In our lecture on the 10th of October, we had our fourth and final media conference with guest speaker and also a past lecturer of mine Dr. Peter Milne, who talked about all things to do with Visual communication. Firstly, he opened our eyes to the idea of icons, and that images can be iconic. This was explained to us in a way that didn’t use only statistics but also a visual comprehension.
We were shown this picture and asked to raise our hand if we knew who this was:
Of course, 100% of the room knew that this painting was the ‘Mona Lisa’ and therefore this picture is classified as iconic. This comes down to recognition, as when Dr. Milne presented us with an image of a distorted Mona Lisa in a mash up with another painting we were all still able to depict this image as the Mona Lisa, showing how brand recognition is such a valuable tool in all forms of communication.
Another important iconic image is of the Napalm Bombings in the Vietnam War and the ‘girl in the picture’:
The most intriguing element of Dr. Milne’s discussion was the notion of culture jamming, something that I had never heard of before. Described simply by Dr. Milne as ‘Engagement with existing media for the purpose of social critique very often using humour. It is about inverting an existing form of media, turning it on its head, inverting and subverting it.’ Dr. Milne explained how famous artist Banksey was well known for his culture jamming and how he could make a statement through the elements of visual language.
Examples of Banksey’s work are:
and;
All in all, this was a very thought provoking session that I enjoyed and learnt a lot from. Definitely a recommended media conference to attend if you get the chance!
maddymccoy 