1. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 1IS146 – SPRING 2005 Understanding Visual Media Prof. Marc Davis, Prof. Peter Lyman, and danah boyd UC Berkeley SIMS Tuesday and Thursday 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Spring 2005 http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/academics/courses/is146/s05/ IS146: Foundations of New Media

2. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 2IS146 – SPRING 2005 Lecture Overview Review of Last Time –History and Technology of Digital Imaging Today –Understanding Visual Media Preview of Next Time –Case Study: Cameraphone

3. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 3IS146 – SPRING 2005 Lecture Overview Review of Last Time –History and Technology of Digital Imaging Today –Understanding Visual Media Preview of Next Time –Case Study: Cameraphone

4. SIMS-IS146 – 17.03.2005 Image reading Visual communication is always coded –“It seems transparent only because we know the code already, at least passively — but without knowing what it is we know, without having the means for talking about what it is we do when we read an image.” Our culture is moving from textual to visual –“Until now, language, especially written language, was the most highly valued, the most frequently analyzed, the most prescriptively taught and the most meticulously policed code in our society.” Visual “literacy” is not taught and needs to be –“If schools are to equip students adequately for the new semiotic order, if they are not to produce people unable to use the 'new writing' actively and effectively, then the old boundaries between 'writing' on the one hand, traditionally the form of literacy without which people cannot adequately function as citizens, and, on the other hand, the 'visual arts', a marginal subject for the specially gifted, and 'technical drawing', a technical subject with limited and specialized application, should be redrawn.”

5. SIMS-IS146 – 17.03.2005 Image technology Painting VERMEER VAN DELFT, c. 1665, Oil on canvas, 46,5 x 40 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague Photo (1830)  development of technology (e.g. colour, brushes, canvas, etc.)  development of presentation techniques (e.g. central perspective) Digital image (1950)  development of technology (e.g. camera, film stock, etc.)  development of presentation techniques (e.g. illumination)  development of technology (e.g. camera, compression, manipulation)  development of presentation techniques (e.g. automatic collage)

6. SIMS-IS146 – 17.03.2005 The camera Analog camera produces a continuous image, simulating the capture of the eye. Negative (reverse reality) Actual image (various manipulation processes) Analog technology is expensive and complicated to handle.

7. SIMS-IS146 – 17.03.2005 The digital image The image is a matrix of values, representing the colour, texture, dimension, etc.

8. SIMS-IS146 – 17.03.2005 The digital image - size 1 Bit -> black and white 8 Bit -> greyscale 16 Bit -> 64.000 colours (High Colour) 24 Bit -> 16 Mil. colours (True Colour) File size for True Colour 640 x 480 x 3 = 0,87 MB 800 x 600 x 3 = 1,37 MB 1024 x 768 x 3 = 2,25 MB 1280 x 1024 x 3 = 3,75 MB

9. SIMS-IS146 – 17.03.2005 The digital image - manipulation Pixel or vector Image format Resolution Mode File type Image enhancement resize colour enhancement artistic filters establishing planes any other sort of manipulation ALWAYS ask: what do I intend to do with the image now AND in the future?

10. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 10IS146 – SPRING 2005 Lecture Overview Review of Last Time –History and Technology of Digital Imaging Today –Understanding Visual Media Preview of Next Time –Case Study: Cameraphone

11. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 11IS146 – SPRING 2005 Understanding Comics Scott McCloud - comic artist Explains visual communication through comics Explains comics through visual communication "If you've ever felt bad about wasting your life reading comics, then check out Scott McCloud's classic book immediately. You might still feel you've wasted your life, but you'll know why, and you'll be proud.” - Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons.

12. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 12IS146 – SPRING 2005 What Are Comics? “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” (p. 9) How do comics differ from –Photographs? –Movies? –Hieroglyphics? –Emoticons?

13. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 13IS146 – SPRING 2005 Why Understand Comics?

14. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 14IS146 – SPRING 2005 Old Comics: Trajan’s Column

15. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 15IS146 – SPRING 2005 Old Comics: Mayan Codex Nuttall

16. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 16IS146 – SPRING 2005 Old Comics: Tortures of St. Erasmus

17. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 17IS146 – SPRING 2005 Scott McCloud’s “Big Triangle” In Chapter Two of Scott McCloud’s 1993 book Understanding Comics, he devises a map of visual iconography (i.e., pictures, words, symbols) that takes the shape of a triangle.Understanding Comics, Picture Plane Reality Language

18. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 18IS146 – SPRING 2005 Scott McCloud’s “Big Triangle” The lower left corner is visual resemblance (e.g., photography and realistic painting). Picture Plane Reality Language

19. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 19IS146 – SPRING 2005 Scott McCloud’s “Big Triangle” The lower right includes the products of what he calls iconic abstraction (e.g., cartooning). Picture Plane Reality Language

20. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 20IS146 – SPRING 2005 Scott McCloud’s “Big Triangle” And at the top are the denizens of the picture plane (“pure” abstraction) which cease to make reference to any visual phenomena other than themselves. Picture Plane Reality Language

21. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 21IS146 – SPRING 2005 Scott McCloud’s “Big Triangle” The move from realism to cartoons along the bottom edge is a move away from resemblance that still retains “meaning,” so words, the next logical step in the progression, are included at far right, thereby enclosing anything in comics’ visual vocabulary between the three points. Picture Plane Reality Language

22. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 22IS146 – SPRING 2005 Scott McCloud’s “Big Triangle” McCloud found that “The Big Triangle” as it came to be known, was an interesting tool for thinking about comics art... Picture Plane Reality Language

23. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 23IS146 – SPRING 2005 Scott McCloud’s “Big Triangle”...and for visual art and language in general! Picture Plane Reality Language

24. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 24IS146 – SPRING 2005 Cartoons and Viewer Identification

25. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 25IS146 – SPRING 2005 Closure: From Parts To The Whole

26. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 26IS146 – SPRING 2005 Closure: Bridging Time and Space

27. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 27IS146 – SPRING 2005 Closure in Comics

28. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 28IS146 – SPRING 2005 Closure: The “Gutter” in Comics

29. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 29IS146 – SPRING 2005 Closure: Moment-To-Moment

30. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 30IS146 – SPRING 2005 Closure: Action-To-Action

31. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 31IS146 – SPRING 2005 Closure: Subject-To-Subject

32. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 32IS146 – SPRING 2005 Closure: Scene-To-Scene

33. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 33IS146 – SPRING 2005 Closure: Aspect-To-Aspect

34. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 34IS146 – SPRING 2005 Closure: Non-Sequitur

35. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 35IS146 – SPRING 2005 Questions for Today How do we interpret images and sequences of images? How do we read different visual representations of the world (especially different levels of realism and abstraction) differently? How does what is left out affect how we understand images and sequences of images?

36. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 36IS146 – SPRING 2005 Questions for Today What are some of the differences between how text and images function in comics? What would be lost/gained in moving between images and text?

37. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 37IS146 – SPRING 2005 Questions for Today How could we represent images and sequences of images in order to make them programmable? What could computation do to affect how we produce, manipulate, reuse, and understand images and sequences of images?

38. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 38IS146 – SPRING 2005 Lecture Overview Review of Last Time –History and Technology of Digital Imaging Today –Understanding Visual Media Preview of Next Time –Case Study: Cameraphone

39. 2005.03.29 SLIDE 39IS146 – SPRING 2005 Readings for Next Time Marc Davis, Simon King, Nathan Good, and Risto Sarvas. From Context to Content: Leveraging Context to Infer Media Metadata. in: Proceedings of 12th Annual ACM International Conference on Multimedia (MM2004). New York: ACM Press, p. 188-195, 2004. –Discussion Questions Nancy A. Van House, Marc Davis, Morgan Ames, Megan Finn, and Vijay Viswanathan. The Uses of Personal Networked Digital Imaging: An Empirical Study of Cameraphone Photos and Sharing. in: Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI2005). New York: ACM Press, Forthcoming 2005. –Discussion Questions