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Having produced paintings, ceramics and various ‘technology derived’ forms of visual images over a period of many years, it was time to construct, for myself, a theoretical definition of what is art and what is its utility value to contemporary society (according to Puggy Booth).

Initially the layout of this attempt to describe what the years of practice and observation have taught, was to place what logically represented the natural beginning, the conventional elements of visual image making, at the beginning. Eventually it moved toward the other end of the project.

Why this became the more logical process evolved from the writing.

The original plan began with the basic elements of painting, being, Line, Form and Colour. Also included here was the concept picked up from the writings of 20th century teachers which include; the Frame and ‘Plastic Art’ (not meaning using polymer materials).

What become evident to me immediately was how much my early ideas have moved away from this traditional concept, but not just because technology has changed everything in every aspect of modern life. I still believe that ‘Line’ is the basic element of all visual perception and that preoccupation has increased in its significance to my mind. I find that now I can achieve an explanation for the creative expressions I am motivated to explore, using discoveries and theories that more commonly guide artificial intelligence investigators.

I don’t do ‘art’. I have no interest in producing attractive images or impressive visual effects. I respect and admire quality in draft-persons work but such skills are peripheral to the purpose of art, which is about contributing to our collective knowledge of the visual Language. Why this is relevant or even necessary, I intend to explore and justify, with the rational analyses, not of an engineer appended to the positivism of the 20^th century but with a knowledge of the visual language, enlighten by the best practitioners of the past and the new revelations about ‘seeing’ and ‘believing’.

I have a basic belief which is that reading the visual language is a balance between ‘internal representation’ (the sense data, or the physiology of vision) and ‘external regularities’ (the acquired knowledge used to process the data). This process of learning to understand the image is the definition of intelligence (in the same context that the human, is an intelligent animal).

This ‘process’ is as compulsive as sleeping and eating. Recognising that such knowledge has a plasticity which defines the human species, and that it is daily remoulded, justifies the need for material that does the task. Some may consider this as a romantic notion, which it is, but an aspiration, not less worthy, for creatives that are up to the challenge.

It is inevitable that ‘art for the pure enjoyment of self expression will prosper. This is inevitable and acceptable. Celebratory and colourful images are ubiquitous in any large community. Their role is to decorate and entertain. Occasionally an iconic image emerges from this source but it is not the normal process.

I must accept that the coercive power of the visual image is boring to the ‘Me generation’ and all ‘natural’ bohemians. All artistically inclined persons in their early explorations, experience a desire to reject such restraining ideas. It is after all, the way it is, for these ‘difficult’ personalities, who are attracted to the freedom of the visual language and its apparent lack of rules. The ‘creative’ wants to invent the whole world, not just a part of it; but still be a part of it. In such an ephemeral world the ‘art establishment’ are the arbiters of quality, and commercial agenda’s drive the market.

For the more sombre and introspective creative, which obviously is where my sympathies lay, the challenge is to avoid obscure concepts such as ‘beauty’ and ‘taste’, when describing a piece of creative work. Such terms, amongst other similarly imprecise terms, inevitably become the agents of abuse when questions of quality need to be addressed. Therefore the initial requirement is to invent the meaning of ‘Art’, that can be expressed in measurable values. If this is in some way confrontational with the commercial art market, so much the better.

For me it was the realisation that although the main complexity in an intelligent ‘image’ might well be expressible in terms of the content (information), the content itself does not constitute intelligence. Rather intelligence exists in the context of an ‘image’ that exhibits an intelligent physical presence, created by the use of ‘Line’, ‘Form’ and ‘the Frame’.

In other words, intelligence does not exist as a mathematical abstraction, but is only embodied in the physical manifestation of the work. This might seem either an obvious or a purely philosophical point, but it leads to the development of an analytical vision paradigm where the notion of functional arrangement can be used as a structuring (or deconstructing) element for creating visual systems. The particular statement in this case, is that vision (being a form of intelligence) cannot be considered independent of its embodiment in an image.

Is this still art or is it science? It certainly comes out of the literature of artificial intelligence, but it is perfectly relevant to the visual language. This allegiance may disturb some but it also is a much stronger logic and a sounder support to an empirical system that is not science, but is complimentary to it.

The human being, functions with a large amount of information. Where does this information come from? It cannot come from the genome, which although being large is not large enough. Nor is there any biological connection that can map information from one individual onto another (a data transfer). The obvious source of structured information is the world, loaded over the relatively high-bandwidth channels that are the senses. The process of mapping this information into the individual, specifically is ‘learning’. The primary tool for learning is vision and the visual language.

‘Art’ like many words in many languages has many definitions. In the English language and its equivalent in other languages, ‘Art’ has many discrete and contextually different meanings.

In my corner of the universe the colloquial term ‘Artist’ was a person particularly adept at improvising nonsensical and exaggerated claims (it is sometimes appended by a reference to bovine excrement). This remains for me the unavoidable default definition and is why I prefer to describe my interest as a graphical technician. I smugly consider it more impressive in the age of technology; but I am unique in this choice.

In the commercial world of graphical design and popular culture the more conventional use of the term ‘Artist’ is somebody doing ‘Art’. So what is art?

There are so many possible usages of the word, it is plausible to say that the noun “Art’, has no meaning at all. At least no meaning without it being attached to a more tangible noun such as ‘Sculpture”. Equally obscure the adjective “Art’, is nonsense and its use as a verb is so ambivalent that it defies any definitive interpretation.

The only clear usage of the word ‘Art’, which de-facto recognises the ambiguity of all other meanings, is its use in the phase; “there is an art to doing ‘…….’ (something/anything).

The interpretation of this phase is that there is some undefinable ability required to do something.

Meaning ‘Art’ is some undefinable quality and in being undefinable it cannot be taken to ‘mean’ anything.

Therefore the result of this initial search for the meaning of art is the first axiom. (according to Puggy Booth) which is that:

There is no such thing as ‘Art’, and a person purporting to do ‘Art’, is an ‘Artist’.

where ‘Artist’ is given by my local/original definition above.

Having sorted that out, right at the beginning, the problem still remains that ‘Art’ is still used in the common lexicon, although it has no real meaning. Strangely that may not be a coincidence because not all commentators on this topic have anything ‘real’ to say, or are disposed to being restricted to making rational or quantifiable statements.

In the 21^st century, what claims to be art, appears to owe nothing to the traditional formats of the visual image. However this could be a delusion which requires some time and effort to sort through because it is correct that the medium in which the visual language today is expressed is so very different from that which went before. What is less obvious is the question which asks, does that mean the nature of the visual code has also changed?

As a painting practitioner, in the scientific age, it is appropriate that a career be a process of experiments in search of the illusive language of visual perception. Naturally it does change like all languages are modulated by common usage and the natural adding and deleting of words; in our case these are the visual elements. It is therefore justified to explain why the basic elements of painting should to be appreciated, even studied. It might even be the case that they need reinterpreting or even redefining in terms of the new media. Legitimising the search for this understanding, is the realization that most of the traditional elements have a contemporary equivalent. What the earliest experiments in the visual language have to teach us lies in the power of these images it produced, to cultivate an awareness of the ‘self’, a relatively contemporary term, derived from psychoanalysis, but practised for many centuries before dear uncle Freud turned his devious mind to it.

Styles and content, even abstract content, place a work in time and within its influencing factors, but this does not confine all contributions to these limits. There are those works that by some quality were able to transcend such prosaic definitions. This is an absolutely explicable combination of phenomena that devolve into a combination of the physiology and the psychology of the visual experience. The advantage contemporary creatives have over their predecessors in understanding this is that the physiological component is so much better defined and the large influence of the brain function leaves less to be explained by the psychology.

The iconic examples have a tenancy to break out of the common ‘straight jacket’; to have a social reference and a communal acceptance of individuality within a group, occasionally giving birth to a ‘school’ or movement. Although an occasional ‘lone wolf’, defies this pattern.

There is no doubt that the ‘meaning of art’, is problematic; especially if we remain attached to the use of ambiguous words. An equivalent ambiguous question is “What is the meaning of life?” This does not stop us from doing ‘life’; neither should ambiguity with handling ‘meaning’, stop us from doing ‘Art’. Already this is a complex concept which invites us to wallow in the ambiguity; or embark on the experimental researchers path, to a more accessible understanding.

This however brings a whole constellation of agenda’s and bias into the mix. It is a problematic zone where ‘the more you pay the more its worth’ world, comes into contrast with the ‘Arty, crafty set’. On another plane, the ‘autocracy of the museum culture’ is juxtaposed with the small band of independent technicians, the ubiquitous, ‘struggling creative spirit’, persevering in unrecognised oblivion. God bless the dedicated bohemian, what would we do without them.

If the term ‘Art’ is too abstruse, what description then can be used to represent the visual language?

‘Plastic art’ or ‘visual art’ have been used at various times but clinging to the ambiguous tag of ‘Art’, invariably compromises it. A derivation may sum up our ambition to replace ambiguity with a logical construct. The term ‘Plastic perception’ neatly encompasses the clear distinction between a mechanical reproduction of ‘reality’, with the necessary abstraction that a ‘human’ produced image engenders. The controversy between this pure condition and the ‘human driving the machine’ compromise can go unchallenged at this enumerate stage, but it can’t be ignored, just deferred.

As the cave painters of antiquity realised, the ‘human’ component is always the subject of a visual image, even when the apparent relationship with the content is more or less esoteric.

Although separated by the distance of time from the true immediate meaning of the earliest works of art that we have access to, their arcane references are not necessary to appreciating the meaning in the visual language. Scholars can not resist trying to decipher the recondite symbols embedded in the image; otherwise the image gives the contemporary observer a clear idea of what it meant to be human in the stone age.

What then is the ‘human component’?

‘Cave painters’ and ‘rock painters’ invariably incorporated human beings into their images; sometimes symbolically, sometimes as simple stick figures. Although the drama of most of these images appears to focus on animal forms, the human representative forms are present; as participants or observers. The fundamental significance of the object-observer relationship is a startling revelation that modern investigation has give great substance to.

In antiquity the graphic technicians discovered the ‘line’, or more accurately the ‘outline’. The images were strictly 2 dimensional but (in many cases) very carefully delineated forms (except when representing human forms). Detail inside the outlined form is minimal and ‘fill’ (or colouring in) was mostly ignored. What these early exponents were discovering is that, what the mind sees in the shape of the line, is the primary effect in any image. In their case it was the only effect they sort.

Consequently it has not lost its pre-eminence in the material phenomena of perception.

The mind considers the visual data from the eye, searching for hard edges it can construct as the line. Using this line it imposes a construction, or an interpretation, and from a catalogue of learned experience attributes what we can loosing say is the meaning.

Modern observers are denied the nature of the ancients experiences so can only see a shadow of that meaning.

As a signature, the creator occasionally included an image of their own hand, but they also left an imprint by the style and use of materials that spoke of the ‘human creative process’.

The minds interpretation of the abstract visual data coming from the eye was invariably influenced by the hand of the creator. It joined the creator and the observer in a mutual bond.

Such a trace has lingered in all works created up until the modern age of technological reproduction. It is what has given the ‘visual image its legitimacy’, and remains an intrinsic component of the ‘visual language’. It is seen in the brush strokes, the pencil lines and the texture of paint applied with the passion and energy that comes from self belief. This is not the ego of the creator but is the common ‘self belief’ of a social group. Everything else, and there is much more, is subservient to the unmissable hand of the creator (no religious pun intended) .

This brings us to the second axiom (according to Puggy Booth).

“The visual Language is expressed in graphical forms, which uniquely, must always include the ‘Human’ component, in its execution and in its content (although ‘content’ is a complex quality, which does not necessarily mean recognisable forms).”

In defiance of the ‘pragmatic’ world, which reduces humanity to the most fundamental levels of self interest, the ‘awareness of self’ in the visual language, is a common ‘self’. It manifests what we have in common; the gift of vision and the sensation of being enlightened and ennobled by the visual experience. You don’t get that in any political diatribe or religious ranting.

A world moderated by the visual language may not save every soul but it could avoid the worst excesses of a lack of communication between conflicted individuals, feuding nations, religious creeds and political bias.

It is worth giving it some space in our cluttered minds. The free spirits that trudge through the psychologically, ‘danger infested ‘swamps of the visual language, on occasions have something pertinent to express that has no alternative way of being shared. Occasionally this has moved individuals, tribes or nations to an accommodation with the rest of humanity; a facility well worthy of dedication from those human beings that see every soul on our planet as a partner in our individual dreams and desires.

Of course painting is not the only art, but the power of the visual image is that it is fundamentally a pure medium. Words are cheap, and ambiguous because they are primarily dependant on culturally biased interpretations. The world is confusing enough without the obscurity of words.

The visual language has an honesty that allows it to say what could not be said in words, even by the few brave enough to try. Such power does not come without an onerous obligation. In the words of the sage: the keys to heaven are also the keys to hell.

It may be a romantic notion but it is worth exploring; the idea that the visual image may reach across the socio-political divide, across the socio-economic chasm, and draw different peoples together. After all there is more that every human being has in common, than there is which divides us. The visual language is the only uncorrupted form of communication to explore these possibilities and it should neither be exploited or despoiled by vested interests.

In the past blatant propagandists have recruited it for their agenda’s.

Throughout history the means of sharing the visual language has been monopolised by the establishment. That still continues but the technology of ‘individual to individual’ communication is threatening to erode that inevitably; or at least weaken its tyrannical control.

Every visual artist is a moral campaigner because they communicate in a privileged spatial area of human cognition, and must appreciate the responsibility to utilise the medium appropriately. Freedom of expression in the visual language is no less a compromise than all of our treasured freedoms, on all sides of the political, religious and economic scenarios all over our planet.

Good artists must attempt to share the medico’s creed; do no harm.

In a similar way to which ‘bullies’, exploit the mass media; trivial and meaningless images can decorate the formal galleries and populate public spaces with their overwhelming mediocrity. Nothing can change that condition as long as those motivated to do it have the time and energy to continue. Alarmingly the depth of this pool of mediocrity is boundless and by its shear volume will be the dominate force in the free media.

This is the enigma of the visual language, it demands to be free; and by this freedom it must be inclusive and available. With this accessibility, it falls into a deluge of aimless expression. Every soul on the planet wants to be heard or seen. All forms of art immediately fail the basic test of authenticity when they deny this; it is a conundrum.

However for the observer all this visual pollution reduces the visual language to ‘white noise’ with the deluge of eye candy and advertising spam along with the additional offence of adolescent pollution in the form of vandalism and obscenity covering any available public space. The observer is neutered by a ‘denial of service’ attack on the visual senses.

No measure of excellence/quality can evolve because where the rare ‘worthy’ works emerge they are as rapidly overwhelmed by the next wave of visual spam.

No evaluation of relevance is possible because there are no sources of authoritative opinion.

In the mid 20^th century this unresolvable contradiction lead commentators to resort to a ‘nihilist’ interpretation of the possibilities of all creative activities. Those negative commentators have not been silenced, but their view is framed in a pragmatic world of values that can only be expressed in material form.

It is the creatives goal to reveal the empirical reality that the image code embraces.

It must be devoid of ambiguous definitions, it must embrace the integrity of a democratic creative environment.

Mens rea

The question is not, ‘what is the meaning’ of art, but ‘what is its utility to modern society’?

Most specifically for this exercise, the art in focus is the ‘visual image’. In this case it has several conspicuous uses. Firstly it is an uncontrolled market place like ‘drugs’, and perhaps the new cyber- currencies; and it is supposedly legal. Therefore the accountancy profession finds it very useful as an apparatus for holding/quarantining capital. Additionally it is the most effective carrier of subliminal information; a self evident tool for any who have something to sell, either ideas, information or products. ( see also: a personal voyage, over the edge of a flat earth – ‘mimetics’ )

Is this all there is to contemporary image making?

Is its charmingly entertaining effects, justified as an contribution to social intercourse or are these bucolic assets more of a distractor than a contribution to understanding our very complex reality? It appears incontrovertible that the role of the image in the learning process, which is such an essential part of acquiring ‘intelligence’, has been commandeered by ‘forces, unspecified’. Whether this can be construed as a malignant energy or just the effects of negligence, is a matter of personal disposition. This unacceptable situation may be convenient for those first 2 examples of the usage of ‘images’, but the cost is that we have lost access to the practice of enlightenment, through the visual language, which has played such a pivotal role in the evolution of our species.

Even prior to birth, the brain soaks up every nuance of experience it can access. Learning is an absolutely essential biological function and it only ceases at the point of death. It is however an attribute that can be hidden as an inconspicuous autonomous activity that is merely subconscious.

Some insightful revelations can be noted from recent work on robotics. This work has shown that, “rather than being fixed in configuration, the functional anatomy of the cortex displays activity-dependant plasticity on a time scale sufficiently short to play a role in perception, …”

For the creative this has subtle implications, especially when considered with other more revealing research. There exists compelling evidence that the brain adopts a viewer-centred, rather than an object-centred approach to visual representation.

What does this mean for the mere creative? It means everything. It illuminates the way the creative can respond to the technology available to them. It gives the most convincing evidence that the observer is the essential element in the experience.

What follows in the substance of this essay is supporting arguments and experimental results that define the democracy of ‘plastic perception’. The creative can expand their concept with these arguments but the real target is the ordinary observer. It is the art consumer that is being usurped by the autocracy of gallery art. My cry is to burn down these hypocritical institutions of false art. Give the public galleries back to the citizens. Our governments should not accept “the more you pay, the more its worth” value for any legal accounting function. The realistic commercial value of any work of art is its cost of manufacture, which is the same as any commercial product. Such a radical change would instantly restore the visual image to its moral role of enlightenment and return its authentic value to the society that produces it; if not to all of humankind.

The role of the visual image begins the instant the new born opens its eyes. The child needs to learn to see before it learns what it is seeing. In this process the visual language that an individual carries for the rest of their life is an extension of this ubiquitous process. Every individual fortunate to possess the use of their visual senses, has this unique tool embedded in their physiology. That it is mostly repressed, is a consequence of the ‘fear of freedom’ an individual experienced when confronted by the pressures of cultural conformity.

Occasionally this dangerous animal escapes, becoming manifest in the form of an iconic image.

It is released by the effect of either an inadvertent, or intentional act by one of the practitioners of the ‘visual language’. Sometimes the endgame is revolutionary because any extension of reality can have unexpected results. All practitioners in the ‘visual language’ need to appreciate what is at stake.

Understanding reality is at stake.

Information is at stake. Every individual is in danger of being drowned in a tsunami of misrepresentation and alternative realities.

Democracy is at stake. When we lack the information to discriminate between real and fabricated information, we become disenfranchised of our freedoms. Depending on the social and political environment we are born into, this opinion can be read as anarchy by some or free-will by others.

I confess to the crime of believing the visual language is the potential instrument that ‘technology age humanity’ has, to recover the lost practice of the iconic image. To the creative it is a call to get out there and cover the walls, fill the rooms and saturate the technology with images for the pure sake of creating images. Out of the chaos the iconic will emerge if the results are open to public scrutiny.

It is a revolution and this ‘Mens rea’ is a call to arms.

Out of the chaos and in spite of the art establishment, iconic images will emerge and be owned by the whole of the society. Creative’s and all around them, must fight this fear of freedom. Enlightenment is the reward.

Mens rea is a Latin phrase, meaning “guilty mind”. This is the mental element of an act. A guilty mind means an intention to commit some act. Intention is separate from a person’s motive.

What ever motive Puggy Booth had in beginning this diatribe, the intent is unequivocal; the graphic image belongs to humanity, it must be repossessed from the usurpers who have commandeered it.

A meaningful image is like a good poem. To quote Dylan Thomas (substituting image for poem); ”…it is a contribution to reality”. To paraphrase Thomas; [The world will never be the same once an iconic image has been added to it. An iconic image helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of ourselves and the world around all of us.]

A graphic image is stolen, if it becomes private property. When an iconic image becomes property it dies (is killed/murdered). When access to the public is denied or restricted, it is an act of piracy.

Who should be guilty in this state of affairs is for some higher court to decide. And let the offenders be damned.

The act of commodifying the ‘image’, is treason toward the whole body of humanity. Any culture, which includes images, automatically makes them public property. Elites may try to create a culture that they may take ownership of, but the culture of a society is public property and cannot be owned, bought or sold; unless a crime against that society is perpetrated.

An elite’s efforts to commodify the ‘image’ is rape or at least prostitution.

This does not imply that the creative is not entitled to claim ownership of the image.

In conclusion Puggy Booth does not only admit guilt to the crime as stated, but also must concede to the sin of pride without which no individual would dare to indulge in the search for enlightenment in the visual manifestation of their creation. The creative must be driven to achieve a meaningful contribution to this environment. But to indulge in the practice of any creative endeavour without a moral obligation to protect the integrity of the visual language is heresy.

It is a moral issue but a secular morality, which does not preclude any other religious beliefs, it is about the perception of reality, not the concept of god.

Although the ‘philosophy of art’ may appear a triviality in the world of violence, famine, flood and other catastrophes, it is not impossible that it may open a discussion that is not available to a troubled world, preoccupied with aggressively protecting their vested interests.

There are speakers, presenting, around the world, the notion that there is a revolution brewing, in all democratic countries. I suspect that they are seeing one side of the great surge of uncertainty and disillusionment that exists now in most countries that profess to be a ‘free’ western style government.

The big names doing this circuit are mostly right biased pontificators, proclaiming the virtues of nationalism, and tariff protected capitalism.

They may or may not be reacting to the real undercurrent of dissatisfaction that ordinary citizens of these western democracies are experiencing, where the benefits they expect and desire are being pushed relentlessly away from their reach.

The advent of the ‘great disrupter’ in the USA, has alerted not only the citizens of that country, of the danger of complacency, and being negligent of their democratic responsibility. The whole western world has realised that their freedom is a tenuous right that must be actively and zealously preserved by direct involvement.

At all times the forces that would usurp the individual rights of citizens, are sniping at the edges of the freedoms that were hard fought for, and so easily lost.

The devils are from both the right and the left.

The right are the national forces of the wealthy and powerful who believe their prosperity is symbolic of the health of the nation.

The left are the disenfranchised who have only belligerence and violence to express their malevolence to the system oppressing them.

Not so obvious is the alternative revolution. The coalescence of the ordinary citizen into a cohesive force that passes all issues through a filter of tolerance is idealist. The realisation that individuals can be different within a social order that is equally available to those who can contribute without denying others their right to also do the same, is plausible.

Although the revolution of the centre is by definition the most potentially powerful, representing the greater number of individuals, it is also the more difficult to define.

It is problematic to gather followers for a movement that is described by what it does not stand for.

There are immediately obvious obstacles to the confederation of the centre which are manifest in the political systems existing in each particular constituency and in the control of the media that exists in all its forms. It is in these areas that the revolution needs to be achieved. Embedded in our present flawed methods of distributing information and expressing opinions, is commercially influenced treatment of information and even government control of publicly financed media.

The enemy of democracy is autocracy and political polarisation, which is so much written into the DNA of politicians and bureaucrats. Politicians should represent their constituents not their party.

Public policy needs to be analysed by a non governmental authority who should present, in a public forum, an impartial assessment of its appropriateness and impact on the status quo; before being presented to a parliament for voting on and for the constituents to appreciate (understand).

This idea alone is more of a revolution than what has happened throughout history and will be a continual ‘work in progress’. It may not be the classic definition of a revolution but it represents something more challenging to implement and even more problematic to convince the populace to endorse.

A party of independents is the natural first step in what may be just ‘too optimistic’ to hope for.

It will be a start and may lead to somewhere as yet conceivable.

See: NoneOfTheAbove4AU

The experience of visual images (looking at pictures) is not just an indulgence of the indolent and snobbish, although it can be that for the self possessed followers of fashion or the gallery squatters.

Such elitist groups of so-called connoisseurs, form an opinionated and exclusive clutch that anoints chosen creative’s that suit their agendas on the pretext that this minority has some indefinable qualification to discern quality in creative effect. However the image code cannot be so easily corralled. It is a gift of nature that is endowed on all individuals. That only a small number are motivated to express themselves in this medium is due to the ambivalence of the majority of society and the effective usurping of image spaces by the gallery squatters and commercial pressure for advertising space.

The reality is that for ‘sighted persons’ the visual experience is actually an everyday exercise, which is mostly unconscious and automatic, to the extent that most individuals are unaware of the essential processes that are being utilised. This was brought into focus when engineering academics turned from image reproduction to image analysis.

In this pragmatic world practitioners were able to capture animated images and convert these to electronic data and pass that information to another location. Also achieved is reconstituting the image data by reverse engineering the signal and displaying the initial image on a graphic device.

When engineers needed to give machines the gift of sight this image transfer model [ camera → data → monitor ], that previous was taken as a close analogy to the [ eye → optic nerve → brain ] format, immediately proved to be totally flawed.

In the course of investigating the problems of finding a ‘machine → image’ interface, what it means ‘to see’, became a complex rethink of what constitutes the image.

The resulting methods and the resolution of systematic problems have a fascinating and instructive set of lessons for the creative that cares to consider the implications and try to understand what it means for the image code.

These ‘learnings’, to use a clumsy and ugly, contemporary colloquialism, not only opens new avenues to creative images they indicate why images have been and will continue to be the most influential of all human experiences.

The academic based inquiry is curious to find the mechanism whereby things are perceived. Therefore the method as well as the assumptions about the nature of experience are those of logical positivism, which hold that the only kind of empirical knowledge is scientific; a dominant influence in philosophy since the last half of the 20^th century. The creative armed with the image code has an alternative rational definition of the empirical evidence which describes the event of seeing from an internal reality. The difference is to distinguish between what can be said about an work and what the work really represents. For the positivist this is a nonsense, they are content with an ‘outer meaning’, which can be measured.

The image code supports another kind of meaning, purely sensory and non rational, undefinable in commutable terms but more real than the abstraction of the scientific method. The source of this sensory reality is the biological process of the [ eye → optic nerve → brain ] connection and the learned process of ‘seeing’, which is innately learned from first light for the individual.