Reflection on W.J.T. Mitchell's Interdisc. and Vis. Culture

I am attracted to the study of interdisciplinarity, so seeing Mitchell's piece on the reading list moved it to the top of my assignment order. 

I found it questioning the  solidity of interdisciplinarity over the long run of educational systems which I took as a way of asking if this approach to pedagogy is a fad or does, indeed, have merit. 

Written in 1993, I think the article is forward looking and now after over 15 years, the concept of a super discipline, Cultural Studies, can not be consider "Pop Education" but a concrete, tested format to expand learning through comparative studies in both practice and in theory. 

Centrally argued is the question of what makes interdisciplinarity. Three approaches are proposed as definitions. Mitchell's preference is 'indisciplinarity' which focuses on the collision of subjects and the changes created by these marriages. Cited as a strong foundational block is cinema studies which Mitchell reminds us is built not just on the visual but also the aural. 

But what I found most compelling in the article was the briefly mentioned concept of convergence. That cinema studies contains codes, formats, designs etc that organize and these practices should be overlapped into other disciplines. In 2000 Lev Manovich discussed and expanded on this concept as part of his theories on Soft (software) Cinema. The computer borrowed heavily from cinema and the visual format developed for over 100 years by the film screen  and now cinema can (continue to)  reciprocate and borrow (in the future) on the layout and visual language of the computer form. The boundaries are indeed overlapping, feeding and growing a new metalanguage as Mitchell calls for.

Summary of Chptr 3, Practices of Looking; Sturkin with question for discussion

Visual Studies Spr 2009

Practices of Learning: Intro to Visual Culture

Sturken & Cartwright

 

Fritz Kiersch

 

Summary: Chapter 3 of “Spectatorship, Power and Knowledge”

 

 Overview

Chapter 3 relates the conditions of control through examination of elements of control; power and knowledge achieved by visual communication. It proposes that to create meaning, a basic human function, humans first visually identify objects, the placement of objects and the organizations of object placements as compositions and translate those assemblies with regard to what they may mean or with a desire to understand that they have a purposeful meaning. A gestalt.

The first section of this chapter defines this gestalt as the practice of spectatorship. Unlike the previous chapter in the text which focused on the individual and the relationships of the one person impacted by one image example, spectatorship is a broaden term, defined to reflect social and psychological habits of the mass audience/ participant.

In this case spectatorship is not the simple one way  ‘act of looking’, but a dual condition exchange between the creator of the image and the viewer of the image where the image producer has specifically designed (composed) the image for the  (the conscientious or subconscious) ideals, the fantasized desires, of that viewer who they believe will see in the image that which the viewer desires to have, become, be with, be like, etc. all within a context of  given viewing conditions.

Spectatorship deals with the expectation of outcomes promoted by the  image/message/information that are designed for a known demographic audience when exchanged under certain predetermined conditions.  See: Jacque Lacan.

Almost sounds like brainwashing. (Hmmmm…)

 

Section two expands on a section one introduced theory of spectatorship based on gender. Feminist Film Theory, developed and formalized in the 1970’s, recognized that the viewer and therefore the image producer, categorizes and creates images based on gender preferences; that images/messages/information can be attractive to the desires of a gender over the other gender. Those who look upon these images/messages do so with an expectation of  desire or pleasure from the image, based on again, specific object arrangements or compositions in or within the frame of the image, that the image producer believes will appeal to a specific gender. Section two further introduces the expansion on this concept of a 'transaction' between those who receive pleasure from viewing and those who receive pleasure from showing (creating).

Using this theory, the economics of art, in particular art merchandising, is explored and discussed as a business that was motivated by the male dominated buyer who acquired images (art) composed and posed specifically for the pleasures of their own male psyches.

This economic mechanism put the power in the hands of the buyer, i.e.,  the viewer, and therefore  slanted the posture of art to generally be organized and constructed with that male personality always in mind.

However, knowing that economic power was driving the image, and that there were other economic bases to exploit, a shift occurred. This one-way exchange was offered to the female population and then further, to alternative lifestyles, cultures, ethnicities, etc. Demand for art, and therefore image/message/information design, shifted. In other words, once recognized, the buyer was redefined and so was the posture of the image for that newly recognized and emerging market.

Economic channels defined and then redefined the image. Power, the second element of control, was more in the hands of a larger and far more diverse spectator population. Demand now creates supply.  A true Keynesian balance.

 

However, the third section of the chapter deals with a philosophy of control proposed in the late 1780’s by Jeremy Bentham. He devised a prison building called the Panopticon which was a singular tower, a viewing tower, facing or centered in front of a equally tall, half moon shaped building layered with individual prisoner’s cells, all of which were exposed to the tower. This construction allowed a few guards in the tower the ability to watch many prisoners with equal geometric perspectives and sightlines. This did two things: first, it employed fewer guards keeping the guard to prisoner ratio high, i.e., less costs and second, it put more power into the equation for the authorities because the prisoners never knew who was watching them or when they were being watched.

Michel Foucault, in the 1970’s, expanded on this proposal by exploring the act of spectatorship, the gaze, and the relationship it has to power both in a social context andin an  institutional context. “Images can both exert power and act as instruments of power”, Sturken writes. Images can control what we know as well as how we use that which we are allowed to know; effectively, this controls what we become.

The outcome (of this power) is knowledge. Photographs are used as the main example of the last discussion of control. It is presented that modern photographs provide meaning by including factors for comparisons for the viewer to judge. This offers more of a sense of 'fairness' of perception.  However, these contrasts, which are called ‘binary oppositions’ have been introduced into modern images as compositional elements signifying norms and abnorms, goods and bads, values and immaterials. These oppositions further the direction of the viewer’s analysis by making a stronger case for establishing a certain predetermined outcome. If we do not know what something is, perhaps we know the opposite and therefore we will make meaning through reduction.  The image producer is calling us to learn (gain knowledge) a certain way and in a certain amount which, I suspect, will be monetized through some channel like advertising, product or service sales. 

 

Summary:

Viewing is a complex process of power, knowledge and the effectiveness of an image’s purpose. Viewing is affected by gender, race, cultural norms, sex, sexuality, race and other social factors. Image creation has developed into a practice of looking at and being looked at. Knowing that this equation or exchange exists and exists with prejudice, makes the act of viewing no longer a naïve, carefree experience, but matures the social issue of  ‘truth’ and the original freedom of choice.

 

Questions:

A.            Can the viewer NOT receive meaning from the image? That is, can you ‘un-ring’ the bell?

B.             Is there a true ‘innocent eye’ anymore?  Studies Spr 2009

Enjoy the four video assemblies at the following address:

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/media/overview/clips/index_en.htm

They are experiments in media literacy. Each assembly is based on a different human emotion. 

All individual images present either examples of what the emotion looks like when felt by someone or what it could be; what we fantasize it to be or how it might be simulated to be.

All are non verbal. They are without ethnic, cultural, social or political references. Just a basic human emotion that we all understand and can read as the same message. 

First entry

My background is in film; studies and production. I am currently the Director of a University Program in Moving Image Arts.
My interest is expansion of my comparative study of literacies.
My expectations of the class are of a deeper introduction to the principles, arguments and directions of the current theories and practices of these literacies.
I am enrolled as a non-credit student; continuing education.

My interest in imagery or images is the use of images as text.