Monthly Archives: January 2017

Reaction to The Visual Representation of Time

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Reaction to The Visual Representation of Time

Huaiyu Dong (Joey)

The Visual Representation of Time by Marilyn Mitchell talks about out cognitive visual representation of time, timelines, timescales and different arrangement of timelines.

Mitchell explains that time is represented in language “primarily through the metaphor time is space” (Lakoff & Johnson). I find this point particularly interesting. When people try to describe the past and the present visually to each other, they always draw a line involuntarily. The left usually indicates the very past and the right usually indicates the present. This is probably because we think the time between the past and present as a path. We imagine ourselves walking on it and facing to the future. For instance, in Egyptians’ hieroglyphic writing, all letters based on living creatures are “facing the direction in which the writing begins”. This demonstrates the way people relate time and space in language.

Mitchell also suggests four essential things that must be included in graphic representation of time: “an indicator of now; an indicator of them; some type of visual differentiation between the past and the future and for a future event, something that indicates the degree of certainty of that event. In my first time project, I documented my recent trip to Taiwan. Although I didn’t include “certainty of future events” since I focused on the trip already occurred, I tried to include other essential elements to make it more complete. I used a line getting darker from light green to dark green to indicate that time is going from then to now. I also put a lot of circles and created illustration in them. The illustrations were done through various media, such as acrylic, collage, watercolor and colored pencil; the different media and different contents in these circles differentiate them well.

Generally speaking, The Visual Representation of Time is very helpful, it provides more possibilities (such as using dotted line to shoe uncertain future events) about turning time 2D to me, and let me think about the convention that we always used but always ignored, for example, most cultures represent time from left to the right because of their writing habits.

Response to The Fashion System by Roland Barthes

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The quote from The Fashion System by Roland Barthes starts with two garments in a fashion magazine.The first one is presented in the form of  fashion photography, while the second one is presented in the form of language. Barthes argues that photography and literature both describe things but in very different ways.

From this quote, I found one sentence particularly interesting: “The functions of Fashion description are thus reduced, but also,thereby, original: since it need not render the object itself, the information which language  communicates , unless it ia pleonastic, is by definition the very information which photography or drawing cannot transmit”. I am a visual person and usually think that photos are more powerful than words, but this quote makes me question myself. Although photos give fashion a form that is almost actual(we can see its color, shape, and many other details), there is still a lot of things that cannot be shown. And that’s why words exist  in fashion description. Designers sometime use very unique techniques in fashion. For example, Issey Miyake experiments with a new method of pleating in his flying saucer dress. Description in words can help people to see his efforts under the final dress and to understand better that why it is revolutionary. Words also provides different perspectives to the viewers. People usually only generate a single opinion about a garment based on their personal preferences. Description in words can help them view the works in the eyes of fashion designers or fashion commentators. Designers’ description shows the development of the original ideas to the final garments, and the commentators’ descriptions  demonstrate the garments in a more professional way.  In addition, fashion photography only show the garment in one or few angles, while words can show it in multiple angles and in motion . For instance, the flying saucer dress is described as an accordion, we can then imagine how the dress appear differently when we push and pull it to different extent.

To conclude, words can bring the fashion photos to life and help people view it in a broader and deeper way.