SAPER VEDERE 'Knowing How To See' visual literacy part 1 - a brief history of image making

'Sapere Vedere' was a motto of Leonardo da Vinci. He was an artist who contibuted much to the world of images. Knowing how to see or read an image is part of visual literacy. Media information is made up of text (words) and images (still or motion pictures). Since the invention of the alphabet text quickly established a final form for writing to establish itself but image production is still evolving largely due to digital technology.

In this class we will look at the many ways the 'Image' has been seen and understood by humans. We are a dynamic global visual information culture now, but it has taken time to reach the age of digital social media.

1. Conceptual Mind

In the 1890's a Dutch anatomist named Eugène Dubois discovered a shell in Indonesia, it was brought back to a museum in Amsterdam Holland and put on display. Recently the engravings in this shell were dated to have been made ----- ? years ago.

It was made by an homonid ancestor of ours 'Homo Erectus' who lived 1.9 milllion years ago.

Homo erectus had fire and tools. What this image shows is evidence of a 'conceptual mind' that recorded an image in a medium. The medium (the transmitting substance) being the surface of the shell. The message (the information transmitted) is unnown. The messenger (long since dead) had some kind of intent behind these scratchings .

2. These 3 aspects of an image Medium, Message and Messenger will be repeated down through history and forms the basis of media studies.

3. Oldest modern human image

Above is an image of a small piece of ochre discovered in Blombos Cave in South Africa. The engravings are 90,000 years old and were made by a a modern human homo sapien.

Again it shows evidence of the conceptual mind's ability to record an image in a medium, this time in ochre.

4. Pictographs

Petroglypths (Greek petro stone glyphein carving) symbolic representaitonal carvings on the walls of large rocks and cave walls from 40,000 years ago found around the world. Possible proto writing (symbolic meaning)

SYMBOLS

5. Cave Painting

20 - 30,000 years ago in France and Spain the walls of caves become the medium for a more realistic representation of reality. Mythic meaning

ym

ysy

6. Writing a new information technology

Cuniform images 4,000 BCE proto writing engraved in a baked clay medium

THE ALPHABET & SYMBOLS FOR LETTERS

7. Books

Pre Printing Press manuscripts - individually made contained hand dawn pictures

8. Printing Press.

In 1440 the Printing Press in Europe - mass replication of text and image available. The Bible was the first book printed for distrubtion in Europe and the New World.

9. Single Point Perspective

THE LAST SUPPER in 1325 By UGOLINO during the Middle Ages - flat 2 dimensional

THE LAST SUPPER by LEONARDO da VINCI now a 3 dimension perspective fom the RENAISSANCE

Single point perspective (perspicere Latin "to see through) developed in the Renaissance added a 3rd dimension to a 2 dimensional image on a 2 dimentional surfce of a page.

10. Photography

'Boulevard du Temple Paris 1838' - with the invention of modern Photography we now have made available the replication of an image by mechanical / chemical means. The medium is film.

(Note : The Camera Obscura (Latin Camera Room Obscura Dark) has been in existance since Aristotle - A single point of light entering a dark room will invert the image in the distance on the wall (medium).)

First Selfie 1839 Robert Cornelius

11. With the introduction of digital in the 1980's from analogue and film cameras, we enter

a new phase of image reproduction.

12. Television from the 195O's

modern tv

In the 1950's television became the dominant news and entertainment medium in house holds all around the world. In the mid 1960's colour came online.

13. Cinema

Cinema is currently the most powerful global motion picture medium for telling a story.

14. The iphone 2007

The convergence of a mobile phone and a camera has revolutionised the way we make, store and share images. Most of the recent R&D research and development in the iphones 8+ and the Iphone X has been in camera technology. This shows that global image production is considered very import for our social media culture. And why learning to become a good photographer has never been so important as it is now.

15. With 360 degree vision cameras now had the ability to take in more information than a single point perspective. The medium is still 2 dimensional but now within that frame the viewer has freedom to move in 360 degrees. The viewer now gains access to a movable frame and is able to see outside the aspect ratio of a normal frame. I will come back to aspect ratio later. The photogapher's image now gives more context to what is seen within the frame.

See NEW VISUAL TECHNOLOGY on Menu bar for 360 tweet

16. Magic Eye Computer Steroscopic Graphics. An interesting 3 dimensional digital image that prepared the way for Virtual Reality.

17. Augmented Reality Images

Pokemon Go is an example.

Star Constallation apps are another. With this technology we are able to add information to the screen augmenting the image seen by the camera.

18. VR Virtual Reality is the next big breakthorugh in immersive viewing not just of an image but of a reality itself.

19. Hologram as a 4th dimension image. With this technology we introduce a 4 dimension reality to our own, the image is not virtual be real, no doubt this technology will become more augmented in time.

The production of a simple image scratched onto a shell has evolved into an immersive experience. This trend will continue.