How to see the world. Summary

Visual culture is not only visible content made during human history, such as paintings or movies, but also relation between visible things, given names, and invisible concepts related to the piece or direction, such as feelings or experience. The concept of visual culture as a specific area of study appeared after Cold War, in a period of vital change, when politicians were not confident, and cyberspace started to influence real world. Ways and especially places to perceive art have changed in past 15 years, and instead of moving to a specific place to see art piece people nowadays are surrounded by art, especially in cyberspace. World never was stable, but now it changes even faster, and that is why today the goal of visual culture is to connect and consider infinite amount of visual pieces, variations of points of view and overall dynamic. Time when personal computing and Internet raised is different from previous massive discoveries and inventions, because of its mass character, speed and geography. Moving images made significant difference in visual culture, and since it was invented, it became more common, then accessible, ending up with easy ways to film and edit any kind of video, and world spread it via Internet, which is available to everyone unlike the TV. Another example of changes is literature – before it was necessary to contact a publisher and justify book printing, while now it is possible to publish any writing online in plenty different ways.

Technically, most of the things seen today are not images in a common meaning, but rendered results of computation. Before photography was a real impact of light on the material, while nowadays cameras are collecting a bunch of data and render image out of it. But because of this it is easier to manipulate with the result, making it in different colors or adding visual effects. At the beginning of digital era some were concerned there would be no visible difference between manipulated and clear images. Today people got used to adjusted photos, and there are plenty easy and fast opportunities to find out if and how an image was changed. Painting and sculptures were equalized to the photography and advertisements, in sense all of them could be described as “a sight, which has been recreated or reproduced”. At the same time, photography destroyed idea of unique image, because of the ability to make identical copies – this was a sign of new era. Digital art is still called “pictures” or “images”, but they are qualitatively different from the original meaning of this terms.

Internet is a truly collective media, with high variability of content and communications, where people contact with each other and engage with published content. Such as there were “imagined communities” created by print culture, where plenty of people felt united by the book or newspaper, Internet also creates its own “us”, that is completely different from any “us” created ever before.

 

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