Development work for week 12 (unit 2)
Digital imagery
This week I started to develop a number of images that explores what WJT Mitchell calls mental Imagery and Verbal Imagery. He writes on the subject of mental imagery,
"People may report experiencing images in their heads while reading or dreaming, but we have only their word for this; there is no way (so the argument goes) to check up on this objectively."
"Mental images don't seem to be stable and permanent the way real images are, and they vary from one person to the next: if I say 'green,' some listeners may see green in their mind's eye, but some may see a word, or nothing at all."
In the first digital image below, entitled "The mental image 1", I have interpreted Mitchell's argument about how we picture images of real objects in our mind. He says that real objects would continue to exist if all consciousness ceases to exist; but the same is not true with consciousness if all real objects ceased to exist.
"The world may not depend upon consciousness, but images in (not to mention of) the world clearly do."
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The mental image 1. We perceive objects in the real world within our consciousness. We recall mental images of real objects and reference them in our own subjective way. |
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How true is the perceived mental image? We cannot take the image out of someone's head or measure its accuracy to the real image. This is the theme to the second image below.
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The mental image 2. The butterfly image on the right signifies the 'real' object in a natural environment. The image on the left is the 'fractured' mental image that we perceive of the butterfly; a reflection of the real. |
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The mental image. This collage explores the mental and verbal image within media publications. The piece was created using clippings from printed publications and then manipulated digitally to add a frame and subtle colour tints. |
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W.J.T. Mitchell. Iconology - image, text, ideology.
1986.
The University of Chicago Press.
[ISBN: 0-226-53229-1]