Clive: I travelled from work down the motorway late at night, I arrived in to my empty kitchen and ate a pear.
Mum: I travelled down the motorway, got home, went in to the kitchen, ate a pear.
Sarah: Person (Sammy) travelled on a busy road home to her kitchen and ate a pear.
Gina: I travelled home on the motorway, sat down in the kitchen and ate a pear.
Sam: The driver travelled at such a speed that there was a police officer waiting to give out a speeding ticket, the driver was rushing home in to the kitchen to do some washing up, the driver felt the need to have a healthy lifestyle so ate a pear.
Lisa: I travelled on the motorway home from work, I went in to the kitchen and ate a pear.
Jon: The old man reminisced of a time when he travelled to a kitchen where he ate a pear. It was a simpler time, a better time.
What I noticed and how this is related the 'Rhetoric of the Image' and the concept of polysemy.
In general this was a more successful experiment with most people coming up with a similar story. Sam and Jon, 2 of the 3 males i asked added more details. Sam added in things that weren’t visible in the images such as a police officer and dirty dishes. Jon on the other hand did not mention the motorway, and he talks of an old man. The women who i asked seemed to give shorter snappier answers which were all quite similar to one another. However i am not sure that it made that much difference.
Throughout the experiment some people came up with similar stories and some people seemed to add in little extra pieces of information. Perhaps this is due to the concept of polysemy people draw different meanings from within the mages as everyone is influenced by different things, aspects within an image can trigger different thoughts in different people. Because of this i agree with Barthes in that a persons background, age, interests, occupation etc can affect their interpretation/analysis of something. I also think that to some extent my investigation has contradicted Barthes as text does not always help to clarify a message. I think the use of text is sometimes necessary in order to establish something for example that the pear was eaten rather than chopped up. This experiment was perhaps the most successful of the 3, however even with text not everyone came up with the same story. Some details differed, some people seemed to add more details and information than was necessary. (There is always the argument that i chose the wrong words/the wrong story/difficult people!)
Without the text a number of people managed to come up with the same story and probably the majority were thinking along the same lines. I think it is therefore fair to suggest that Barthes is correct in saying that images without text can be powerful in portraying a message.
I think carrying out this experiment not only helped me understand the essay by Roland Barthes better but it has also lead me to think more carefully about how things can mean different things to different people. I will also try to think more about the use and importance of text and whether text is always necessary.
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