drawn (Instagram)”](https://www.instagram.com/thingsihavedrawn/)

![https://www.instagram.com/p/CAQPVJnl_XS/](things_i_have_drawn1.jpg)

![https://www.instagram.com/p/CAQPVJnl_XS/](things_i_have_drawn2.jpg)

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# Index

* _**HIGH**_ Degree of Motivation
* A sign that has an "existential" relatoinship, "co-existing" with its referent. 
* It is often PHYSICALLY PRODUCED by its referent. 
* Examples:
 * Smoke is an index of fire
 * Sneezing is an index of a cold
 * A fingerprint is an index of a thief

![Tire Tracks](tire_tracks.jpg# w-80pct)

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Existential: affirming or implying the existence of a thing.  having being in time and space.

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# What about a photograph?
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![Cricket](cricket.jpg)

My old pup, Cricket (RIP)?

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Photographs
- iconic
- indexical (light rays bouncing off); traditional form of photography, the technique in which light rays reflecting off objects pass through a lens and register an imprint on a medium such as silver halide film (or, in the case of digital photography, a digital chip

the "having been there/then"

Myth of photographic truth and the belief in the machine recording of an image (as opposed to the painter's interpretive hand) provides a mimetic mirroring of the world as it is (positivism)

New forms of photorealistic images

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## For next class:

* Read:

* Casey, Brenna M. (2021, August 29).  "[Art, Power, and Profit at Duke University](https://www.theassemblync.com/long-form/art-power-and-profit-at-duke-university)"  The Assembly.  [PDF version](https://sakai.duke.edu/access/content/group/VMS-202D-001-F22/Readings/Art%2C%20Power%2C%20and%20Profit%20at%20Duke%20University.pdf)

* _Practices of Looking_, Chapter 2 (pp. 51 – 74)