Representation and Interaction

This chapter is more fun to me than previous ones. There are several things I found interesting, upon which I have some thoughts to share.

1. I think the disjunction between the “represented” and “enacted” is socially constructed.

In the chapter, it mentioned that social relations in images can be “represented” rather than “enacted.” (116) For example, people won’t lower eyes when they found characters in the painting starring at them. However, it doesn’t mean the painting is not good enough or realistic enough to convince viewers to enact. That’s because people believe they don’t have to enact because that is only a picture.

Here I have a personal story. Last Thanksgiving holiday I went to Florida, and there in a private gallery I saw wax figures for the first time. It was a figure of an old housekeeper in black suit. I knew it was not real, however, when I tried to look at him closely, I felt uncomfortable looking into his eyes directly, and I cannot help lower my eyes for several times. Perhaps, it is our instinct or conditioned reflex to enact to people or something looks like a person. For instance, babies tend to smile back to a smiling face in a picture or on TV. However, under the social rule that we don’t have to give reaction to an image, we force ourselves not to enact in front of a picture or a wax figure.

The disjunction is not in the image, but in our mind.

2. I like the theory that the represented participant is “demanding” something from the viewers by looking at them. I was so impressed by the famous advertisement poster of army recruitment that I cannot help pose myself in that way when I found a very American hat. (Taken in that Florida trip)

3. It talks about the social relations suggested by images between the viewer and represented participants. Close shots suggest involvement relation, and long shots contain detached feeling to the represented. However, I know another theory about the effects of close shots and long shots to viewers’ feelings.

In a film editing class in college, the instructor told us that close shots were made to force viewers to focus on one single part of a person or an object. Due to the limited information of the scene, it doesn’t need much time and effort for viewer to finishing reading it. So the movie can move to next scene very soon. This kind of editing is like fast food, quick and easy to understand, and it heavily used in Hollywood commercial films, especially action films. On the other hand, long shots are comparatively slow and hard to understand, and they are more often used in art movies.

4. I was curious when I read “as we know, the Chinese do not use the art of perspective. They do not like to see everything from a single point of view.” (131) According to my knowledge on Chinese classic painting (Chinese modern painting is no much different from western painting.), it is right to some extent.

Chinese artists are not satisfied with what they see in reality. They want to draw something beyond their sights, something from their imagination.

For example, this landscape painting uses the frame size of long shot. However, it is not possible for the producer to have such a big view when standing on the mountain. He may be able to see the passerbys and trees by the path, but the mountians and tree far away are not likely to be visible to him from his point of view.

Another example, the house on the mountain was too clear to be real. It is more obvious that the producer used a lot of imagination, instead of observation.

Conceptual Representations

I think theories introduced in this chapter can be applied regardless of cultural differences, because they are focused on fundamental elements of reading habits, such as classificational process and analytical process. And the pictures produced under those orientations will probably look “boring” which means having little lifelike details.

In the case of classificational process, images often aim to reflect hierarchical relations through spatial or time ordering. It is mainly used among elements which share similar attributes, for instance, they are all folders (Fig 3.1), watches (Fig 3.2) or sources (Fig 3.3). And the whole image is about these specific elements and their relations. As a result, we are likely to see every watch.

Therefore it is not likely to be an effective picture from the scope of classificational process, if it carries too much information. For instance, in the case of watch advertisement, if it shows a man wearing a watch, suit, drinking coffee by window and looking at city scenery outside, readers are not likely to be attracted by the watch from the first sight.

On the other hand, “many analytical visuals have low modality,” because “too much details would distract from their analytical purpose.” (88) Abstract images convey messages with a kind of impersonal detached tone, which is quite similar with the tone of advanced textbooks. That’s why the pictures in high-school textbooks are so boring, white-and-black, simple lines, so that students won’t be distracted by the pretty pictures which may be more attractive than linear algebra.

When it comes commercial, people want it to be attractive and concentrated on the products. So commercials have various colors (usually) but emphasize on one or several items, such as lip and eyelashes.

For those who are familiar with modern commercials, it is rather easy to distinguish what products those two pictures are for. The lip looks outstanding compared to the skin, eyes, nose and hair. With the image of lipstick beside, it is not even possible to misunderstand this commercial.

For this one, there is only one thing left on the face--eyes with exaggerated super-curved eyelashes. Well, that must be a mascara commercial.


Now let's guess what this one is for:


The face is too colorful... Well, it is for everything...
(By clicking on the picture, you will see the answer on the right side.)

Vampires with Marginalized Identity-Reflected in the Avatar Subproject

Vampires emerged as terrifying creatures in folk tales hundreds years ago. For a long period, people believe in the existence of vampires who are the walking undead, “devour human beings” at night. (Oinas, 433) However, in recent years, the image of vampires changed dramatically in modern literature and media. They are endowed with human characteristics. They display “thoughts, feelings, fears, hope, dream and infinite sadness” (Fountain 2000).

On the other hand, “several facets of American cultural identity have contributed to the alterations in the makeup of vampire media that have been witnessed in the last twenty-five years. These elements include: secularization in American culture, American fascination with psychoanalysis and self-help, and American gender and sexual politics” (Fountain 2000). More specifically, they become a metaphor of the socially and sexually marginalized.

In this project, I’m trying to explore how to reflect that metaphor of vampires through an avatar, a digital remix and a film. The avatar here is made to represent the marginalized identity of a vampire, Jeen Alter.

About the Avatar

I define my avatar, Jeen Alter, as a marginalized vampire wanderer who belongs to neither human society nor vampire society. He inherited the elegant nature and human emotions from his mentor, Louis (from Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire), who made him handsome, rebellious, powerful, but solitary and idealistic, haunted by his continuous thinking about the essence of life and death.

Louis, the vampire who created Jeen, was always confused by the meaning of life and the existence of God. He had immortal life but he never enjoyed it. He suffered because he yarned for something he can never get, such as love and hope. They had been taken away from him as the day he became a vampire. After living and suffering for more than one hundred years, he found himself deadly need a companion to make him feel the existence of his life. So Jeen was born.

However, once he made Jeen a vampire, Louis found that he felt even guiltier and cannot afford the suffering from endless life in dark anymore. One morning, he walked to seaside to see the sunrise as the last day before he became a vampire. He ended his life in glorious sunshine and fell asleep forever in flickering flame...

Louis’s death left Jeen a big shock and deep confusion about life. He felt helpless and hopeless living as a vampire. He is no longer accepted by human society, and he does not fit vampires’ society. However, he doesn’t want to evade suffering by suicide as Louis. With the absent of his mentor, he lives independently as a vampire wandering between human world and vampire world. He is the marginalized of the marginalized, the outsider of the outsiders, and the lonely of the lonely. He has no fear because he has nothing to lose. He believes in nothing because he needs no god to shelter him from evil. The only companion he has is the faith in his heart—freedom.

Visual Elements Contained in the Avatar

Name: Jeen Alter

Gender: Male

Age: Above 50

Height: 6 feet 6 inches

Weight: About 110 pounds

I made my avatar so tall and skinny because I am not satisfied with my body and I want to be like that. So I put what I considered as beauty into my avatar.

According to Stevenson’s analysis to the movie Dracula, (Stevenson, 141), whites, red and black are the three theme colors of vampire race. And Jeen Alter is marked as those colors, for example, His waxed teeth and skin, his dyed hair, his necklace and his vest with the drawing of dragon. All of those hint his connection with ancient vampires from whom he got mysterious power.

Armband: Slither– Burgundy on Black

Earring: Slither – White on Sliver

Wristbands: Taoist wristbands

Vest: Dragon – Slither (L) – Leather

Trousers: Mental club night for man

However, on the other hand, his appearance is much different from medieval vampires, since they don’t dye their hair and they don’t wear a vest in this way. His hair style makes him look much like a rebellious young man or a rock singer on his way to a rock & roll concert.

Yes, that is right. I was trying to build a vampire like Lestat from the movie of Queen of the Damned. He broke the fundamental rule of vampires—to staying shadow. He came to the public and become a singer. Although that is not a film of good quality in its narrative, its costume design is really impressive to me. Lestat’s spirit of rebellion and revolution is something this avatar aims to reflect.

On the other hand, graphics of dragon on his vest and the Taoist symbol on his wristbands represent his preference in oriental philosophy and culture. Here I assume that he likes to explore the meaning of life and death in Taoist works.

Most of people saw this avatar reported that he was “feminized,” which has something in common with some criticism to Lestate in Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned. However, Rice responds that “I love you because you are so perfectly what is wrong with all things male. Aggressive, full of hate and recklessness, and endlessly eloquent excuses for violence—you are the essence of masculinity.” (Rice, 336) Similarly, I also attempt to build a vampire of real masculinity because I hold the same belief that “male gender identity was the predominant and successful predatory identity in human society.” And that is the reason why I made my avatar male.

Connections with other subprojects

The subprojects aim to represent the identity of the rebellious vampire. The whole project will tell the story of Jeen Alter from his reborn as a vampire the suicide of Louis, his struggling with his identity as a vampire, to the resettlement of his identity. This avatar serves to build up the raw image of Jeen Alter, which would probably be further improved in other visual products.

My reflection to "the semiotic landscape"

This chapter talks about the relations between two significant elements in human communication--verbal language and visual language. Authors cited the classifications of Barthes as below:

Specifically, the relations of elaboration and illustration are more frequently reflected in “the era of science” (18) than two other relations. Within the relation of “illustration,” “verbal texts formed a source of authority in society,” while “images disseminated the dominant texts in a particular mode to particular groups within society, gradually changed to one in which nature, rather than discourse.”(18)

It explores the relation between verbal and visual language through consideration the competition between two modes of representation” and the invention of alphabetic writing from the perspective of “unconventional history of writing.” (21) Their relation development can be represented as follow:

However, in some cultures, the visual got along with the verbal instead of being taken over, such as “Australian Aboriginal cultures (drawings, sand-paintings and carvings)” as it says in this chapter. (22) However, I’m curious that why the authors didn’t use Chinese language as an illustration of cultures “having both modes of representation,” (23) since Chinese characters do convey textual message in the form of visual representation. I think there might be some differences, if “conventional” historicist took Chinese into consideration when they are distinguishing “illiterate culture” from “literate culture.” (23)