Visual rhetoric

Abstract: This book uses the methodology of artificial intelligence to investigate the phenomena of visual motion perception: how the visual system constructs descriptions of the environment in terms of objects, their three-dimensional shape, and their motion through space, on the basis of the changing image that reaches the eye. The author has analyzed the computations performed in the course of visual motion analysis. Workable schemes able to perform certain tasks performed by the visual system have been constructed and used as vehicles for investigating the problems faced by the visual system and its methods for solving them.Two major problems are treated: first, the correspondence problem, which concerns the identification of image elements that represent the same object at different times, thereby maintaining the perceptual identity of the object in motion or in change. The second problem is the three-dimensional interpretation of the changing image once a correspondence has been established.The author's computational approach to visual theory makes the work unique, and it should be of interest to psychologists working in visual perception and readers interested in cognitive studies in general, as well as computer scientists interested in machine vision, theoretical neurophysiologists, and philosophers of science.

Abstract: Researching Visual Objects A Critical Visual Methodology How To Use This Book 'The Good Eye' Looking at Pictures Using Compositional Interpretation Content Analysis Counting What You (Think) You See Semiology Laying Bare the Prejudices beneath the Smooth Surface of the Beautiful Psychoanalysis Visual Culture, Visual Pleasure, Visual Disruption Discourse Analysis I Text, Intertext, Context Discourse Analysis II Institutions and Ways of Seeing Audience Studies Studying How Television Gets Watched An Anthropological Approach Directly Observing the Social Life of Visual Objects Making Photographs as Part of a Research Project Photo-Elicitation, Photo-Documentation and Other Uses of Photos Visual Methodologies A Review

Abstract: READING PICTURES The trouble with pictures An introductory example Unnatural vision Reading narratives Formal readings Planning a research project with visual methods ENCOUNTERING THE VISUAL On Television Visual forms produced I: representations of society Interpreting Forest of Bliss Still and moving images Visual forms produced II: representations of knowledge Visualisation Networks Diagrams of Nuer lineages Visual forms encountered Encountering 'indigenous' media The image as evidence 'Us' and 'them'? MATERIAL VISION Object and representation The materiality of visual forms Displaying family photographs Exchanged goods Market exchange Size matters Transformations: digitisation and computer-based media Digital manipulation Digital pornography: constraining the virtual Digital pornography: exchange and circulation RESEARCH STRATEGIES Silk thread to plastic bags Researching image use and production in social contexts Watching television Soap opera in India and Egypt Television as social presence Doing things with photographs and films Photo-elicitation with archival images Photo-elicitation with contemporary images Learning from photo-elicitation Film-elicitation Working with archival material Photographic archives and picture libraries Film archives MAKING IMAGES Observing Creating images for research Documentation A ladder climbed then discarded Documentary exploration Documentary control Collaborative projects Indigenous media collaborations Collaborative after effects Ethics and visual research Ethical review Permissions Returning images PRESENTING RESEARCH RESULTS Audiences Presenting photographs The photographic essay Presenting ethnographic and other films Study guides and other contextualisation Databases and digital images Can computer see? Multimedia projects Interacting with Yanomamo Copyright PERSPECTIVES ON VISUAL RESEARCH The state of visual research The place of visual research The nature of visual research

Abstract: In this article, past consumer research dealing with advertising images is analyzed and critiqued for its underlying assumption: that pictures are reflections of reality. The case against this assumption is presented, and an alternative view, in which visuals are a convention-based symbolic system, is formulated. In this alternative view, pictures must be cognitively processed, rather than absorbed peripherally or automatically. The author argues that current conceptualizations of advertising images are incommensurate with what ads are really like, and that many images currently dismissed as affect laden or information devoid are, in fact, complex figurative arguments. A new theoretical framework for the study of images is advanced in which advertising images are a sophisticated form of visual rhetoric. The process of consumer response implied by the new framework differs radically from past concepts in many ways, but also suggests new ways to approach questions currently open in the literature on the nature and processing of imagery. A pluralistic program for studying advertising pictures as persuasion is outlined.