Reading Response Chapter 2

In chapter 2, Stirken and Cartwright further examine the relationship  between the viewer and the art piece, than an "audience" and the art piece.  They point this out as an important distinction because an individual viewer can have much more personal experience than a collective audience.  According to the authors "by looking at the viewer, we can understand certain aspects of practices of looking that cannot be captured by examining the concept of the audience, an entity into which producers hope to mold viewers as consumers."  

 They also cover other topics like taste, and how it depends on the individual's culture, ethnicity, age, background, personal opinion, etc, and Encoding/Decoding which is the process of viewers decoding meanings that the artist has encoded into the work.  I personally think the encoding/decoding process is rather fun, because artwork can vary by date made, the artist's lifestyle, the message, and various other factors.  With old paintings, you can decode a bit of history within almost any piece, and some one could go to extensive depths examining.