Visual Communication recent issues

Wearable technology

Cranny-Francis, A., Hawkins, C. — 2008-07-22

Sonic drapery as a folding metaphor for a wearable visualization and sonification display

Beilharz, K., Vande Moere, A. — 2008-07-22

This article examines two different multimodal interpretations of a folding metaphor, with folding understood as a richly interpretable communication medium. The authors look at the mythological origins of giving voice to fabrics and the tradition in drapery and arts of creating folds to signify embedded meanings. Their projects explore the intertextuality and intermodality of drapery (found originally in painting) as the context for sonic drapery or audification of material in motion and electronic music created from sounds of cloth, friction and permutations of textile sounds. This notion of folding representation is then transported into a contemporary pervasive computing context, as the second section of the article concerns the design and development of a novel wearable visualization and sonification display device. This display is able to sense and externalize environmental data about the wearer using a deliberately subtle and ambiguous representation metaphor.

Wear now!

High Tea With Mrs Woo, , Cranny-Francis, A. — 2008-07-22

This is a photo-essay of the design philosophy and practice of a three-sister fashion design team based in Newcastle, Australia. Their interest in fabrication, textiles and technology in fashion led them to participate in the Australian Network of Art and Technology (ANAT)'s reSkin wearable technology laboratory 2007. The lab explored the integration of electronics and new materials into traditional craft practices and design artefacts. This photo-essay addresses questions raised by Anne Cranny-Francis that came out of that ReSkin experience, as well as general questions relating to their design practice.

Peacocks and wallflowers: (in)visibility with digital jewellery

Kettley, S. — 2008-07-22

As a genre of Ubiquitous Computing, wearables inherited a paradigmatic ideal of disappearance and, until very recently, visibility was treated as a simplistic dichotomous issue of overt versus covert technology. In line with calls by theorists in New Media for oscillation between states of invisibility and reflection in the design of interfaces, this article presents findings from a networked jewellery project which reconceptualize this problem as both situated and dynamic, revealing that wearable artefacts segue between high states of visibility and disappearance just as they afford their wearers new ways of maintaining social presence.

Clothing the homunculus

Barrass, S. — 2008-07-22

The concept of the homunculus, or `body in the brain', has been used by neuroscientists to explain bodily illusions such as the Shrinking Waist, the disappearance of limbs from conscious perception with stroke, and the sensations of phantom limbs. In this article, the author proposes that the homunculus can also provide a theoretical basis for the design of wearable interfaces and information systems. This idea is explored in a series of practice-led experiments with textile interfaces. The first experiment, called ZiZi the Affectionate Couch, is a couch that responds with a tactile `purring' when it is stroked. Visitors to exhibitions of the couch have commented on the positive effects this tactile responsiveness has had on autistic children in their care. The next experiment, called Scruffy Scallyscrap, is a prototype of an actively tactile textile, called a `taxtile', that co-locates tactile input and output in the same textile substrate. The most recent development is a `nerve extension button' designed to connect a taxtile to the tactile sensations of the wearer. Ten of these buttons have been sewn on the inside of a fashion concept garment called Fauxy the Fake Fur with Feelings. In further work, Fauxy will be used to explore what effects these nerve extensions might have on the bodily perceptions and behaviours of the wearer.

Designing for the unexpected: the role of creative group work for emerging interaction design paradigms

Pirhonen, A., Murphy, E. — 2008-07-22

Interaction design for new technological environments relies on the tradition of human—computer interaction (HCI). With roots in the 1980s, HCI design paradigms often reflect the setting in which the user is an office worker in front of a desktop computer. As computational power can now be embedded in almost any type of product, the desktop setting has lost much of its relevance as a starting point for interface design. In particular, interfaces for wearable computing challenge designers to look for completely new approaches to interaction design. In this article, we propose a method in which the ideas for new creative forms of interaction design are triggered through panel work. This method draws on an underpinning theoretical framework from structural semiotics that emphasizes the holistic nature of design.

Realism of the unreal: the Japanese robot and the performance of representation

Sone, Y. — 2008-07-22

This article addresses the general theme of wearable technology from an oblique angle - via performance studies - by examining the performative basis of interactions between humans and machines. The author considers the developing nature of human robot relations in Japan, and raises concerns relevant to discussions of wearable technologies.

From extension to engagement: mapping the imaginary of wearable technology

Cranny-Francis, A. — 2008-07-22

This article maps the metaphors that have been used to facilitate human engagement with wearable technologies — extension, enhancement, augmentation — and locates the values and assumptions about the body and technology that they articulate. At the same time it considers the figure of the cyborg, in which many of these metaphors are incorporated fictionally and theoretically, and locates in this figure not one (interrogative, critical) meaning, but many possible meanings. The article then goes on to explore a recent reconfiguring of the human—technology relationship (Schroeder and Rebelo's 2007 analogy with the relationship between musician and intstrument), which it describes in terms of engagement — and to propose further that we need to embrace fully the embodied character of this relationship in order to realize the most creative possibilities of our relationship with the material world as expressed in this recent technology.

Book review: CIGALLE HANAOR, Breaking the Mould: New Approaches to Ceramics. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007. 208 pp. ISBN 978--1--904772--76--7

Clayton, J. — 2008-07-22

Book review: `Welcome to Texas -- God Bless': A Review of a Biblical Journey

Serisier, G. — 2008-07-22

Your Memory of an Art Piece: an audio and video artwork (2007)

Decombe, F. — 2008-04-11

The spectacle of suffering and death: the photographic representation of war in Greek newspapers

Konstantinidou, C. — 2008-04-11

This article analyses the visual construction of human suffering in war, with special reference to the signifying practices of the photographs published in Greek newspapers during the Second Iraq War. The author carries out a socio-semiotic analysis, arguing that the overall construction of the Second Iraq War in the Greek press — illustrated by two case studies which are examined in detail — combines contradictory elements and assumptions. Representations of the war are `framed' by the `overpoliticization' of the Greek public sphere and the dominant political culture synthesizing themes of `anti-Americanism', `anti-globalization' and `pro-Third Worldism', but also a particular version of what Said called `Orientalism'. More specifically, the insistence on spectacular images of suffering, and the combination of a humanitarian discourse of compassion for the `innocent distant victims of war' with populist and Greek Christian Orthodox conceptualizations of the self are constitutive elements of the newspapers' signifying practices, which aid the Greek press to be critical of the hegemonic western discourse regarding the Second Iraq War without, however, slipping to the other side of `Orientalist binary oppositions'. On the contrary, this persistence on the humanitarian discourse of compassion towards victims is pivotal in identifying with the western moral virtues of `civilized' humanity.

`Bling -- the Asians introduced that to the country': gold and its value within a group of families of South Asian origin in Yorkshire

Pahl, K., Pollard, A. — 2008-04-11

This visual essay describes an exhibition that collected narratives of migration and artefacts from the homes of families of Pakistani origin from Rotherham, South Yorkshire.¹ The project was collaborative, involving a visual artist — Zahir Rafiq, who designed art work and the website (www.ferhamfamilies.com) — the Clifton Park Museum in Rotherham, Rotherham Central Sure Start and Ferham Primary School.

Visual abstraction and anatomy: pre- and post-modern imagery

Daly, T., Bell, P. — 2008-04-11

Illustrations from pre-modern and Renaissance `Anatomies', on the one hand, and late 20th-century digital representations of male and female anatomy, on the other, are contrasted and compared in terms of social semiotic concepts. The title page of On the Fabric of the Human Body (1543), for instance, presents detailed narrativizations and conceptual constructions of the changing worlds and significance of public anatomical demonstrations and their settings in `theatres'. In the early anatomical illustrations discussed, women's bodies were objectified as the locus of male surgeons' practices, revealing the truth of bifurcated gender. Similarly, in popular digital sequences of anatomy composed around mobile microphotographic `fly-throughs' in The Human Body (1998) and in other Wellcome Trust/BBC productions, gender is abstracted in ways that continue to naturalize long-established binaries.

Perceiving hierarchy through intrinsic color structure

Puhalla, D. M. — 2008-04-11

Color is an intrinsic visual attribute of form that functions as language and message. The purpose of this study was to investigate objectively structured color combinations as a means to communicate visual order for the purpose of reinforcing information hierarchy. Controlling the visual relationships of hue, value and chroma contrast can significantly assist a person's cognitive ability to assign importance and dominance to a controlled color structure. This research study provided significant findings supporting the hypothesis that intrinsic color structures can be formulated objectively; represent a visual hierarchy; and be perceived in an understandable order.

Chi-square analysis for 99 participants was calculated for task effectiveness. To analyze task efficiency, three distinct ANOVA calculations were made for time variations. The documented findings of this study presented explicit evidence that addresses specific mechanisms for objective color ordering. The natural inferences of the study support the proposition that there is a natural relationship between objective color ordering principles and human perception.

(In)visible evidence: pictorially enhanced disbelief in the Apollo moon landings

Perlmutter, D. D., Dahmen, N. S. — 2008-04-11

When pictures become journalistic, historical, and popular icons, there is a common belief that they also have a single, usable meaning, and media, political, and academic elites typically determine it. Yet, research on how people interpret images suggests that believing is seeing: pre-existing prejudices and experiences affect what meanings we draw from pictures. This is especially so when the viewer seeks out information that confirms strongly held notions, what mainstream audiences might think of in some cases as conspiracy theories. This article examines reaction to one of the most famous sets of images of the past century — photos of the 1969 Apollo moon landing — by proponents of the `moon hoax' theory, those who believe that the landings were faked by NASA. Analysis of moon hoax websites shows that the pictures' visual details are used as evidence that the mainstream interpretation is `visibly' in error.

Book review: STEVEN HALL, The Raw Shark Texts. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007. 448 pp. ISBN 9781841959023

Sadokierski, Z. — 2008-04-11

Conference review: ADM-HEA Annual Forum 2007: VISUAL, Birmingham, UK, 11 May 2007

Wright, R. — 2008-04-11

Newspaper design as cultural change

de Vries, J. — 2008-01-21

This article describes the (re-)design of newspapers and magazines as a process of cultural change which goes beyond designing a publication's layout, typography and use of colour, and includes designing the processes and structures of its production.

Semiotics of visual iconicity in Leninist `monumental' propaganda

Kruk, S. — 2008-01-21

Leninist propaganda conveyed through artistic monuments (referred to in this article as `monumental' propaganda) — painting, sculpture, urban architecture — was intended as a way of communicating key political ideas to a largely illiterate population. The politically motivated character of the visual icon made it a helpful tool of communication and instruction, and gradually the visual icon became confused with reality itself. In the 1920s, the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR) pioneered the use of artistic images as a documental attestation of reality. Under Stalin, monumental visual signs offered an idealized vision of the Communist future as an already achieved reality. Sculptures and paintings secured the state leader's symbolic presence in every corner of the country. Therefore, the subsequent change of political leadership resulted in damnatio memoriae — the destruction of visual images of statesmen from the previous regime. Leninist monumental propaganda perpetuated the neoplatonic artistic tradition of the Russian Orthodox Church, which meant there was no clear distinction between the iconic sign and its referent.

Digital photography: communication, identity, memory

van Dijck, J. — 2008-01-21

Taking photographs seems no longer primarily an act of memory intended to safeguard a family's pictorial heritage, but is increasingly becoming a tool for an individual's identity formation and communication. Digital cameras, cameraphones, photoblogs and other multipurpose devices are used to promote the use of images as the preferred idiom of a new generation of users. The aim of this article is to explore how technical changes (digitization) combined with growing insights in cognitive science and socio-cultural transformations have affected personal photography. The increased manipulation of photographic images may suit the individual's need for continuous self-remodelling and instant communication and bonding. However, that same manipulability may also lessen our grip on our images' future repurposing and reframing. Memory is not eradicated from digital multipurpose tools. Instead, the function of memory reappears in the networked, distributed nature of digital photographs, as most images are sent over the internet and stored in virtual space.

How children make meaning through drawing and play

Hopperstad, M. H. — 2008-01-21

This article presents studies of 5—6-year-old children in year one in a Norwegian primary school as they develop and engage in drawing-related play within teacher-initiated drawing sessions. The author discusses the quality of the children's play from a semiotic point of view and reflects on play as a possible learning context for drawing. Elevating drawing and play to the same prominent position as images in contemporary texts, she demonstrates how they can be used to support children's competence in interpreting the visual mode as well as using it to convey meaning.

Is copyright blind to the visual?

Macmillan, F. — 2008-01-21

This article argues that, with respect to the copyright protection of works of visual art, the general uneasiness that has always pervaded the relationship between copyright law and concepts of creativity produces three anomalous results. One of these is that copyright lacks much in the way of a central concept of `visual art' and, to the extent that it embraces any concept of the `visual', it is rooted in the rhetorical discourse of the Renaissance. This means that copyright is poorly equipped to deal with modern developments in the visual arts. Secondly, the pervasive effect of rhetorical discourse appears to have made it particularly difficult for copyright law to strike a meaningful balance between protecting creativity and permitting its use in further creative works. Thirdly, just when rhetorical discourse might have been useful in identifying the significance and materiality of the unique one-off work of visual art, copyright law chooses to ignore its implications.

Book review: SUNIL MANGHANI, ARTHUR PIPER and JON SIMONS, Images: A Reader. London: Sage, 2006. 352 pp. ISBN 978--1412900447 (hbk); 978--1412900454 (pbk)

Sadokierski, Z. — 2008-01-21

Book review: DAVID MACHIN, Introduction to Multimodal Analysis. London: Hodder Education, 2007. 206 pp. ISBN 0--340--92938--4

Bjorkvall, A. — 2008-01-21

My Brother Michael

Davis, J. — 2007-09-19

`Faces of the Fallen' and the dematerialization of US war memorials

Grider, N. — 2007-09-19

The advent of internet technology has enabled the process of memorialization of those killed in US military conflicts to keep pace with the casualties themselves and, as such, has marked a shift in both the ideology of the war memorial as symbol and the ideology-driven media use of those symbols. This article argues that a process of increasing humanization and specificity enabled by the information architecture of the internet has lead to a form of `war memorial', exemplified by www.facesofthefallen.org, that emphasizes decontexualized human loss at the expense of a coherent representation of a military nature for the loss itself.

An unbearable lightness?

Rigley, S. — 2007-09-19

This article considers various notions of `beauty' and how these have informed the creative and critical processes of graphic design, specifically typography. The author considers how the Renaissance revival of Greek mathematics to support a `universal beauty' was gradually unpicked by Enlightenment thinkers such as Descartes, Kant and Hume, and how this process has subsequently shaped modernist and postmodernist attitudes towards `beauty'. From our current vantage point it could be argued that `beauty' should now be considered a redundant concept; however, design schools and studios continue to make value judgements dividing the `beautiful' from the `ugly'. On what basis are these judgements made and are they still valid in a pluralistic society? Is it possible that we now have a new sensibility, a different notion of beauty? Reflecting upon important questions raised by the American designer and writer Steven Heller in his controversial essay `The Cult of the Ugly' in Eye magazine in 1993, the author proposes that 14 years on from the article, we can indeed witness a new aesthetic sensibility, shared but not universal, rooted in loss yet also `found'.

National pride, global capital: a social semiotic analysis of transnational visual branding in the airline industry

Thurlow, C., Aiello, G. — 2007-09-19

In this article we examine 561 different airline tailfin designs as a visual genre, revealing how the global-local binary may be managed and realized semiotically. Our analysis is organized into three strands: (a) a descriptive analysis identifies the strikingly restricted visual lexicon and dominant corporate aesthetic established by tailfin design; (b) an interpretive analysis considers the communicative strategies at play and the meaning potentials which underpin different visual resources; (c) a critical analysis links these decisions of design and branding to the political and cultural economies of globalism and the airline industry. Specifically, we show how airlines are able to service national identity concerns through the use of highly localized visual meanings while also appealing to the meaning systems of the international market in their pursuit of symbolic and economic capital. One key semiotic resource is the balancing of cultural symbolism and perceptual iconicity in the form of abstracted stylizations of kinetic effects. Although positioned unfairly in the global semioscape, airlines may resist straightforward cultural homogenization by strategically reworking existing design structures and exploiting possibly universal semiotic meaning potentials.

Frozen memories: unthawing Scott of the Antarctic in cultural memory

Barwell, C. — 2007-09-19

This article explores the staging of memory and death and the connotative differences within still photographs and film. It examines the tenses that can be inferred in reading photographs and film through examples drawn from representations of the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-13 and Captain Scott's journey to the South Pole taken by Herbert Ponting, and in the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic.

Book review: ROXANNE VARZI, Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolutionary Iran. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. 290 pp. ISBN 978-0-8223-3709-6 (hbk) $74.95; ISBN 978-0-8223-3721-8 $21.95

Wells, K. — 2007-09-19

Book review: PATRICIA VAN ULZEN, Imagine a Metropolis: Rotterdam's Creative Class 1970-2000, trans. John Kirkpatrick. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2007. 240 pp., richly illustrated. ISBN 978-90-6450-621-5 (pbk)

Kaji-O'Grady, S. — 2007-09-19