11.7 Parsing Images

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From the course by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Multimodal Literacies: Communication and Learning in the Era of Digital Media

13 ratings

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Multimodal Literacies: Communication and Learning in the Era of Digital Media

13 ratings

This course introduces innovative approaches to learning and teaching, with a focus on the use of e-learning and social web technologies.

From the lesson

Module 2: Making Meaning by Reading + Making Meaning by Writing + Making Visual Meaning

This module begins with an overview of the conventional focus of literacy pedagogy – reading and writing. In its second half, the module applies a parallel set of tools to analysis of visual meanings.

11.1 The Contemporary Significance of Visual Meanings6:32

11.2 Designs of Visual Meanings8:39

11.3 Perceptual Images and Mental Images7:40

11.4 A Grammar of the Visual7:41

11.5 Deconstructing Images5:19

11.6 Image Making as Design6:41

11.7 Parsing Images7:52

11.8 Multimodal Pedagogy in Practice3:32

Meet the Instructors

Dr William Cope
Professor
Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership, College of Education
Dr Mary Kalantzis
Professor
College of Education

I want to analyze a couple of images just by way of example, in fact, three images,

and they're all the same, and they're all totally different.

They're all referring to the same thing, but

they're totally different in some interesting kinds of ways.

So, and they're all train pictures, so three train pictures.

So here's the first train picture.

And this is a photograph

taken a little while ago in the era when there was still steam trains in the world.

And there are three kids there who are sitting on their school bags,

waiting for the school bus, and this train's going past.

So it's a kind of a quasi-romantic kind of picture of an era

that's gone when there was steam trains on a very cold winter's day.

And so on.

So, what are we referring to?

Let's take our five questions.

We're referring to this phenomenon of a train.

It's on the edge of a town.

It's crossing a little crossing.

It's crossing the road.

Dialogical, what is the relationship of the viewer and

the photographer to the children and the train?

Well, the answer is the children are semi not aware that the photographer exists.

They're watching the train.

We're following their eye lines.

It's of interest to us, it's of interest to them.

And we're going to have a direct relationship with them.

So in terms of things that we do in language with first-person and

second-person and

interpersonal relationships, this image is framing those things.

Structure.

Let's go on to the next point.

Well the image is framed.

The children are in the middle, they're in the foreground.

The trains in the background, so

there is a set of things compositional elements there with this particular image.

So what do we do now in relation to context?

Well, what's the outside of the image?

Well, it looks like it's on the edge of an industrial factory.

There is another piece of smoke.

You can see it going in the other direction across the screen.

In fact, that's a factory.

This is a cement factory where this train is going to.

That's the factory.

It's not in the image, but it's part of the context.

There's a town on the other side.

Also, not in the image, but part of the context.

This is a factory, this is a school.

This is probably in the morning, these kids are going to school.

What's the purpose of the image?

Well, the purpose of the image is.

About this nonchalantly waiting for school, this era when

there were same trains, there's a whole lot of intentions that going on the image.

Let's stay with the trains and here's another different train image So

this is one of the classic design pieces,

visual design pieces on the 20th century in a really funny interesting why.

So The London Transport Map is a way of building a conceptual

map of how to get around London on the underground.

It's very famous.

The logo's famous.

Everything about this imagery is famous for its clarity, its simplicity,

the little dots where you change trains, you are on lines which are color coded.

And of course, London,

you can see the River Tens going through the middle of the picture.

But London in reality the river Thames doesn't have neat corners like that and

the railway lines don't have straight lines like this.

It's a map which conceptualizes travel abstractly in the way which is usefully

different from the ways in which the actual space of London is laid out.

But rather, this is a new version of this map, which is very very cute.

You can see between each of the The stations

there is a actually a little number which is the walking time between the stations.

And one of things about being on a train like this is you can't,

it's in the dock it's on the ground you can't see where you're going.

You're not quite sure how far it is.

And by saying, look, if you actually got out and

walked this, it'd be seven minutes.

It's actually telling you not to get the train because

it's another piece of information which is being put there.

And it's also telling you something very simply.

If you were up on the street, you don't really know that it said, well,

if you had your phone you'd know.

But this map wouldn't tell you that it's seven minutes and don't bother getting

the train because you could walk it quicker than waiting for a train.

So Again what are the features of this map?

Well, firstly, it refers to train things, which is stations and places,

the same way the previous image referred to train things.

It refers to the London underground.

But in this abstract conceptual kind of way, so it's a visual representation

Which operates at a kind of level of generality and

abstraction which is useful in terms of planning your itinerary.

So, we can go through each of these five questions.

The structure of it, it's a quite beautiful,

elegant structure in terms of the way in which the hull of

a huge city's huge underground is represented on one very simple map.

So, it's structured in these particular ways, with a key.

Down the side, which it's a very very explicit structure to facilitate

an easy reading path for a particular user and

the context is this other world which actually in reality looks very different.

So there's a context, which is you can get some pictures of London and

you head down and you can say, London doesn't look like this at all.

And the intention is not just around getting the train.

The attention is around not getting the train in some funny kinds of ways.

So if we can actually ask these five questions

it helps us deconstruct the visual grammar of this particular train picture.

To a third train picture.

So here's we've got an image from a train book called The City of New Orleans.

So the city of New Orleans is a train, which it runs from Chicago to New Orleans.

And it's a book for children.

Good Morning America How you say you don't me.

I'm your native son.

I'm the train they call the Spirit of New Orleans.

I'll be going 500 miles when the day is done.

Personifying the train.

So what we're doing is we're doing a classic literary thing.

Except in this point with an image we're putting a caption on that train.

And that train then becomes a person.

Which is part of the life blood of America and so on.

So, if we go through our analysis what are we referring to?

We're referring to this train of great historic significance,

Chicago to New Orleans.

There's kinds of In the personal of being constructed,

I'm as a view relating to the people coming off the train but

I'm also relating the train as a person.

So I'm being constructive that way, so that's the business of dialogue,

dialogues being framed in this image.

When it comes to structure, we've got a particular grammar around the writing at

the top, the image on the page, a particular type of medium being used for

drawing the image in these kinds of ways.

When we get to context, the context as a whole historical context,

and the whole aura around what this train means.

And when we get to intention, to intend, or

purpose It's a kind of a literary thing, young children's writing.

And it's meant to evoke a whole set of auras.

So it's a deeply, humanly drenched

story full of human intention of one sort or another.

And the intentions Then, the relationship with the reader.

What if the young persons never been on a train?

Which although, young people may not have.

What does this particular story mean, how's it interpreted,

what's their relation to this text is also in that space?

So, here we've got a multimodal text where

We are deconstructing using this grammar of multi modality around,

we are deconstructing the way that the image works and what it does.

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