WHY DO IMAGES MATTER?
A friend of mine sent an email and asked me this question and I am passing it on to anyone who has any feedback for her.
Here it is:
For a final project for my Image & Imagination class I'm looking into this big sticky question of :
WHY DO IMAGES MATTER? I'm seeking out insights from artists, actors, musicians, non-artists, everybodys... wondering what you can offer to all this.
More specifically, why to the particulars of an image matter? Just going off your website... if there's a big face, open-mouthed and toothy with a red nose, so what? Why does it matter that that is what came up? Because it could have been close-mouthed or toothless or blue-nosed or not a face at all. Why does this image matter? Or any image.
posted by kpnil at 1:38 PM
2 Comments:
Interesting question. Matter is the key word here. Quite frankly it does not really matter. It is a struggle for me to find the "right" kind of image to use in a painting. Why use an image that represents something? The plain and simple reason is to give the viewer something to identify with. You see an angry face it is going to guide you towards a certain set of responses and if you see a happy face the same. Where we go after that is composition, how all of the elements, image, color,etc., come together to form an idea or more importantly, I think, a feeling. I am now working on less identifiable images within a composition so as to bypass the association part and go straight for the feelings. To me, the image is nothing but a vessel that holds meaning. In most cases it is a pre-conceived agreed upon set of meanings that we as a social structure use to communicate visually. How you shape the vessel changes the meaning and if you misshape it enough it will fall outside of this preconceived "norm" and at this point I think we humans fall back to our oldest form of deciphering and that is to feel something. This does not make the image any less or more important for it is just a vessel. It matters just as much as it doesn't matter. This is not a copout, I am just illustrating the illusive quality of trying to define an image. If you understand it's (the image) meaning then you are not feeling it and if you feel it you are not understanding it.
"The inner being of a human being is a jungle.
Sometimes wolves dominate,
sometimes wild hogs.
Be wary when you breathe!
At one moment gentle generous qualities,
like Josephs, pass from one nature to another.
The next moment vicious qualities move in hidden ways;
Wisdom slips for a while into an ox!
A restless, recalcitrant horse suddenly
becomes obedient and smooth-gaited.
A bear begins to dance.
A goal kneels!
Human consciousness goes into a dog,
and that dog becomes a shepherd, or a hunter.
In the Cave of the Seven Sleepers
even the dogs were seekers.
At every moment a new species rises in the chest
now a demon, now an angel, now a wild animal.
There are also those in this amazing jungle
who can absorb you into their own surrender.
If you have to stalk and steal something,
steal from them!"
(Barks, 1990)
Archetypes are littered within our mind and body and images are their language. They stimulate the unconscious and stir within us a primordial soup of the collective unconscious.
Hope this helps,
See ya soon,
Kurt
1:44 PM
interesting question indeed. in the starkest sense, an image is simply light stimulus projected onto our retina that elicits a response, most likely associated with that image. i remember an interesting exhibit in Amsterdam's science museum (http://www.e-nemo.nl/) that showed you images, which included scary-looking insects, sexy scenes, bloody and violent scenes, and others, and measured your physiological response (don't remember how - perhaps pulse monitor). the idea was to illustrate that images alone can elicit physiological responses.
so, without getting into the even stickier question of What is Art? (see Tolstoy's attempt to answer this question), images do matter because they can carry information (e.g. maps) or can make us feel something, and hence, potentially move us to action.
just my $0.02 worth.
7:45 PM
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