The web was built by million of people simply because they wanted it. As a distributed browsing and searching system, the web functions as a huge library with its vast storehouses of information. The introduction of the World Wide Web in 1991 led the transformation of the Internet from a text-only environment into a multimedia site. It allows for incorporating and displaying colourful pictures, animations, sounds and video. This is why the web makes the Internet as a powerful communication medium and a warehouse of valuable information. As a multimedia text, a web or website has become a medium to produce social, cultural and political expression. It has generated representation of human being as individual and society. This essay will analyse Lord of the Rings website (http://www.lordoftherings.net) and Powerhouse Museum (http://www.powerhousemuseum.com). The analysis will explore social, cultural, and political meanings of the websites. It also will describe potential meanings and how they are created. These aspects will be dealt with in turn in this essay.
According to Bhatnagar, Mehta & Mitra (2001:139):Typeface are divided into two broad categories: Serif [e.g. Times New Roman] and Sans Serif [e.g. Arial]… On paper, serif fonts are easy on the eye because the flags at the end of the letter stroke guide the eye along the line. So, serif fonts, such as Times, are used when there is a lot of tet to be read. Sans Serif typefaces, such as Arial, are used for titles and headlines. On computer screens, the situation is different. Screen resolution is poor which makes the flags on letters difficult to read. Therefore, serif fonts are difficult to read on-screen.Unlike most of websites, The Lord Of The Rings (LOTR)’ website does not use sans serif as the title or headlines, but serif typeface. However, sans serif is used to show all information about the site e.g. if we click all parts in “THE FILM”; “THE LEGEND”; & “THE IMAGINARY”, it will show us all the information in sans serif typeface.
There are two reasons I will explain about the use of serif typeface as the title or headlines LOTR site. The first explanation is aesthetic reason. As Mclean (1980:64) puts it “The serif, … when written with pen, or cut in stone, for reasons that are both functional and decorative.” The way the title/headlines written in serif font makes LOTR’s website looks more attractive and eye-catching. It gives us a feeling of engagement with the movie and also a feeling of enjoyment from being entertained. It urges us to want to look more and to see more information we might have/not expected before. This is precisely what the LOTR’s website is all about. The Website not only gives us information that we cannot find in the movie, but also entertains us through juxtaposition of visuals and writings, e.g. the style of font, size, and colour. The second explanation is cultural representation of the website. According to Mclean (1980:44) “The basic principle is that roman type [serif typeface] has become “norm” for most Europeans & Americans”. Since serif is the standard typeface in western culture, thus combination of certain colors, font type and size convey meanings and representation of the LOTR as a classic high fantasy tale in western culture.
Poynor (2001:51 in Cranny-Francis 2005: 34) “the process by which particular typeface embody the look, mood, and aspirations of a period is mysterious and fascinating. It cannot be predicted with any accuracy and no single designer can will it to happen, but somehow a typeface will look fresh, unexpected, precisely attuned to the moment – and a consensus emerges.” It means that when we look at the website of LOTR, it situates historically and culturally not just by the images, or by the colours, or the language employed in the website, but also by the typeface used. Typeface embodies a particular time in the past in fictional world. It then reminds us of other similar texts – websites – such as harry potter (http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com), and the chronicle of narnia (http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/narnia).
The visualisation of images combine with colours and the style of font, tells us that The LOTR’s website is drawn from the legend/myth particularly in western culture, It is a high fantasy tale, which is the sub genre of fantasy fiction. The movie itself is a trilogy of live action fantasy epic films. The website could be categorized as the entertainment site since it provides not only the exclusive images from all three LOTR movies that we can download, but also contains the extended information about the movie or the story, for instance in “THE LEGEND” part: characters, cultures, weapon and war, locations, insides the effects, interviews.
The sound effect comes out as soon as we fully access the web, generates a visceral response. Responses that are resembling feelings of menace and terror, but at the same time there are also feelings of curiosity and adventure. This happens as the result of combination of loudness, pitch, and timbre. Together with a brief sound effect at the beginning, we also can hear the welcome greeting from different casts of the LOTR’s movies. The sound is creating an emotional environment and the same time it livens up the mood of visitors. As Cranny-Francis (2005:60) puts it “… sound can be touching in more than a metaphorical sense. It is a semiotic that is experienced bodily, as more than a bundle of sense impressions to interpret. Sound can bodily move us, and we embody ourselves in (response to) sound.”
When we look at around the website, the websites gives us an insight of how humanity placed in fictional past – people and cultures of LOTR – represents humanity in our real contemporary world with different kind of habits, traditions, languages, colours but also similar in concept of peace, war, and survival. These then lead to power mechanisms and practice discourse. It is knowledge as power’s instrument has constructed to convince every individual to believe it as the truth. How the concept of peace, war, survival, and society for every human race is constructed through the relation of knowledge and truth. Foucault (in Gordon, 1980:97) puts it “… how it is that subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organism, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc. We should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects” It other words power generate people to perform certain behaviour, thoughts, feelings and desires in order to produce certain subjectivity. As soon as we know who we are, our races, cultures, believes, and so on, we interpret the concept of peace, war, survival and society according to the truth planted in our society.
The next multimedia text to be analysis is the website of Powerhouse Museum Sydney Australia. Powerhouse Museum’s website does not emphasis on aesthetic function. The website is more informative and educational. As any other educational websites, which stress on giving information rather than entertaining the visitor, Powerhouse Museum uses conventional style in way of conveying the information, such as the style of font – sans serif, the size and the colour seem very simple, regular and serious. This is one of characteristics of educational websites, where the chosen of typeface as a decorative function is not significant. The more important is what inside the web could provide the needs of visitors when they go to the website. Visitors will be expected to read rather than to enjoy the images around the web most of the time. Hence sans serif is the right typeface to convey the information, since it is easier to read on computer screen than serif.
The main list of options that the website offered such as Exhibitions & Events, Education, Collection & Research, Online Research are in fact representing Powerhouse Museum as the website of education, science, art and technology. The juxtaposition of visual images and writings signify the vision of Powerhouse Museum to celebrate and explore human creativity and innovation. The image of two little girls for instance, could signify the commitment of Powerhouse Museum to promote education and science in the future. It also could represent diverse audiences, which have inspired and informed the advance of Powerhouse Museum to explore design and history for the people of New South Wales and beyond. As Barthes (1977:39, in Kress, G. & van Leeuween, T. 1996:16) puts it, “The meaning of the images [and of other semiotic codes] is always related to, and, in a sense, dependent on, verbal text. Images are too ‘polysemous’, too open to a variety of possible meanings. To arrive at a definite meaning, language [text] must come to the rescue”. This website then leads us to the discourse about the impact of science and technology in our everyday lives.
Powerhouse Museum’s website is a depiction of new culture or way of living in our contemporary world today, where we are really affected by science and technology. Together with the era of digitalization and the Internet, the world seems not so big and places not so far one to each other. Since science and knowledge are always considered as a process of progression, Powerhouse Museum is an explanation about how science and technology will bring the world to the future. The question raised is how the future would be like when the worlds were so scientific and technological? Would it be utopia or dystopia? We might answer this question by questioning ourselves in what way we use, and how we treat science and technology for our better lives. And that is what the Powerhouse Museum’s website is all about.
In conclusion, it appears that since the development of the World Wide Web in the early 90s has brought powerful impact to change and shape the way we live in this world. As we go through the website of Lord of the Rings and Powerhouse Museum, we recognize how the websites have been constructed not in a simple single meaning. They both have represented the social, cultural, and political meanings through the juxtaposition of visual image, writing – typefaces – and sound. Through all combination of those aspects the websites have succeeded signifying the function and the purpose of the creation of both.
REFERENCE
Cranny-Francis, A. (2005) Multimedia: Texts and Contexts. London: Sage Publications.
Foucault, M., 1980, Power/Knowledge, Collin Gordon (ed.). NY: Partheon.
Gupta, R. (2001) ‘Text in Multimedia and the Internet’, in Guarav Bhatnagar, Shikah
Mehta and Sugata Mitra (eds.), Introduction to Multimedia Systems, Academic
Press.
Kress, G. & van Leeuween, T. (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design.
London: Routhledge.
McLean, R. (1980) The Thames and Hudson Manual of Typography, London: Thames
and Hudson Ltd.
Powerhouse Museum, available at: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com
The Lord Of The Rings – The Official Website, available at:http://www.lordoftherings.net
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