Television

Mainstream research on children and television has tended to define children as more or less 'incompetent' viewers. What children do with television is typically compared with adult norms, and thereby found wanting. Children, it is argues, are unselective, uncritical and unsophisticated viewer. They lack many of the 'skills' which are required to make sense of television and to use it in a responsible and sensible way. Thus, it is argued that children are incapable of distinguishing between television fantasy and reality; that they are unable to identify the essential elements of a narrative or the motivations of characters; that they do not understand the persuasive functions of advertising; and that they are ignorant about how television is produced.

On analysing cartoons, it is usually the verbal code which carried the necessary clues for children to 'understand' the plot as a whole. Children have been observed to pay greatest attention to television when other children are talking.

Infants observing the adults around them interpret other codes before the verbal code. They notice pitch differences very early. They can recognise their mother's pitch from that of another female by about 3 weeks old. By a month they can distinguish between different sounds such as 'p' and 'b'. That is, they develop the paradigmatic structures that are the basis of the full phonological system or the basic alphabet of sounds of their language. But they do not begin to crack the phonological code as a system till much later; about 12 months old.

The modality(or perceived reality) of the text is thus the product of a series of judgements made by the reader. This process can be seen to have two dimensions. On the one hand, it depends upon our recognition of formal or stylistic properties that are internal to the text. For example, most cartoons employ graphic conventions- forms of simplification and exaggeration- that are clearly at a greater remove from 'reality' than the rather different photographic conventions of live action filming.

However natural they may appear, these conventions are of course subject to historical and cultural variations; and they are learnt rather than innate. 'Realism' is, in this sense, a relative term; texts are defined as 'realistic' in terms of their relationships with other texts that have been perceived as such in the past. On the other hand, our judgements also depend upon criteria that are external to the text- that is, upon our own experience of, or beliefs about, the real world. Such experiences and beliefs are of course not without their inconsistencies and contradictions; although, broadly speaking, it should be harder to make reliable judgements where the reality that is depicted is remote from our own experience. Yet the potential for diversity here is clearly enormous, perhaps particularly for children, whose understanding of the conventions of the medium and of the world in general is still rapidly changing.

Television

Mainstream research on children and television has tended to define children as more or less 'incompetent' viewers. What children do with television is typically compared with adult norms, and thereby found wanting. Children, it is argues, are unselective, uncritical and unsophiscated viewer. They lack many of the 'skills' which are required to make sense of television and to use it in a responsible and sensible way. Thus, it is argued that hcildren are incapable of distinguishing between television fantasy and reality; that they are unable to identify the essential elements of a narractive or the motications of characters; theat they do not understand the persuasive funcations of advertising; and that they are ignorant about how television is produced.

Anatomy of Visual Message

The process of creating a visual message can be described as a series of steps from a number of rough sketches probing for solutions to increasingly refined versions toward a final choice and decision. The key to perception lies in the fact that the whole creative process seems to reverse for the receiver of visual messages. First, he sees the visual facts, either information drawn from the environment which can be recognised, or symbols which can be defined.

On the second level of perception, the subject sees the compositional content, the basic elements, the techniques. It is an unconscious process, but through it is the cumulative experience of information input. If the original compositional intentions of the visual message-maker are successful that is, have been brought to a sound solution, the result is coherent and clear, a working whole. If the solutions are extremely successful, the relationship between content and form can be described as elegant.

With bad strategic decisions, the final visual effect is ambiguous. Aesthetic judgements involving words like "beauty" need not be involved at this level of interpretation, but rather left to a more subjective point of view. The interaction between purpose and composition, between syntactical structure and visual substance, must be mutually strengthening to be visually effective. Together, they represent the most important force in all visual communication, the anatomy of a visual message.

Simplicity of shape, in fact, simplicity, is a prime visual technique of the style. Flatness of rendition is also a frequently noticeable technique in primitive visual work, as are primary colours. The sum total of all these techniques is a kind of childlike quality in the primitive style, which has some importance to the synthesis of this style.

We judge the work of children and primitives as crude, but before we accept this judgement, we should reevaluate the work on the basis of its purpose. Appropriateness has great effect on any visual work, and the intensity and purity of this style should be given its due.

Abstraction

Abstraction, however, need have no relationship to actual symbol-making when symbols have meaning only because it is pinned on them. The reduction of all we see to the basic visual elements is also a process of abstraction which, in fact, has far more significance to the understanding and structuring of visual messages. The more representational the visual information, the more specific its reference; the more abstract, the more general and all-encompassing it is.

Abstraction, visually, is simplification toward a more intense and distilled meaning. Human perception strips away surface detail in response to the need to establish balance and other visual rationalisations. But the importance to meaning does not end there. Abstraction can exist in visual matters not only in the purity of a visual statement stripped down to minimal representational information but also as pure abstraction, which draws no connection with familiar visual date, environmental or experiential.

Abstraction is the primary tool in the development of a visual plan. It is most useful in the process of uncommitted exploration of a problem and development of visible options and solutions. The nature of abstraction releases the visualizer from the demands of representing the finished final solution, and so allows the underlying structural forces of the compositional questions to surface, the pure visual elements to appear, and the techniques to be applied with direct experimentation.

It is a dynamic process filled with starts and false starts but free and easy by nature.

Symbolism

Abstraction toward symbolism required ultimate simplicity, the reduction of visual detail to the irreducible minimum. A symbol, in order to be effective, must not only be seen and recognised but also remembered and even reproduced. It cannot by definition, have a great deal of detailed information. The more abstract the symbol, the more penetration of the public mind is necessary for the education to its meaning.

Not only in language does the symbol exist as an information-packed means of visual communication, universal in meaning. It is used broadly. The symbol must be simple and refer to a group, an idea, a business, an institution, or a political party. Sometimes it is abstracted from nature. It is even more effective for the transmission of information if it is a totally abstract figure. In this form it becomes a code that serves as an adjunct to written language. The code system of numbers provides examples of figures which are also abstract concepts.

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The symbol is anything from a simplified picture to a highly complex system of attached meaning like language or numbers. In all its formulations it can reinforce message and meaning in visual communication many ways. In print, it is a large and important component of the total character of the book, a magazine, or a poster, and must be dealt with in the forming of a design as abstract visual data, despite the fact that it is information with its own integrity and form. For the designer it is an interactive force which must be dealt with in terms of meaning and visual appearance.

Representation

Reality is the basic and dominating visual experience. For example the total general category of the bird is defined in elemental visual terms. A bird can be identified through a general shape, linear and detailed characteristics. All birds have some connecting , shared visual referents within the broader category.

All visual information of a particular object can easily be obtained through various levels of the direct experience of seeing. We all are the original camera; we call can store and recall for use this visual information with high visual effectiveness. The difference between the camera and the human brain lie in the question of faithfulness of observation and ability to reproduce the visual information. It is clear that the artist and the camera hold some special expertise in both areas.

Beyond a realistic three-dimensional model, the closest thing to actually seeing a bird in direct experience would be a carefully exposed and focused photography in full and natural colour. The photograph matches the facility of the eye and brain, replicating the real bird in the real environment. We call the effect realistic. It should be noted, however, that in direct experience, or on any level of the scale of visual expression from photograph to impressionistic sketch, all visual experience is intensely subject to individual interpretation.

From the "I see a bird" response to "I see flight," and to the multiple levels and degrees of meaning and intention between and beyond, the message is always open to subjective modification. The development of visual material should no more be dominated by inspiration and threatened by method than the converse. Making a film, designing a book, painting a painting, are all complicated ventures that must utilise both inspiration as well as method. Rules do not threaten creative thinking in mathematics; grammar and spelling for not impede creative writing. Coherence is not unaesthetic, and a well-expressed visual idea should have the same beauty and elegance as a mathematical theorem or a well-known sonnet.

Texture

Texture is the visual element that frequently serves as a stand-in for the qualities of another sense, touching. But, in fact, we can appreciate and recognise texture either by touch or sight individually, or by a combination of both. It is possible for a texture to have no tactile quality, only optical, like the lines of type on a printed page, or polka dots on material, or crosshatched lines in a doodle. Where there is actual texture, the tactile and optical qualities coexist, not like tone and colour which are unified in their comparable and even value, but separately and uniquely, affording individual sensation to the eye and the hand, even though we project onto both strong associative meaning. What sandpaper looks like and what sandpaper feels like have the same intellectual meaning, but not the same value. They are singular experiences which may or may not suggest each other under certain circumstances. The judgement of the eye is usually checked on by the hand by actual touching. Is it really smooth or does it just look that way? Is that an indentation or a raised mark?

Texture has reference to the composition of a substance through minute variations on the surface of the material. Texture should serve as a sensitive and enriching experience. At the 1967 Montreal Expo, the 5+ Comingo Pavilion was designed for visitors to explore the quality of their five senses. It was a popular and enjoyable exhibit. People sniffed away at a series of funnels offering a variety of odours, even though they suspected, and justifiably, that some would be unpleasant. They listening, they looked, tasted, but they stood hesitant and inhibited in front of the yawning holes designed to be reached into blindly. What did they fear? It appears that the natural, free, "hands on" investigation approach of the baby or young child has been conditioned out of the adult. Whatever the reason, the result starves one of our richest senses.

But in this increasingly simulated and plastic world, the problem arises infrequently. Most of our textural experience is optical, not tactile. Not only is texture faked rather convincingly in plastics and printed material and faked fur, but, also, much of what we see that is painted, photographed, and filmed convincingly presents texture that is not there. If we touch a photograph of silky velvet, we do not have the convincing tactile experience the visual clues promise. Meaning is based on what we see. This fakery is an important factor in survival in nature; animals, birds, reptiles, insects, fish, take on the coloration and texture of their surroundings as a protection against predators. Man copies this camouflage method in war in response to the same needs for survival that inspired it in nature.