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There is a secret code that is older than civilization; much older than the western version and may even be what defines human society. It is so clandestine that even its users are only partially inducted into its ‘modus operandi’. Yet the influence it has had, is having and is poised to increasingly have, is shaping the future, culturally and politically. To recognise this ghostly force it is necessary to lift our head out of the pages of history books and look. This code is revealed in images; the illusive but omnipotent power of visual perception.
It has come to prominence courtesy of the revolution precipitated by explosive expansion of the internet. The technology that has enabled social networking and portals for individual expression, to function as a completely uncontrolled media platform; in theory if not actually in practice. However the devil in the detail is that the culture and psychology of the society is written in a very different codex to the machine code of the technology. That clandestine human code is multi generations old, and is embedded into the minds of humans as they learn, within the confines of their society, what it is to be ‘alive’. Much is culturally implanted, but significantly a very influential component is the product of the sensory data that surrounds the emerging adult. Although what and where we see are circumstantial, how we perceive it is determined by the bio-mechanics of our visual senses and is therefore the closest we can ever get to knowing ‘reality’.
It is the ‘Visual Codex’ that implants the earliest ‘beliefs’, associates perceptions into ideas and presets the minds fundamental reality; identifying ‘forms’ that are neural network based elements of the individuals notion of reality. Memesis has been theorized by thinkers as far back as Plato to current times, and is essentially the inspiration for meme’s that are popular graffiti on the net. But do not be fooled, there is nothing new in what the net is exploiting, it just seems that way because we have not used our visual codex perceptions to the extent we now do; the experience is unfamiliar and supporting mimetic believes are unsupported by the established memesis paradigms.
That is the contemporary challenge to the individual. How to function in a memetically redundant system? A plausible model that is however readily accessible, is the subconscious memetic tools that were created in the mind that learns the belief structure of visual perception.
I suffered this ubiquitous phenomena in early primary school, to my determinant at the time, but on reflection it was an inevitable revelation that was as much a curse as a life centring experience. I had the uncanny experience of having Miss Jenkins in both grade 3 and 4; a solid woman in physique as well as attitude. Her mission was to bestow the gift of reading, writing and arithmetic onto her charges. Ball point pens were allowed for ruling lines only; pencils were acceptable but writing was to be done in ink; from the inkwell or fountain pen for the fortunate few. In these tasks I was no better or worse than the others but the underutilised pen which needed no ink management and never went blunt, drew my hand to it whenever the distractions of third grade life moved to boredom. The resulting doodles attracted the ire of Miss Jenkins but they unconsciously proliferated and grew in scale and scope, driven by some automatic compulsion; a fascination in the effects that evolved. Why this provoked such a negative response from the teacher is still unanswered, and why it proved so disruptive in my early education is now no longer worth contemplating.
What did start from this, is an obsession with ‘the hard line of delineation’ that a ball point made, and how by hatching and outline, it could be made to represent images of ‘things’. At first these things were objects but they could also represent ideas, a lesson that took much longer to realise and endlessly longer to master to any degree of accomplishment. It is insignificant whether practice produced a level of competence or there was some innate disposition; what it produced is a compulsion to explore the possibilities that so far I have not exhausted, or even done more than scratch the outer casing of, in this disguised treasure chest.
Either despite or because of Miss Jenkins, I eventually realised that at least for me, many objects that I could imagine, were describable by reproducing a shape on a flat surface with some suitable drawing instrument.
The images were never exactly the same but even in the opinion of others they were a recognisable object. These others had not been tutored by Miss Jenkins or were not themselves able to draw shapes that were recognisable but they did recognise the shapes when they saw them. How or why, I am still trying to answer but I am convinced it is a common faculty of every mind that is innately learned, and more human than philologists recognise in spoken or written language.
I hardly ever touch a ball point pen today, and I write on a computer, draw with pencils and brushes; but the relationship between images and ideas has exponentially grown in my attention with the advent of the information highway and the mobile microprocessor personified in the ‘cell phone’. Images are omnipresent, in net products. They are readily produced, reproduced, and manipulated. Their overwhelming saturation is witnesses to their potential influence. Even as ‘wallpaper’ they have an effect. We either learn to understand and use them, or we will be used and abused by them.
The modern world of technology based forms of communication and the displacement of written communication with audio visual devices has seen the rise to prominence of the influence memetic elements have on communication. They are not solely visual images, but many are or use the visual codex to supplement their message or just to categorise it. In traditional media the owners agenda was known but with unknown ownership of a net memetic element, the full implications are unknowable and are usually unconscious; consequently most users are unprepared for the potential they hold to mould the ideas, opinions and actions an individual may concede to adopt.
As innocuous as this seems, social structures are threatened. Establishments are challenged and values are being deconstructed under the intense glare of a new freedom of expression enabled by the instrument in the hands of all fortunate citizens of fortunate countries with fortunate governance in place.
Despite the uncertainty, the individual has never had freedom of expression so close to their grasp.
The take up by commercial interests may have fuelled the boom but the opportunity to participate is the greatest an individual citizen has known.
This is potentially nothing less than reinventing democracy. But will it be the net redefining the message, or net being redefined by the expression of a nihilistic anarchy amongst the netizens. Is it a celebration of freedoms once dreamed to be only available in a hypothetical, idealistic world?
Off course this is too good to be true. The circumstance is greater than the individuals capacity to handle it. Such freedom is appalled by the majority, excepting the most reckless and extreme risk takers. For the brave it is an opportunity not to be missed. For the rest it is a latent tool in democracy terms and essentially an entertainment vehicle for most.
The net is not a new world, but is a radical new interpretation of what is could be. History has not gone away but it has been unshackled from the bonds of the elite. The risk that we will not learn from history and consequently repeat it, has been replaced by the danger that we may not be aware of history when it is buried under the mountain of arcane information overload. Instead of history being written by the victors, as it was in the past; who will be responsible to write it? Who will protect the permanence of the record, shield it from attack and abuse? Who will have the last say? Will a future philologist find the material we are now creating ‘readable’ and be positioned to understand accurately what it represents.
It is probable that the future will be written in the visual Codex. All who desire to be a part of this development should begin to practice immediately. Will this be the ultimate ‘book burning’ exercise (metaphorically speaking ); and the human race be better positioned if it comes to pass?
Not all that has been said has been written. What was ever spoken is as transient as the breeze. What was written and not lost or destroyed, accounts for recorded history; a mere façade, which is effectively an agenda driven filter that has selectively culled reality to suit the interpretation of whom ever was the custodian of the books. Consequently words have been cheapened, even those with apparent provenance; and with the advent of the word processor the written story is as free of factorial authenticity as the birds are unbound by gravity to the ground.
The most effective messages now, are not confined to an imprecise literature or a single language but are revealed in the common code that only ones personal faith and specific cultural roots can manipulate, if the subversive content is able to be separated from the dross.
The often quoted adage, “seeing is believing”, even if it is not as reliable or immutable as it first appears, is what the mind readily records. This information is the source data for our notion of reality, of the ‘truth’ ( if we indeed know what truth approximately means ), and of the tangible, tactile existence of everything that is external to our psychological presence. The image is not immune to distortion but it is at least resistant to, if not impervious to, the editing which the establishment of any, even all, societies are subject to.
It takes a lot of counter evidence to persuasion even the most disciplined, skeptical and cynical mind, once an idea has been visually perceived. Perhaps this is why some orthodox religions prohibit images, it certainly is how others use images to shape the thoughts of the faithful.
I do not subscribe to the Dawkins association of meme’s with the physiology of evolution although it may contribute to the psychology of evolution; if there is such a concept. However it may be that ‘History’ is recorded in the storage of the actual mimetic ideas that evolve. Will they be in the cloud or on a chip? Will they be encoded or raw? Will they represent what you want to be represented by?
If this were to transpire we should care what ideas are preserved or stored. We should care what ideas we want to record and we should care that they are as comprehensible as possible to interpretation in the future. It consequently behooves us to understand the visual language that will encapsulate the greater portion of that record.
It would be delinquent of me to forget to mention the manner of my preoccupation with the visual codex. I found a niche in engineering that introduced me to the technology of the silicon chip, as early as it was taking shape. From the privilege of accidentally being in this position, the development of current day electronics was played out over that intervening period. I witnessed the earliest attempts to harness the visual codex and the techniques of simulating the source data management. The only comment it leads me to make is that despite appearances, technology has barely mimicked the eye and gone no way to simulating the ‘eye – optic nerve – brain’ mechanism. In my humble opinion it is partly because machines can’t master the function of believing; and partly because learning is subjective, which is anathema to machine code. Attempts by engineering, to breakdown this nexus only mask the contradiction. [ Artificial Intelligence ]
With the potential for animated images it would appear that a single image, just one frame of a video sequence, is readily surpassed by the ability of the latest media to tell a story, or make a statement. Therefore the potential for moving pictures to make an aesthetic statement appears unarguable. But the motion picture, despite it’s immediate influence on the observer, has not actually achieved the visual impact of the traditional picture that both freezes and distills, in form and composition, an iconic form; a statement that burns into the mind as a brand sears its imprint onto a hide. The single image that captures a sentiment or expresses an idea that is shared or that touches the soul of many people, is the paramount achievement of great art. Critical analysis claims that such pictures have an dynamism and energy, capture the emotional and occasionally political sub plot, behind the images; it is this that separates them from the ruck of images that seek but do not achieve the same impact. Titian ( Tiziano Vecelli ) was the most conspicuous early practitioners of this craft although not the first, but the power of the image grew from the directions which were explored. The effect was movement, frozen in a moment but implying action.
A possible explanation for this enigmatic phenomena is that a moving picture inherits a time line. And just as a time line has a beginning it also has an ending, so that as impressive as the animated statement may be, in the process of experiencing it, this is transitory. This brief candle burns brightly for the moment but the image fades from the mind as quickly as it fades from the retina; it is too complex to be deconstructed into a single mimetic element.