Page 20 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

ANALOGUE

smaller groups, continue to imply a set of common beliefs around
notions of truth, beauty and art.
The term aesthetic gained some currency in semiotic analysis,
especially in the notion of an ‘aesthetic code’, in which the production
of meaning is not the aim but the starting point of a given message. It
prioritises the signifier over the signified, and seeks to exploit rather
than confirm the limits and constraints of the form, genre or
convention within which it operates. Hence aesthetic codes put a
premium on innovation, entropy and experimentation with the raw
materials of signification (words, colours, composition, sequence), and
evoke pleasurable responses for that reason. Semiotics goes beyond
idealist aesthetics in its attempt to find a value-free and culturally
specific description of aesthetic codes, and thence to find such codes
operating in discourses or media not usually associated with the
category ‘art’: advertising copy, political slogans, graffiti, and the
output of consumer and entertainment media.

Further reading: Barrell (1986)

ANALOGUE

Analogue information works by resemblance, as opposed to digital
information, which works by fixed code, especially the zeros and ones
of computer code. Thus, a painting or photograph is analogue, while
videotape, computer display and digital ‘photography’ are digital.
Analogue visual images may display infinite gradation of tone, colour,
hue, line, grain, etc., whereas digital images break down such variation
into standard blocks of information, such as pixels.
It is possible to identify the late twentieth century as an era passing
from analogue to digital. Broadcasting, mass communication, cinema,
illustrated newspapers and magazines and the recorded music industry
were based largely on analogue media technologies. In cinema, for
example, analogue cameras and tape recorders gathered the action, and
reproduction (screening) was also done via photographic film and
optical soundtracks. Newinteractive media, on the other hand, were
entirely digital, including cameras, sound recording and playback
devices, computers, etc., all the way through the production chain from
image- and sound-gathering to eventual consumer/user download and
interaction. Even forms of larceny shifted from ‘analogue’ (stealing
books or magazines from retailers, for instance) to ‘digital’ (down-
loading music or pictures via Napster before its demise, for instance).

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