Kress (2006): Gains and losses

Once again, from one of my EDC10 binders of readings. Cited text from the paper indented, followed by my comments in each case.

"The current home page is profoundly different. It is not organized following the logic of the traditional written page but following that of the image-based logic of contemporary pages. Tellingly and more significantly, this page has thirteen distinct entry points where the 1992 page had one." (p9)

and

"It was an entry point given by convention and used by the author. Access to the power of authorship was strictly governed." (p9)

Comment:

"The existence of the different entry points speaks of a sense of insecurity about the visitors, a feeling or fragmentation of the audience - who are no longer just readers but visitors a quite different action being implied in the change of the name." (p9)

Comment:

"This then leaves the task of finding principles that will show the 'affordances', distinct potentials and limitations for representation of the various modes." (p12)

Comment:

"Sequence is used to make meaning; being first has the potential to mean something other than being second or being last." (p12)

and

"Sequence has effects for authorship and for reading." (p13)

Comment:

"Speech and writing tell the world; depiction shows the world. in the one, the order of the world is that given by the author; in the other, the order of the world is yet to be designed (fully and/or definitely) by the viewer." (p16)

Comment:

"The new constellation of image and screen - where screen, the contemporary canvas, is dominated by the logic of image..." (p18)

Comment:

"Where with traditional pages, in the former semiotic landscape, it was the power of the author that rules, here, it is the interest of the reader, derived from the contingencies and needs of their life-worlds." (p18)

Comment:

"The new media make it possible to use the mode that seems most apt for the purposes of representation and communication." (p19) 

and

"I can now choose the mode according to what I know or might imagine is the preferred mode of the audiences I have in mind." (p19)

Comment:

"That certainty is gone; each occasion of representation and communication now becomes one in which the issue of my relation to my audience has to be newly considered and settled on." (p19)