Reading The Image -Part 2

              We then continued to discuss sound as semiotics and spoke of Rolan Barthers and his book “Image,Music,Text”. The result was that we grow up and learn to accept signs for what they mean to make things and life work easy, such as traffic lights, the colour red always warns of something bad or not to do and so on. I learnt that in every image there is a process, signifier, signified and the sign. Take the jacket I mentioned earlier, the signifier was the jacket, the signified was the meanings behind the studs and badges, the sign was that we are culturally mediated. We don’t see ourselves as culturally mediated, but we are influenced by everything, from parents, media, education, society and even religion. Although we don’t realise, education sends us in a certain direction whilst years ago the only reason children were sent to school was to give parents time to work. This whole discussion is hegemony, it can be challenged and shifted however we don’t realise what we are being influenced into thinking and believing.

                                  Furthermore, skeuomorphism is another term we discussed, I learnt that everything is the way it is for a reason and it’s not what we actually think it looks like. Such as apps on a phone, they’re square which gives a business like feel to them.

                           Also we watched a short video of a previous students work, which at first the text was simply about a farmer and his lazy dog however it wasn’t as plain as we thought. The sub-text was that he can’t live without it and this is what rural life is like. Overall I learnt that hegemony and signs in the world all work together and something that is no longer acceptant of the same rules is called a coercive society.