Visual Culture and Semiotics

The course analyses the use of various elements used by image-makers and their commissioning agents, and the effects of these elements on the viewer. This course explores how pictures? whether media or fine art photographs, paintings, film stills, postcards or graphics ? are constructed, and how this construction affects how we view and interpret them. The purpose of the course is to provide students with the vocabulary, knowledge and skills necessary to analyze and interpret images within the framework of aesthetics and design, and to be able to understand the effects of these elements in terms of an image?s impact on audiences in the context of the agenda of the image-maker/commissioning agent.