Chapter 6 The meaning of composition

This chapter talked about the spatial arrangement of semiotic units, and the meanings of different arrangements. In most places in the world, people are used to reading from left to right, from top to bottom. Therefore, some reading conventions are generated, practiced and institutionalized.

In the text, it argues that the unit on left is "Given," and the unit on right is "New," the thing on top is "ideal" and the thing at bottom is "real." Here, "Given" means something already existed even before the visual argument is made, so there is hardly anything can be or need to be criticized or changed. In other words, we can only take it as "given." But "New" is something emerged after the “Given,” and it may have some problems the viewers can make comments. In that sense, if God is put on the left of the image, we don't need to doubt the meaning of God, because he is "presented as commonsensical, self-evident." Meanwhile Adam and Eva who are on the right side are "problematic", "contestable”,” the information at issue." (181)

But for the culture in which people read from right to left, the function and meaning of the left-right arrangement are reversed like the website design on page 182.

On the other hand, it argues that things on the top represent the "Ideal," which is "presented as the idealized or generalized essence of the information," and the "Real" on the bottom is supposed to present "more specific information, more down-to-earth information or more practical information." I guess the reason why we have that visual convention has something to do with the way humans live. Specifically, human walks on the earth and cannot get close to the sky. And we have to look up to see the sky where the sunshine and other source of life is from.

Thus, things on the sky seem mysterious to us, and ancient people used to look for answers to things we were not able to understand from the sky. Far before science was developed, astrology, the theory about sky was invented and spread in western world, which could be seen as a proof that people are used to seeking answers from the sky--the top part of their visions. To the contrary, things on the earth which are beside us instead of above us look more real, more down to earth, and more vulnerable to being realized. Accordingly, the instant coffee is more easily to get than the romantic atmosphere above. And that's why the exact product was put on the bottom, because to put in the bottom means the product is easy to approach.

And the sequence of center to margin is a combination of top to down and left to right orders.

Question:

1. Whether the film makers and painters arranged the visual units in films and paintings when creating them? Or maybe they just happened to do it in that way?

2. Whether there are other ways to perceive the arrangement of visual units in the figures in the chapter?