1. Visual Perspective
Jaclyn Baglos

2. Aesthetics vs. Communication and Rhetoric
Visual Aesthetics: the creation and appreciation of art
Visual Communication: how images and objects convey meaning
Visual Rhetoric: how visuals communicate meanings that reinforce or challenge beliefs and behaviors

3. History First visuals: 9000 BC
Pictograms-pictures that resemble what they signify
Ideograms-pictures that resemble ideas

4. Nature of Visuals
Visual Culture: countless ways visuals are used in everyday life
Visual rhetoric is being used to understand the world around us
Visual literacy: set of skills required to “effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media”
Images and objects utilize “visual language”
Rules that relate to color layout, texture, sequencing, imagery, style, animation, and sound

5. Visual Theory Perspectives
Gestalt Theory
Semiotics Theory
Cognitive Theory

6. Gestalt Theory
Max Werthimer: “The whole is different from the sum of its parts”
Belief: Brains group items based on what goes together and what doesn’t

7. Gestalt Theory Principles
Similarity: group things that look similar
Interest is piqued when something is different
Proximity: Two forms
Associate things that are or appear to be close to each other
Notice things that are or appear to be close to us
Continuity: the desire for a smooth continuation of movement
Closure: “seeing” an object as complete even when it’s not
Common Fate: mentally group objects that appear to be going in the same direction
Interest is piqued when something is going the opposite direction

9. Semiotics The study of signs
Semiosis: relationship between a sign (which represents an object, referent) and a meaning (interpretation)
Examines the social meanings of visual objects and its effects

10. Semiotic Signs and Meanings
Syntagmatic: gain their meaning from the signs that surround them in a static image
Paradigmatic: gain meaning as they fit with or in contrast to other signs
Denotative meanings: what we notice first, easy to decode
Connotative meanings: underlying messages related to social norms and practices
Metonymic signs: associated with something else, serve to represent that something else
Synecdochal signs: part of something else that serves to stand as a whole

11. Cognitive Theory
Focuses on what is going on in our minds when we view an image or object and how it affects our perception
Psychoanalytic theory is used to examine mediated popular texts
Focus primarily on how the mind, psyche, and unconscious are constructed
Visual pleasure theory is the main psychoanalytic theory

12. Visual Pleasure Theory
Visual images in media encourages viewers to look pleasurably at images via a male gaze
Male gaze:
Describes the way viewers look at people presented in visual images by identifying with only the male actor
Viewers gaze upon images in a way that influence our beliefs

13. Psychoanalytic Theory, Scopophelia, and Narcissism
Mirror stage: symbolizes an ongoing sexual relationship we have with body image
Scopophelia: love of or pleasurable looking
Ex. Women being portrayed as sexy in advertisements
Narcissism: excessive self-love based on self-image

14. Constructs of Visual Pleasure
Fetishism: getting pleasure from openly looking at objects that are satisfying in itself
Voyeurism: instances where people engage in sexual, sordid, or scandalous acts are being watched without them knowing it
Narcissism

15. Conducting a Visual Pleasure Analysis
Select an Appropriate Text
Examine the Text
Describe the image via voyeurism, fetishism, and narcissism
Evaluate Potential Implications of the Text
Consider the target audience
Ex. Primary audience for magazines are year-old women wishing they looked like the celebrities in the magazine photographs