An object reflects a pattern of light, which enters the eye through the pupil. Gathered by the lens, the light is shed on the retina. Over 120 million rods then take in data on about 500 levels of brightness, meanwhile some seven million cones receive information that can encompass around one million combinations of color. The optic nerve with its 800,000 fibres transfers the brightness and color information to the brain.

And here, at this point, the human equipment for visual perception differs from one man to the next. As Michael Baxandall (1988) notes,

The brain must interpret the raw data about light and color... with innate skills and those developed out of experience. It tries out relevant items from its stock of patterns, categories, habits of inference and analogy – 'round', 'grey', 'smooth', 'pebble' would be verbalized examples – and these lend the fantastically complex ocular data a structure and therefore a meaning... But each of us has had different experience, and so each of us has slightly different knowledge and skills of interpretation. Everyone, in fact, processes the data from the eye with different equipment.Furthermore, we know that there is no image in itself. Its properties vary in accordance with evolution of technology and social belief systems.

Our perception of reality and its representation in art are constantly reflecting each other. This is an interactive development, that has generated many changes and even crucial shifts in history of culture.

The varieties of visual experience have always been, and still are, accompanied with philosophical doctrines concerning the phenomenon of perception. However they could not succeed in reducing the pure nature of visual experience to a single formula. Time after time different conceptions of human nature, along with new ways and means of representation, were breaking into conventional views and legitimate stereotypes of perception, leaving their imprints in languages, and developing our comprehension of reality. Within this historical chain, we can distinguish a certain period by the conceptions of human nature that underlie it and by its specific means of expression of human condition. For example, Régis Debray (1995) argues that

To be limited to inflecting the time of art into "ancient", "medieval", "classical", "modern", and "contemporary" in imitation of convenient scholarly divisions does not seem particularly rigorous. The history of eye does not coincide with institutional, economic, or military history. It has a claim... to its own, more radical temporality.

Each of these eras delineates an environment of life and thought with strong internal connections, as ecosystem of vision and thus a certain horizon of visual expectation (which does not expect the same thing from a Pantocrator, a self-portrait, and a short video spot).

However, these historical periods are not clearly outlined: they are superimposed and intertwined with one another.

...rather than as clear breaks, their borders ought to be conceptualized in the old way, as they were before the existence of nation-states: buffer zones, fringe areas of contact, broad chronological stages that yesterday embraced centuries and today only decades. Just as the innovation of printing did not erase from our culture medieval proverbs and common dicta, those mnenonic devises proper to oral societies, television does not prevent us from going to the Louvre (quite the contrary)... It is worth repeating that nothing occurs after the cesura that could not already be found before it. If this  were not the case, developments of either side could not be linked together, each germinating within its predecessor. Yet not at the same place or with the same intensity. (ibid.)

And almost every next era begins with the destruction of the existing cultural stereotypes. New, just in a sense, conceptions challenge our point of view, settings and ways of both seeing things and seeing ourselves seeing. Be they may not historically new at all – no matter, once they are introduced, we know that things have changed.

The intermittent process of change shifts everything on its way. Time and again it questions our methods of cognition and ability to perceive, or changes the hierarchy of senses, drawing the sight in second or even third place behind hearing and touch...

Among the analytical procedures, chronology is the most basic and widely applied one. Also in cultural studies, when we talk about the politics of culture, periodization becomes necessary. As Raymond Williams notes,

The new sociology of culture can be seen as the convergence, and at a certain point the transformation, of two clear tendencies: one within general social thought and then specifically sociology; the other one within cultural history and analysis. (in Hardt 1992)

In the first chapter, Varieties of visual experience before the age of media, I will be concerned with chronology. I will try to follow the historical pace of visual experience from “ancient” through “medieval”, and “classical”, up to “modern” and “contemporary”.  I believe, however, that the generalizing title I have chosen, which can evoke a broad range of associations, such us the Stone Age, reflects some holistic contemplation as well.

The second chapter, The hidden screen: postmodernism, avant-gardes, spectator, presents a survey of avant-garde film. Today to think about the avant-garde cinema means to think back to its history. In my opinion, however, the postmodern culture offers an interesting viewpoint by melting avant-gardes in its overall flow. This chapter includes also an attempt on analysing the theories of the film spectator.

In the third chapter, called TV reception, my concern is with the question of our commonplace experience with television viewing. I discuss the difference between moviegoing and the specifics of watching television and then I consider the notion of television audience and the place of television in our day-to-day practices. I discuss further the phenomenon of witness, outlined in the first part of the present text, and some ideological aspects of TV apparatus.

And finally, The power of nonsense presents two theoretical approaches to advertising: the "internal" theory which is developed and utilised by advertising production practices, and the "outer" theory of advertising, that belongs to cultural and communication studies.

Part One

Download the viscomm.zip file of the thesis.

viscom.zip

	: Butterfly | thesis