Chapter Two

Chapter 2 – Viewers Make Meaning

Meaning in an image is produced by:
1: the codes and conventions that structure the image and that cannot be separated from the content of the image.
2: the viewers and how they interpret or experience the image
3: the contexts in which an image is exhibited and viewed

Dominant meanings of the images we see are not necessarily the most important one we experience. A producer can mean different things: from an individual, to a company or brand.

Today, we consider concepts like “beauty” to be socially constructed. Rather than having a universal idea of beauty, we believe that the definition of beauty changes between cultures and viewpoints. “Taste” has becoming something that many believe one can learn through contact with culture. However, tastes can also be “kitschy” and fall in and out of mainstream trends. In the twentieth century, the distinction between fine art and pop culture was blurred significantly.

The acts of creating and viewing images contain the processes of encoding and decoding—the process in encoded with meaning by its creator and then decoded by its viewer.

Reception theory looks at how people view, interpret, and make meaning through their interaction with cultural products.

The concept of “bricolage” discusses how things can be put to uses for which they were not originally intended and in ways that remove them from their original context—such as in the use of safety pins as body decoration by punk youth in the 1970s.

Cultural meaning changes daily in ways that we can clearly observe. Even thinking of cultural trends three and five years ago, they are as different as the trends 10 and 15 years ago. It’s interesting—but impossible—to speculate what the trends and cultural norms will look like three and first years from now.

Talking Point Number 1: What is the significance in distinguishing between the viewer and the audience when talking about the meaning of an image?

Talking Point Number 2: Are texts created when the author writes them or when they are read by an individual “viewer”? In other words, is the idea of the author as the primary producer of a literary text a myth?

Talking Point Number 3: How has the internet affected collecting and displaying art?

Taking Point Number 4: How have the lines between subculture fashion and mainstream fashion become blurred?