I have been looking for effective ways to visualise my semiotic analysis of Ministry of Information propaganda posters so that I can easily communicate my results. I went to the MCNx conference on Monday, where I listened to a presentation by Izzy Bartley from Leeds Museums and Galleries. She was presenting on ‘Digital on a Shoestring: Creating web-based and in-gallery digital learning resources in-house and on a minimal budget’. She mentioned a range of free and open source tools that can easily be used to visualise materials and create learning resources.
One tool she mentioned was ThingLink, and I immediately thought of how this tool might be useful in visualising semiotic analysis. It allows you to create points in an image or video, which when clicked can reveal additional information. In the example below, I have added points within a 1942 image by Abram Games.
The points list the connotations I interpreted from each sign. This methods enables you to see the connotations in their context, so that the visual sign does not have to be described verbally, but can simply be seen. I would like to extend this experiment further to show both my own semiotic analysis and the results of my surveys and interviews, in an easy-to-understand way.