From Kress and Van Leeuwen's Reading Images
84
-networks "tend to obscure the fact that the range of choices is ultimately pre-designed and limited"
-"the network is modelled on a form of social organization which is a vast labyrinth of intersecting [85] local relations in which each node is related in many different ways to other nodes in its immediate environment, but in which it is difficult, if not impossible, to form a coherent view of the whole"
85
-"may obscure the globalizing tendencies"
99
-"When analytical structures are topological, theyare read as accurately representing the 'logical' relations between participants, the way in which participants are connected to each other...but not the actual physical size of the participants or their distance from each other"
154
-modality is about "the reliability of messages"
-"we regard our sense of sight as more reliable than our sense of hearing"
-modality markers, "cues for what can be regarded as credible," help us to make decisions
155
-modality "refers to the truth value or credibility of (linguistically realized) statements about the world"
-modality markers in language: may, will, must, possible, probable, certain
-modality is composed of "shared truths"
156
-"while the photograph restricts itself to representing what would normally be visible to the naked eye, the diagrams do not: they make visible what is normally invisible"...."they take recourse to abstract graphic elements"
158
-"A 'realism' is produced by a particular group"
-"Each realism has its naturalism--that is, a realism is a definition of what counts a real--a set of criteria for the real"
-"photorealism"...."how much correspondence there is between what we can 'normally' see of an object, in a concrete and specific setting and [159] what we can see of it in a visual representation"
159
-picture of coffee is clearer than soft background, and so holds higher modality
160
-abstraction relative to the standards of contemporary naturalistic representation
160-163
-types of modality markers
163
-"The world 'as we see it' (rather than 'as we know it', and certainly not 'as we hear it' or 'as we feel it') has become the measure for what is 'real' and 'true'"
164
-"the 'hyper-real' does not have the decreased modality it has in 'photographic' naturalism. Magazine photos of food are one example....the more a picture can create an illusion of touch and taste and smell, the higher its modality"
165
-"a realism that takes subjective emotions and sensations as the criterion for what is real and true"
171
-"a multiplicity of ways in which artists can relate to the reality they are depicting and 'define' reality in general"
-food photos both abstract and sensory
Monday, October 11, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Cooking and Writing
I know Peter Elbow has covered the similarities between cooking and writing, but I'm compelled to recite my personal experience.
I love looking at the recipes in the NY Times but when it comes to transforming recipes into food, I see the ingredient list and realize all my shortcomings: my lack of ingredients and tools and my lack of motivation to spend three hours prepping, cooking, and plating elaborate dishes. These recipes require some serious economic resources and some real dedication to becoming a foodie. As a cook, I've come to revel in simplicity and develop an appreciation for good weekly planning.
Likewise, I've come to value clear writing over the opaque rhetoric often used by contemporary theorists. As much as I enjoy reading Zizek, Deleuze, and Butler, their complex, unclear writing cannot make complex issues more interesting. They are NY Times recipes, accessible to readers with the resources and know-how to decipher and use their opaque writing. And reading their books, I can't help but get discouraged: I simply don't have the ingredients and motivation to write like postmodern theorists.
Instead, I draw from Maya Angelou's memoir cookbook, The Welcome Table, which provides relatively simple recipes that connect to taste, culture, and tradition in complex ways. The recipes are simple but the resulting taste is complex, drawing from Angelou's heritage and personal experience. Her prose also expresses clarity without sacrificing complexity. The key to her clear writing, I think, is her capacity to create images, which are made from basic ingredients--good, though not necessarily standard, syntax and grammar. She plays with images at many levels, ranging from a cohesive picture of her whole book to individual metaphor used by her grandmother. Writing and cooking weave together, the clarity and simplicity of each practice producing complex images and tastes.
I may observe complex spectacles, but my sustenance starts with simplicity.
I love looking at the recipes in the NY Times but when it comes to transforming recipes into food, I see the ingredient list and realize all my shortcomings: my lack of ingredients and tools and my lack of motivation to spend three hours prepping, cooking, and plating elaborate dishes. These recipes require some serious economic resources and some real dedication to becoming a foodie. As a cook, I've come to revel in simplicity and develop an appreciation for good weekly planning.
Likewise, I've come to value clear writing over the opaque rhetoric often used by contemporary theorists. As much as I enjoy reading Zizek, Deleuze, and Butler, their complex, unclear writing cannot make complex issues more interesting. They are NY Times recipes, accessible to readers with the resources and know-how to decipher and use their opaque writing. And reading their books, I can't help but get discouraged: I simply don't have the ingredients and motivation to write like postmodern theorists.
Instead, I draw from Maya Angelou's memoir cookbook, The Welcome Table, which provides relatively simple recipes that connect to taste, culture, and tradition in complex ways. The recipes are simple but the resulting taste is complex, drawing from Angelou's heritage and personal experience. Her prose also expresses clarity without sacrificing complexity. The key to her clear writing, I think, is her capacity to create images, which are made from basic ingredients--good, though not necessarily standard, syntax and grammar. She plays with images at many levels, ranging from a cohesive picture of her whole book to individual metaphor used by her grandmother. Writing and cooking weave together, the clarity and simplicity of each practice producing complex images and tastes.
I may observe complex spectacles, but my sustenance starts with simplicity.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Defining "Food Image"
Explaining my project to "non-specialists" always helps me address basic issues that I tend to overlook. My mom asked me what I mean by "food image," a compound phrase I couldn't unpack very clearly for her. So here goes.
First, the institution of food studies has generally taken a more social, economic, and political perspective on food, rather than attempting a wholesale definition. One of the most quoted definitions comes from Arjun Appadurai, who sees food as a "highly condensed social fact." He points out that when we convert a part of our environment into food, we create a "powerful semiotic device." The boundaries of edibility and palatability often separate cultures, serving as grounds for perceived exoticism, primitiveness, or disgust. So food has a complex material and social DNA.
Second, visual studies sees images as a cultural phenomenon. WJT Mitchell provides a widely cited and coherent definition, understanding images as a family that includes graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, and verbal forms. He also understands images, or pictures, as "worldmaking" devices, rather than world-reflecting devices. The definition I use the most comes from N Katherine Hayles's book on cybernetics and literature. Drawing from information theories, she claims an image is a condensation of information that can be both visually evocative and invite visualization.
The symmetry between her definition of image as a condensation of information and Appadurai's notion of food a highly condensed social fact offers a pathway into defining food images. A food image condenses social information, affording a way of visualizing the world. Although food proper may be a condensed social fact, it does not necessarily lead to visualization or to visually evocative graphics and language. Here, I think, is the boundary between food and food images: it is not edibility that separates them, we can eat food but not food images; rather, it is visualization. When food allows us to visualize, it becomes a food image.
This definition actually accords with Manuel DeLanda's description of Hume's theory of images. Hume didn't think images were reflections of the world. Rather, images, even in the mind, were low-level reproductions of the world. The difference between the actual world and the image of the world was not that one was real and the other was just mental; the difference between world and image was a matter of intensity: the image is a lower-level intensity of the world. A low-level reproduction or image of an apple allows visualization in ways that the material apple cannot. In Proust's famous description of eating a madeleine, he reveals an image of food that allows us to not only represent the actual world but to also produce a world filled with memories, tastes, and psychological drama.
When food allows us to visualize, then it becomes a food image.
Revision
A few tips I've picked up.
1) Change the font. This practice can spice up routine reading, especially at the sentence level.
2) Read aloud, either by yourself or get someone to read for you. Hearing writing can help you hear unclear sentences.
3) Read backwards, from last sentence to first. The idea here is to get rid of the cohesive picture of your writing that you have in your head, and read for sentence-level clarity.
4) Highlight key sentences in each paragraph and put it into an outline. The best advice I have read from Tara Gray, using key sentences helps to provide a more global picture of your essay and makes you look for coherence. Be sure to organize everything with your working thesis.
1) Change the font. This practice can spice up routine reading, especially at the sentence level.
2) Read aloud, either by yourself or get someone to read for you. Hearing writing can help you hear unclear sentences.
3) Read backwards, from last sentence to first. The idea here is to get rid of the cohesive picture of your writing that you have in your head, and read for sentence-level clarity.
4) Highlight key sentences in each paragraph and put it into an outline. The best advice I have read from Tara Gray, using key sentences helps to provide a more global picture of your essay and makes you look for coherence. Be sure to organize everything with your working thesis.
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