The image and the imaginary.

Link between imaginary and image.

Definition: image; latin. a representation or copy. includes mental image, form in your mind a representation.

Imagination; fomation of mental image not perceived as real.

Link, difference between appearance and image. image is detatched. Bigger link between visual and illusion.
Touch is more reliable than sight. Visions prone to illusion. Suspicion, sight may only be image, not real, illusion.

Lacan, Mirror stage.

Photography: The Spark of the Real
Photo - latin, light.
Graphy - write.

Word image rivalry.
Which is more effective, word or image, similar.

Image is too broad a catagory.
Image works like a word. Pipe, not one specific, a catagory of objects. Words do not refer to individual things. shoe, sign: no shoes, refers to all shoes.

Cartoon hand, realistic hand. Cartoon easier to recognize. What we rocognize is less than what we see. basic pattern.

van gough - peasant shoes. painting refers to this particular pair of shoes.
Magritte, pipe. Not a particular pipe, all pipes. closer to a sign.

Roland Barthes.
Photographic image has a referent.
'can you put out that pipe'
'take off those shoes'

contarst with photos and how words work.

not all photographs refer to 'thisness' ambush you with the real. studium, visual, cliche, stereotypes, cultural, seen as an illustration. unexpected flash of reality.
Punctun - latin, point or blindspot. punctuation.

Freud, Lacan and Others.
The word image interface.
Surrealism.
Puns. Both meanings present. A play on words, at the same time. Normally kept seperate, no relationship.
a.The architect whsoe career 'lies in ruins.'
b.At the Circus. the human cannonball who went to offer his resignation only to be told 'we were going to fire you anyway'
fire has two meaning present at the same time.
c. An architect on prison caomplained that teh walls were not built to scale.
homonym; spelt the same, sounds the same, different meaning.
d.the excitment at the circus is in tents.

Shaespear 'now is the winter of out discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.
Homonphone; spelt different, sounds the same.

One signifier, two different signified.
Central to Freud, way he thinks unconscious works.
Does not use a fixed language of symbols.
3 different ways.
syptoms, slips of the tongue, dreams.

parrallel language.

Bruse Fink. slipks of the tongue. Job, Scnob - not an actual word. snob, scnez (Jewish word for nose) Unconscious hijacked 'job' similarity in sound.
Patient as a child had a fear of his fathers nose, older brother snob. Onyl unerstood in relation to patients history. Patient regards this as an error. encoded. Unconscious speaking in code as i cannot speak directly.

Dreams consist of images, secret content often a word disguised as an image, pictogram. Dream Rebus.

conversation. annogram of conservation. unconscious scrambles the word to find an image.

Metonomy. Give me a hand.
Two mouths to feed.

Surrealists.
Magritte.
A rabbit or a duck?
This is not a pipe.
representation of a pipe, not actual.
part of the painting, not the title.
'The treason of images'
title and image. 'The rape' perception changes.

SIGN AND FORM MAKING

Graffiti - Italian root is 'graphic'

"The writings on the wall"
TRUTH.
Doesn't exactly refer to graffiti.
From the bible. appearence of truth.

Anonymous.
Political sloagns.
Mark out territory.

Graffiti visual style.
Sprayed, tags.
Graffiti mimics corporate branding. Letter as a visual image.
About the envolope, rather than the content.
shape + word.
logos + graffiti.
nothing to read, just recognize.

Signature is the work.
The brand becomes the thing that's being sold, name eclipses the product.
Blankness of commercial logo, no specific meaning attached.
Different meanings at different times, amrketing campaign.
Coca-Colas, endlessly repeatable.
Tag is blank, meaningless.
Visual style has no meaning other than signifying graffiti. Content is unimportant, as long as it identifies you as being different.

Meaning of the mimicry?
What are the significant differnce?
Copyright, property, insist on originalty, graffiti's relationship to copyright, mockery. lay claim to the building, ownership of public space.
Using the language of corporate advertising.
Subversive.
What does a graffiti tag individualize?
Brand name relates to a brand. Tag doesn't refer to anything. Signature and brand at the same time.
Signifier/Signified.
Brand name signifer, brand name signified.
Tag refers to other tags, doesn't refer to specific individual. That tag again, trace of something.

If a piece graffiti was placed in a gallery, it would no longer be graffiti as it woudn't be illegal, it would be an example of graffiti. The same as if a piece of work was deliberatly made to be put in a gallery, it would simply be be art in the style of graffiti. When it's authorised it is no longer graffiti as it is not illegal.

Metaphor

Mixed metaphor - two metaphors together.

Normal speech is deeply metaphorical.
Metaphor, is about the perception of common properties, not just word use. Seeing one thing in terms of another.
Example "He's a cold person"
"He's a warm person"
Conceptualize an emotion as a temperature.
Time, Motion, Space, Object, Landscape, Future.
Blossoming friendship, budding.

Fitting two realms together, mapping one in terms of another. Cross -domain. mapping stages in a relationship to places you have travelled.

Love as a journey.
Target Domain - emotion
Source Domain - Personality.

Thinking guided by metaphors, sleeping metaphors, e.g leg of a table, dead of night.

Vision, common invisable metaphor, seeing means understanding.
Thinking about self. "out of your mind" "beside yourself"

Why do we need metaphors?
Doesn't just refer to something, it describes it.
Seeing death as night,
scream of brakes.
sound, secondary properties suggests fear.

Put the past behind us. Not descriptive, easier to think of time as space.

Key points/Notes

SIMULACRUM
An image that has lost touch with what it refers to.
Empty.
Something isn't original until there is a reproduction of it.
Detachability of the image through technology.

Language of advertising, modern advertising started at the same time as department stores. People started "going shopping" for leisure, rather than for essential items that they needed.
Identical products began competeing for attention. They had to gain a 'symbolic value' advertising thurns things into signs.

Simulacrum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Simulacrum (plural: simulacra), from the Latin simulare, "to make like, to put on an appearance of", originally meaning a material object representing something (such as a cult image representing a deity, or a painted still-life of a bowl of fruit). By the 1800s it developed a sense of a "mere" image, an empty form devoid of spirit, and descended to connote a specious or fallow representation.

In the book Simulacra and Simulation (1981/1995), the French social theorist Jean Baudrillard gave the term a specific meaning in the context of semiotics, extended from its common one: a copy of a copy which has been so dissipated in its relation to the original that it can no longer be said to be a copy. The simulacrum, therefore, stands on its own as a copy without a model. For example, the cartoon Betty Boop was based on singer Helen Kane. Kane, however, rose to fame imitating Annette Hanshaw. Hanshaw and Kane have fallen into relative obscurity, while Betty Boop remains an icon of the flapper.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia itself may be seen as a large-scale field experiment in the spread of simulacra. It is notable that many pages contain factoids about the meaning of words in the fictitious context of popular movies, video and role-playing games, usually derivative cliches in imitation of other such fictions. For instance the 1999 movie The Matrix explores the relationship between people and their simulacra; and in a further example of self-reference Neo, one of the lead characters from the movie, uses a hollowed out copy of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation as a secret store.

Fredric Jameson uses the example of photorealism to describe simulacra. The painting is a copy of a photograph, not of reality. The photograph itself is a copy of the original. Therefore, the painting is a copy of a copy. Other art forms that play with simulacra include Pop Art, Trompe l'oeil, Italian neorealism and the French New Wave. Jean Baudrillard puts forth God as an example.

SEMIOTICS
The study of signs.
French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure formulated his theory of language.

SIGN- Signs are events or things that direct attention or are indicative of other events or things. Basically, anything that represents something else is a sign. All other definitions are categories and subcategories of signs. A sign has a certain structure that Saussure first defined as the association between a signifier and a signified.

A 'signifier' - the form which the sign takes; and
The 'signified' - the concept it represents.

Signs can take many forms.
'Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign'
(Peirce 1931-58, 2.172).
Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to something other than itself.

There are three goups of signs: the Icon, the Index and the Symbol.

ICON
An icon looks like its signified.
For example computer icons, which popularize the word, or the pictographs used on "pedestrian crossing" signs. There is no real connection between an object and an icon of it other than the likeness, so the mind is required to see the similarity and associate the two.
A characteristic of the icon is that by looking at it, we can get information about its signified.

INDEX
An index has a causal connection to its signified. A key to understanding indexes is the verb "indicate".
A directly perceivable event that can act as a reference to events that are not directly seen, or in other words they are something visible that indicates something out of sight. You cannot see a fire, but you see smoke and that indicates that a fire is burning.

SYMBOL
A symbol represents something in a completely chance relationship.
The connection between signifier and signified depends entirely on the observer, or what the observer knows.
Symbols are subjective, words are an example of symbols.
As a spoken word or group of letters, they are only linked to their signified because we decide they are. The connection is neither physical nor logical, words change meaning or objects change names over time.
Symbols are ideas, and whenever we use one we are only pointing to the idea behind that symbol.
A symbol can rarely tell us anything more about its signifier than we already know.

The Icon as Interface

ICON AS INTERFACE

The Concept of Icon:
A greek word meaning likeness.
An icon (from Greek, eikon, "image") is an image, picture, or representation. It is a sign or likeness that stands for an object by signifying or representing it, or by analogy, as in semiotics. In computers an icon is a symbol on the monitor used to signify a command; by extension, icon is also used, particularly in modern popular culture, in the general sense of "Symbol" — i.e. a name, face, picture or even a person readily recognized as having some well-known significance or embodying certain qualities.

Today, words are becoming icons/images. In advertising for example, such as the Nike logo. And also a neon sign, the word is an image.
Advertisers use images because they are more instant, and quicker to 'read'. They compete with sentances.
Another example would be in newspapers, where images are just as important as the text.

The older definition of icon, would be that of a sacred image. An aid to religious devotion. An image was nessecary as some people where illiterate, or found the concept of God difficult. The icon acts as an interface between two things. These 'sacred' images were an incarnation of an abstract concept.

Iconoclasm is the destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives. In Christian circles, iconoclasm has generally been motivated by a literal interpretation of the second of the ten commadments, which forbids the making and worshipping of "graven images".
People who believe this are known as 'iconoclasts'. P eople who favour these religios icons are called iconodules.
ICONOCLASTS
Attack sacred notions, and destroy the images in the name of the sacred. God cannot be an image. These images are false, people are worshiping the image insted of what it refers to.
ICONODULES believe that god had been 'made flesh'. Christ is the image of the invisible God. And that God completed himself by becoming an image. The abstract became concrete.

The image of christ doesn't physically represent, instead it acts as an interface, a link between man, and abstract being/concept. Iconoclasts argue that people worship the image. But, in my opinion, isn't it better that they are doing that and living by christian laws, rather than not at all?

These days, people have a fascination with images, insted of what it represents. The image is acting as a decoy.
Something iconic is not just visual, it can be an individual, or an incident. Some examples are, the '97 election, the tears of Paul Gasgoine.
An example of an iconic moment in a film would be 'The Shining'
"Here's Johnny!"
As Nicholson's character breaks into the bathroom, he ad-libs a line based on the introduction that Ed McMahon used on 'The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.' The quote was picked as #68 of AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes.

Iconic images or movies are often lifted from context and reproduced so they become familiar. Or parodied, such as in 'The Simpsons' satirical version of 'The Shining'
















What makes these images iconic? It could be that it reflects the whole mood of the film, or because it is easily quotable, and acts as a 'visual quotation'. It is not seen as a definining or symbolic moment, at which everything changes, and is a key time in the film. This paticular image is iconic in the history of film in general, rather than in the film itself.

CULTURAL ICONS
A cultural icon is a notable individual who has transcended "mere" celebrity to represent a given Zeitgeist. Therefore, a cultural icon is not simply a famous face, but a complex, multi-layered personage who reflects the conflicts and contradictions of his or her time. Modern mass media and popular culture has helped to poplularize these icons.
An icon is often the incarnation of a culture.
The image of Che Guevara is one such example of an iconic image, over time it has begun to represent him less and less, almost becoming an empty image in some cases. It has transformed into a quotable image, endlessly repeatable. Imitations of the image have started to have even less of a connection with the real person and original meaning of the image, people merely recongnize the image as an imitation and nothing more. It has lost any connection with its original context.


Another example is the Hammer and Sickle icon, endlessly repeated to only vaguely suggest revolution.

DENNOTATION - Refers to something in particular.
CONNOTATION - Vaguely refers.
SIMULACRUM - Once referred to something, lost touch with what it referred or represented.

If the iconic image didn't exsist, how else would what it represents be remembered? i.e Che Guevara, Albert Einstein etc....most people know these images, but don't know that much about the person, at least however, they know of them. Without these iconic images, would the person still be iconic?