VLVC wk 9 - Media Literacy

Lesson 9 - Media Literacy  

Readings:
1) Robertson, Linda. “From War Propaganda to Sound Bites: The Poster Mentality of Politics in the Age of Television.” Images in Language, Media, and Mind. Ed. Roy Fox. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994. 

2) Semiotics Text Chapters 6 & 16: (Smith-Shank, Deborah. Semiotics and Visual Culture: Sights, Signs, and Significance. Reston: National Art Education Association, 2004.)

Thoughts as I go: 
Good readings this week. Very interesting. One thought I was left with as I finished Duncum's readings: Those poor pre-service teachers! Such hopeful and innocent thoughts about children darkened ! Although not bad things to think about, but what a way to get there!   


Discussion Board Assignment:

For our last “show-and-tell” with visual images, find a visual advertisement that you observe in your everyday life. Use Rank‟s Intensify/Downplay schema (and last week‟s Critical Literacy skills) to analyze its attempts at persuasion.
Here‟s the twist! Your last name will determine what medium the advertisement needs to be in: A-H – Print Ad
I-P – Television Ad
Q-Z – Webpage Ad
If you‟re using digital media, please post the URL links (YouTube and Hulu are great sources for TV commercials!) to the advertisement that you‟re analyzing; if using a print ad, copy and scan as normal!
Here‟s the second twist! When responding to other people‟s posts, find colleagues who analyzed ads within each of the other two media, and discuss how the nature of the medium impacts the message being sent. Another way of thinking about this: how would the advertisement be different if it was produced in the original medium that you studied (instead of its current form)?

For my Webpage Ad, I'm going to look at the Bing It On advertisements. 

http://www.bingiton.com/?FORM=MBIOST&PUBL=GOOGLE&CREA=userid1743vi40sv896p599k4kcwn262lwj97nd1r542

I originally saw the ad on the dictionary.com website, running across the top as a banner ad.



The ad, like many web ads, is animated to catch the viewer's attention. I have attempted to take a few snapshots so you can see the various images that are included.

        
Using Rank's scale, I see a lot of tools being used to intensify the message that Bing is trying to communicate. Bing is going up against a well established, and successful search engine - Google. To overcome this, Bing will have to get its "customers" to try it and has to entice them to do so. People love games and many people love competition, so Bing has embraced this idea of a match, a head to head boxing match. It invites the viewer to become part of the action, participating in the match up, trying out our own searches. But first it introduces us to the concept through a series of images that are boxing related (repetition) so that we associate the action of an internet search with the punches being thrown in the ring (association). Looking at the composition, the first few frames isolate boxing items to bring to mind the event that is about to take place, building up the association. They are emphasized through animated spotlights so that after being given time to read, the viewers' eye is drawn to the images. At the end, a button invites viewers to judge for themselves, to try out the competition for themselves, not just see it alluded to. That leads to the opposite side of the Rank scale - downplay.
What is left out? If you weren't already familiar with the brands, you might not know what the advertisement was for until the end frame, and maybe not even then. You might not realize that 'searches' refers to internet searches. Just that these two are going head to head. And if nothing else, people typically go with what is first. The lack of any information about either brand leaves out any facts about why one would be better than the other. It really just leaves it up to your experience, which will happen elsewhere. By keeping the action moving in the animation, from one image to another, none dealing with the content of the product, the advertisers have used confusion to keep the viewer from asking questions and instead focused (intensify!)  on the theme of the competition.

If you want to try the competition yourself, Bing has a dedicated webpage here: http://www.bingiton.com

VLVC wk 8 - Critical Literacy

Lesson 8 - Critical Literacy

Readings:
1) Orwell, George. “Politics and the English Language.” Shooting an Elephant and other Essays. London: Secker and Warburg, 1950. Reprinted: <http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit>. 

2) Semiotics Text Chapter 11: (Smith-Shank, Deborah. Semiotics and Visual Culture: Sights, Signs, and Significance. Reston: National Art Education Association, 2004.)

3) Fox, Roy. “Where We Live.” Images in Language, Media, and Mind. Ed. Roy Fox. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994.

 

Thoughts as I go: 
Orwell: Am I too dumb to understand what I'm reading? Gosh this is hard. Maybe that's the point. I'm picking up some stuff, but I get the feeling I should be gleaning more from this. Why isn't he directly addressing the double speak? This seems somewhat separate from that and more just an issue he has with the way people write. Is it just me or do most research papers sound like this?
Semiotics: This seems to have multiple parts and points and i'm not seeing how they go together. Is this an example of what Orwell wouldn't want to see?
Fox: Okay! I'm getting it now. This is speaking my language. I see the manipulation of images and understand why we do it. 
So why did we read the other two?


Discussion Board Assignment:

Find [and post] an image that utilizes Symbolspeak (as defined by Fox) and/or Doublespeak (as defined by Orwell). Adopt a critical literacy approach by which to question and deconstruct the text. Who/What is left out of the image? Why? What stake does the composer have in designing the text in this fashion? Is it effective in its manipulation of reality? 

 I am going to be honest, this week's readings were a bit hard for me - maybe because I had so much swirling in my head from the NAEA convention I had little room for other deep thoughts. But as I sat down to do my readings, I couldn't help but feel it wasn't all quite sinking in. The Fox article, read last and furthest away from my time at the convention, made the most sense. Orwell's piece, although I am familiar with his term of double speak, did not do much to explain that concept for me. He gave many counter examples without offering what we should use, or at least it was not very clear to me. The reading in the semiotics text seemed very disjointed and perhaps at first like an example of what Orwell would not like to see. This is where I was dying for an in person class discussion / teacher presentation to help me place all the puzzle pieces and make sense of it all.  

So I hope I am getting this out all right. After much deliberation, I wanted to pick an image not in the field of advertising, which might be counterintuitive. It just seems like that is the point of advertising to mislead and misrepresent. I wanted to look more at the world of art. My first choice was the photograph 'Destitute Pea Pickers in California' otherwise known to us as Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange. 

I thought of this photograph because it is iconic and was used for so many ulterior motives. It is used to represent ideas other than what was going on at the time the photograph was taken.

 

When you look at this image, what comes to mind?

 

I was introduced to this image as part of my learning about the dust bowl and the depression. It was used in conjunction with the Grapes of Wrath and will probably be forever intertwined with the images from the movie as well as the novel in my mind. I saw a woman taking care of her children in the most dire of circumstances, plagued by uncertainty and doubt about not just where she could get food and shelter for her family but if she could get it at all. She seemed so very alone. She also seemed very transitory and nomadic, searching. The black and white added to the feeling of grittiness and dirtiness that I imagined went along with all that dust rolling about. It is a very warm image, cropped in close to the face of the worried mother with her children in close, touching her. Since the children's faces are turned away, we as the viewer are able to put ourselves in the place of these children depending on our own mothers. If we are mothers, we recognize that look of worry about our own children and identify with that constant concern for their well being. It is highly emotional.  

If we look at the series of six images that Dorothea Lange took that day, we also a progression from cool to warm. The distance from the subjects lessens, the content becomes more emotional, you can see the relationship between photographer and subject warm up as well. (Use this link to wikipedia which gives a nice layout of the other five images.)

Looking at the questions: Who/What is left out of the image? Why? What stake does the composer have in designing the text in this fashion? Is it effective in its manipulation of reality? we start to form a different understanding of this image. 

Who is left out of this image? Where is the father of these children or where is her husband? Why is she here? Where is here, exactly? What is she doing here? What is this woman's reality instead of our perceived reality?  If we start to ask some questions about what is missing, instead of letting our assumptions answer them for us, we start to dive into why there was controversy over this image. (It reminds me of a game I play when I travel at the airport. I find a person and construct his or her life story for them based on appearance and first impressions. Then, as we travel together, little clues come together either in support of or against my initial reaction to them. The more I talk to them, the more I learn.) 

According to Dorothea Lange's own notes, she did not ask the woman, Florence Owens Thompson, her name or her history. That Florence had offered her age and that she had been surviving on frozen vegetables and birds that her children had killed. Lange also notes that Florence told her that they had just sold their tires to buy food. However, Florence's husband said that Lange never asked any questions and got many of the details incorrect. They couldn't have sold their tires since they ended up driving away on the same ones they came in on when the car broke down. The general feel is not that Lange was lying, but rather she was mixed up or filling in from other people's lives to create the story she saw in the images she took.   The image went on to become an icon of the depression and used to garner support for the government's aid programs. With no depiction of the pea farm, the desolate conditions of the farm or the actual workers we are tied to the emotion of the event and not the actual conditions of the event. Lange had a lot to gain from composing a moving image of the migrants. She had a career to build, and an interest in selling her work. She knew that emotion and a good story would add value to a documentary style photo. She even went further to manipulate the image in the darkroom, altering its composition. By manipulating reality, Lange was able to invest more people in the distribution of this photograph. 

I might seem to be dogging Lange, but in fact I might have done the same thing. As a humanitarian, I would want to get help for people in need. If  that meant manipulating a composition or constructing an image to capture the essence of a larger problem (as opposed to a single woman's real problem) in order to get assistance, I might have done the same thing. People don't necessarily have a problem with fiction unless it is presented as fact. That is the use of symbol speak here.

If you are interested in more information about the history of this image, here are two easily accessible write ups:

http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/downloads/pdfs/Resource_Guide_Chapters/PictAmer_Resource_Book_Chapter_18B.pdf

http://www.tampabay.com/features/visualarts/depressions-migrant-mother-remains-a-powerful-image/493338

Also, as a side note, I wanted to look at (and almost did) this image:

If you don't know anything about this image, I invite you to comment on what you think about it. BUT if you do know the history of this image, don't say anything yet... It would be interesting to hear people's first impressions.

VLVC wk 7 - Cultural Relativism

Lesson 7 – Cultural Relativism

Readings:
1) Hall, Edward T. Chapter Nine: “Space Speaks.” The Silent Language. New York: Anchor Books, 1959.

2) Semiotics  Text Chapters 3 & 13: (Smith-Shank, Deborah. Semiotics and Visual Culture: Sights, Signs, and Significance. Reston: National Art Education Association, 2004.)

Thoughts as I go: 
Holy moly. Now I know why my kitchen is driving me crazy. It's not mine. It lives by my husband's rules. That drives me crazy. In fact, my whole house is that way. Areas may start out under my control, but eventually fall to the whims of either my children or my husband. This explains my wanderlust and my aggravation!

Discussion Board Assignment:

   Adrienne Salinger compiled an interesting photography collection in the 1980s entitled My Room: Teenagers in Their Bedroom. The project immediately came to mind when putting together lessons and readings for this week, and so I thought it might be fun for us to replicate the experiment!

   Take (or obtain) a picture of a room that is not your own. [Possible ideas: a co-worker’s classroom/office, a son/daughter’s bedroom, a friend’s kitchen, etc.] Make note of your immediate individual reactions to the visual space. Then, briefly interview the individual who “owns” the room to ask about his/her rationale for constructing the visual elements in the manner they appear. Include both conscious aesthetic choices (décor, color, etc.) and seemingly unconscious decisions (physical space, orderliness, etc.). Finally, consider what an outsider from America might say about the room. 

   Post any significant “cultural relativism” findings (and the photo) to the Discussion Board.

Z's Room -
South West Corner

Z's Room
North East Corner

I have chosen a co-worker's teenage daughter's room to look at. I was very curious as it has recently been redecorated and I had seen it five years ago in its previous incarnation. I met "Agent Z" (obviously a pseudonym for my young friend) when she was just 9 years old. She is now a freshman and 14 years old. Quite a time of development for anyone. I was very curious to see how she conceptualized herself in her own space.

As I waited for the photos from Z, I wondered how she had chosen to design her space. What would she pick? How independent would her decisions be? I've worked closely with her mother for the last 5 years and gotten to know her and her daughter. I wondered what parts of her mother and her opinions and her aesthetic would creep onto the walls and into the "new" room. How strong would Z's voice be? What parts of her that I already know would I see? What new would I learn?

Agent Z's Room

Z's room has been recently redecorated to reflect her shifting identity from child & preteen to  hip teenager. The impetus was the need for a larger bed ( to full from twin) and how to make that happen in such a small space. The solution was the loft, placing the sleeping space above the action down below. The room is decorated in bright, acidic colors. The western wall is painted bright blue and the eastern wall is bright green with white walls dividing them. Previously her room had been painted in stripes of pale mint green, pink and black with a girls Parisian theme.

Her furniture has a clean, modern industrial feel to it. The decorations revolve around her color palette of fluorescent pink, green, orange, and blue and a circle motif. Around her room you can pick out her artistic influences and style icons such as Audrey Hepburn as well as many musical references and awards. Scattered around under her loft are her devices: an iPad, a laptop, an iPod, and tv remotes. She is definitely a connected iKid. Somewhat orderly but what I think of as typically teenager, there are piles of stuff pushed to the edges here and there. I spy a stocking from Christmas (even though it is now March), a stuffed animal, an errant clothes hanger, binders, notebooks, and other school like items.

My first impression is that it definitely captures that teenage aesthetic. Slightly rebellious with the industrial feel, yet minimalistic in style. So many of my students also seem to have selected similarly styled furniture for their rooms. The catalogs such as Pottery Barn Teen carry different variations of this industrial chic furniture and accessories.  I find myself thinking back to this same time in my life, when I was choosing to redecorate my room as a teenager and I, too, selected this look. Does this speak to a time in our lives? Although each of us vary with differences in opinions, looks, styles, preferences, and future paths we choose an aesthetic that is so much the same. The furniture is clean, bare, sharp, functional, modern, youthful, bright. Is this because this is how we see ourselves at this time in our lives? It mirrors where Z is at this time in her life. Bright, youthful, sharp, and like a clean slate begging to be drawn on, to be filled with experiences, with work to be done, and dreams to be drafted. In a way this industrial chic doesn't quite define itself, it has a feel but doesn't commit itself to a full on personality - much like teenagers figuring out what they want from themselves and life. Z is trying on aspects of her own personality. Tacking them to her bulletin board, putting them on display to analyze them, moving them around, and determining how much they fit who she wants to be.  

When asked about her room, Z had this to say:

1.) My room used to be very light and childish and had stripes all over the walls (which were extremely hard to paint over) , and I figured it was time to change it. I got to decorate this current room.

2.) I really like bright colors, and I needed some that would cheer me up. The circular lanterns and mirrors matched the comforter I got for my bed, so I sort of took that theme and ran with it.

3.) The opposite colored walls looked really cool when I was checking out some things online about room designs, and the white walls in between those made my room look a lot bigger than it actually is.

4.) I decided to use a loft bed because I wanted to have something different than just a normal bed. I originally had a twin bed, but I had to get a bigger one, so we got the idea from that. I really like it, I think it's something unusual and all my friends love it. The only thing difficult about it is climbing up and down the ladder when I'm super tired.

5.) I have a lot of different things in my bulletin board. I have a few posters of my favorite bands, some artwork that I have done, and pictures of friends. Most of the things I have up there deal with music, so I guess there is a pattern now that I think of it.

6.) I actually do have a desk (it was out of the frame), but I don't use it often. I usually do my homework on my couch, where I do mostly everything else. :)

7.) I multitask a lot under my loft, mostly listening to music and going on the internet. If I'm using my tv, I use it for movies, mostly Brave or something I recorded on the DVR.

8.) My room is almost NEVER clean. You can even ask my parents. It's extremely rare to even see the floor in there. I have a hamper, and I've tried to use it, but I forget a lot.

9.) My room definitely reflects myself, especially my bulletin board. I just have so many pictures and posters underneath my bed that I can't even remember all of them!

10.) The Audrey Hepburn poster I have in my room was the first thing I ever got to hang up on my wall. I remember searching for something that I would definitely not get rid of to hang up, and that was perfect, especially because of the pop art style and my love for Audrey. I have always been told I look like her...

11.) If I could rearrange it, I would! There are just no other spaces that I can put my loft since my my door would knock into it if I put it on the opposite side of my room. I have switched my desk and my couch multiple times, but it wasn't enough change for me, so I kept it the way it was.

It's really hard to get into my drawers, especially when I'm taking them out to clean them out for a new season. Trust me, I don't know how in the world I do it, but it just happens. I have another dresser for pajamas and such in my closet, so sometimes I use that one.

Thanks for interviewing me! I love talking about my room!

I wonder if an outsider (a teenager from somewhere other than America, or heck somewhere other than the sprawled out Midwest) would read the color choices and space any differently. Would the colors be garish as opposed to energetic, modern and youthful? Would the room feel spacious as opposed to cramped? Would that same modern industrial aesthetic translate to a different culture? How would adolescence look in another culture?

Thinking about these questions I decided to ask a couple of cousins I have in Australia to also share their rooms with me. One is female and an older teenager, just starting University (which they go to school Jan - December so ages to grade levels are a little off of ours). The other is a 16yo male. Although Australian culture is closer to ours than say Chinese, or perhaps Ethiopian, or numerous other  countries with differing cultures, I was able to access this alternative point of view. Unfortunately, I haven't heard back from them any details about what they think about their rooms. So, I want to open this up to you all, my class mates. What would you ask either of them about their rooms?

Cousin 1 (female): 

Cousin 2 (male):

VLVC wk 6 - Semiotics: Denotation & Connotation

Lesson 6 – Semantics: Denotation vs. Connotation

Readings:
1) Barrett, Terry. “Interpreting Visual Culture.” Art Education. March 2003.

2) Semiotics  Text Chapters 9 & 10: (Smith-Shank, Deborah. Semiotics and Visual Culture: Sights, Signs, and Significance. Reston: National Art Education Association, 2004.)

Too Many Thoughts as I went. 
Had to take notes in a notebook to hurry along. Might come back to this later here...

Discussion Board Assignment: 

This week you will break one of English teachers' most sacred rules - judge a book by its cover!  Browse a library (personal, school, or community), and select a book based purely off its cover art.  Photograph or scan the cover, upload the image in your post, and analyze it in terms of denotation and connotation.

When responding to others' posts, note your own individual connotations from the book cover before reading your colleague's analysis, and share any similarities or differences discovered in your response.

[Optional - Read the first few chapters of the book (or...gasp...the entire thing!) and discuss how the reading experience compared to your visual anticipations of the story)].

  Like I'm sure many of you, browsing books was an assignment of mixed emotions. It is way too easy to get sucked into the world of books, the worlds the images evoke, and then either to fall to temptation or fight mightily to resist the urge to read the synopsis of what lies between the covers. I wanted to pick a book I knew nothing about so as not to be influenced by its context. And I didn't want to succumb to my lack of will power and walk out of the book store or library with an armful of books I had neither bank nor time to invest.

  So, what did a limited time grad student mom type of girl do? She stopped by the book aisle at Target where books are usually discounted and often not always something I want to read (although I learned that second part wasn't exactly true...oh well!) I eventually landed on this gem: 

OKay, so here begins my deconstruction:

Denotation: 
In this cover image I see a two-toned green room with a cloth covered table in the foreground.  The table extends off the edges of the book cover and breaks the picture plane. Sitting on the table is what looks like an old fashioned, either darkened metal or wooden birdcage with architectural details making it look rather fancy. The cage is empty, but behind it, with her head laying on her hands which are folded on the table, sits a girl with short hair. We can see her eye just peering through the bars. Her expression is passive, with perhaps a slight smile or maybe her face just looks pleasant like that when at ease. The background color highlights the figure of her form and the tall cage, lightening the background directly behind her and fading to dark as it approached the edges. 
The text at the top is constructed in a very light yellow, pronouncing endorsements of the author's previous work followed by her name. Then at the bottom, in a different white colored font, is the title of the book. 

Connotation: 
The first thing I notice about these images is the bird cage as focal point. Positioned directly center, with contrasted lighting it draws my eye immediately towards it. Then I see the girl somewhat hiding behind it, only her elbows are visible without cage in front of her.  Her right elbow is even in shadow so it is hard to see. The Cage brings to mind ideas of being caged, of being kept, of not being able to escape. Because it is a bird cage, I start to associate bird like things such as  not being to spread ones wings, or of some thing beautiful to see and/or hear being put on display. I start to think of flight, or lack there of and limitations. I also associate it with the phrase, "if you love someone set them free." Since these is no bird inside I see the absence of this creature being at the point where it is out and about, free, and the girl waiting to see if it shall return, bringing back its love. I also start to connect the two ideas of something being kept or caged with the girl hiding behind the cage. Is she the one being kept? Is she waiting? Or is her body only jailed while her spirit is out soaring with the bird? 
     I start to associate the text with some of the imagery. Does "Easy" refer to a place? Such as Louisiana and "the Big Easy"? Or does it refer to something (maybe life) being easy? The room does not appear to be especially fine or fancy, but the cage makes reference to affluence. Is this girl's life of affluence and prosperity give way to her questioning her position in life or where she fits in? Perhaps its a combination and a juxtaposition of place and position (or maybe I've been watching too much Downton Abbey ;) ) The font of the title (even though I cannot name it specifically) reminds me of architectural styles of New Orleans and the texture of the cloth, as well as the color perhaps, makes me think of the swamp roots in the bayou (again, maybe its my compulsive T.V. watching, but it makes think of the cat fish in the river from the opening sequence of True Blood.) At first I thought maybe it was fading from the cloth into an overlaid image of the river, but looking closer it wasn't.

Okay! Now I can go read some of this book and check out if I was reading the cover correctly. This makes me think of VTSing with my students and them asking at the end if their answers were right!  We shall see...