ID3230_Unit4_Pt1_Notes.docx

ID3230 Unit 4 (Part 1: How Squiggles Mean)

The Meaning of the Image Through Appearance

Overview
Besides their Content, all images communicate through their Appearance too, and this is often a more immediate and emotional aspect of their meaning. Visual elements like line, color, shape, and texture have an impact on us that can be examined apart from what an image shows. The same is true for visual principles that organize those elements within the frame of the image such as balance, rhythm, and hierarchy.

The Appearance of the Image
Our second approach to the meaning of an image moves us away from the issues connected with what the image shows or depicts and how it does or does not look like the world. When we focus on the Appearance of an image, we are trying to be sensitive to the impression or feelings we get from the image through its visual impact alone. In other words, we are trying to focus on the impact not from what the image shows, but from how it shows it.

But keep in mind as you think about Appearance, that in natural looking this is something we get from the image at the same time, and often intermingled with, issues of Content. It is in analyzing and discussing the image that we are able to separate the two so sharply and intentionally focus on one or the other.

Appearance is based on the idea that the visible components of any image – by themselves and on their own terms – have an impact on us emotionally, psychologically, and even cognitively. It presumes that when we look at any image we probe it not only for information related to the world we know (Content), but also for direct emotional and sensual impact. This explains how images with no Content (as we are using the term here to mean an image that is not a picture of anything) can still have meaning. In other words, even abstract images that do not depict anything at all can still have an impact on us through their visual impression and therefore still have meaning.

The Formal Analysis
When we focus on the Appearance of an image we are trying to understand how its visual look and feel may affect us, separate from what the image depicts. The idea is that the visual components themselves – the colors and shapes and textures – communicate something that matters, just as the details do.

For example, shapes that are fluid or curvy have a different effect on us than shapes that are sharp or pointy. Warm colors like orange impact us differently than cool colors like blue. A soft texture conveys something different than a harsh one. A balanced image feels calming, an asymmetrical one more dynamic.

These aspects of the image are part of the overall meaning of that image, just as much as details of what the image shows. Sometimes (as in still-life paintings) these factors are tied up with what the image shows and sometimes (as in abstract images) they stand on their own. In natural looking we take all this in at once but when analyzing the meaning of an image, we can try to separate these approaches for a better understanding.
Focusing on Appearance gives us an opportunity to concentrate on just the visual impact and become sensitive to its effect on us.

This kind of focus on the Appearance of the image is called a formal analysis because we are considering the form or the look rather than the Content. This is tricky to do and especially hard to write about. It is generally easier to use nouns to describe what an image shows than it is to come up with words to express the impact of color or shape on us. But it is worth the effort because although the effect may be subtle, it is profoundly important

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in the impact of images.

Understanding Visual Impact
To focus on the Appearance of an image we try to veer away from the Content. This is not a rule, it is a goal. Something to strive for. The reason for this is that the illusion of Content, the way in which the image fools us into thinking it is a world within itself, is so powerful that we can easily miss other important aspects of the meaning, like the meaning through the Appearance.

This goal is a bit easier with abstract images in which there is no Content to seduce us. In fact, one of the impulses behind abstract art is the exploration of the impact of color, shape, balance, etc. by themselves and on their own terms. Yet it is common for people to look at abstract images and try to see familiar things in them. This can be a fun game to play – a kind of Rohrshach test – but it misses the point of those kinds of images, which is to affect us directly through their visual components. Focusing on the impact of Appearance is a worthwhile effort to make with representational images too because it can reveal certain less obvious parts of the overall meaning.

It is also important to keep in mind that the question here is not about personal preference…whether you like or dislike what you see. Those kinds of judgments are important and we make them all the time, but focusing on Appearance for our purposes is not an attempt to justify your tastes. What we are trying to do is understand what aspects of the image affect us and in what ways they do so, like it or not.

Element and Principles
The standard idea of a formal analysis is to look at the impact of the way the elements of an image are composed according to principles of organization. The word “elements” refers to the visual parts or pieces that make up any image. These are commonly thought of as line, shape, color, pattern, texture, and tone. The question in a formal analysis is what kinds of effects these have on us as viewers.

The phrase “principles of composition” refers to the various ways of arranging or organizing those elements within the frame to create certain effects. Typical effects are usually thought of as rhythm, balance, hierarchy, figure/ground, and contrast.

These terms or categories may appear differently – in different or using different words – in various texts but the overall idea is the same…that the visual components of an image and how they are put together have an effect on us and are therefore part of the meaning of the image AND that it is valuable to try to focus on and understand that effect.

The Musical Analogy
One of the implications of this approach is that a picture that does not show anything (an abstract image, in other words) can still communicate something to us. Or to put it another way…that mere squiggles can still mean something.

If you have trouble understanding how that can be the case, just think of music. Instrumental music without words. You know very well that music can make you feel things, change your mood, even affect your body. Lyrics refer directly to the world and are, in that sense, part of the Content of songs. But music without words can be equally powerful in an abstract way. This is similar to the way an abstract image can have a powerful visual impact. Think of the notes and silences of music as the elements that are organized into rhythms and melodies and you have a good analogy to the way shapes and colors organized into visual rhythms and sequences can also have an effect.

Any movie that you see makes this connection as the creative team tries to match the background music to the look and feel (and themes too) of any scene. For a more direct example, put keywords like “Abstract Music” into

a YouTube search and you can find many examples of artists creating video images that support or visually express what a piece of music expresses.

The Abstract Movement
In a book entitled More Than You See: A Guide to Art, author Frederick Horowitz writes about the development of abstract art as part of a wider trend in the modern world away from clear, ly, logical understanding of images to a more mysterious, ambiguous, intangible (but equally powerful) view.

Horowitz suggests that abstract images can provide a more intense, emotional experience than images that only ask us to simply recognize what we see. These kinds of images may also focus our attention on forces and qualities of the world that would otherwise go unrecognized. And, like music, they can create moods and influence the way we think and feel in direct ways.

This approach is really a challenge for us to become aware of the various ways that the formal elements of abstract art affect us but it is important to keep in mind that the principles he is writing about applies to all images, not just abstract ones, and in this way part of understanding any image relates to the impact of its formal elements and principles.

Impressions and Perceptions
In trying to explore the impact of Appearance, there are two things to keep in mind. The most important is what can be revealed through a formal analysis, that is, the visual impression we get from the elements and principles of the image. What feelings we get from them, what emotions might be stimulated, what level of energy we pick up. This is a crucial part of the meaning of the image.

But it is also instructive to keep in mind a second aspect of Appearance and that is how we are able to perceive these things at all. In trying to detect differences in color, balance, shape, and all the rest, there is a great deal of eye/brainwork going on. The detective in the visual cortex is constantly working to evaluate and assess color, for example, in the same way it works to understand objects in the image.

This reminds us again that seeing is a form of thinking and that understanding images is a process of exploring, probing, evaluating, assessing. The eyescan studies show that looking involves a constant effort to compare one aspect of the image to another and make judgments about what we are seeing. Red versus blue, dark versus light, balance versus imbalance. This is another example of just how hard our brains work to make sense of things. Yet, just as with all the work that goes into understanding the Content of an image – all that cataloging and identifying – this effort feels effortless, automatic, instant. Another example of the magic of visual perception.

Conclusion
Factors about the Appearance of an image are another important part of the meaning of the image. Just as we explore the image searching for meaningful objects, we also probe the image to understand and respond to visual elements like line, shape, color, texture, and tone and also to visual principles like balance, hierarchy, rhythm, or contrast. Whether we are looing at a representational image or an abstract one, these factors about the Appearance have a direct impact on us, just as they do in the real world. When we write or talk about these effects – beyond simply experience them – this is called a formal analysis of the image.

(CSLO 1, CSLO 2, CSLO 3, CSLO 4, CSLO 5)