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98 pages

English

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Audrey Grace Bennett is associate professor of graphics in the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. She is editor of Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design.

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Publié par	Intellect Books Ltd
Date de parution	08 janvier 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781841506678
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Engendering Interaction with Images
Engendering Interaction with Images
AUDREY G. BENNETT
First published in the UK in 2012
by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road,
Fishponds, Bristol,
BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2012 by
Intellect
The University of Chicago Press
1427 E. 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2012 Audrey G. Bennett
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover design: Audrey Bennett
Copy-editor: Heather Owen
Book design and typesetting: Audrey Bennett
ISBN 978-1-84150-289-2
Printed and bound by Hobbs, Tatton, Hampshire, UK.
for Marcel
Contents
Acknowledgements
Image Credits
Chapter 1: Introduction
PART I: ECOSYSTEM
Chapter 2: Image
Chapter 3: Effectiveness
Chapter 4: Interaction
PART II: ENGENDERING INTERACTION WITH IMAGES
Chapter 5: Collaborative design through active interaction
Chapter 6: Collaborative design through active interaction with a dynamic image
Chapter 7: Computer mediated collaborative design of a static image
Acronym Glossary
Notes
Index
Colophon
Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank the following professional colleagues and former students who did not hesitate when granting me permission to use their images to illustrate my arguments: Jason Desjardins, Yehuda Duenyas, Katie Franceour, Steve Liska, Andrew Rarig, Ashley Rio, and Omar Vulpinari. I give special thanks to The MIT Press, Inderscience Enterprises Limited, and Transformative Dialogues for granting me permission to reprint my previously published articles in updated form for this book. This book is the result of over fourteen years of collaborative interdisciplinary research on images with scholars in computer science, anthropology, sociology, engineering, and technical communication. Thank you Dr. Sal Restivo for asking me the key question-What is wrong with this image?-in reference to a photograph of Kismet on the cover of Discover magazine. By responding to that question I took my first step towards understanding the important role user research plays in the communication design process. Thanks to Dr. Ekaterina Haskins for sharing a useful writing strategy-aim for 500 good words a day-that helped me to get to the finish line with this manuscript; and, thanks also to Dr. Tamar Gordon, Raymond Lutzky, Gaines Hubbell, Dr. Jay Zalinger, Janice Darling, and Kaitlyn Tebordo Wood for intriguing conversations as I wrote this book. I also wish to express sincere gratitude to Intellect for its enthusiastic support of my manuscript. Specifically, I want to thank May, Melanie and James for being accessible, helpful, and professional throughout the process. I am most grateful though to my husband and colleague Dr. Ron Eglash, an anthropologist and social justice enthusiast who continues an inspiring fight to correct social wrongs in math and computing education. Because of him, I am now deeply committed to improving changing the world through communicatively effective images.
Image Credits
Chapter 1 1. Image ecosystem Audrey Bennett 2. Show the Truth, World No Tobacco Day Campaign FABRICA 2009; Poster Mouth: Art Director, Namyoung An; Photo: Piero Martinello; Teeth photo Province of British Columbia, Creative Director: Omar Vulpinari 3. Interpret Red Circle Audrey Bennett
Chapter 2 4. Emotive images of a child Audrey Bennett 5. Ocean horizon Audrey Bennett 6. Tunnel at Dartmouth College Audrey Bennett
Chapter 3
7. Meta-poster image Nathan Porteous, Chris Kerr, Katie Francoeur, Andrew Emerson, Alix Broomfield
Chapter 4 8. AIGA Get out to Vote poster Steve Liska, Liska + Associates 9. Take Me to Your Leader EMPAC posters EMPAC, designed by Andrew Rarig, illustrations by Shela Xu 10. The Infinity Simulator created by Yehuda Duenyas (also pictured), photography by Jason Desjardins 11. Self-promotional image Ashley Rio 12. Nok Clay sculpture, terracotta, 6th century BC - 6th century CE, Nigeria, Wikimedia Commons licensed photo by Jastrow 13. Cultural background section of the Virtual Beadloom CSDT Ron Eglash
14. Virtual Bead Loom simulation software Ron Eglash
Chapter 5 15. Stakeholders Audrey Bennett 16. Interactive Aesthetics Audrey Bennett 17. Design Process Audrey Bennett 18. Design Process with Interactive Aesthetics Audrey Bennett
Chapter 6 19. Kismet Cynthia Breazeal 20. Analog controllers Audrey Bennett
Chapter 7 21. An HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention image Audrey Bennett 22. Interactive image, iteration 1 Audrey Bennett 23. Interactive image, iteration 2 Audrey Bennett
Chapter 1
Introduction: See. Change.
T he word image comes from the eleventh-century Latin imaginem which means picture, statue, idea, copy, and appearance. 1 Most dictionaries today define it similarly-as both a verb and a noun with cross-disciplinary usage within mathematics, computer science, communication, art and physics. Engineering, the social sciences and other science disciplines use the word image as well. Consider scientific visualization (an emerging sub-discipline focused on the visual display of complex, technical information) and visual anthropology (a sub-discipline of anthropology that studies ethnographic images). Within interdisciplinary discourse, we can find perennial intellectual debates on what constitutes an image from disciplines like literary criticism, art history, theology, and philosophy 2 -all of which use images differently. Thus, art historian W.J.T. Mitchell appropriately visualizes an image as a family tree that branches out into a range of categories including graphic (from art history), optic (from physics), perceptual (from multiple disciplines), mental (from psychology and epistemology), and verbal (from literary criticism). 3 In Mitchell s family tree, each category branches out into a set of sub-categories that form a cohesive visual unit. His family tree visualization shows a kind of kinship between different image types that helps to facilitate understanding of what constitutes an image across disciplines. It also begins an important dialogue on the role of images as an evolving perceptual, cultural, technical and historical phenomenon within society. In Chapter 2, I leapfrog from two of Mitchell s categories-optic and mental-into a broader re-categorization of images that reflects the influence of technology and globalization. My aim is to redefine image to be more inclusive of the rainbow of images in use today and explain how an image communicates meaning through a system that depends on stakeholders, familial characterization, cultural aesthetics, and context. In other words, an image exists as an ecosystem (see Figure 1) comprising: Different families, cultural aesthetics, and communication contexts. A communication network that facilitates interaction between actors-that is, the professional communication designer, user and other stakeholders. A performance component that warrants metrics for assessing communicative effectiveness. A resilient nature that adapts to technological change and evolves.

Figure 1: Image ecosystem depiction that shows resilience and ability to evolve represented by the stoic stance of a slab- serif letterform.
How an image ecosystem communicates meaning has been the subject of scholarly debate for many decades. Faigley et al., 4 for instance, believe that the act of communicating with images is similar to the rhetorical act of communicating with text. They essentially argue that an image is text. However, the opposite is more accurate: text is image. That is, text is a written or typeset group of words that comprise letters that are visual symbols with phonetic sounds associated with them. As Saussure describes it, the written word is a graphic representation of language 5 -an image. And, while we cannot reduce all images to text, many of the theories we use to analyse how text conveys meaning can also be used to analyse images. For instance, as the rhetorician moves (movere), instructs (docere), and delights (delectare), 6 the communication designer also uses images to inform, entertain, or persuade the user to adopt or change a belief or behaviour. Consider the image in Figure 2 that aims to evoke a change in behaviour by showing the negative ramifications of smoking through the package design.

Figure 2: Show the Truth, World No Tobacco Day Campaign
If we look specifically at twentieth-century, literary criticism we find a rich reservoir of interrelated and evolving perspectives on how images communicate meaning. Consider the image of a simple red circle. From a Saussurean perspective, this image is a sign comprising a signifier (its form as a red circle) and a signified (a concept or idea it represents) where the relationship between the signifier and the signified is an arbitrary one. 7 The arbitrariness of the relationship between the signifier and the signified is most likely influenced by the culture of the user and communication context. As the late design historian Philip B. Meggs notes:
The interpretation of a sign is impacted by the context in which it is used, its relationships to other signs, and its environment. 8
Thus, the basic image of a red circle can mean several different things depending on the culture of the user and the context in which it communicates to targeted users. For example, when printed on a white piece of cloth attached to a pole-placed at GPS coordinates 37 34 0 North, 140 59 0 East-a red circle might mean Japan (the country, the people, and their culture) to some; whereas, when painted on the external wall of a store in 1933 Charleston, South Carolina, the same red circle might mean liquor sold here to others. 9 Thus, the red circle has two levels of communicative significance- one tha