We live in a virtual world which is almost dominated by the internet and the world wide web. Film and television are a huge part of our lives Mirzoeff (1999) suggests "this trend seems set to continue." p 9.
These image displays within our everyday life is what visual culture is all about. It comes away from "the structured, formal viewing settings like the cinema and art gallery to the centrality of visual experience in everyday life.
It is accepted that where we view images, whether it be in an art gallery, a cinema or on television will influence our attitudes towards what we are viewing. Mirzoeff (1999) p7.
Mirzoeff talks of the interaction between the viewer and the viewed and calls this the visual event. We interpret these visual events through the use of signs within the images. In semiotic terms the signifier (that which is seen) and the signified ( that which is meant). There is no causal relationship between the two halves of the sign. He states "seeing is not believing but interpreting". Whether we can interpret an image successfully will determine whether it succeeds or fails as an image. p13
"In 1967 the situationist critic Guy Debord named what he called the "society of the spectacle", that is to say, a culture entirely in sway to a spectacular consumer culture "whose function is to make history forgotten within culture"Debord (1977:191). In the society of the spectacle individuals are dazzled by the spectacle into a passive existence within mass consumer culture, aspiring only to acquire yet more products. The rise of an image dominated culture is due to the fact that "the spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image" Debord (1977:32). Obvious in the mc donalds golden arches and the nike swoosh etc. Mirzoeff (1999) p 27
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