Points of Praxis

My Blog Reflects on Visual Rhetorical Theory and Disability Rhetoric and their Connections to Classical and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

In the spirit of finding "points of praxis" in my academic studies this semester, I incorporated a discussion on photography and new media into my Semiotics paper.  I posted this section into the compexam study board, and Cheri, Sandy, and Dr. G were kind enough to give me suggestions for revision.  So, without further adieu...

New Directions in Photography and Semiotics

In 1980, Alan Trachtenberg concluded his collection of essays on photography by noting that critics have finally put an end to the “traditional quest for an absolute definition of the photograph, and have turned instead to questions of the actual experience of photographs, attempting to locate the differences between photographs and other graphic media” (287).  In light of recent studies in new media and graphic design, Trachtenberg’s comments were either roughly ten years premature or eerily foreshadowed of the “digital revolution.”  Either way, Trachtenberg’s comments to illustrate the emerging conversations regarding the ways in which images, particularly photographs, function to construct meaning.
            Specifically, new media scholarship explores how technology transforms how humans convey meaning electronically and digitally.  For instance, N. Katherine Hayles explores means by which a disembodied human consciousness is more acceptable in her book How We Became Posthuman.  And, while I am simplifying Hayles’s point for purposes of this discussion, it is important to note that human consciousness is tied to technology through “embodied virtuality” and “artificial life.”  As Cheri Crenshaw notes in a discussion forum, Hayles is concerned with “not leaving the body out of discussions of consciousness” but how she sees the body extended through technology. In other words, images, like photographs, take on new meaning as they are made digital.  Hayles notes that “meaning changes as something is made digital—one of her central concerns. In My Mother was a Computer, Hayles cites Dene Grigar’s analogy between moving material between mediums as an act of “translation”: “As she [Grigar] observes, the adage that something is gained as well as lost in translation applies with special force to print documents that are imported to the Web. The challenge is to specify, rigorously and precisely, what these gains and losses entail and especially what they reveal about presuppositions underlying reading and writing” (qtd in Crenshaw 89).^[1]

While Hayles acknowledges that semiotic theory explains the relationship between the ways humans know the world and construct that meaning, she would prefer a non-literary theoretical approach to new media discussions because the relationship between the signifier/signified is not quite so simple or linear.  Whereas this discussion on photography began with an exploration of the “naturalness” of daguerreotypy, such concerns might be irrelevant in regard to new media.  Namely, the photographic image no longer represents the chemical process by which images are transposed onto paper.  Instead, Hayles notes that an image is now “a geometrical figure created by the spatial arrangements of the letter keys” (26).   Digital photographs do not share the same semiotic concerns as chemically-developed photographs because the digital image does not represent a one-to-one relation between “thing seen” and “thing captured on film.”  Specifically: 

Typewriter keys are directly proportionate to the script they produce.  One keystroke yields one letter, and striking the key harder produces a darker letter.  The system lends itself to a signification model that links signifier to signified in direct correspondence, for there is a one-to-one relation between the key and the letter it produces.  Moreover, the signifier itself is spatially discrete, durable inscribed, and flat.  (Hayles 26)

            However, virtual images do not share this one-to-one relationship; rather, one key stroke only yields a combination of 1’s and 0’s.  Likewise, images reflected on the computer screen are only the manifestation these commands.  Images in this medium are “fluid and changeable as water” where “no simple one-to-one correspondence exists between signifier and signified” (Hayles 26). 

Ron Burnett also explores the ways in which virtual images change conceptions of semiotics, signifiers, and signifieds in his book How Images Think.  However, while Hayles argues that semiotics cannot be necessarily applied to new media, Burnett applies semiotic conventions to images, and photography, in particular.  To illustrate, Burnett examines how a photograph’s meaning changes once it becomes a data file and argues that images and event “coexist within a shared context and are part of a shared foundation that uphold and gives coherence to reality” (31-2).  Since images “enter into relationships with viewers,” they are “integral to, and are at the foundation of, visual, linguistic, and perceptual processes” (Burnett 32).  As such, while Hayles argues that semiotic analysis is not applicable to new media, Burnett proposes that semiotic theories must instead acknowledge these new processes by which images are imbued with meaning: 

It is commonly assumed that what is seen in a photograph is something that represents something else.  A photographed tree is accepted as such, even though the tree has been reduced to a small sized and is two-dimensional.  Culturally, this jump in logic seems natural because the language that allows the word “tree” to be used in the first place doesn’t change dramatically because there is an image of a tree.  But the tree as image is only there by virtue of an agreement that is both cultural and individual.  This agreement says that the image can be used to refer to “tree” without any necessary loss in meaning.  (33-4)

As Hayles’s and Burnett’s discussions reflect, new media scholarship, as it relates to photography and semiotics, reflects many of the same concerns for representation, signification, and codes that scholars have addressed over the past two centuries.  As Dene Grigar notes, Burnett’s criticism of Hayles’s semiotic approach is not entirely fair because Hayles frames her discussions on posthumanity and images until something better comes along:  “It is her starting point, not her teleology” (Grigar).

posted by: rgregory at 02:03 | link | comments (2) |

Comments:

#1  07 December 2005 - 22:11

 

I have already commented on the content, but let me say that you have found a very visually rhetorical pleasing way to present your paper on the blog.

I think that is something a lot of blogs do not pay attention to––arrangement. Your posting is not only easy to read but inviting to read as well.

--Dene

Dene

#2  07 December 2005 - 23:01

 

Thanks. I think between my visual rhetoric, technical writing classes, and your article, "Why People Don't Read Online," I've been very cognizant of my blog's arrangement.

rgregory

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