Flusser and Communication (Visually)

While I plan to add more later, I wanted to get this section down before I forgot what I wanted to write about.

Andreas Stroehl divided (sort of) Flusser’s essays into vague groupings, and I really keyed into the theory of communication part.  Stroehl calls it “Communications Philosophy and Communicology” (xxxiii).

Flusser divides perspectives on communication into two camps: Information Science and Communications Theory.  I won’t spend too much time talking about the differences (though it’s probably important to know that they represent, roughly, the following of the second law of thermodynamics and the exception to that law, respectively) because that is basically the entire point of the first essay.  What I am more focused on is a concept he starts with in “Line and Surface” that actually then traces back to “On the Theory of Communication” and forward to the other essays.

In “Line and Surface,” Flusser sets up the problem of concepts and images.  Concepts are coded by the written word, and images are coded in a variety of other mediums.  In discussing this, Flusser points out an interesting and important issue: in order to even engage in the various questions/concerns surrounding this split, it “can only be stated by writing it out in lines” (22).

So I tend to have a problem with just this.  In reading Flusser, he explains several different systems very clearly, but I still have problems understanding.  For example, going back to “On the Theory of Communication,” Flusser explains the difference between “discourse” and “dialogue” (18).  For my own benefit, I created a little diagram:

Reading on, I encountered another moment in this essay where I felt a diagram would be important.  Flusser describes what he means when he states “what characterizes the present: a discursive culture without dialogical feedback” (18).  His explanation is fairly lengthy, so I made a diagram to help me remember without having to reread the entire section:

As I continued reading, I obviously encountered Flusser’s concern about writing about a problem that deals with the relationship between the written and the visual.  My notes throughout this section are inclusions of diagrams to help my make images of the concepts he writes about. Flusser explains perfectly why I feel the need to do this: “it takes many more minutes to describe what one has seen in a picture than it does to see it” (23).  It would take me much longer to write out a summary of the concepts visualized above.

Granted, my visualizations are not entirely without text.  Perhaps my diagrams could almost be considered more text than image, but I feel this is still more concise and perhaps more along the lines of where Flusser sees the model of communication leading to: “Imaginal thought will be a translation from concept into image, and conceptual thought a translation from image to concept” (30).  This rather circular model will be able to clearly delineate the difference between fact and fiction because all the fiction will be self-referential, making the fact easier to see.  Or maybe my drawings are just scribbles on paper, linear, that keep me grounded in the linear world of type.

Actually, looking forward to “The Codified World,” Flusser gives another explanation as to why I spent time drawing out these little pictures (there are more, I just shared the first two).  He explains that for a person to understand something linearly (like his explanation of the mass communication system in the modern world) that person has to read the whole thing and then bring it together, “Linear codes demand a synchronization of their diachronicity” (39).  That is exactly what my images do.  In fact, in a way, that is what these blogs are really supposed to do, are they not?

We are in fact on these blogs supposed to be bringing together all these different little threads we’ve picked up in the books we’re reading and bring them together as the notes we have, to help ourselves understand the concepts.  We don’t necessarily have a thesis or anything like that, but we are putting stuff together.

The papers we are about to start writing (since Flusser is the third book) are supposed to do this as well.  We are linking concepts into a synthesis from three sources.  We read these sources diachronically, and will now try and understand the three together synchronically.

Flusser’s point in all of this is really about the changes that are occurring in the way we communicate.  With new technology, we are more and more living in a world dominated by “surface thought” as opposed to “line thought,” “image thinking” instead of “concept thinking.”  He is quick to remind us that we are not necessarily becoming illiterate, that “concept thinking” should never actually go away, but inform our new method and, ideally, lead to a whole new model of communication.  If it doesn’t, the model of communication set up in my little drawing above will go on a rampage and consumer culture will reign and the select elite will manipulate the masses and hold all power.

From his view, it’s either utopia or distopia.  I have to wonder if there is no middle ground for him.

Advertisement