Visual Language in Scifi 101

What is a 'visual language'?

The term 'visual language' refers to the meanings or ideas connected with visual elements of art, agreed either amongst an audience or between audience and creators.  These elements may be very broad ('black is for bad guys') or very specific ('blue space torpedoes are more powerful'), but when they are used without explanation we see that we as an audience bring a set of rules regarding how things should look, or a range of implicit meanings we are ready to understand and accept.  Engagement with art is not always a conscious decision, but not engaging with art usually is - and a consistent visual language is an effective way for creators to ensure we as an audience never stop to think about what these things mean, and simply experience it while paying attention to the narrative or more direct meaning of the work.

In brief, when we picture a spaceship or a robot or a doom laser, we can imagine what this should look like to us - and when a visual work agrees with those ideas, it is very easy for us to understand implicitly what it is, and often specific attributes of it in particular.  This both builds engagement and avoids confusion or rejection with an audience.

What kinds of visual language are there?

It is important to note that this 'language' is not universal.  There is no one 'spaceship' or 'robot' in visual art; there are a very wide variety of ways to express those ideas.  In addition, any visual language can change over time, as the audience changes in terms of how it understands and expects these ideas.  Looking at America as an example, the idea of 'spaceship' changes radically from the 1890s, to the 1930s, to the 1960s, to the 1990s, to the present day.  In many cases, a modern audience would only recognise a 'spaceship' in an older work because they understand the old-fashioned usage.

Many genres have their own visual conventions; comic books, science fiction tv shows, and horror movies all have consistent languages that allow audiences to immediately understand what, who, how, where, or why.  Different communities also develop their visual styles in different ways - a compelling example is the language of robots in east Asia and in America.


What specific examples are going to be considered?
east vs west, iron man vs gundam, western homogeneity

What ideas can we draw from this?
visual shorthand adds 'scifi' to stories, is built from and informs expectations of audience
dissonant images disrupt engagement