Viewers Make Meaning

Much of the social context and cultural influences make up the meaning that we associate with art.

1. codes and conventions that structure the image and that cannot be separated from the content of the image.
2. the viewer and how they interpret or experience the image
3. the context in which an image is exhibited and viewed.

the viewer is an individual who looks, and audience is a collection of lookers.

is the image private or public.

to interpellate, in traditional usage of this concept, is to interrupt a procedure in order to question someone or something formally, as in a legal or governmental setting.

Louis Althusser- believed and said that the subject of the image reaches a wider audiance and the viewers understand it is not intended "just for me"

By focusing on the viewer, it shows how emphasizing the practices through which images and media texts reach out and make a connection.

Producers Intended Meanings

Produce can refurr to the individual maker, artist, or many people from production to display, or a corporate conglomerate engaged in parts of an ad.

Sometimes "producer function" tells us that "authorship" is not just one who creates but sometimes

Many if not all advertisements and pictures have one preferred meaning by the producer. but many time there are different interpretations and ideas that can go along with cultural and social difference.

Even though the maker or producer has an intended meaning, this doesn't man that everyone who comes into contact with the piece will have the same reaction.

Aesthetics and Taste

All images are judged on their quality and their capacity to impact an viewer and audience.

Taste- how a viewers informed experiences i.e., social class, cultural background education and other aspects of identity, help them interpret images. It is how people understand something in context with their lives.

"Good Taste" is the  notion of middle to upperclass notions of what is pleasing even if they are not in these social perimeters.

Kitsch- is iconic of a historical moment in which everyday life is over saturated with cheesiness.

Social wants of art differ as the regions change. Americans favor landscapes, wild animals and George Washington. While Russia's taste is more religious.  It does not mean one is wrong they just see things differently, and favor different aspects of culture.

Most favor realism over abstract

It used to be High Culture was fine art, classical music, opera and ballet, while working class, or low class, was comic strips, television, and the cinema.

Popular Cultural is something that is now studies because there is now a belief that we cannot understand a culture without analyzing its production and consumption of all forms of culture, from high to low.

Collecting, Display and Institutional Critique

"Art-culture system" - shows how the movement of objects through the collecting practices of museums, scholars and connoisseurs effect transitions in the meaning and the value of works from not art to art and authentic to inauthentic.

When art is not being shown or objects not being used the become "dead" and keeping them out in the publics eye and in interaction with viewers they keep their vitality.

Fred Wilson- use of juxtaposition objects created and interesting dialog.  He went through the archives of the museum and took out many objects that were not being shown and gave them a new home, he also gave lectures to a tour on why he chose specific objects and positions.

Reading Images as Ideological Subjects.

Karl Marx- both the roll of economics in the progress of history and the way that capitalism works in terms of class relations. Those that own the means to production are also in control of the ideas and viewpoints produced and circulated in a society's venues. whom ever is dominant is what will be portrayed because of the dominant social class that controls it.

hegemony- power is not wielded by one class over another, but rather it is negotiated among all classes of all people.

Relationships are constantly changing, so once dominant ideologies have to be often reaffirmed because now people can work against them

Encoding and Decoding

Stuart Hall

1. Dominant- hegemonic reading. what the majority of people are meant to decipher
2. Negotiated reading. you understand the meaning but negate it also
3. Oppositional reading. they listen but they don't agree 

 negotiation invokes the process of trade

interpretation is a mental process of acceptance and rejection of the meaning that are assigned to the image given the dominant ideologies that surround it.

Reception and the Audience

Reception theory has for the most part looked at the practices of individual viewers in the interpretation and making meaning from watching and consuming cultural products

Bricolage is taking things and using them in ways they were not intended as to separate them from their normal or expected context.

Appropriation and Cultural Production

appropriation- taking something for oneself without consent.

textual poaching- changing the original idea