Gillian Rose in her book Visual Methodologies (3rd edition, 2012) suggests a potentially useful framework to analyse images. The model investigates images in terms of three sites: the site of production, the image itself and the site of audiencing. Within each site, it distinguishes between three modalities: technological, compositional and social. To explicate the details of the framework, she relies on a photo taken by Doisneau. For this particular image the framework comes across as compelling but even though Rose makes references to some other types of visuals, in my view the framework presents somewhat of a challenge for the multimodal artefacts under discussion in my study.
Adapting Rose's analytical frameworkImage vs Visual - Let's get the terms right
The first problem might be the terminology itself. To my mind, an image is associated with a static picture, a painting or a photograph, whereas for my s tudy purposes I’d need a b roader term that would encompass dynamic visual sequences like videos or slideshows. I need to investigate if this view can be supported or not.
Sites and modalities - it's a maze!
Additionally and perhaps more importantly I find there is a lot of overlap between the sites and modalities and so attempting to break them down into clearly delineated categories might result in unnecessary replication (in fairness, Rose does point this out herself). I need to find an effective way of using the framework to avoid redundancy and repetition in the analysis – perhaps an approach worth considering would be to identify main themes and discuss them from the crossroads perspectives, i.e. locations where the sites and modalities intersect with each other? An added value of such a take on the analysis would be equal treatment of the analysed points. At the moment at least, I feel I would not be able to flesh out ideas for every site and every modality as some of them, as presented by Rose, are difficult to transfer to and apply in my particular context. Perhaps more reading and background research can provide me with more ideas.
For example, in terms of a compositional modality at the site of the image, in her sample analysis Rose refers mostly to paintings, photographs and film footages. I find it challenging if not impossible at times to apply the various notions of colour, spatial organisation understood as perspective or angles and foci of shots to the analysis of the artefacts in my study. All three multimodal assignments make use of a video; however neither tools to analyse photographs nor film videos in their traditional sense really lend themselves to making sense of animated slideshow sequences (I’m using this convenient shorthand term just for a moment).
Multimodal assignments as games?
Something to note: Rose makes an interesting reference to video games (Nitche, 2008) and points out functionality and structure as elements that could illuminate the compositional interpretation of the game. Functionality is defined as ‘the interactive access and underlying rules determining what the player can do in the game space and what the space can do to adjust that’ (Nitche, 2008: 7). The discovery of those rules that are built into the game by the designer and/or the programmer would contribute to the compositional analysis of the game. The structure, on the other hand, is made up of ‘the events a player causes, triggers, and encounters inside a videogame space’ (ibid). It is a combined effect of how the player approaches the game and the aforementioned rules. I wonder if this analytical slant could not be adapted to fit my purposes. Not sure if that could be used to analyse the animated slideshows or whole assignments or both. Something to explore perhaps?
Rose's frameowork and multimodality
There are some other issues with Rose’s framework that need to be considered. First of all, her focus is on visuals while my artefacts/assignments make use of multiple modes, the visual and textual/verbal being the main ones. What I want to avoid in the analysis is the separation of the modes and investigating them independently of the other meaning contributors. I think I am mostly interested in and concerned with what occurs at the boundaries between the modes, how they interact with each other and in what ways they mutually affect their meanings. If I am to use Rose’s framework I need to account for this interactive elements in a rigorous manner, which means I need another framework to ascertain that. Certain alternative present themselves here, for example Barthes’ ideas of anchorage and relay or more specialist relational grammatical identification, a model proposed by Unsworth and Cleirigh (2011) which was created to address the need to have the synergistic nature of image-language interaction in meaning construction (emphasis mine).
Hybrid tasks, processes, practices ... Conflict!
Then there is also the hybrid nature of the task/process (?) associated with my multimodal assignments. Borrowing idea from Assignment 3, it seems to me there is a crossover here between striated practices and smooth spaces, which influences the analysis of the artefacts, particularly in terms of the social modalities. But even the compositional modality might be affected. How? Well, the highly visual genres associated with home-made video intersect with scholarly genres, creating potential sources of conflict.
The first problem might be the terminology itself. To my mind, an image is associated with a static picture, a painting or a photograph, whereas for my s tudy purposes I’d need a b roader term that would encompass dynamic visual sequences like videos or slideshows. I need to investigate if this view can be supported or not.
Sites and modalities - it's a maze!
Additionally and perhaps more importantly I find there is a lot of overlap between the sites and modalities and so attempting to break them down into clearly delineated categories might result in unnecessary replication (in fairness, Rose does point this out herself). I need to find an effective way of using the framework to avoid redundancy and repetition in the analysis – perhaps an approach worth considering would be to identify main themes and discuss them from the crossroads perspectives, i.e. locations where the sites and modalities intersect with each other? An added value of such a take on the analysis would be equal treatment of the analysed points. At the moment at least, I feel I would not be able to flesh out ideas for every site and every modality as some of them, as presented by Rose, are difficult to transfer to and apply in my particular context. Perhaps more reading and background research can provide me with more ideas.
For example, in terms of a compositional modality at the site of the image, in her sample analysis Rose refers mostly to paintings, photographs and film footages. I find it challenging if not impossible at times to apply the various notions of colour, spatial organisation understood as perspective or angles and foci of shots to the analysis of the artefacts in my study. All three multimodal assignments make use of a video; however neither tools to analyse photographs nor film videos in their traditional sense really lend themselves to making sense of animated slideshow sequences (I’m using this convenient shorthand term just for a moment).
Multimodal assignments as games?
Something to note: Rose makes an interesting reference to video games (Nitche, 2008) and points out functionality and structure as elements that could illuminate the compositional interpretation of the game. Functionality is defined as ‘the interactive access and underlying rules determining what the player can do in the game space and what the space can do to adjust that’ (Nitche, 2008: 7). The discovery of those rules that are built into the game by the designer and/or the programmer would contribute to the compositional analysis of the game. The structure, on the other hand, is made up of ‘the events a player causes, triggers, and encounters inside a videogame space’ (ibid). It is a combined effect of how the player approaches the game and the aforementioned rules. I wonder if this analytical slant could not be adapted to fit my purposes. Not sure if that could be used to analyse the animated slideshows or whole assignments or both. Something to explore perhaps?
Rose's frameowork and multimodality
There are some other issues with Rose’s framework that need to be considered. First of all, her focus is on visuals while my artefacts/assignments make use of multiple modes, the visual and textual/verbal being the main ones. What I want to avoid in the analysis is the separation of the modes and investigating them independently of the other meaning contributors. I think I am mostly interested in and concerned with what occurs at the boundaries between the modes, how they interact with each other and in what ways they mutually affect their meanings. If I am to use Rose’s framework I need to account for this interactive elements in a rigorous manner, which means I need another framework to ascertain that. Certain alternative present themselves here, for example Barthes’ ideas of anchorage and relay or more specialist relational grammatical identification, a model proposed by Unsworth and Cleirigh (2011) which was created to address the need to have the synergistic nature of image-language interaction in meaning construction (emphasis mine).
Hybrid tasks, processes, practices ... Conflict!
Then there is also the hybrid nature of the task/process (?) associated with my multimodal assignments. Borrowing idea from Assignment 3, it seems to me there is a crossover here between striated practices and smooth spaces, which influences the analysis of the artefacts, particularly in terms of the social modalities. But even the compositional modality might be affected. How? Well, the highly visual genres associated with home-made video intersect with scholarly genres, creating potential sources of conflict.