Semester 2, Assignment 2 : What images mean.

Another group assignment :) But this time my group was a lot bigger and it consisted of  Interior and Environmental, Textile and Graphic Design students.. We were meant to group up with students from other disciplines to carry out an experiment and had to discuss the results with them so I don't think the number of us doing it really mattered...

2A: Before we started the experiment we all had to read an essay by Roland Barthes called: The Rhetoric of the image and understand the meaning of polysemy! After reading this essay I had a good idea of what Barthes was talking about as he used an advertisement as an example of how an image can send out different meanings. An image on itself can mean something different for everybody but if we add specific symbols or text to it we can drive everybody into the same direction and ''make'' them get the same or similar meaning out of it.

2B: The next step was to pick three random images. So once we all had read the essay and were ready, we got together to discuss what exactly we had to do and used the Randomizer on http://www.sxc.hu/ to get the images we were gonna use for the first part of the experiment. After we all decided on which images we were going to use, we started the experiment by asking people to say something about each photo, then putting them in whichever order they wanted and making up a story.

The 3 images we used:

  
2C: People were very happy to help us and we got a bit carried away with how many we were asking to participate that we ended up having a lot more material than we needed. The majority of the subjects were female, you will see the range of different answers we got below! 

Female (20’s) Student and Part time shop work

Don’t like the coffee picture as much as the other two.

In a cafe, a having coffee, table has a vase with a single rose in it. Man is playing a guitar in the corner, like in friends.

Female (50’s) Office worker

Coffee - Nice warm cup of coffee waiting on you - have a break.

Rose - Sunny day, summer heat, picking up a rose.

Guitar - Wonder why the guitars at that angle, beetles.

Someone husband taking them out for coffee for Valentines day and serenading them with a guitar then giving them a rose.

Female (20) Nursing student

A wee man gets up and has a coffee and then plays guitar then trims his rose bush

Female (31) Home-help assistant

Seem unrelated - no obvious story

Musician had a cup of coffee then walked home and saw a rose

Female (52) Administrator

Everyday objects, things taken for granted, taken in an unusual way to make you think about it differently.

Nice Day, gardening, cuts rose, brings rose indoors, plays music and has a cup of tea.

Female (40’s) Housekeeper

Rose - A person looking/admiring a rose - not growing it.

Coffee - Someone preparing a hot chocolate

Guitar - Wants to play the guitar/repair it.

Male (20’s) Housing company

Rose - Small red rose

Coffee - I need a coffee right now

Guitar - Learning to play the guitar would be a dream come true.

Female (18) Student

Rose - First day after the snow has cleared and it’s the most noticeable thing in the garden.

Coffee - A quiet individual owned a coffee shop looking out onto a busy road, bustling rush hour traffic.

Guitar - They have rediscovered their love for music after putting it off for years.

Female (19) Student

A nice warm sunny day when someone is playing a song with friends, relaxed atmosphere. Very vibrant, pretty image of someone taking a walk and spotting a pretty flower.

Female (50’s) Computing

Out gardening, looking at pretty roses so gets partner to take out for a coffee and their was a guitar playing.

Male (50’s) Planner

Out for a cappuccino with partner, surprised to be serenaded by a man with a guitar. Handed a red rose over as a token of affection.

Male (19) English Student

Stays up at night playing guitar, has coffee to stay up. Falls asleep and in love, has an American Beauty type dream.

Male (15) School pupil

Valentines, takes someone out to get to know them, for a coffee, write a song for them and give a rose.

Female (49) Office Worker 

Rose - I picked this red rose especially for my loved one. 

Coffee - My favorite drink of the day is a latte.

Guitar - I can play the guitar.

 I am a famous guitarist and am famous for my top hit song  "red roses".  It doesn't matter where I am I have to have a latte first thing in the morning.

Female (44) Aroma Therapist

Rose - Man needs to go and get his girl

Coffee - Woman is waiting for dumb-ass to find her!

Guitar - Sweet song to remind them to remember that they love each other!

A couple have split up and neither knows why.  They both know that they want to and should be together.  Neither knows how to tell the other.   She is sitting in a cafe, wishing that there were two cups and he was sitting opposite her, his sapphire blue eyes sparkling with happiness.  She has no idea where he is.  He at that same moment is walking down the road that the cafe is in, holding a single red rose and wishing he could give it to her, see her face light up and then he would know that they were ok again, no words needed, simply a look that said everything.  Music starts to play and she looks up to see a guitarist on the small stage, she hadn't seen the stage before, too busy wallowing!  The song reminds her of those wonderful blue eyes and she closes her eyes and says I wish I could see him now.The door opens, but she does not turn round, she knows he is there, he holds his breath, can't believe that she is really there.  He walks up to her and she stands, suddenly wishing she had worn something else, too late now!  He touches her shoulder and they both catch their breath.  When they face each other he tells her she looks beautiful.  Thank you she whispers, he replies You are beautiful.

Male 24 (Cricket Player)

Rose: People being together, St. Valentines day

Coffee: Start of a day

Guitar: Music, Oasis, Buskers in the Underground singing to the people walking passed.

It was a summer camp to America where I met my fellow band member and the woman of my dreams. I played the guitar for hours and hours. Made new friends who are on the band today. Long nights of practice plenty cups of coffee trying to be like our boyhood star’s. We got our first record label. At first major gig we had hundreds of people whistling and  throwing roses at us, we even found a rose with a number attached to it.

Female (20) Speech Therapy Student

Rose: Romantic atmosphere

Coffee: All is under control (time to have coffee)

Guitar: Songs with friends (rhythm, music)

Waking up in the morning beside a friend or boyfriend, having coffee and chilling all day while listening to music. Later on going for a stroll in the country side and picking flowers. 

Female (24) Student

Sitting in a cafe having a coffee and a busker comes along playing the guitar and trying to sell her a rose.

Female (20) Student

A guy gives a girl a rose but she doesn’t know who it’s from. She’s in a cafe and he plays the guitar o her and she realizes it’s him who gave her the rose. Then they have a coffee together.

This is when we actually understood in depth how an image can mean something different for every single person because they might associate the picture with a memory they have or with a person they know or a feeling they felt when they last came across a guitar, a rose and a latte. We kind of knew what the results would be for the first part and didn't expect people to think of the same thing, although we did have some similar stories. After reading through all the stories we realized that a lot of people thought of romantic things by looking at the pictures, so in order to carry on and do the rest of the experiment we had to come up with a story which we would manipulate people to come up with the same or something similar. 

2D: The story we wanted our subjects to come up with was : -A couple in love on Valentines day going for a coffee date where the man serenades the woman and gives her a rose.- In order to drive people in that direction we added two hand drawn pictures, first a red heart and then a stick man and woman.

    

 

 

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We then went to find more subjects and get results and more stories. We limited the number of people we asked to help us down to about seven as Braque said it is enough to get a good result.

Results 3 images + heart :

Male (19) Accountancy Student

Valentines day, guy takes girl for a coffee, gives her a rose and plays her a song.

Female (31) Nursing Student

Couple sitting having a coffee, romantic scene, someone playing a guitar, valentines day.

Male (18) Business Student

Valentines day, picnic outside, boy gives the girl a rose and musics playing.

Female (17) Nursing Student

People, no a couple out having coffee, in love, guy has bought her flowers and musics playing in the background.

Female (17) Nursing Student

Musicians having a coffee in the morning, thinking about writing a love song

Female (19) English Student

Romance - girl has a flower, falls in love with a guy playing a guitar

Male (19) Zoology Student

I love coffee and it makes me play my guitar and write love songs about love and coffee and stuff

The result didn't turn out as we hoped it would because people weren't thinking of two people in love on a coffee date so that's when the stick man and woman came in the scene. 

Results 3 images + heart + stick man and woman:

Male (27) Unemployed

Boy meets girl impresses her with his guitar playing skills and buys her a rose and a coffee.

Female (50’s) Service Industry

Love, Romance - two people fall in love over a coffee, music playing in the background, rose is given as a gift.

Male (23) Geography

Playing a guitar, sang a song for his girlfriend who he loved, took her for a coffee and gave her a rose.

Female (20’s) History

It’s Valentines day and a girl called Suzie meets a boy called Jack in a coffee shop, they stay there all day and in the evening a man with a guitar comes round and serenades Suzie and Jack buys a rose from him for her.

Female (19) English Literature

Children out picking flowers listening to some music whilst dreaming of being grown up.

Female (30’s) Business Student

It’s Valentines day and a couple are in love and having a morning coffee, he’s bought her a rose and ordered for a man to serenade her at their table with a special song.

Male (18) Accountancy Student

Boy and girl, together, in love, pick a flower then go and have a coffee, musics playing in background.

Again as you can see we didn't get the result we wanted to get but a lot of people mentioned a couple on a date. You always get the odd one though :

Female (19) English Literature

Children out picking flowers listening to some music whilst dreaming of being grown up.

(We figured out that it's probably because children usually draw stick men so we don't blame her.) Maybe a more realistic image of a couple would have led to the result we wished for. But the experiment wasn't over anyways, we had one more task to go... 

2E: The next part was to add text, so in order to make people think of Valentines day and romanticism we added LOVE + 14th to our images!

        
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Result 3 images + LOVE + 14th: 

Male (20’s) History Student

Two people on Valentines day go to a cafe for a date, one of them buys a rose for the other one and musics playing in the background.

Female (50’s) Service Industry

Girl and boy meet in a coffee bar on Valentines day, arrange to meet afterwards where the boy serenades her and gives her a red rose.

Female (20’s) Primary Teaching

Valentines day, couple having a coffee in a restaurant where there’s music playing, he gives her a rose.

Female (20’s) Tunnel Planning

Quite a soppy story - boy meets girl in a coffee shop, plays her a love song on Valentines day, gives her a rose.

Male (20’s) English and Film Student

Valentines day, two people on a date, got someone to sing for them and go for a hot chocolate.

Male (20’s) Engineering Student

Couple in a cafe on Valentines day, music in background, he gets her a rose.

Female (20’s) History Student

Boy and girl meet, go for a coffee, he gives her a rose for valentines day and they fall in love.

Finally!!! Everybody mentioned that it was Valentines day and that the couple were on a coffee date. :) ooooh ooooook so not everybody got that the man serenades the woman bit but the result was quite close in fact very close and I think that if we looked in to it a bit further we could have made everybody think what we wanted them to think!! So that's basically what Barthes says in his essay, an image has many meanings but if we take one meaning and add more details to it and some text, we can make the image have just one meaning (sign).

Taste!

Good taste and bad taste isn't something you are born with, you develop your taste as you go along and you are influenced by people around you, like your parents, friends, teachers, even by strangers you see.
As a young girl my dress sense was mostly influenced by my friends at school, I went through a phase where I only wore tracksuits and trainers (tomboy)  and I'm pretty sure I did it to fit in with my basketball team. Then I started dressing prettier, very much like my mothers style, I even remember her telling me to stop copying her and to get my own style!! Now, at uni I feel like I've developed my own style but a lot of times notice that certain friends influence my dress sense when I have nights out. This is going to go on all my life and my taste will keep changing, but there are some things that wont be influenced by others, you have to after all put your personality in a few things otherwise you will constantly be copying others.
In general, not only by the way I dress but by everything in my life, I think I've got good taste, but somebody that is totally different to me will say that my taste is awful.. Not everything will please everybody because each person has their own opinion.   

The idea that taste has a sociology seems strange but after reading what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu says about taste, it all makes sense to me. Tastes are connected to major social divisions like class,gender and between the highly and poorly educated. That doesn't mean that all upper class people have similar taste though.
My personal opinion is that peoples tastes can't really be affected by class.
Take music for an example, it is written for everybody to listen to. Surely, none of the great classical composers ever addressed themselves consciously and exclusively  to a ''musically trained public.'' People of lower class think they don't like classical music because of the ideology they have formed in their heads that it is only for upper class educated people, therefore they do not listen to it. I agree that people of different social backgrounds may have different tastes but I also believe that they have a lot of common taste.

Semester 2, Assignment 1 : Are you what you wear /Buy /Sit on /Sleep in /Talk to?

 Over the Christmas Holidays we were to read '' Snoop : What your stuff says about you'' by Sam Gosling in order to have an idea of how to snoop and do complete assignment 1 of the second semester. This book is about what the way you organize your personal belongings, office, bookshelf etc. reveals about you. Gosling talks about how people display things they want other people to notice in a visible and outstanding way or perhaps change their personality by organizing their personal spaces differently. He believes that some elements of our daily lives can say more about our character than our most intimate conversations.



For assignment 1 we were paired up by our lecturer with somebody we had never met before and had to exchange photographs of us growing up and doing activities or of our house, rooms etc. Once we received each others photos  we started snooping and finding/ assuming things about the other persons life. My snooping partner was Andrew Leitch from Graphics Design. Andrew sent me some photos of himself while i sent him photos of my room. I didn't trust my mother in choosing photographs of me growing up for this assingment as all my old photos are back home in Kos.

1 of Andrews photos!

After analysing the pictures, we arranged to meet up and discuss what we discovered about each other and note what we got wrong and what we got right. We never met for our first ''date'' and I thought I got stood up, but it turned out he didn't receive my last e-mail about where exactly to meet and we missed each other in the library. We arranged a second date later on the same day though and finally went through our notes.

I was a little reluctant about reading my notes out because I thought I would be wrong about a lot of things, but surprisingly enough I didn't do too bad. Judging from his photographs I could actually imagine what kind of person he could be. Most of the photos were of him on holiday and doing activities, so I assumed he must be open to learning about different cultures and having new experiences. It looked like he were a nature person and enjoyed outdoor activities with his family, as one of his pictures is of him on a fishing boat, possibly with his father or another member of family. In one of Andrews photos, he is wearing huge traditional Swedish shoes which tells me that he has been to Sweden. The photo is funny but you can tell he used to be (possibly still is) a shy person by the way he has his arms hidden behind his back. There is a picture of him in a big store in Sweden and although the shop looks cluttered with a lot of different products, games and clothes, he is looking at leather belts. I thought that revealed that he was sensible from a young age and acted mature. he has also got a brother but I couldn't work out which one of them was Andrew cause they are so identical but I guessed he was the oldest of the two. His taste in clothes is casual and sporty so that gives me another reason to believe he is an active person. I also noted that his favorite color  might be red because he is wearing red in three different photos. Overall I thought he is a n adventurous, cultured, easy going/ kind person ( kind face), family orientated, sensible and funny person. Andrew pretty much agreed with all my findings apart from the fact that his favorite color is red (that might have changed over the years) and he never really thought of himself as being shy.

1 of the photos I sent him!

His turn to tell me about myself came and I was curious to see what my room in Dundee says about me. Andrew noticed my Rosary beads and a couple of cards I've got on my wall by my desk and came to the conclusion that I am religious, more specifically Catholic and that I seek guidance which is true. Judging by my books he said that I am dedicated to the subject I am studying , he also spotted one of my Greek books and made out that English isn't my first language. he was right about that too, English isn't my first language, i was brought up with three, firstly Greek then English and Turkish. He thought I have photos of my family on my wall to remind me of them cause they are so far away and that I enjoy dressing up, partying and having fun. Also, he said I'm open to new experiences and I love traveling. The only things he got wrong was that I've got a younger sister cause he saw drawings from a young person on my wall, he wasn't too wrong really cause they are from my little cousin. Another thing he wasn't right about was that I've been to Australia. Unfortunately, I haven't been yet but I really want to visit my uncle. He thought that I had been cause he saw an instrument by my desk that looks like it's got Aboriginal Art on it, but I actually bought it on a market stool in Dundee last Spring.

In order to be able to do this assignment and see what facts Andrew said about me I knew of or didn't know of I used the Johari window. It has four boxes in which you have to fill each one with appropriate words  that best describe your personality.




Snooping was fun to do and I definitely notice other peoples stuff and try and figure out their personality after reading that book. I was really interested in finding out what other peoples impression of me is by not even meeting me. So that is the end of assignment 1, bring on assignment 2. :)