The Visual Language, Why?

The world of visual information or The Visual Language, is a strange and beautiful world.  It is all around us and it is acting on us all the time.  We take pictures, we see pictures. These pictures tell us stories.  They convince us to buy things.  They tell us who to be attracted to. Who we should try to be and how we should look. The Visual Language does not communicate like a written language.  If you do not want to hear the words that the authors have written, then do not read the text. You are spared from the content. Unlike this, pictures are consumed and understanding in a glance. Before you have a chance to make judgement it is already inside of your mind and working to reshape your mind’s basic understanding of reality. Yes, part of you knows that you are looking at a picture.  But the most basic, fundamental and primal portion of your mind does not, and this is why pictures work.  But this is also why pictures are dangerous to those that unconsciously and carelessly consume the visual language. 

Humans began a journey towards our present state from a realm of communication that was purely visual and directly relating to that which is being communicated. We first communicated verbally and if our communication was recorded it was in paint or drawing. Pictographic languages, Egyptian Hieroglyphs and sometimes Chinese languages like Mandarin use language in this way. The symbol looks like the thing that it stands for.  The communication is reliant on the ‘the way that reality looks” to properly communicate. As human civilization evolved we moved away from this to symbols that stand for sounds. These in turn represent the things not directly but indirectly. The word tree is not related to a tree by look.  It is a set of sounds that we agree stand for the object that grows upward and has leaves.  This type of language use has far surpassed the directly representational use of language. However, we must never forget that the original way that humans conceived of a symbolic and permanent way of communicating is by first using a less symbolic way of communicating that directly represents the world around them. They began by using pictures to communicate.

Our present state is as far from this original state. We now live in a state of communication where information is transmitted by a highly organized, code like, and symbolic language that stands for reality in a purely symbolic way and not directly. Consider how seamlessly present humans use information.  In a moments glance pages and pages worth of coded information get translated into light and darkness shaping letters on a computer screen. This information is instantly changed from radio waves, one type of code based on waves, to binary a code based on ones and zeros, to electrical currents yet another type of code, to light and dark patches on a screen, to biological processes within your eye and that is only the beginning of your understanding of what you are looking at.

The Visual Language is the basis for this new communication that surpasses our ability to use the language first hand. Instead we rely on machines that takes our normal language and information processing capabilities and then translates these into a language that is impossible for us to directly use.  Humans are moving into a new type of communicated reality, this happened two other times in human history. Once when we started making pictures and music. The second time when we started taking the complex representational communication of pictures and translated it into written language.  When these changes happen, it is important to consider the earlier language closely.  As our emphasis on communication shifts to the primary place our use of the others increases yet our cognitive understanding seems to lag.  Our attention is altered as one communication type moves to a secondary status. With the creation of new and better ways of communicating we risk the abandonment of the thoughtful and thorough consumption of the earlier language or communication type. In short, we should not forget the power of images to communicate. Similarly, as we increase our use of multimedia and a digital means to communicate, the verbal language and written language will suffer.  The greatest danger of abandoning our deep understanding of one language for the other is the loss of each type’s unique communication qualities. Digital and multimedia appeals directly because it is loud, moving, fast and flashy.  Written appeals to us because it is linear and specific.  The Visual language should appeal to us because it is neither.  As we move ever forward in our ability to communicate the teaching of our first and most subliminal language risks losing the spot light. Each of the newer types of languages receives increasing emphasis in education.  Frequently this happens in the visual arts and the Visual Language. It is so uniformly used and instinctual that few teachers would consider a class on reading pictures. This is because reading pictures is considered automatic and does not need to be taught.  As we learn more and more about our human consciousness we learn that consuming the visual language is fast but not automatic. This reveals that the consumption of The Visual Language must be taught otherwise this type of quickly consumed information risks becoming a thoughtless and therefore unconsidered act of information consumption. A dangerous activity considering the subtle effects that this language has on the mind and its ability to consume information. This is the premise of The Visual Language a book that teaches use not only about the individuals that continue in the practice of using this purely visual language, but educates basic fluency in The Visual Language.