Visual Representation

We express and receive visual messages on three levels: representationally- what we see and recognise from environment and experience; abstractly- the kinesthetic quality of a visual event reduced to the basic elemental visual components, emphasising the more direct, emotional, even primitive message-making means; symbolically- the vast world of coded symbol systems which man has created arbitrarily, and to which he has attached meaning. All these levels of information retrieval are interconnected and overlapping, but can be sufficiently distinguished from each other so that they can be analysed both as to their value as potential tactics for message-making and their quality in the process of seeing.

Vision defines the act of seeing in all its ramification. We see in sharp detail and learn and recognise all the elemental visual material in our lives in order to negotiate most competently in the world. Most learning processes are visual, sight if the only necessity for visual understanding. One does not need to be literate to speak of understand visual messages. These abilities are intrinsic in man and will emerge, to some extent, with or without teaching or models. As they develop in history, so they develop in the child. Part of the present and most of the suture will be made by a generation conditioned by photography, film, and television , and to whom camera and visual computer will be an intellectual adjunct.

First we learn a symbol system, abstract shapes that represent designated sounds. These symbols are our ABC, the alpha and beta of the Greek language from which we have named the whole group of sound-symbols or letters, the alphabet. We learn our alphabet as individual letters, and then we learn the combinations of letters and their sounds which we call words, the stand-ins or surrogates for things and ideas and actions.

At first, words are represented by pictures and where that is not feasible, a symbol is invented. Eventually, in highly developed written language, pictures are abandoned and sounds are represented by symbols. Unlike the pictures, the symbols require few special skills to produce. Literacy is infinitely more possible for the majority with the sound symbol language, because it is so simplified.

The representational level of visual intelligence is governed strongly by direct experience which extends beyond perception. We learn about things we are prevented from experiencing directly through visual media, through demonstrations, through examples in model form. Although a verbal description can be an extremely effective explanation, the visual means are quite different in character from language, particularly in their directness.

Seeing a process is sometimes enough to be able to understand how it functions. Seeing an object sometimes provides enough knowledge to evaluate and understand it. This fact of observation serves not only as an enabling device for learning but also as out closest link to the reality of our surroundings. We trust our eyes and we depend on them.