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As I previously, briefly revealed in my ramblings on the subject of the ‘Visual Codex’, my first personal sense of alienation from main stream society was made evident by my primary school teacher. With a naivety that was already excessive for my age, it did not immediately occur to me that I was defective, maladjusted or abnormal in any way ( an opinion I still hold ). I liked to draw things and that entertained a few, confused more and delighted many who appreciated, that the tutors frustrations were focused on somebody else and not them. I do not recall being thanked.
I do not deny that the continual reprimanding, occasionally upset me. It was only when she began to lock the classroom door, forcing me to leave via an open window, that my parents were alerted. If it worried them I was unconscious of that, and still managed to get some kind of education.
Anything that involved drawing was obviously attractive to me. My socio economic situation meant that would be the trades or engineering. What did occur to me as ‘strange’, was that the constant fascination of how a representative image could be so readily and easily understood, was not widely discussed in this world of eminently practical people. If I inadvertently spoke along these lines, the blank stares were enough chastisement to make me realise this was a private obsession. So except in the privacy of my solitary time I put such ruminations to one side. Life and love were perfectly enjoyable without such complicating intricacies.
All of this biographical nonsense I have chosen to share to explain how by pure accident, my trade became machinery and my task was utilising the rapidly evolving power of the microprocessor. For obvious reasons layouts of control equipment attracted my attention, and to my satisfaction that has become a recognised aspect of performance and safety.
Initially all machine controls were just labelled. In the worst instances they formed a cluster of evenly spaced, identically sized and shape buttons. Sometimes buttons were colour coded to enforce the operation of a button, red to stop, and green to go. Eventually button graphics took on more descriptive symbolic forms, such a ( ) to describe lift doors close, ( ) or open. This also spilled over into the public arena where symbols such as ( ) for men, and for women were commonly the only designation for a toilet. It is fascinating that there is no symbol to say ‘toilet’ and only both signs together means ‘not sex specific’. Every hour in this internationally biased world, new forms are invented and mostly they are interpretable by all parties, some becoming ubiquitous.
As technology exploded the availability of graphics and screens to display them meant both invention and usage of graphic symbols also blossomed. On modern cell phones with a few buttons but the rest of the options nominated by touching icons, this trend has became common. Graphics has become a communication utility. It is unsurprising today to open a ‘flat pack’ and instead of a ream of printed instructions, in multiple languages, there is just a clear sequence of diagrams and recognisable symbols; allowing even the illiterate to assemble the product ( presuming, the not always true, that they do fit together ).
Industry had discovered graphics and the tools to apply them to their unique communication requirements. It is obvious that what is being exploited here are ‘memes’, not graffiti memes that are so popular on the net, but they are the forms that so implicitly the mind can learn, and believe. Amongst my technical handbooks I have many dedicated to such symbols, that have become industry standards and under certain safety codes, mandated descriptors.
The above is, at least in my reserved opinion, a contemporary development of Mimesis, a subject as old as ancient Greece, and continuously updated, although hardly ever reached greater heights of public attention than Plato aroused. It was Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book ‘The Selfish Gene’, who proposed what many sensible critics consider pseudoscience, the idea that meme’s effected ‘evolution’. I will allow the nets own encyclopedia to do the documentary background, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics .
Although I can readily agree that to call the modern interpretations by Richard Brodie, and Aaron Lynch, ‘science’, is not justified. However for purely subjective significance, there is something endogenous to the prevalence of ‘memes’ in their modern net spawned reincarnation. It jells with my understanding of how we see; or ‘perceive’, in general.
Personally it makes more sense that what we see, in the adoption of the visual language by technology, is a version of what ‘memetics’ is alluding to. It is evolving in machine code if not the genetic code. And for my private satisfaction, that is a production of the minds natural methodology of creating ‘forms’ from the visual sensory data and assembling these forms into structures that are beliefs; which are the fundamental elements for developing the structure into what we might refer to as knowledge.
Technology knows it is poor business to allow barriers to stand between a product and a client. Using the elemental forms of the Visual Codex, their response is just a hint into the enormous capacity there is to exploit it; for good and bad but inevitably for the forward motion needed for ‘believing’ to challenge ‘nihilism’ as a progenitor of ‘contemporary metaphysics’. Note that as described in other places of this series, it does not matter ‘what you believe’, only that you ‘care’ enough to believe.
In the case of the ‘World Wide Web’ the packaging both intentional and incidently, into content is different to the use industrial technology makes of the phenomena. However the basic elements are the same and obviously more extensive because the net is a much more diversified environment than a machine.
So far the story projects an exciting future of cheap mass communication for social networking, learning and information. This is not totally abandoned in cyber space but it is the most despicable traits of human nature that have infiltrated every nock and cranny.
Out of this scenario a new problematic environment has emerged. It is identified by terms such as ‘Fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’.
In the social media world it has precipitated behaviours such as ‘trolling’, ‘cyber bullying’ and a plethora of associated malignant practices, based on the anonymity it provides.
With election rigging, some of corrosive practices really hit the big time. Today the net is plagued with security threats.
To appreciate what this means to the utility of the net we will all be involved in deciding; first for ourselves and collectively in what individual users will be free to do on the digital communication platforms that facilitate it.
What does the visual codex add to the net?
As far as net opinion sharing goes it is best if a contributor veers away from the confrontational character of words and rather makes a point by begging a question. The innate reaction a person has to the expression of an opinion, contrary to theirs, is to defend the position. To avoid this impulsive response and make a constructive criticism to another’s opinion, it is prudent to question it. Not aggressively or with belligerence, but inclusively; allowing that their opinion is rationally worthy of debate. Hopefully the reaction, while still being defensive, is also to some degree, to be a justification, which at least requires self analysis.
Everybody has an opinion. I don’t know if we all need so many opinions but virtually everybody has them and they are heavily traded. They are also constantly assaulted in the media and the deceptive element of the media, including the uncontrolled net space, is inevitably available to deceive the gullible, and influence the ill-informed. There will be many versions of ‘how to counter’ this reality. The ‘Visual Codex’ is but one, but a powerful tool, perhaps the most obvious source of tactics to bypass a wall of bias.
The craft of the ‘press photographer’ is one obvious source of mimetic material. As most individuals armed with a cell phone camera are virtual ‘paparazzi’, that propensity of a picture to be a ‘witness’ to a fact is something we all should have knowledge about. Because an image has such natural authority when we actually see it with our own eyes, it is easy to forget that the digital image has not such claim to authenticity.
The tools to manipulate an image even exist on cell phones, including video. Such an example was perpetrated when the media manager for President Trump, retweeted a video clip that was manipulated to misrepresent an actual event. Many net meme’s are reproduced images and have dubbed text, intended to either amuse, insult or abuse. The individual is totally responsible for deciding which is which.
I am more interested and as I revealed above, may be obsessed, with what useful tools are available from the lexicon of the visual codex.
A receiver of an image opinion whether solicited or not, initially, subconsciously assesses it. As this process in many ways calls up ‘forms’ that are unpolluted by learned bias, the reaction is acceptance, the first stage of belief. A visual opinion in many ways is partially an entertainment because the innate ‘child’ in us is attracted to the novelty of an image. If it is done in an amusing style it only enforces the appeal. Potentially the visual language opinion can hold several psychological elements that improve and even significantly effect the resulting perception.
Some who seek to have their opinion noted, do not care if it is effective, may even intend it to be offensive and confrontational. They resort to lewd content, or depictions of violence; the weapons of aggression. It is absolutely mandatory that such material not be given attention just because it appeals to the voyeur in us all. In time the net will be modified as net service providers are forced to take responsibility for their content but that is a very perplexing balance that can’t be give due respect in these paragraphs. On the net most content is banal gossip or blatant commercialism but the valuable information is there, under layers of trite nonsense but worth the task to find it.
How the visual codex can be used, for those who have opinions that they desire to share, is according to myself, best done by single images. It is a valuable enterprise to learn the visual language because it can say things that the observer would not necessarily find receptive in any other format. The reason this effect can happen is in my opinion, due to a phenomena not unlike that described by mimesis. Maybe not Plato’s ‘correspondence to the physical world understood as a model for beauty, truth and the good’; but in the more contemporary notion of reality, as a subjective manifestation of our perception. Note that this is not the same objective reality that is ‘science’, which demands that we step outside the objective frame, in order to be an observer, and therefore are excluded from it.
The visual codex is constructed from forms set in place from the earliest experience of perception. It supplies a means to express ‘meaning’ in an image that includes symbolic narratives, as well as evocative elements such as contrast, balance and referential assembly of the elements. I will explain later why I have not included colour as a significant part of the visual language, just for now I will concede only that colour is a component of ‘contrast’. Note that ‘symbolic narratives’ are the story behind a form, which can be derived from cultural mythology, specific religious codes or just be perception effects such as diagonal lines, the horizontal plan, the frame or representative elements.
The last sentence includes a substantial amount of material which I will only explore here in a most cursory sense. The detail belongs to another project altogether.
There are recognised styles of the visual format that are generally recognised genre. Cartoons are the easiest to use as a sample of how all images can contain and convey information. In this style absolutely accurate representations are redundant, with exaggeration of conspicuous parts used for defining a character. This apparently casual attitude to drawing, should not be confused with a lack of skills. The abstractions are an intrinsic component of the message. Where a draughtsperson genuinely lacks skill the result is a highly compromised image but that should not prevent any aspiring creative from the visual codex, because photo manipulation can close this gap.
An example I often use when an opinion about the law is the subject, is what I call ‘the beak’. The long convex, pointed nose, the projecting chin and unmistakable wig, serve as a disrespectful allegory; whatever the figure is doing is the commentary component. Together they are typical of how various visual forms can be combined for specific commentary effect. The same or something like it can be done in several other formats. Net users can find these elements in pictures and can manipulate an image to create what the draughts person’s pencil can produce.
Simple distortion of a humanoid figure can be enhanced by adding ‘extra human’ appendages such as a set of bulls horns to be indicative of the devil or evil. A face that is only the bones of a skull, may elicit the notion of death or dying, and feathery bird like wings can evoke a celestial source.
All of this type of allegory is consciously a part of a visual vocabulary that has regional specifics but is generally a universal resource. Additions are continuously added as creatives invent them and others improve or refine a fresh form.
There are more subtle forms that work in the same way to influence a message but are associated with the visual narrative. A creative deliberately but sometimes unconsciously, sets up elements with fine detail, amongst more abstract, ambiguous representations, which has the effect of focusing the eye on that part of a composition.
Some more ambiguous shapes within the frame ( extents ) of the picture plain, characterise a composition. It is arguable if they originate in the nature of perception or the tradition of ‘painting’. Setting up the elements of a photo or a sketch in a broad based triangle at the centre of a picture plain, prepares the observer to witness a stable and traditional message.
Making the image or composition line up along a diagonal to the frame not only defines tension or stress, but often alludes to mental instability.
High contrast will always evoke drama, while large empty spaces depending on their architecture can represent solitude or vulnerability.
The creative visual communicator can include, juxtapose or balance these attributes to produce entertaining or critical commentary. The imaginative draughtsperson has the greatest spontaneous range because the starting point is ‘a blank sheet’. For those who construct their statements using pictorial ( photographic ) raw material the task is challenging but not different in substance.
In many practical examples the end result is an emotive response. Even the most practised creative relies on spontaneity and the inspiration of finding new allegorical connections to use. I am not certain why the viewer needs so little training to see the connections between this material while it is a task of very significant difficulty for the creative producer to master. How it works or why it works is not as important as to know that it works; and to acknowledge its power for persuasion is unsurpassed.
In this role the visual codex can break down communication road blocks but it is not omnipotent. It may not persuade a murder to become a penitent priest, but it can profoundly move the majority some distance either side of the centre and by incremental change move humanity forward, where nihilism effectively stalls that motion or even drags it backwards.
In a philosophy that allows subjective logic, if that is not an inconsistency, the connection with mimesis and the new idea of meme’s, is a plausible scenario. When it comes to communication between human individuals the imposition of a fabricated pseudoscience is not required because a language exists that is a ‘plastic’ interpretation of reality, and therefore a suitable tool; as well as having a deeply rooted origin in all cultures.
Every human being with eyes to see will have some concrete forms already embedded long before any words can be arranged to express the same beliefs. ‘Forms’ although they are plastic arrangements of neurons in the cerebral matter of a human mind, they are to only reality the brain can believe and the only available building blocks of knowledge. Although every body uses them unconsciously and a few subconsciously, there is every good reason to understand their source because to communicate with such ‘forms’ is to speak in a universal language.