Katia Smits 2022 - 2023
Theory of visual communication
INTRODUCTION – WHY THE VISUAL MATTERS
Vision is central to how we experience the world but at the same time it is also something
that is cultural defined. It is not neutral, not necessarily something natural. We need to be
critical towards it.
Phenomenology: Addresses what an image is. Understanding the photograph as a thing.
Semiotics: What an image means
ON VISION – A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EYE
Meditation exercise on da Vinci’s Mona Lisa: Naar een foto kijken, ogen sluiten, ogen
open, ogen sluiten, ...
Mona Lisa: You’ll think you know the painting because it’s very familiar to you, but she has
more details than you remember. There are elements that you never noticed that were
there or that you instructed in a very different way in your mind.
Portrait is looking at you
Reciprocity (wederkerigheid) is something of how you interact with an image
It comes in a context, background, colors, etc.
How vision functions: When you start engaging with an image, you realize that there
is much more to know than you actually think
When you start engaging with an image you realize that there is much more than you think.
And especially that you cannot control that image. You think that you know what is
happening but actually you don’t. You see details that you are not aware of.
Our vision is always generated in an interplane between the functioning of the brain
and the functioning of the eye
The brain reconstructs stimuli where they all come together
Painful images, pictures of calamities, pictures of catastrophizes: Normally we have a
relation to e.g., the war trough an image. So, the image is the fundamental tool trough which
that comes to us. But the image does not exist apart from an active subject viewing it, from
1
,Katia Smits 2022 - 2023
an active viewer. The viewer and the viewed come together. That image gadders meaning in
relation to an active subject who engages with it. It changes all the time, every time you look
at it will change meaning. (Purpose of an image)
Vision has to do with your eye scanning:
The eye constructs and reconstructs
The play of focus and defocus does not change our perception of an image, it
changes the image itself. You don’t see the same thing when you close your eyes and
when you reopen them
How can such a small thing (an eye) bring in such a fastness of the world? So much
information?
We go back to the Greeks/Egyptians:
Instead of the eye being an active agent, it is hunting for information
The eye is scanning around the surface trying to grab what is there to be
known
“The eye is a hunter”
The eye is not the passive identity, it is not just receiving stuff from the
outside, but it is an active one (the focusing and defocusing)
Most important division that you have to bear in mind: The devision between the
principles of extramission and intromission
Plato - Extramission
The eye conquers what it sees - objects are reduced in size and brought into the eye - the
world was made up by the existence of pure, universal forms, archetypes to which all
elements and objects that make up the world must, to a certain extent adhere
Is what characterizes the approach that Plato had.
The eye is and active agent that conquers what it sees.
The eye reduces an object and is a laser way that would progress into the world and
reduces element in their minimal form. The eye is a hunter, it captures.
2
,Katia Smits 2022 - 2023
Democritus (460 – 370 BC): matter composed of atoms that are carried to the soul to be
viewed - objects make copies of themselves which contracts in size until it is sucked up
by the pupil - objects emanated a thin pellicle (the eidola) that would enter the mind by
travelling through the eye
For him there was some Eidola: Nothing but a reduction of an object that the
eye could suck up. Through the eye being able to reconstruct into the soul.
Materie bestaande uit atomen die naar de ziel worden gedragen om bekeken
te worden
Objecten maken kopieën van zichzelf die in omvang krimpen totdat ze door
de pupil worden opgezogen
Objecten straalden een dunne pellicule (de eidola) uit die de geest zou
binnendringen door door het oog te reizen
Empedocles: Theorizes the 4 elements (earth, air, wind, fire): Light radiates from the
fire within the eye
The eye illuminates the world with its own spirit “as when a human being
going out at night lint up a lantern”
Het oog verlicht de wereld met zijn eigen geest “zoals een mens die ‘s nachts
uitgaat een lantaarn opsteekt”.
Galen: Was interested in the lens, he did cataract surgeries
Known for the spiritual turn, function of the optical nerve
First real scientific understanding of the connection between eye and brain
Optical nerve is hollow (hol) and conducts (voert uit) visual spirits
Extramission: Flow starting from the brain and developing through the hollow
optical nerves.
Flow was centered around the notion of the pneuma, “a vaporous substance
which is formed in party by the inspired air and in party by the vaporization of
the arterial blood”
Stroming vanuit de hersenen en zich ontwikkelend via de holle optische
zenuwen. De stroming was gecentreerd rond het begrip pneuma, "een
dampachtige substantie die in de partij gevormd wordt door de geïnspireerde
lucht en in de partij door de verdamping van het slagaderlijke bloed
Aristotle - Intramission
3
, Katia Smits 2022 - 2023
Aristotle: Objects are visible only insofar as they are lit. Lights come from fire. The eye is a
receiving rather than emanating organ. NOT an active organ
Objecten zijn alleen zichtbaar voor zover ze verlicht zijn
Licht komt van vuur
Het oog is eerder een ontvangend dan een uitstralend orgaan
Ings: “He managed to explain the way in which distant objects too can be perceived instantly
and also why objects are visible only during daytime and not during nighttime”
Hij slaagde erin te verklaren hoe ook verre objecten onmiddelijk kunnen worden
waargenomen en ook waarom objecten alleen overdag zichtbaar zijn en niet snachts
Representation
The notion of representation
Greek civilisation was hence busy interrogating itself on how such a small organ could
actually bring into the consciousness of a human being the vastness of the world... in the
midst of these debates that a key notion (that would stay alive for generations to come)
would set its roots, the notion of representation.
De Griekse beschaving was dus bezig zich af te vragen hoe zo'n klein orgaan
daadwerkelijk de uitgestrektheid van de wereld in het bewustzijn van een mens kon
brengen
In het midden van deze debatten zou een sleutelbegrip (dat generaties lang zou
blijven voortbestaan) zijn wortels krijgen... het begrip representatie
Plato intuition a feeling was born that the way in which things appear, is different from how
they actually are
Bij Plato ontstond het gevoel dat de manier waarop de dingen verschijnen, anders is
dan hoe ze in werkelijkheid zijn
They only see the surface of things but not the pure form, which is instead what a
philosopher does
Zij zien alleen de oppervlakte van de dingen, maar niet de zuivere vorm, wat een
filosoof wel doet
4
Theory of visual communication
INTRODUCTION – WHY THE VISUAL MATTERS
Vision is central to how we experience the world but at the same time it is also something
that is cultural defined. It is not neutral, not necessarily something natural. We need to be
critical towards it.
Phenomenology: Addresses what an image is. Understanding the photograph as a thing.
Semiotics: What an image means
ON VISION – A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EYE
Meditation exercise on da Vinci’s Mona Lisa: Naar een foto kijken, ogen sluiten, ogen
open, ogen sluiten, ...
Mona Lisa: You’ll think you know the painting because it’s very familiar to you, but she has
more details than you remember. There are elements that you never noticed that were
there or that you instructed in a very different way in your mind.
Portrait is looking at you
Reciprocity (wederkerigheid) is something of how you interact with an image
It comes in a context, background, colors, etc.
How vision functions: When you start engaging with an image, you realize that there
is much more to know than you actually think
When you start engaging with an image you realize that there is much more than you think.
And especially that you cannot control that image. You think that you know what is
happening but actually you don’t. You see details that you are not aware of.
Our vision is always generated in an interplane between the functioning of the brain
and the functioning of the eye
The brain reconstructs stimuli where they all come together
Painful images, pictures of calamities, pictures of catastrophizes: Normally we have a
relation to e.g., the war trough an image. So, the image is the fundamental tool trough which
that comes to us. But the image does not exist apart from an active subject viewing it, from
1
,Katia Smits 2022 - 2023
an active viewer. The viewer and the viewed come together. That image gadders meaning in
relation to an active subject who engages with it. It changes all the time, every time you look
at it will change meaning. (Purpose of an image)
Vision has to do with your eye scanning:
The eye constructs and reconstructs
The play of focus and defocus does not change our perception of an image, it
changes the image itself. You don’t see the same thing when you close your eyes and
when you reopen them
How can such a small thing (an eye) bring in such a fastness of the world? So much
information?
We go back to the Greeks/Egyptians:
Instead of the eye being an active agent, it is hunting for information
The eye is scanning around the surface trying to grab what is there to be
known
“The eye is a hunter”
The eye is not the passive identity, it is not just receiving stuff from the
outside, but it is an active one (the focusing and defocusing)
Most important division that you have to bear in mind: The devision between the
principles of extramission and intromission
Plato - Extramission
The eye conquers what it sees - objects are reduced in size and brought into the eye - the
world was made up by the existence of pure, universal forms, archetypes to which all
elements and objects that make up the world must, to a certain extent adhere
Is what characterizes the approach that Plato had.
The eye is and active agent that conquers what it sees.
The eye reduces an object and is a laser way that would progress into the world and
reduces element in their minimal form. The eye is a hunter, it captures.
2
,Katia Smits 2022 - 2023
Democritus (460 – 370 BC): matter composed of atoms that are carried to the soul to be
viewed - objects make copies of themselves which contracts in size until it is sucked up
by the pupil - objects emanated a thin pellicle (the eidola) that would enter the mind by
travelling through the eye
For him there was some Eidola: Nothing but a reduction of an object that the
eye could suck up. Through the eye being able to reconstruct into the soul.
Materie bestaande uit atomen die naar de ziel worden gedragen om bekeken
te worden
Objecten maken kopieën van zichzelf die in omvang krimpen totdat ze door
de pupil worden opgezogen
Objecten straalden een dunne pellicule (de eidola) uit die de geest zou
binnendringen door door het oog te reizen
Empedocles: Theorizes the 4 elements (earth, air, wind, fire): Light radiates from the
fire within the eye
The eye illuminates the world with its own spirit “as when a human being
going out at night lint up a lantern”
Het oog verlicht de wereld met zijn eigen geest “zoals een mens die ‘s nachts
uitgaat een lantaarn opsteekt”.
Galen: Was interested in the lens, he did cataract surgeries
Known for the spiritual turn, function of the optical nerve
First real scientific understanding of the connection between eye and brain
Optical nerve is hollow (hol) and conducts (voert uit) visual spirits
Extramission: Flow starting from the brain and developing through the hollow
optical nerves.
Flow was centered around the notion of the pneuma, “a vaporous substance
which is formed in party by the inspired air and in party by the vaporization of
the arterial blood”
Stroming vanuit de hersenen en zich ontwikkelend via de holle optische
zenuwen. De stroming was gecentreerd rond het begrip pneuma, "een
dampachtige substantie die in de partij gevormd wordt door de geïnspireerde
lucht en in de partij door de verdamping van het slagaderlijke bloed
Aristotle - Intramission
3
, Katia Smits 2022 - 2023
Aristotle: Objects are visible only insofar as they are lit. Lights come from fire. The eye is a
receiving rather than emanating organ. NOT an active organ
Objecten zijn alleen zichtbaar voor zover ze verlicht zijn
Licht komt van vuur
Het oog is eerder een ontvangend dan een uitstralend orgaan
Ings: “He managed to explain the way in which distant objects too can be perceived instantly
and also why objects are visible only during daytime and not during nighttime”
Hij slaagde erin te verklaren hoe ook verre objecten onmiddelijk kunnen worden
waargenomen en ook waarom objecten alleen overdag zichtbaar zijn en niet snachts
Representation
The notion of representation
Greek civilisation was hence busy interrogating itself on how such a small organ could
actually bring into the consciousness of a human being the vastness of the world... in the
midst of these debates that a key notion (that would stay alive for generations to come)
would set its roots, the notion of representation.
De Griekse beschaving was dus bezig zich af te vragen hoe zo'n klein orgaan
daadwerkelijk de uitgestrektheid van de wereld in het bewustzijn van een mens kon
brengen
In het midden van deze debatten zou een sleutelbegrip (dat generaties lang zou
blijven voortbestaan) zijn wortels krijgen... het begrip representatie
Plato intuition a feeling was born that the way in which things appear, is different from how
they actually are
Bij Plato ontstond het gevoel dat de manier waarop de dingen verschijnen, anders is
dan hoe ze in werkelijkheid zijn
They only see the surface of things but not the pure form, which is instead what a
philosopher does
Zij zien alleen de oppervlakte van de dingen, maar niet de zuivere vorm, wat een
filosoof wel doet
4
