Semiotics As a Method of Visual Communication

Moon light Tales by Chike Aniakor 2013

                        SEMIOTICS AS A METHOD OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION
                
Visual communication as explained by Yahooanswers.com, is communication through visual aids and is described as the conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or worked upon. Visual communication in part or whole relies on vision and is primarily presented or expressed with two dimensional images. It includes sign, typography, drawing, painting, sculpture, illustration, design and electronic resources. {yahooanswers.com,2010}

 Trenholin (2012), concludes that every message whether linguistic or non-linguistic, verbal or no-verbal is a system of signs. Humans then are immersed in a world of signs; to be human is to be a creator, decimator and consumer of signs. We use available signs and codes to produce and receive verbal or non-verbal meaningful messages. While language is a powerful model for understanding communication, it has its limits as an explanatory schema because it ignores other forms of communication, example Visual. (Moriarty 1996).
   In communication, whether verbal or no-verbal, ambiguous meanings are constructed from its viewers, listeners and observers as Lester  has put forward the problem with admitting that there is a visible language , not that there are no words , pictorial elements in still or motion picture photography but there is no universally acceptable language of visual description. As we live in a world dominated by electronics media, producers, filmmakers graphic artists, image makers all use images and signs to affect our meaning making process. (Lester,1995)
        Art as a means of pleasure is considered as one of the major means of intercourse between man and man. Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who is producing the art. Also, with all those who simultaneously, previously or subsequently receive the same artistic impression (Maude, 1990).
         Art acts in a similar way as speech by transmitting mans thoughts and experiences. This creates a union, whereas by words a man transmits his feelings through art. It is upon this capacity of man to receive another man’s expression of feelings and experience those feelings himself that the activity of art is based on.
         Art and language are very parallel in relationship. Artist began using structural linguistic as a means to access the underlying methods and rules of art. Frank Ugiomoh (2014) notes that structuralism analyzes culture according to the principle derived from linguist such as Ferdinande de Saussure termed Semiotics. Semiotics is a study of signs and symbols as elements of human communicative behavior and signification. Semiotics is a constant of art theory that studies the in-depth meanings of art works.
     Semiotics translates a picture from image to words, thereby making visual language an expression of deep emotional and ambiguous thoughts. According to Saussure (1909), the heart of semiotics is the realization that the whole human experience is an interpretative structure sustained by signs. A Sign is referred to as something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. A sign can be verbal, visual, gestural and musical. (Buchler p.99).
       Nevertheless, visual art consumers have become highly sophisticated readers of signs and signals, decoding subconsciously art compositions. Every art work has a conceptual meaning that hides beyond its visual appearance. Ugiomoh further notes that the moment an art piece leaves the corridors of the studio for public view, it becomes open for multiple analysis, interpretation and meanings. (Ugiomoh, 2014) 
      Semiotics as a method of visual communication opens one up to the extraction of diverse meaning without divorcing the main intended meaning. Deely (1990), explains that the whole of human experience, without exception is an interpretive structure mediated and sustained by signs.
     Ron Scollon and Suzie Wong Scollon(2012) note that Visual semiotics has to do with turning from the spoken face to face discourses to the representations of that interaction order in images and signs. When it comes to images, Scollon and Wong realizes there are multiple relationships. This includes the relationship between the components of a visual image, the relationships between the producer of the visual image, the relationships between the producers and the components of an image and those who are viewing it.
     Semiotics as a method of Visual Communication in art is a also divided into four interaction order as stated in wikepedia.com. This order are Represented participants, modality, composition and interactive participants. Represented participants are nuggets of visual image. Scollon and wong (86) explains that represented participants are either narrative (present unfolding actions and events or process of changes) or conceptual (show abstract, comparative and generalized categories). Modality is how true to reality a visual image is. And main indicators include colour saturation, colour differentiation, depth among others.
     Scollon and Wong (86) further explains that with modality truth, veracity or sincerity might be expressed in very different ways from one society to another. Meanwhile, interactive participants explain the various relationships that occur around a visual image and the represented participants in that image. Composition is simply the way in which represented participants within a visual image are arranged in relation to each other.
      Conclusively, semiotics as a method of Visual communication proves that an art work can be analyzed in respect to the meaning constructed by its numerous viewers. This also creates a state of ambiguity because of the interpretation of a visual image based on perception, cognition, knowledge, experience and ideology from different people in the society but relatively drawn from the symbols, index and icons represented visually.




REFERENCES
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