As we approach Project Brief 4, over the next few weeks we will be discussing important ideas and concepts that interrelate to create media forms. Today we focussed on the analytical process of text and touched on the basic foundations of analysing sound.
TEXT- ” As an object of study, text is all embracive”
– We were given the example of the Bobo Doll experiment in which it was thought that certain media influenced human behaviour; this is an example of the ‘effects’ tradition in communication studies
– Another example included the quote ” I don’t know what pornography is, but I know it when I see it” – this referred to another tradition involving the mid 20th century turn against a particular idea of culture; the rise of consumer mass culture that privileged the study of culturally valued texts
The question of what exactly can be defined as a Text? arose amongst our discussion, over the years examples have included:
– material traces that are left of the practice of sense-making- the only empirical evidence we have of how other people make sense of the world
– sign systems
– production of values and ideas
Basically texts are understood as how audiences engage and how they are represented; we must ask who, what, why and where something/someone has occurred
We then moved on to Semiotic Tradition- analysing internal aspects of text
– It can be understood that we as people hold visual, aural and linguistic, expectations and connotations of the everyday world that influences how we read/watch media texts, this idea can be broken down into a set of terms including:
– sign, signifier; which can refer to say the word “red”
– signified; which refers to what we infer from those letters/sound such as the colour of red
– denotation; first order meaning; red is apart of the colour spectrum
– connotation; cultural or 2nd meaning; emotions associated with red including ‘anger’ or ‘love’
– codes; formal- technical (shot focus, scale), composition, genre
social- family, age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, nationality
Our next point of discussion was Sound and Moving Image
– every medium has unique capabilities
– sound is considered a very pervasive, constant, multi-directional, complexly layered, prioritised experience that we may have little control over
– Sound is Intimate- as close to us as our own thoughts, invited to imagine the world being represented
Aural semiotics
– Perspective applies to simultaneous sounds- hierarchizes elements of sound
Figure; focus of interest; lecturer voice
Ground; the setting or context; keyboard, conversation
Field; the background ambient space ; hum of projector, outside
– Social distance applies to single sounds (Theo Van Leeuwen)
– Different degrees of formality; affected by volume, pitch, quality, tone
-informal
-formal
-personal
–intimate
Soundscape
sonic representation of place or an environment
– actual environments
– abstract constructions
– musical compositions
Exercise – Vietnam War photo
– figure; crying, shouting, explosion
-ground; gun reloading,
-field; wind, after effects of explosion
