Visual Culture
Life is constantly under surveillance in industrialised countries. CCTV on all streets, banks, private properties, shops etc.Work and leisure also infringed by visual culture – computers, video games etc.
Internet not just part of every day life it is every day life with it’s constant supply of imagery.
Does surveillance provide added security? It didn’t prevent the abduction of James Bulger although it did help in solving the crime. But the act of taking Jamie wasn’t prevented by CCTV all it did was record the act.
Consider Jo Yeates case. CCTV showed her movements that evening. It may have helped in some small way to solve the case but is only really useful after the event.
Visualisation does not necessarily mean we know what we are seeing.
“What are we to believe if seeing is no longer believing?” p 3
“Visual Culture is concerned with visual events in which information, meaning, or pleasure is sought by the consumer in an interface with visual technology.”p3
Ie, "any form or apparatus designed either to be looked at or to enhance natural vision". This could be anything from film/television, to advertisements, to paintings and art.
Visualising as a strategy is a failure of modernism. Postmodernism is the confrontation of that failure to visualise. Text is still a part of our culture and always will be but it is the lack of acknowledgement of this visual culture that has brought about post modernism.
Post modernism is best understood visually as the 19th century was best understood literally in print.
My take on this is that we live in a world where we are constantly monitored though imagery. This imagery has been sold to us as adding to our security. It is questionable though as to whether it actually helps protect us. If we look at certain criminal cases such as Jamie Bulger, it may have been caught on camera but it didn’t prevent his murder. It was only really useful after the event in helping to solve the crime.
Imagery is a huge part of our lives. There are visual clues everywhere we look, the Internet, television, film etc, but what we see isn’t always what we think it is.
Nothing is definitive. Can we trust anything we see?
Modern culture in the 19th century was a time when we understood our world/culture through reading and the printed word, neglecting the visual signs and clues that were all around us. Post modernism has come about because we need to recognise that just the printed word isn’t enough. We were neglecting a huge part of our culture which was visual and becoming more and more visual. Post modernism is about taking on board that visual culture. Using those visual clues/signs/images to understand our world. But it is probably a mixture of both the visual and the printed that is important.
Mirzoeff N., (1999) An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Routledge
