Serendipity, Lecture 11/15

Imagery is an incredibly unclear way of getting a message across. Unless however that is the point. Some artists use photography and images as ways to evoke feeling and to convey a general message. However, due to personal circumstance and subjectivity, the meaning may be taken in a completely different direction than the artist intended it to, which in most arts is usually okay. However, there is still a distinction that has to be made, and this is that pure text can usually get the message across more easily and clearly than an image, even though it may lack some of the emotional "oomph". In Sven's lecture on Thursday evening, he explained that the camera lens does not equal clarification. Photographs yield misrepresentation, but the artist is aware of this. It is up to the viewer to decipher the codes in the way that makes the most sense to them, and make it meaningful to themselves, therefore the meaning will take a slightly different turn for each individual person. Photographs are imaginary removals from the here and now, and it is impossible to know what was really happening at the time it was taken, whether it is posed, or whether the image was tinkered with. "Don't always trust your eyes" is basically what Sven feels about most imagery. This notion is similar to Benjamin's idea that the camera lies, and that we can never know the truth unless we were physically there at the the time the photograph or filming was taking place. Imagery is a way of decoding, putting words to mental pictures. This is different from reading, which is putting images to words. As Sven mentioned, Cartege claims that reading is mental recreation. I personally am addicted to reading for leisure, and find that the images I create in my mind are much more fabulous than those a director making a movie can come up with. For this reason, I am almost always somewhat disappointed with the movies based off of books, and refuse to see the movie until after I have read the book, as not to taint my mind with the mediocre images the movie portrays in contrast to those I come up with in my mind. In general, I think both text and images are equally as important, and they both convey different things, it is up to the artist to decide what medium to use in order to produce the most impact on the viewer.