Visual Interaction

VISUAL INTERACTION

Kress & Van Leeuwen
(DR ch. 26; p. 362)

Brian Thaler and Serena Epstein

IMPORTANT CONCEPTS:
represented participants – the people, places and things depicted in images (362)

interactive participants – the people who communicate with each other through images, the producers and viewers of images (362)

3 kinds of relations between participants (362)
1. between represented participants
2. between interactive and represented participants (the interactive participants’ attitudes towards the represented participants)
3. between interactive participants (the things interactive participants do to or for each other through images)

producer – the creator of the image (362)

viewer – any person who sees and reacts to the image (362)

real authors – the actual creator of the text (363)

implied authors – disembodied voice, or even a set of implicit norms rather than the speaker of a voice (363)

real reader – the actual viewer of the text (363)

implied reader – anticipated audience of the text (363)

image act – a certain action with which a represented participant is depicted. Ex: an image of a woman who is holding a glass of wine towards the viewer, smiling, can be said to engage in an image act, in that she is inviting the viewer to take part in the action: accepting the glass of wine (366, Oyama)

gaze – causes the viewer to enter into a relation with a represented participant, most often through eye contact (366)

communication through body language: (Prince, 24)

• film replicates real-life communication by highlighting body language, facial expressions
• this also makes film more universally accessible than traditional text (limited by language, vocabulary)

3 types of metafunctions:

1. ideational
2. textual
3. interpersonal (we’ll be focusing on this one: it’s an umbrella term for the following important concepts in our chapter)

demand – viewer is addressed directly, and a specific reaction is expected (366)

offer – viewer is addressed indirectly, and is able to interpret the image freely (366-7)

types of distance (370)
1. intimate distance – a few inches from participant (head and face only)
2. close personal distance – the distance at which one can hold or grasp the other person (head and shoulders)
3. far personal distance – typical conversational distance…a few feet between the participants (from the waist up)
4. close social distance – begins just outside far personal distance (the whole figure)
5. far social distance – an entire person is viewable (whole figure with space around it)
6. public distance – the distance between people who are strangers (the torsos of at least four or five people)

types of horizontal angles within an image (372)
1. frontal – angle at which the subject of the image is directly faced by viewer
2. oblique – angle at which the subject is faced from the side (not head on)

From “The Discourse of Pictures”:

visual grammar (Prince, 20)

• film structure operates like a language
• uses elements like angles, distance, shot sequence
• film grammar can be violated (ex: The Birds)

involvement – the viewer feels actively drawn into the image, and can relate to the subject (376)

detachment – the viewer does not feel involved in the image, and does not relate as easily to the subject (376)

back view – the subject is portrayed from behind (378)

types of vertical angles within an image (379)
1. low – the viewer is placed below the subject of the image
2. high – the viewer is placed above the subject

power relation – the perceived status relationship between the interactive participant (image viewer) and the represented participant (image subject) (379)

From “Visual Communication Across Cultures”:

• Japanese kanji as vertical (more traditional) vs horizontal (western influenced, modern
• metafunction of increased visual elements on a page combined with traditional and therefore seemingly more important vertical information influences language

Works Cited

Prince, Stephen. “The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies.” Film Quarterly Vol. 47, No. 1 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 16-28

Oyama, Rumiko. “Visual Communication Across Cultures” Journal of Intercultural Communication April 2000