THE POWER OF PERCEPTION

Since I have embarked on this doctoral journey the number of readers of this blog appears to have declined. Not surprising. Whenever I am asked about this course of study/action, after about 30 seconds the questioner’s eyes glaze over and other topics of conversation are swiftly introduced. I too wonder if I will be able to sustain interest in the subject matter for a period of three years. Not that the project has to take three years, although the amount of reading that I am encountering daily is quite staggering.

Fiske

There is a wonderful quote, which I believe comes from Professor John Fiske, who was Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

“Communication is too often taken for granted when it should be taken to pieces.”

There is also the work of Jacques Bertin – “Semiologie Graphique”, in respect of which I find this:

Bertin

[…]The basis of Bertin’s work is the acknowledgement that (in the words of Serge Bonin) “graphics is a set of signs that allow you to transcribe the existing relations of difference, order or proportionality amongst qualitative or quantitative data”. Bertin restricts the field of semiology of graphics, excluding musical notation, language and mathematics, systems “bound to the temporal linearity”.

Among the systems aimed at the visual sense, that, unlike hearing, is non sequential (we can look at whatever part of the picture, but a song has a start and a finish), he discards symbolics and art, the meanings of which depend on the relationships between the signs and are, hence, disputable. This way what remains finally is the “rational part” of the visual signs that can be structured with a determined grammar.

Graphic representation has a double function for Bertin: as an artificial memory and as a tool for discovery, bound to the huge power of visual perception.’[…]

There is a lot to take in, and is it any wonder that communication of these theories produces the glazed look; yet, still, despite very visual evidence, I believe these matters should engender excitement.  Is the discovery of the ‘tools for discovery’ so unappealing? Perhaps in the filmic record of this journey, the ‘huge power of perception’ may answer the question. 

This young man Miguel Bongato clearly has a view: