Week 5 Blog: Language, pictures, the social network and the Making of Place.
Pictorial evidence has never been easier to display on a worldwide basis through the use of various social network sites, in particular the ability to share a photo on Facebook, but prior to the technological age paintings, sketches, diagrams and maps provided historical representations of a place.
(Image 1.)
Unfortunately pictures do not tell the whole story and as Tuan (1979.P691) articulated “words supply a temporal dimension to landscape that the visual image alone cannot provide." The addition of ‘thunderstorm’ and ‘Yangtze River’ in the image (image 1) is descriptive whilst providing a geographical location without which it may just be an atypical boat on a river in Asia.
Prior to Facebook and not being an artist, I would have taken the image on a regular camera (image 2) and then after paying for it to be printed, gloss or matt, it would have been confined to an album on a bookshelf gathering dust, however the smart phone application has allowed me to publish the image causing an immediate interaction that could not have happened otherwise.
As mentioned in the lecture by Dr. Arielle Van Luyn a relationship exists between literature, art and the environment and I would suggest that an eloquent person can articulate more through the correct use of one word than the old adage of ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. obviously coined before the invention of the camera.
If a person is capable of eloquence or waxing lyrical it is a clear and powerful message that they have substantial, though never complete, knowledge, understanding and command of the “English” language, without being grandiloquent, for as Tuan (1979. P694) states “we are also under obligation to speak well” for we are uniquely human.
Consequently, in an era that has over 82 million people ‘texting’ has the time passed for expressive, expansive, emotive and passionate words to exist, for names, labels and other identifiers to be replaced with ‘OMG,BTW,BFN,IMHO, LMAO AND FWB’ acronyms.
References;
Tuan,
Y.-F. (1979). Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative – Descriptive Approach.
USA, University of Wisconsin.
Dr.
Arielle Van Luyn, “Lecture/Pod cast 5.” James Cook University, BA1002. Our
Space: Networks, Narratives and the Making of Place. Cairns, Qld. 27 August
2013.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words.html
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words.html
Without using symbols,such as language,as a means of perceiving place one would assume -as you mentioned - that this photo could have been taken anywhere in Asia, say Japan for instance. Thanks to the internet millions of pictorial evidence of places in the world have been uploaded to virtual world. In essence someone who hasn't been out of the country can already have a good idea on what other places around the world would look like. This is because of the relation between language and image to assign meanings to perception of place.
ReplyDelete“words supply a temporal dimension to landscape that the visual image alone cannot provide."
Further more I liked your theory of an 'eloquent person being articulate' though the correct command of a language, a mental image of a place can be painted.
Tuan, Y.-F. (1991).p.691 Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Descriptive Approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81(4), 684-696. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.1991.tb01715.x