Week 2 - Narrative through Visual Communication

Visual Communication  Narrative

Ancient Narrative -Communication through pictographs and traditional printing - hieroglyphics, murals, tablets.  

Epic of Gilgamesh - Poetry and Ancient legend deriving from Mesopotamia, one of the earliest known works of literature, originating as a series of Sumerian legends and poems narrating the story of Gilgamesh, Early II Dynasty Deity and King of Uruk, later fashioned into a single, more detailed Akkadian epic. The most complete version of the epic today exists on 12 clay tablets preserve in the library collection of 7th BC Assyrian King Ashurbanipal.

Greek Mythology

Narrative styles have progressed since the Epic of Gilgamesh with more engaging story telling and characters. Characters that an audience could identify with emotionally.

Trajan's Column

Roman Triumphal Column commemorating emperor Trajan's victory in the Dacian wars.
Sculptured murals on Column walls communicate the story of Trajan and his exploits.
View points - close shot, birds eye, angle shot, etc. established the foundations of filming in the future.

Aboriginal/Indigenous story telling - Knowledge communicated through art - wall paintings, pictographs. Symbolic, iconography over realistic images.


Development of story telling in cultures -  Ancient Mesoptamian Culture - denotation what happened/ story board - materiality - relief images on stone - story line - limitations no emotion, are factor nil- denotation - accessible to illiterate masses,  political intent (connotation ) - The King (Gilgamesh) supreme lion slayer -

Ancient Greece - Homer's tale - materiality (lighting, stone, cave) - what happended?  (suspense and emotion, connotation - Brain>brawn - emotion (gives us psychologic credibility, engaging character)

Trajans Column - Medium is the message - materiality -the spoil of war Demonstration of power- denotation story line with sub plots - heroes appears - connotation - Emperor is number one- multiple view points for drama - Alfred Hitchcock

Two Methods of Studying of Visual Culture :

i) Process theory
Shanon and Weaver Model - telephone, engineers)
1. Information source - Client/designer
2. transmitter - design
3. receiver/ noise source-Medium(bill board, poster, etc.
4. Destination - reader

Study of literature
(linguistic model/ decifering meaning) - destination
semiotics
denoted
connoted
signs
symbols
indexes

noise - distraction from focal point

Ambiguity - Design that has numerous meanings

Signs and Symbols

triangle - watch out

man digging - men at work-changes according to the associated culture

signifier/ signified

red circle with diagonal bar = something forbidden

Linguistics :
Views communication as the production of meaning and suggests that one message is going to mean different things to different people depending on different factors.
Focuses on the receiver and the social, political, and economic environment in which they live.

This theoretical approach to design applies not only to graphic design but fashion designers, product designers, illustrators and architects.

Culture as goods or as tools
The values of any culture are incorporated into the sign systems we use.

Homework:  Find definitions for the word paradigm.