Though
we may at times wish to be considered individual and omnipotent in our constructions
of self, there is no denying that each individual arises within a social
context that shapes him or her. That shaping, that social construction, brings
to bear on everything we perceive. Things have meaning insofar as we have been
developed to construct that meaning from the social conditions in which we are
constructed. Furthermore, those social relations are dynamic and perpetually
subject to change. This too presents a problem to a universal standard by which
we interact with images.
The
universal approach to image interaction presupposes a static universe, which is
evidently not the case at all. The world might instead be viewed as an
amorphous mass, one that is in a constant state of flux. There are constantly
shifting social relations and values that simply do not allow for a universal
standard of image interaction. So how does visual interaction with images
proceed? And how do these interactions shape the visual produced and the viewer
of the visual? I intend to outline the current state of theory regarding visual
interaction with texts and gain insight into how visual interaction functions
not only to shape images, but to shape the viewers who produce those images.
The
current state of visual interaction seems to be separated into two opposing
schools of thought. These schools of thought are summed up in Anne Frances
Wysocki’s “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty.” Wysocki makes the distinction between
visual text interactions that favor discovery and ones that favor construction:
“they propose that the work of shaping texts visually is to result in objects
that stop and hold sight; I would rather that what we make when we shape the
visual aspects of texts is reciprocal communication” (149). Herein lies the
dichotomy between visual interaction that presupposes decipherment of essential
meaning and visual interaction that presupposes construction of meaning. While
the balance seems to be shifting toward the latter strategy, approaches to
visual interaction continue to endorse the former strategy in turn denying the
shift.
Wysocki
recognizes this in the tendency of theorists of visual design to establish
principles of visual interaction. She uses Robin Williams as an example. Wysocki
argues that Williams’s design principles—contrast, repetition, alignments, and
proximity— are stated in such a way that they have the appearance of being “not
contingent, that they are neutral in their effects—that they have no effects
other than the creation of organized layout—, that they should apply anywhere
at all times, that they are not values” (151). In a similar manner, Stephen A.
Bernhardt presents principles that fail to call attention to their contingent
nature.
In
“Seeing the Text,” Bernhardt proposes the sort of visual text interaction that
Wysocki denounces. Though his intent is to demonstrate how “a preoccupation with conventional essay format allows
little attention to visual features” (77 Bernhardt), he promotes a
conventionalized visual text interaction. The conventions he endorses are the
laws of gestalt—equilibrium, good continuation, closure, and similarities. Stephanie
Sabar, in her essay “What’s a Gestalt?” defines gestalt as
an attribute of a perception or a thing that has a quality
that is different from (not more than) the sum of its
components, the components being the stimuli received from the outside world.
It is a quality of the entity as a whole, resulting from its configuration, i.e.,
the relationship, interaction, and interdependence between its
parts, rather than the sum or random combination of its parts (9)
Here I will explain my skepticism and aversion to the “laws”
of this theory of perceptual organization.
The first law, the law of equilibrium, is erroneous in
its objective grounding as a principle in the very definition Bernhardt
provides: “the most relevant law is that of equilibrium, or pragnanz, which
suggests that items in a visual field strive for balance or equilibrium with
other items in the field (71). The definition personifies the elements in the
field of vision such that they are understood as seeking balance. The
inclination for balance is rather in the subject viewing the image; these
elements are not autonomous, but acted upon by the viewer.
The next law, the law of good continuation, “suggests
that visual perception works to pull figures out of the background, to give
them definition against the undistinguished field with which they are located”
(72), recognizing the role of human perceptual interaction to a certain extent.
However, it should be evident that the distinction between figure and
background does not inhere in the image. On a 2 dimensional surface, the “undistinguished
field” might be just as much figure as the “figure” the law purports to give
definition to. The “background” might be considered as the distinguished
figure. Why this is not so in many cases is something that can hopefully be
reconciled later in this analysis.
The third law, the law of similarity functions to impose
similarity where similarity might not actually exist. This too is a human
construct. This law suggests “that units which resemble each other in shape,
size, color, or direction will be seen together as homogeneous grouping” (72).
This tendency to make that which is dissimilar similar hinges on organization
structure inherent in the human condition. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, “we
possess only metaphors of things which in no way correspond to the original
entities” (767). This is due to the process through which we designate objects
with words. In doing this we erase differences through homogenization induced
by conferring on the non-equivalent a characteristic of equivalence through the
concepts we attribute to distinct objects: “Every concept comes into being by
making equivalent that which is non-equivalent” (Nietzsche 767). For example,
every raisin is unique, varying in size and pattern of convoluted folds, but we
impose the idea of raisin-ness on each individual raisin and render them
similar. In visual textual interaction, the similarity is forced on the
elements in a similar matter. While the law of similarity helps to organize a
text, I am naturally hesitant of a law that promotes similarity while erasing
difference. The differences of the apparently similar elements should be able
to call themselves into question.
The final law, the law of closure, though it has its own
flaws, begins to recognize the human role in shaping the visual text. According
to the law of closure, “When good continuation or good figure is not provided
by the visual stimulus, the perceiver has a tendency to fill in the missing
gaps, to provide the missing definition” (Bernhardt 72). This, of course, presumes
that there is such thing as a self-contained visual text, that in the case that
the visual text is not, the missing gaps and definitions will be apparent
enough to be identified. My questions is “What visual text doesn’t contain
gaps?” My concern is that by assuming a visual text can be self-contained, we
perpetuate the idea of a naturalized text. Regardless of good continuation,
every text should be considered as lacking closure. In considering text as such,
we might begin to dismantle the naturalized visual text, and make possible the
sort of reciprocal communication for which Wysocki calls.
Gestalt theory as enumerated by Bernhardt in 1986 is
radically different from current understandings of gestalt (This alone is
evidence of shifting beliefs and values). Gestalt theory now holds that “[w]e
do not see the world objectively” (Sabar 8), that “what people see is not
simply a replica of what is before them” (Sabar 19). Instead, “what we see is interpreted
and given meaning by the observer, based on memories, expectations,
beliefs, values, fears, assumptions, emotional states, and more” (Sabar 8). The
enumeration of factors that control interpretation and give meaning arise out
of social relations and experiences with the world. The aforementioned laws of
gestalt might be considered amongst these factors, but they are not laws that
exist outside of human perception; they are inseparable from learned social
values. The visual text necessarily involves construction of meaning, but it
does not follow a one-sided construction process. Sabar explains that “one’s
existing mind-set shapes a perception or experience as much as the external
stimulus affects the mind” (19). The latter part calls attention to the visual
texts capability of shaping the viewer, a concern that Wysocki voices in “The
Multiple Media of Texts: How Onscreen and Paper Texts Incorporate Words,
Images, and Other Media”: “But what might be the consequences of design that
ask me to use it unquestioningly, to acquire through what I see and do the
values of efficiency and transparency?” (158).
If
a consequence of a visual text is to shape the viewer, the acquisition of these
values—transparency and efficiency—might be of lesser concern than other values
one might subliminally acquire. So far I have discussed two dominant schools of
thought regarding visual interaction, but I have failed to call attention to these
strategies for visual interaction being gendered. The gendering of visual
interaction, and how the values inherent in that gendering shape the viewer are
the values I referred to previously as cause for concern.
As
Wysocki so aptly puts it in “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty,” the values with
which we interact with a text have predominately arisen out of male-controlled
discourse in a patriarchal society. She refers back to Kant, stating that his “sense
of the world and its functioning grew out of his ability as a man of his time
and place to look upon his experiences as being, necessarily, the experiences
of all others” (164). This statement at once recognizes the social relations
that allow for value-making, but it suggests that the approach is primarily a
masculine one. This masculine approach considers beauty as a universal quality
inherent in the object/image. Consequently, the power dynamics implicit in Kant’s
critique of judgment are effaced. The power that determines beauty is
misplaced, removed from the viewer and instead said to arise out of the object.
This is not so, however. The implications of Kant’s argument become all the
more important when considered against Laura Mulvey’s reckoning of the function
of gaze in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”
In
her essay, Mulvey argues that gazing is a masculine role and to be gazed upon
is a feminine one. The object of gaze is always feminized, always determined to
be such by a masculine gazer. According to Mulvey, “In world ordered by sexual
imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and
passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female
figure, which is styled accordingly” (2088). The visual text then might be
considered as feminized, on object to be gazed upon by masculine power and determined
to be beautiful, or not beautiful, by masculine judgment. Kant’s argument can
then be understood as rendering the gazed-upon as an object disembodied. The function
of this visual interaction promotes the gender disparity that benefited Kant. A
female adopting the masculine role as gazer would twice conform to masculine
ideology by uncritically accepting Kant’s critique of judgment: “The actual
image of woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of man takes the
argument a step further into the content and structure of representation,
adding a further layer of ideological significance demanded by the patriarchal
order” (2094). If the content and structure of representation are
male-dominated and the gazed-upon is feminine, the adoption of Kant’s
particular ideology is utterly disempowering to females.
This power structure produces
circumstances in which feminine empowerment arises out of embracing the
masculinized role as gazer so that power for females is permitted only insofar
as the power is mediated through patriarchal ideology. In a BBC televisions
series with John Berger, Berger states the following:
“Men act and women appear.
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not
only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to
themselves. The surveyor of women in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus
she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a
sight” ()
Through their
function as masculine gazer, females even objectify themselves. Upon viewing
themselves as “objects that stop and hold sight” (Wysocki 149), objects for
which they have no role in the determination of beauty, their autonomy is
rendered useless. They are powerless in a system that perpetually endorses
active masculine agency and passive feminine objects. If what Wysocki suggests—when
“we see what does not have beauty as an apparently inherent quality and does
not therefore live up to our formal expectations, we denigrate it, or try to
lay (or force) perfect form upon it, or we try to erase it” (168)—is true, then
females run the risk of self-effacement by failing to subvert masculine principles
of visual interaction.
The issue concerning theories of
visual interaction is then much greater than it appears superficially. Wysocki
calls for a visual interaction that involves “reciprocal communications,
shaping both composer and reader and establishing relationships among them” (173),
but no matter the form of interaction, if it continues to be backed by
masculine ideology, the position remains the same for females. The values that
we carry with us to the visual interaction continue to arise out of a
patriarchal hegemony, so they fail to resolve gender disparity. Her suggestion
might be understood as the masculine gazer controlling and shaping the object
gazed upon. Though a relationship does develop, it is still a relationship of
inequity because the values residing in the viewer emanate from the hegemonic
structure that shapes the viewer. The real issue is the structure that shapes
values. The other issues is that Wysocki’s argument demands what already
exists. What Wysocki calls for is recognition of how we actually already
perceive things.
Visual perception proceeds in such a
way that much of what is perceived is imposed on the scene by the viewer. According to Aude Oliva, a principle research
scientist at MIT, “viewing a
scene is an active process in which perceived images are combined with stored
knowledge to create an internal reconstruction of the visual world… The visual
features extracted from the image (e.g., color, lines, and patterns of texture)
are rearranged according to our expectations and knowledge of the world” (Oliva).
The shaping of the text is already a process through which we inevitably
interact with visuals. We bring our expectations, values, and all that is
stored in our minds to create a scene that is uniquely our own. The creators of
the visual text do the same thing in producing the visually interactive text.
There is no fidelity between the image intended and the image perceived.
Whether one recognizes interpretation of visual text as contingent on values or
not, it is already happening through the way our brains process images. Consider
the following picture:
How one interprets the image depends on the meaning one
places in eagles and a man chained to a rock in a barren land. An American
initiated into knowledge of the eagle representing freedom and American
patriotism might read the message as anti-terrorist. The man chained to the
rocks then might be interpreted as a man bound by his amoral heathen ideology
in the desolate Middle East with the symbol of America reigning over him. This,
of course, is a painting of Prometheus, which I know because I’ve conducted
research on the mythological archetype. The point here, though, is that my
knowledge of what this image is intended to represent is irrelevant. No matter
what knowledge one brings to the visual text interaction, that knowledge will
shape the nature of the interpretation.
With
this understanding visual interaction, it seems interpretation doesn’t just vary
across people, time, and culture, but can vary across an individual as well,
depending on his or her particular affordances at a given time. Endeavors to
find universal principles underlying visual interaction and even ones that seek
value-contingent principles are futile attempts to impose order on what is
inherently chaotic. There is really no tracing the myriad factors that lend
themselves to each individual’s visual interaction on a micro-level, but this
is not to say that amendments to visual interaction should be abandoned.
If
we understand theories of visual interaction as a structure that reinforces
power disparity between males and females and continuously objectifies women,
we should alter the features of visual communication. However, the solution to gender inequity relies not on recognition of
value contingency, but rather on re-examining the power structures that shape
those values. I’m not calling for a radical revamping of patriarchal society.
That seems incredibly unrealistic. But maybe I should be.
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