The Body and the Archive

I respond to this passage with aw, because of the fact that it went into many different directions to come to one conclusion. It talks about how photography was being used as part of the policing agenda to identify criminals and keep a better track on them. Next, it goes into pure scientific theories, trying to convey how to find traits using the human body of the inmates to catch a class of potential criminals or something. However, I was really bewildered by the part where he talks about setting points for the different races and of course the Africans having the lowest, plus the finger print solution was doing just find. Although this evolve to what we now know as the mug shots and it is a good way to have the identity of criminals, I think he was trying to do too much scientific stuff with just photos of their bodies. I see why this is just a paraphrase of his research and experiments of this project.

Pictures for Rent

I think the development of stock photography is a relationship to how a lot of passionate things we have done has been turned into a market for the media to use on us. For example, almost everything that we have been doing for the passion has become part or is a business. Whether that be sports or art that is being used. It reminds me of how today researchers for companies try to find the ideal consumers want and advertise it as an image of the average consumer to sell to us. Get back to how stock photography was used initially as photography in an artistic sort of view until it got into to corporate, where it turned into mirror pictures of us as consumers to be used by advertising companies.

Visual Language: Semiotics

Before reading this, I had no idea what semiotics where and what I can take away from this after reading it as that it's different visual ways in which we communicate. I like how the author used different concepts and there meanings with the word. Being that we were just talking about this in my Intro to New Median class, i understand what the author means in how the things are match together, comparing the coin to how we know tree by the symbol but without the symbol the word is just a word. Therefore, because of one you have the other introducing how they relate to connotation and denotations.

Respond to Swastika and Symbols

I thinks it's really messed up that a symbol and had such good intentions and meaning could have just flipped to the opposite so quickly. Initially when I saw the swastika, before I learned about the Holocaust, I thought it was a cool symbol and now if I see there is a totally different feeling. The reading discusses how it can be found and so many different cultures as a good luck charm or in a different way but since we are so familiar with the usage by the Nazis, the thought seeing it as a good luck charm is the furthest thing and the symbol has been corrupted.

After reading the articles about the Modern Hieroglyphs, I found that symbols can be used as for anything as simple to just a man and woman to renting a car in the airport. I think learning to change English words to symbols would be extremely hard and I like how they used the a Japanese and Chinese writing to show how they have symbols for words and phrases and although, they look the same have total different meanings according to punctuation.

New Respond

My respond to the reading of “What is a sign?” is kind of confusing. Like, I understand what he means by the different states of mind we have and how without some likenesses we wouldn’t be able to communicate. However, I don’t get what’s going on in all of this. Also, he explains the other different kinds of signs which include indications and symbols. I do like how he tells how before words the pictures played a big part from the Egyptians to the Greek. Then, I comprehend what he means by the fact that pictures aren’t enough; you need symbols and words to complete it, using maps as example. On the contrary, after reading this, I thought to myself what the hell did I just read.

Response to Image

After reading 'image' by Kristine Nielsen, I realize that image is so much more than what it seems to be. I thought it was interesting how she wrote about how it was used in the Old Testimate, comparing image to the golden calf and how it was viewed in a Biblical sort of sense. Then, after telling us that, she lets us know how image does a lot using the words attracts, deceives, imitates, resembles etc. I also like the fact that she informs us on how we view image, which she says is perhaps in collections using the five categories of graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, and verbal. I feel like I can relate to those categories after I think of the different ways to view image.