take towards what is being represented. Three semiotic resources have a role in the
realisation of these meanings: distance, contact and attitude. Together these can
realise complex and subtle relations between the elements represented and the viewer.
Through the semiotic resource of ‘distance’ images can bring representations of
people, places and things close to the viewer or make them distant. In everyday
interaction cultural norms of social relationships influence the distance that people
keep from each other. To see people close up, every detail of their face, is to see them
in a way that is usually reserved for people that are intimate with one another. To see
people at a distance is to see them from the position that people would normally see
strangers. The physical distance that one person has from another person has social
meaning and this meaning can be realised in the visual representation of distance.
Different distances signify different degrees of formality and intimacy. I draw on the
semiotic resource of social distance to analyse the interpersonal meaning signified in
the computer applications discussed in this thesis, that is how distance is used to
project a particular social relation between the producer, viewer, and the entities
represented on screen.
Attitude (visual angle) is another visual semiotic resource that contributes to the
positioning of the viewer. The horizontal and vertical angle that an element is
represented from encodes the position of the viewer. In the case of the horizontal
plane, the relation will be one of involvement with, or detachment from, what is
represented. A frontal angle produces maximum involvement. The viewer is directly
confronted with what is represented in the picture. If something is depicted from the
side (from an oblique angle), the viewer is literally and figuratively on the side
(lines). There are many degrees of involved or detached engagement in between. The
vertical angle also contributes to the elements and events displayed, one of ‘semiotic’
power. If the viewer looks down on something, she or he looks at it from a position of
power. If they look up at something, that something has some kind of power over
them. At eye-level there is a relation of equality.
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