Visual Communication- Metaphors

This theme took place over 2 sessions. The first session we were put into groups of 2-3 and we had to create a collage. The theme was sense of place. Kate and I made a collage representing us individually and our lives. We put images such as make up, money, food etc. We had a section about university and a section, which was about us. It represented the journey of being in university and the responsibilities we had that we may have never had before such as finance, being able to budget our money for food and accommodation. During the next session we presented our collage to the class, we talked about the images representing university, which gave us a sense of freedom and then why different images were significant to us.

We then went on to discuss metaphors as a class, the first task we had was to think of artists that used Metaphors in their lyrics in different songs, It was surprising to see how many do. Some examples that Kate and I came up with were ‘The ice inside your soul’ and  ‘Baby you’re a firework’ we then talked about how metaphors are used to send out a powerful message. Not just in songs but also as images. Susie gave us a number of images to look at, one, which I found particularly powerful, was the image below.  Which is about animal testing.

At the end of this session we watched a video by Martin Luther King which was about his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and looked at the different types of metaphors that he used to emphasis on things that he was saying.

Visual communications

The new module that we have recently had is Visual communication with Suzie Pugh. Suzie specialises in art and in our first session with her we talked about pictures and their meaning. At the start of the session we all sat in a circle and we discussed images that we had seen that has stuck in our minds that day. People said a range of things that they had seen some had captured a image in their mind such as the scenery that they saw when they first woke up and looked out of their windows, other said logos that they had seen.  We then talked about why it was that these particular images/logos stuck in our minds and if they had any relevance to us or had some sort of meaning.

I talked about the fields that I had saw when I looked out of the window this morning, I think it stuck in my head so much because when I caught a bus to University I passed a lot of fields as I do every morning, So in my mind I had captured a still picture of the landscape.

We then looked at some photos that Suzie had on a PowerPoint for the class and tried to discover the meaning behind them.

One of the pieces that we looked at which interested me was ‘The Scream’ by Edward Munch in 1983.

The main focus of the picture is what seems to be a man screaming with his hands on his face this instantly makes the viewer want to look more into the painting to see why he is screaming which entices you to look further. The colours that are used which looks like the sky are all vibrant oranges which looks a lot like a sunset. Underneath blues are used which seem to create some sort of pond. There are no straight lines in the painting, which may suggest how the painter was feeling. There are 2 people in the background which are either walking towards the man that is screaming or away, this may be the reason for the man screaming. I think that the painter is trying to portray ‘fear’ in this painting. It is a very strong painting.