2. State of Art Representative Theories
Behaviorists attempt to observe and measure the real world directly.
Phenomenologists are exclusively interested in a person's introspective experience.
Semioticians and rhetoricians try to understand the linkages between our internal
world and the external world, and that linkage is necessary, they believe, because
the external world is always mediated by our senses and our mind.
Rhetoricians have investigated how humans create and manipulate symbols in order
to persuade other humans,
Semioticians have been more interested in how humans (and other animals)
interpret all kinds of signs, including symbols, that were created by other people.
3. The Concept of Representation (Saussure)
Signifier Signfied
4. The Concept of Representation (Pierce)
sign
objectinterpretant
5. The Concept of Representation (Mitchel)
Representation
Maker
Object
Viewer
Signfier
6. Do you see a real dancer stretching?
Are you reminded of a dancer stretching?
Does the picture look like a dancer stretching?
Or do you have an experience that isjust like the experience of looking at a dancer
stretching? Do you read the language of the photograph and realize it concerns a
dancer stretching? Do you have the illusion you are in the presence of a dancer
stretching?
Do you make believe you see a dancer stretching? Do you see a dancer stretching in
the picture and also see the surface of the picture?
7.
8. Causal Relation Theories
Transparency theory states that a camera picture represents a phenomenon
because it was automatically and mechanically caused by the existence of the
phenomenon and because the picture looks like exactly like the phenomenon.
Transparency theory is silent about the communication axis running from maker to
viewer because it ignores the viewer and the maker.
In conclusion, transparency theory is important because many viewers, and some
picture-makers, continue to implicitly, if not explicitly, believe that camera pictures
are aids to vision that allow us to see the world directly. People enjoy looking at
photographs of loved ones; they use photographs as evidence in courts of law, and
news organizations use photographs to report on people and events.
9. Causal Relation Theories
A key concept of recognition theory is aspects. Wilkerson (1991) suggested that
aspectseeing has five main features. One, seeing aspects involves noticing
resemblances.
Recognition theory deemphasizes the symbolic relationship between sign and object
because it states that picturing is generative, which means we do not need to learn
the meaning of unfamiliar pictures in the way we must learn the meaning of
unfamiliar words.
10. RESEMBLANCE THEORIES
Nonperceptual Resemblance Theory:
A nonperceptual theory states that pictures represent by virtue of similarity with their
subjects. This theory has intuitive appeal because when we look at pictures, we seem
to see similarities between the picture and what it represents.
Perception-based Resemblance Theory:
A painting resembles its subject if the painting has the same power to affect our
organs of sight as its subject. According to resemblance theory, at an early stage of
vision, at least, we just receive visual information and what we see is not affected by
our beliefs, values, or background knowledge (Rollins, 1999).
11. Convention Theory
Convention theory holds that a picture represents whatever it does by virtue of belonging to a symbol
system with rules or conventions that link marked surfaces of pictures with external things.
12. "almost any picture may represent
almost anything" (Goodman, 1976, p.
38)
In conclusion, Goodman has made rules or conventions
central to picture representation, but his theory been
justly criticized as having the consequence that any
picture can represent anything because resemblance
between a picture and its object is rejected as a
necessary condition for depicting.
14. Illusion
pictures give us the false
perceptual belief we are in
the presence of the subject.
It is the eye, not the mind,
that is fooled. The picture
triggers a nonveridical visual
experience through the
arousal of visual sensations.
We look at the picture and
see something that is not a
dancer but that nevertheless
causes us to have a visual
experience of seeing a
dancer.
15. Gombrich (1977, 1982) believed we fully
participate in the game of illusion by
intentionally ignoring nonmatching aspects
of the representation and by concentrating
on following the hints of the painter, who
provides sufficient clues to allow our
imaginative powers to project what is not
there and to complete the representation.
16. looking at handmade pictures is
like playing children's games of
make-believe because in both
cases we exercise our
imaginations in order to
understand and appreciate
fictional worlds (Walton 1973,
1990)
if we see a subject in a picture and
the artist marked the picture so
that we should see it, then the
picture represents the subject.
make-believe
17. Seeing-in
According to seeing-in
theory (Wollheim, 1980,
1986, 1988, 1993, 1998),
we see pictures‘ subjects
in the marks, colors, and
textures of the pictures'
surfaces. Of course, we
also can see subjects in
things other than pictures.
18. Conclusion of Mental Contruction Theory
• In conclusion, with the three mental construction theories, we
perceive the picture and then we think about a scene, and our
perceptions and thoughts become mixed together.
19. Conclusion of Representation Theories
• Representation is a key concept to semiotics, phenomenology, and
rhetoric. In general, each of these fields has its own vocabulary, its
own leaders, and its own assumptions, which together seem to lock
scholars into a fixed and limited theoretical approach to investigating
pictures. The three mental construction theories are closely tied with
phenomenology, and the causal relations-resemblance-conventional
theories are closely tied with semiotics. Rhetoric has a looser
connection to conventional theory and the mental construction
theories. Future theoretical work should attempt to facilitate
communication and argumentation among these three competing,
isolated fields in order to create a theoretical synthesis that would be
useful to anyone studying pictures and how they represent.
