"Possession of human language is associated with a specific type of mental organization, not simply a higher degree of intelligence."--Noam Chomsky
Exploring language is a way to explore human cognition, but it is not the only way to explore human cognition: enter the image.
We tend to ignore how humans react to images. We don't have required classes in grade school that force us to interpret movies etc. Although the study of images is not new, it is growing in importance with advances in technology.
"The soul never thinks without images"--Aristotle
And the growing interest in images is exemplified in the Matrix where "reality and images have become thoroughly mixed."
Developing Written Language
Most cultures have a myth describing the origins of language and writing, often given by some divine being.
Is that still true today? With the Bible etc.? Do we tend to consider images more spiritual (the crucifix)?
The first drawings date back only 32,000 years ago, while humans have existed for over a million. Pictures were literal representations of objects, not yet related to the words of a spoken language. Pictographs are still used today, for example, women and men's bathrooms are marked by human wearing skirt or pants.
Literal pictographs were simplified to metaphors out of necessity. When Spanish ships landed on the shores of Mexico in the 1500s Montezuma was sent a very large and literal painting, this is too time consuming. The best known system of simplified pictographs are Egypt's hieroglyphics, while the Chinese have simplified full images into tracings.
Learning to interpret Images
Early image critics treated images simply as another form of written word, judging them on the "effective delineation of character, in the pathos of the situation or in the play of emotion it represents...[not] its technical excellence."
But today we distrust images, claiming they appeal too much to our emotions and tricking us into thinking they are real.
What is it about images that evoke more emotion?
-Perhaps they give visual context that we cannot supply ourselves because we've never been in that situation?
-Cannot use euphemisms to distort reality?
Danger of Images
Why does the government work so hard to suppress certain images? For example, dead soldiers returning home:
-Maybe pictures are too open to interpretation:
Could be seen as victory for enemy.
Exploiting private moment of a family for political purposes.
Or as giving respect by mourning.
The rise of the image scares many critics:
"Images are winning--materialistic, entertainment-besotting, civic-life-depleting images; vain, phony, surface-loving, fantasy-promoting, reality-murdering images."
But which is more real? A picture of dead soldier or text?
Maybe if we were taught how to "read" images in school they would not be so. Some movies are as complex as novels.
Relationship between Images and Text
Each of us brings our own biology and life experiences to processing images.
Often novels are seen as allowing for more imagination, but is this really true? Do we simply not think about movies because we aren't forced to?
Before pictures were seen as support for the text of a news article, this seems to becoming less and less true. For example, Abu Grab scandal or Laci Peterson. Stories revolve around what makes good pictures.
A lessning attention-span? We're demanding more activity to remain interested, but is this a bad thing?
Today we are able to combine images and language like never before. Movies, Music Videos and now hypertext works of fiction. I tried finding examples of hypertext fiction but either links were dead or asked for money...perhaps the market isn't there yet.
The web requires a whole new set of skills that weren't required of previous artists, perhaps this will lead to more collaborative projects, and not just for artists. Today already 70 percent of jobs requiring a bachelors degree use computers.
According to the screenwriter of On the Waterfront, Budd Schulberg, movies are different from novels because they only focus on sequences leading towards the climax: there is no space or time for nuance, perspective and contradictions.
Is this even true? And if it is perhaps that is only because of the limits of technology. It is much cheaper and easier to write a novel then to make a 20 hour movies, but perhaps it won't always be that way.
This is from a presentation I gave on: