Practices of Looking Pages 49-62

        Chapter two of Practices of Looking is titled Viewers Make Meaning, so I was expecting this chapter to be about the viewer, how viewers view different pieces of digital work and what different pieces of work can mean to the viewer. The book defines a viewer as "an individual who looks" whereas an audience is "a collective of lookers". I never thought that a viewer and a audience could be so different from each other, but both use their eyes to view these images that seem to call attention to those viewing it. I liked how the book talked about how even though images ken be seen in the same way, they can have different meanings to different people. "I do not have to like or appreciate the dominant messages of the image to be interpolated by it or to understand that message" (pg 50). I liked this quote because I felt like it was basically saying that the viewer doesn't necessarily have to like an image for it to have an effect on you. 
        In the next section titled Producers' Intended Meanings I assumed that it would be about Producers, but when I think about producers I think about movie producers and the movie industry of Hollywood. I had no idea there would be producers for digital images. I knew that people who create different things sometimes have a meaning behind their work that isn't always portrayed to the viewer or audience, but because of technology today consumers can produce their own media to create their own meanings. Our everyday reality of producers as consumers has become the norm because the technology and manipulation of images has become so ingrained that it no longer surprises me about how much piracy and plagiarism is occurring in the digital world today. 
      The last section Aesthetics and Taste talks about ho both aesthetics and taste are the fundamental concepts of value and pleasure that it brings to the viewer. The value of a piece of art can bring pleasure through its beauty, style, reactive virtuosity or its technical virtuosity. But an interesting point that the authors make is that what most people would consider naturally beautiful or pleasing is actually "culturally specific" (pg 56). This basically means our culture has predetermined what we think should and should not be pleasing to the eye. This type of brainwashing prevents the viewer and audience from foaming their own opinions of likes and dislikes.