Agent X

Agent X lives in my house.  He fixes my computer, leaves his dirty socks in the middle of the hall, loses days to the world of videogames, and wakes up early every morning to take out the puppy, letting me sleep in.  He also drives me crazy with his fashion.  It’s not that he possesses a fashion sense that is overly expensive to maintain, nor does he suffer from the lack of fashion sense that can often mark an individual as fodder for high school tormentors.  Rather, his sensible Everyman sense of fashion, marked occasionally by whimsical t-shirts, includes a preference for blue and green shirts.  The trouble is that, while Agent X can clearly identify bright greens and blues, he tends to perceive many olive tones as brown, many turquoises and blues only tinted with green as being wholly green, and many dark blues he mistakes for black or dark grey.  As far as fashion goes, this is not especially concerning, but at times, his perception of color gives rise to confusing and interesting situations.  Luckily, the charm of wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day isn’t as essential for adults.

In How Images Think, Ron Burnett discusses the concept of perception, how perception is different than seeing.  The way an individual perceives an image results from the interplay of biological, cultural, and personal (esp. memory) factors which converge together.  Perhaps collide is a better term here.  There is not gentle mingling, and while some of the information affecting perception do synthesize together, some also data could be considered overwritten or increased in influence. 

            For Agent X, the biological input that interprets color is different than what falls along conventional, or normal, lines.  What color blindness brings into relief is more subtle than the difference between those who suffer color blindness and those who do not.  Every individual interprets color differently.  Every lens of every eye is unique; every individual’s ability and range to input information is different.  The cones and rods within the eye which determine color also affects the range of colors and shades it is possible for any individual to see.  Every individual’s eyes are different, so every individual’s biological input of color information is different.  What this means is that perception is not only a factor of opinion but of data input information.   

            This raises the question as to how the concept of communication could differ if more people realized that some things we list as matters of opinion are matters of biology?  It is not Agent X’s opinion that his St. Patrick’s Day shirt it green while my opinion is that it’s blue: to his eyes, the shirt is green; to mine, it is blue.  This is not a matter of opinion, but it is a matter of perception.  How might communication be reevaluated if perception was understood as a matter of more than interpretation but of actual data?

Stained Glass Identity

In No Caption Needed, Hariman and Lucaites argue that shared experiences and shared images create a shared memory and shared civic identity.  To argue this, Hariman and Lucaites examine multiple iconic photographs from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—these images are powerful partly because they have spread, argue Hariman and Lucaites.  Photography has allowed the spread and reproduction of selected images; this ability of a selected image to be reproduced and spread is an important factor in it becoming a recognized image and icon.  It is in the ability to spread and reproduce these images that shared civic identity can be formed around them—shared memory from the individual experience of viewing an iconic image.

But what about images that do not spread?  What about images that remain attached to a particular local and what about the shared and civic identity which can emerge around these images?

Stained glass windows are images created from a process very different that photography, and the materiality of these images preclude the possibility for easy mobility.  These images do not move; the individual—the community—must come to the image.  But these images are also traditionally attached to a church, and the church was, for centuries, the center of a community.  The importance of the church to society and community in the middle ages made this so. 

Stained glass images presented the images of the church and had the potential to become, I would argue, as significant to these smaller communities in the creation of shared memory and identity as Hariman and Lucaites’s photographs.  Just as there are often multiple versions of a single photographic image, there are multiple variations of a subject presented in stained glass.  Subjects repeat in stained glass, however; this is especially true of the images presented by the church.  The Madonna or the saints were the most frequent subjects represented in stained glass, and each of these subjects had iconic motifs to identify him or her.  Mary would be depicted in Blue, often with the addition of red to her dress, for example.  This motif would identify the image of Mary for the viewer, a cultural cue learned through community and shared experience. 

But no two Mary images are alike.  The iconic image of Mary spreads through multiple images encoded with the same symbolic cues, but each Mary is herself unique.  Where one image might depict a stoic Mary, another image might represent a smiling Mary.  This combination of shared iconic imagery within different images makes me questions how Hariman and Lucaites’s concept of shared memory and civic identity would function with these images.

One thing is for certain—the image would not travel to the viewer; instead, the viewer would have to come to the image.  As mentioned above, given the church’s function in a community, community members would be familiar with the images of their own church.  Would these images create a shared and civic identity among that community that is different that the shared and civic identity among a community three towns over with a different church and different images?   My inclination would be, yes.  In small ways, I think it probably would make a difference.  To understand Mary through an image depicting her as a smiling new mother is to interpolate different qualities and a different understanding of the figure than to understand Mary from an image of a sorrowful, contemplative woman.  Yet, both these images would be readily identifiable as Mary by the colors in which she is depicted.

Would these two different iconic representations of the same figure then create two different shared cultural identities?  Would these identities conflict when a member of one community then discusses some matter with a member of another community, both of whom have been affected differently by their formed shared memories and identities? 

I don’t yet know, but it’s something to think about.  The materiality and mobility of an image might not preclude the formation of shared memory and shared identity, but it certainly changes the scope of influence. 

Speaking Through Silence

In No Caption Needed Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites argue that iconic images create cultural identity.  In examining specific photos which represent moments which have become iconic for national memory and identity, Hariman and Lucaites trace the production and presentation of these photos that first raised them to iconic status, and then examines how each particular image examined has shaped public memory and civic culture in ways that differ from those who participated (subjects, photographers, new agencies, etc.).  Within this process, it is the concept of anonymity which seems to be one of the most significant aspects in the creation of the iconic image.

An iconic image must be able to secure the emotional attention of the viewer and create a sense of empathy or awe over the subjects presented.  In “Migrant Mother,” the Depression era picture of a struggling migrant woman and her children, the anonymity of the subject allows for such empathy and awe.  Hariman and Lucaites note that “for those who initially encountered this photograph in the 1930s, the ‘Migrant Mother’ captured a profound, generalized sense of vulnerability while simultaneously providing a localized means for breaking its spell” (49)  It is only in being anonymous that this image can provide a generalized and iconic message.  Indeed, once Migrant Mother’s identity is revealed (Florence Owens) in the late 1970s, once Owens gives a voice and a specificity to Migrant Mother, the image loses both its power and iconic status, no longer able to represent the plight of the general public (or, even, of a historical era) once she becomes a real (and bitter) person to the public.  It is not until her death in the early 1980s that the image becomes iconic once again.

With Owens death cane the subject’s silence.  No longer able to speak for herself, no longer able to voice her dissatisfaction over the image, the picture is able to return to a silent portrayal of public identity.  In this photo an emotional microcosm represents for the public an entire historical era , but that spell breaks once the anonymity of the subject is broken.

This makes me wonder at the formation of iconic images.  Anonymity allows for viewer to read into the subject, to transfer their empathy to the subject of the photograph.  Anonymity allows for the view to experience with the subject what is emotionally evoked by the subject.  Once the subject becomes a complex human being, with beliefs and personality traits uniquely individual, the subject becomes real.  In becoming real, it loses its ability to impart the empathic message to the generalized audience, and in losing this ability, it seems that the image loses its power to represent shared culture.   It is only in a subject’s silence that the image speaks.

Communication Breakdown

In this post I want to talk about ekphrasis, and, specifically, I want to talk about how ekphrasis is something with which I struggle to fully understand.  It’s not the concept which I find exceptionally difficult.  A particular communication process, and one especially linked with literature, W. J. T. Mitchell succinctly identifies ekphrasis in Picture Theory as “the verbal representation of visual representation,” noting at one point that simple description is the lowest form of ekphrasis.  Ekphrasis is the verbalization of the visual, the use of language to cue readers towards specific imagistic renderings.  My problem is that language does not easily transfigure itself into images.  Instead, my mode of thinking is very strongly aligned with the linguistic.  Visual information is difficult for me to process as it is (I always get lost, and don’t ask me to find my car in a parking lot!), but to read a description of anything visual and then actually visualize it is near impossible for me.

When I read a scene that has strong imagistic details, I get easily lost in the text.  Instead of “seeing” the image described, instead of constructing an understanding of the visual space being described as I read, I simply hear the text in emphatic tone.   While I have a great memory for identifying from which text a particular quote is written or spoken, and can often remember specific details about intonation and the quality of the voice (esp. if originally spoken), years after I first encounter the material, the visual moments are difficult for me to remember moments after they occur.  And if it is a piece of ekphrasic text from a novel or poem, it is very likely that I will ever be able to comprehend the text well enough to remember it in the first place.

Here’s a secret: I am not a fan of Lord of the Rings.  I love Tolkien, and his poem about myth written after one of his philosophical/religious arguments with C. S. Lewis is one of my favorites.  The Hobbit?  Fun!  Wonderful!  But the Lord of the Rings trilogy simply has too many passages of detailed description.  I can’t keep the geography straight, let alone the battle scenes.  I have trouble converting even the smallest descriptive details into visual detail.

My personal failures at converting the linguistic let me understand what it is like on one side of the spectrum; to be able to convert what I read into pictures is not something I can understand.

This leads me to think of Temple Grandin. In the first lines of her autobiographic Thinking in Pictures, Grandin describes experiencing the world from the other side of the spectrum: “I think in pictures.  Words are a second language to me.  I translate both spoken and written words into full-color movies, complete with sound, which runs like a VCR tape in my head.  When somebody speaks to me, his words are instantly translated into pictures” (3).   Grandin, whose Thinking in Pictures details her life with autism, describes in great detail her struggle to understand communication and human interaction, and how her difficulty in understanding language in an abstract form complicates these processes.  Grandin explains how socializing with people is difficult because the way she perceives the world, and the way she perceives language and the process of communicating, is so different from the norm.  

Grandin, too, interprets language in a different way.  According to Grandin’s research, many autistic individuals are highly visual thinkers and, like her, will acquire a vast mental library of visual images that function as their communicative structures.  Many of the image associations would seem incongruous to others, especially images which get connected to abstract concepts.  But even simple imagistic concepts can be complicated visual associations that are too specific.  For example, Grandin discusses how the terms tree or dog recall specific trees and dogs of which she has attained personal knowledge through experience.  To interpret these terms outside the specific images she has already encoded with the terms is incredibly difficult and sometimes impossible for her. 

My real question comes down to this: concepts like ekphrasis are used and discussed as communicative patterns that are natural and universal.  Only, they are not.  The concept of ekphrasis is complicated by acknowledging that there is a range of effective interpretation of which some people simply fall along the outside. 

When we communicate, how much of our response is based simply because we assume the other person encodes and decodes information the same way we do?  I’m not talking about differences in beliefs or preferences, but the mechanics of interpreting.   

Seeing Music

In Music-Image-Text Roland Barthes discusses the limitations of language to really speak about music.  Now, whether Barthes argument is valid, whether I buy the claims, and even whether it is an argument that needs to be included in this post all seem valid topics for discussion, and certainly what one might expect from such an opening statement.  But I feel as though Barthes’s discussion of music in linguistic terms, his discussion over the denotative and connotative, over sign and signified have actually lead me to consider something very different.  Barthes’s arguments all come back to text, to language—it is the lens through which he saw and analyzed the world.  Understanding that and seeing that in Barthes has made me wonder about those who do not interpret the world in such a way.

Oh, yes, I know there are different perspectives.  I’m even willing to use a word here that, usually, I hate seeing because it is so often used incorrectly and histrionically, but there exists an actual plethora (that’s right, plethora) of lenses through which to experience and interpret the world.  Barthes’s lens is particular to himself, but it also falls under a general category one might identify and the linguistic lens.  His examination of image and music in Music-Image-Text comes from that general lens.  What strikes me interesting about Barthes’s interpretive lens is less on how he interprets and more on how that lens was formed.  Now, I, and I would hope a general majority of academics and intellectuals, acknowledge that while Barthes might have been born with a natural inclination towards certain kinds of learning and thinking (abstract thinking verses spatial, for example), that he was certainly also influenced by the socio-cultural sphere of his particular time and place.  What I want to consider is the biological lens—the lens constructed through chemicals and synapses and electronic impulses in brain and nerve centers.  I want to talk about chromaesthesia. synesthesia.

Chromaesthesia is a particular form of synethesia, and to understand the former first requires a description of the latter.  Synethesia is a condition in which one experiences the cognitive input of one sense automatically and involuntarily with another sense.  In grapheme to color synethesia, for example, one would involuntarily associate certain colors with certain letters and numbers, thus “4” might be yellow, “Q” red, and “C” blue.  In the lexical to gustatory form of synesthesia words (or for some phonemes) have corresponding taste sensations.  This is not as simple as reading “apple” and simultaneously tasting an apple (that would be your taste-memory kicking in); it’s not even as simple as reading “pear” and tasting an apple (we might consider this a kind of cross-association where the taste of one fruit is remembered at the indication of another fruit).  In lexical to gustatory synesthesia one might read “desk,” or even simply the indication for the phonetic /d/, and involuntarily the decoding of that sign through the brain’s pathways would trigger not only the cognitive meaning, but also the taste of an apple.  Imagine that every time you read a word with an initial /d/ you tasted an apple, involuntarily and without prompting.  To those of us without synthesia we might consider such an experience as odd, frightening even, but for those with synesthesia it is normalcy.  “Desk,” “Dog,” “Deodorant”… all equal apple; well, of course they do.  If you had lived your life this way, it would be normal.  Perhaps a bit unpleasant if you happen to really hate apples, but normal.   (For more information on synesthesia, you might want to watch this short documentary by Jonathan Fowler on BoingBoing http://www.youtube.com/user/boingboingvideo#p/search/0/a3DbScY8Ais)

Chromaesthesia is a particular kind of synesthesia in which one sees colors while listening to sound.  Imagine that every time you listen to music creates an involuntary imagistic response.  I can’t help but think back to Barthes whose examination of music (and the way we can experience and discuss music) seems completely changed by the notion of forced association.  If sound—music—cannot be separated from specific visuals how does that affect not only what associations are brought to it, what associations are biologically codified, but also the means one might possess for interpreting and discussing it. 

When I first heard of chromaesthesia, I thought of Disney’s film Fantasia (the original 1940 film) in which there is a segment called “Meet the Soundtrack” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTM48pwoXAo ).  During this segment, the Soundtrack, a single vertical animated line, is encouraged to demonstrate different sounds and, as he does so, his figure transforms in color and shape.  Now try to imagine that, instead of interpretation, as a biological response to sound.

For French composer Olivier Messiaen, that is exactly how he saw music.  Usually, when asserting one “saw” music there are two interpretations—the literal reference actually refers to the seeing of symbols (e.g. notes) that represent what can be translated (if used properly) into music.   The other reference is metaphoric—we say “saw” music, but we mean “understood” or “interpreted.”  In Messiaen’s case, he actually saw music.  He interpreted, learned, composed as much through color as through sound.  Take this video in which he discusses French composer Claude Debussy to his students (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSWatsiBErU&feature=related).  Messiaen not only understands music through color (for him, after all, they are irrevocably linked), but tries to express through sound a visual aesthetic.  Because of his chromaesthesia, Messiaen  didn’t try to create a piece that metaphorically called to the imagination the color blue or the color red as we tend to think of as the artistic process for one who attempts to represent the essence of one sense through the expression of another (take, for example, this attempt to visually represent  chromaesthesia http://www.behance.net/gallery/CHROMAesthesiae/747516).  For Messiaen, the synaesthesia normalizes particular color-sound combinations.  For Messiaen, certain colors and shades were uniquely created through music—if I want to stick to metaphor, I’d say that Messiaen painted his compositions.  Only, for Messiaen, this is not necessarily metaphor. 

Unlike Barthes, whose developed lens of examination and interpretation prevented him from fully communicating and expressing his reactions to music, Messiaen’s lens joins two senses forever in interpretation, but he is the only one who could see music in his particular way.  Even another chromaesthete, when listening to Messiaen’s music, is bound by the lens of his or her own biological uniqueness.   (For example, see this video in which a chromasethete describes her experiences with synaethesia and  listening to Messiaen’s music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM4WvF_PikI&feature=related). 

Quarter Logic

I have appropriated a lesson from a former professor that involves a set of questions and object X, X being for the lesson a U. S. quarter.  Though I use this lesson in a different type of class and for different purposes than my former professor, the general outcome is the same: a detailed examination of a seemingly innocuous and mundane object reveals layers of meaning most (if not all) of the students had never really considered before.  The first question, What is X?, delivers a variety of responses from the denotative “money,” “metal,” and “coin” to the greater connotative responses like “a wish,” “propaganda,” and “history.”  The second and third questions follow suit, thus “What does X do?” will elicit responses from “flip,” “purchase,” and “hold its shape” to “symbolize,” and “declare a belief in God.”  This pattern follows suit in every class: the early responses reveal only surface level, denotative insight into the object while the latter responses delve into more connotative, symbolic possibilities. 

In Image-Music-Text, Roland Barthes discusses the assumption of reality that is often given to the press photo.  That is to say, people tend to take the press photo at face value and assign a certain quality of factualness or truthiness, though neither of these MacGyvered terms are either fully accurate.  He identifies this quality as denotation—when one looks at a press photo, one assumes that the information gleamed is literal and direct. The thing to consider here is this: people understand the press or realistic photo is not the same as a studio portrait photo or art photo, and this provides the press photo with a certain verisimilitude—a verisimilitude that does not really exist.  It is easy in a studio photo or art photo to see the emphasis on the stylistic and the artificial; it is natural to see these images as posed.  Barthes argues that the press photo is just as staged and posed, but, of course, that’s not what most viewers perceive.  Even the significance of camera angle is often overlooked.

 What the quarter lesson suggests to me is that the assumption of denotative meaning does not end with press photos (and the like)—this assumption is not relegated to the realm of realism or the realistic, but exists as much in the realm of the symbolic and metaphoric, especially when the symbols and metaphors in question are common-place everyday objects.  The ubiquity of the quarter makes it banal.  The metaphoric and symbolic images don’t simply lose their meaning, it’s like they cease to be taken in as part of the meaning-creating process.   They slip into the background, into the movement and necessity of the everyday, and yet, as the latter responses that my students eventually come up with in examining what the quarter is, what it does, and what it means, there is a complex web of meaning attached to these banal objects that if considered bespeaks a multitude of connotations.  Before my students leave the class on the “What is X?” assignment day, I ask them to check their pockets, wallets, and backpacks for loose and ready cash.  I tell them to look for coins as well as paper currency, in American as well as foreign, and although the onset of debit cards has reduced (slightly) the number of individuals in any classroom who possesses ready cash, the truth is most students have a cache of quarters or a few dollar bills they keep in reserve, if nothing else than for use in the vending machines or parking meters.  I ask them to look at their bills and their coins, the symbols and the words stamped upon them, the connotations that they mean, and I ask them to consider the next time they go to purchase a Coca-Cola, or to feed the meter, or to grab a quick Starbucks, just what it is they are declaring by using that cash.

Seeing by Touch

I’d like to start this posting by continuing some thoughts from my last post.  Specifically, the question of how one who is visually impaired can become integrated into those parts of the national consciousness formed by a shared participation in some image.  The bulk of examples upon which both I and the text from which I drew my concerns in the last post focused on more political examples (e.g. the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima), but what about those cultural images encountered as children that, even when encountered individually, help to form a collective identity based upon the experience of having viewed the same image.  Think about how some images and picture books become a part of the cultural consciousness.  Some images like Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar or Dr. Sues’s Cat in the Hat become iconic of childhood even for adults who managed to never read the books.  (Take a look at the variety of items bearing the image of Carle’s Caterpillar http://www.eric-carle.com/world.html.)

  But what of the children who, though they may learn the stories, have no access to the images? 

Audio books, reading machines, and Braille all provide opportunities for the visually impaired to read a great variety of media from books to websites.  Braille computer displays allow for the blind to read the text from computer screens, but while concept designs like that of the Siafu (http://www.yankodesign.com/2008/02/27/metamophing-computer-interfaces/) take into consideration the need to render computer images for the blind, the technology to do so does not yet exist.  

So if more advanced technology is not yet up to speed, what about less advanced?  What about the technology involved in book publishing? In textile and paper arts?   Enter into the conversation the tactile book.  The technology does exist for creating these textual rich texts.  Unfortunately, most tactile books that are created are done so to create an additional depth to a visual art piece or to promote limited multi-sensory reading experiences for the young.  Pat the Bunny and a tactile version of Horton Hears a Who are examples of well-known tactile books aimed at children.  Pat the Bunny’s tactile element is a small patch of fuzzy fabric that is meant to be the animal’s fur; the book is designed to allow the child to interact with the text by, as the title says, patting the bunny.  The tactile Horton Hears a Who incorporates a three dimensional stuffed plushy of Horton into the book. 

   Images from childhood reading can become intrinsic parts of our identity and culture, both individually and collectively.  So, does it not make sense that there would be a strong effort to include the visually impaired in this process?   The difficulty occurs in finding appropriate material.  Even though tactile books do exist, they are not really constructed with the visually impaired in mind. 

            A tactile book constructed for the visually impaired needs to consider very specific concerns.  (See http://www.makingtactilebooks.com/ for some instructions.)  Tactile images need to be distinct with clearly identifiable characters, borders, textures.  A fluffy patch in the middle of an otherwise traditional printed illustration is not enough.  Yet, largely, a fluffy patch meant to represent a rabbit’s soft pelt is the best a visually impaired child can hope to find in a tactile picture book outside of those handcrafted by individuals with their needs in mind. 

            Now, I understand that economics do play an issue in why there does not exist an abundance of tactile picture books for the visually impaired.  It is more expensive than conventional paperback printing, certainly.  But if the funds (and marketable success) can be found for puffed up Hortons and fluffed bunnies, is it unreasonable to believe funds can be put into a tactile picture book that appeals to both the needs of the visually impaired and is still marketed as a multi-sensory book for other sighted children? 

            If we have the technology but not the inclination to construct tactile picture books for children who are visually impaired, if we as a society fail to incorporate them into the fold of what I would call a shared image identity construction, then what becomes of the national and shared community discussed in the texts?  What’s more—why is there so little apparent concern about this topic?