2. Dr Anne Cranny-Francis
• Professor in Critical and Cultural Studies
at Macquarie University
• Chris Chesher’s PhD Supervisor at MQ
• First conference paper was given at
Syncon '83: the 22nd Australian National
SF Convention
6. The Singh Twins
• Critique Anglo-British society from their
position within it as non-Anglo citizens
• Questions of identity
• Visual cues from both cultures – Indian
miniature painting juxtaposed with
Western celebrity iconography
• Intertextuality
9. H.R. Giger
• Swiss painter, sculptor, set designer
• Won an Academy Award for his work on
Alien
• His art is influenced by Gothic, surreal
and grotesque sources
• Uses darkness, bodily fragmentation and
bodies in extreme states of pain or
pleasure to shock the viewer
14. Giger’s alien
• “From its penile ‘face-
hugger’ stage through to
full-grown state the alien
is a monstrous projection
of Western fears about
sexuality – as penetrating
and/or devouring. But it
articulates most
dramatically the fear of
the feminine, as it
deconstructs ‘normal’
masculine
(hetero)sexuality.”
(p.32)
16. Locating meaning in a visual text
• More than just reading images
• Need an awareness of visual conventions
and the meanings associated with those
conventions
– complexity and sensual richness of Indian
miniatures
– darkness and dankness of Gothic
– play with line in typography
17. Newspapers
• Complex texts that include both images
and writing – looked at together
• Pictures can give meaning not specified
by the words on the page
• Visceral reading – from instinct rather
than intellect
• Visual texts are not removed from the
everyday
18. September 9
2008
Filling the
coffers
Little has to
go a long way Budget crisis
Catholics welcome,
Garnaut
Muslims not
condemned
Hillsong’s Palin packs racist
secret schools punch
push
Looking for
‘God’
19. • Visual literacy is less developed as an
area of study than verbal literacy
• Part of numerous other disciplines that
studied them in their own way
• Results in an eclectic mix of concepts and
ideas
20. • The Singhs’ and Giger’s art relates to a
specific time and culture
• Also related to other art/texts – indian
miniatures, surrealism and Gothic
• Viewed within a broader intertextual
understanding of late twentieth-century
visual art and media
23. White paper – an
informal name for a
parliamentary paper
enunciating
government policy
24. • Choices that the author makes are
important – the visual skill and knowledge
of the designer/author should not be
downplayed
• It is neither possible nor desirable to
attempt to lock down the meaning
potential of a text
25. • Primer – a guide to the literacy that is
shared by many viewers
• Can open up for the designer or author
the possibilities for text production
within current literacies by mapping the
ways in which users respond to visual
materials
26. Discourse
• Usually linked to verbal, but essentially is
about exchange, the communication of
meaning, so can be used with the visual
• Derived from Foucault – a set of
statements that articulate a particular
way of thinking, feeling and being in the
world
27. • Giger’s work can be located in the
discourse surrounding Gothic
• More than a style, it questions the
meaning of ‘normality’ by being
provocatively engaging – either erotically,
sensually, sexually or intellectually
• Giger’s art can also be located in
Freudian discourse, as can most surrealist
art
28. Genre
• Any set of texts using similar strategies to
make meanings
• Does not spell out how a text should be
composed and read, but rather describes
how they are read
• Websites are a distinct genre
– own meaning-making practices
– own social and cultural function
– own way of addressing viewers
29. Sub-genres of websites
• Government / Institutional
• Commercial
• Fan
• Portal
• Family
• Educational
• Useful in identifying the potentials of a site
30. HistoryWired
• Institutional website
– communicate effectively
– represent identity of democratic state
– articulate meaning of citizenship
• Museum website
– education
– access to collections
– demonstrate value of cultural items / society
31.
32. Visual conventions of websites
• Mix of modalities – verbal and visual text
• Layout
• Use of images
• Fonts
• Colour
• Trajectories
33. From Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading Images
Margin Margin
Ideal Ideal
Given New
Centre
Margin Margin
Real Real
Given New
36. • Visual strategies are not simply chosen for their
aesthetics effects
– politics and aesthetics cannot be separated
– construct abstract ideas and concepts
– convey cultural and social meanings
• Layout, colour, image and font can be used to
construct meanings
• Visuals can evoke, construct and deconstruct
issues of identity
• The viewer/user is a social subject
38. Further reading
• Cloninger, Curt. Fresh styles for Web designers: eye candy from the underground. Indianapolis:
New Riders, 2002.
• de Lauretis, Teresa. Technologies of gender: essays on theory, film, and fiction. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1987.
• Heller, Steven and Philip B. Meggs. Texts on type: critical writings on typography. New York:
Allworth Press, 2001.
• Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of
Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold, 2001.
• Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2nd
ed.). London: Routledge, 2006.
• Lynch, Patrick J. and Sarah Horton. Web style guide : basic design principles for creating web
sites (3rd ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
• Mirzoeff, Nicholas (ed.). The Visual Culture Reader (2nd ed.). London: Routledge, 2002.
• Morra Joanne and Marquard Smith (eds.). Visual Culture: Critical Concepts in Media and
Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 2006.
• Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture
(2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Wroblewski, Luke. Site-seeing: a visual approach to Web usability. Indianapolis: Hungry Minds,
2002.
