Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication

Cuts across perceptual psychology, art, television, film, literature, advertising, and political communication to give the reader critical insight into the holistic logic and emotional power of the images that dominate our lives.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction I. Perceiving Images 1. Perception and Visual "Common Sense" Evolution, Emotion, and Subliminal Perception * Fallacies of Rationality * Perceptual Illusion * Remnants of Former Perceptual "Truths" * Neurology of Perception * Holistic versus Analytical Perceptual Views * Gestalt Roots * From Phi to AM * Event Perception, Media, and Logic * Perceptual Principles and Artistic Manipulation * Multisensory Surrounds and Virtual * Reality * Brain Wiring * Conclusion 2. The Nature and Power of Images Defining the Image * Primal Invariance: Cave Art to Comics * Image Affordance * Inner Necessity * Mental Imagery * Metaphors of Mind * Eiconics * Conclusion II. Mediated Images 3.The Language of Images Language * Comics and Hieroglyphics * Proxemics * Deep Structure * Semiotics * Literary Imagery: Breaking through Words * Color * Light, Grain, Angle and Size * Conclusion Close Up: Manipulating Public Images in the Age of Digitalization: J.F.K. Marries Marilyn; O.J. Metamorphoses from Black to White 4.Video's Moving Images Video Experience and the Nature of the Image * Low and High Definition * The O.J. Phenomenon * Sensation, Information, and Dreams * Manipulating TV Images Close Up: Manipulating Public Image through Television Image: "Teddy" 5.Film Logic and Rhetoric Perception and the Development of Montage * Film Origins * Editing and Perceptual Process * Kuleshov Workshop * Pudovkin: Linkage Montage * Eisenstein: Dialectical Montage * From Long Take to CG * Sound and Mental Imagery * Hollywood Style and Linear Narrative * Color Comes to Black and White * 2-D to 3-D * SFX * The Third Phase * Conclusion Close Up: Tailhook "Top Guns": Living Up to the Image III. Controversial Images 6. Advertising Images: Seduction, Shock, and the Unwary Ads as Gestalts * Tension and Closure * The Big Idea * Embeds and Subliminal Advertising * Advertising and Color * The Sex-Sell: Women's Bodies and Normative Images * The Sex-Sell: Men and Their Machines * Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man: Images That Kill * Conclusion 7. Political Images: Public Relations, Advertising, and Propaganda Hill and Knowlton's PR War Effort * Political Advertising and Public Image * Images of Hitler * Image and Group Psychology * Conclusion 8. Media Images and Violence Physical Causes of Violence * Desensitivity * Attitudinal Studies and Image: Mean World Consequences * How Violent Is TV? * Imitative Violence * Long Term Studies * The New Violence * The Public Trust * Video Games * Conclusion Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Ann Marie Seward Barry is Associate Professor of Communication at Boston College. She is the author of The Advertising Portfolio.

Review :
"We have always been interested in 'what images mean,' but in the current era of expanding visual technologies, the question is critical. Visual intelligence is recognized as an aspect of intelligence that is crucial to understanding our world. The role of visual intelligence must be considered in the educational process. The increasing role of visual images in our society necessitates increasing skills in the reading and understanding of those images. This book hits on a central quandary of contemporary society, the power of visual media and the use and control of that power." - Mary Stieglitz, Boise State University