Glossar-English:Image reception as a communication process

Sub-Item to: Image Pragmatics

Original: Bildrezeption als Kommunikationsprozess

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Is image reception a case of sign use If pictures are used as signs, objects can only be understood as images if viewed as components with a specific function in a communicative interaction between at least two individuals. This bipolar view of the reception situation seems to stand in direct contrast to the view, which has become standard in art history, of the reception situation as a monopolar action – i.e., an action carried out by an isolated individual alone – in front of the picture carrier. The question is: How can the sign theory of images be conceptually reconciled with the apparently monopolar reception situation? The “classic” monopolar reception situation, the “active” image, and the aura Whenever art-historical considerations address the reception situations of the visual artifacts under consideration, one element is not abandoned, at least in their more traditionally oriented or vulgarized approaches, despite all the variances in the reception situations, if it is to be a question of a correct approach to the picture: The naive viewer, the professional art critic, the experienced art historians, they all stand alone in contemplation in front of the work. It is the picture that seems to turn to the lonely viewer standing in front of it and – suddenly or gradually, but always spontaneously – reveals its (the picture's) nature. Similar to the ideational essence view of phenomenology, only an essentially intensive but passive-patient attitude on the part of the recipient opens up access to the true nature of the work. For Marshall McLuhan, however, this monopolar reception situation only represents a historically conditioned view, which from a media-theoretical perspective should be understood as a typical impact of social reactions to the “new” medium of book printing (“Gutenberg galaxy”) (cf. [McLuhan 1962a]McLuhan, Marshall (1962): The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. University of Toronto Press, Toronto. ). It reflects the dominance of the "linear" mono-perspective representations that had become paradigmatic for pictorial representations since the Renaissance. It only made room for alternative representations again with the transition to the 20th century. With his concept of the aura, Walter Benjamin had already proposed a description of the bourgeois concept of art that rejects the monopolar reception situation as an outdated historical construct, if not as ideologically burdened ([Benjamin 1939a]Benjamin, Walter (2002): Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. In: Schöttker, D. (Hg.), Walter Benjamin: Medienästhetische Schriften. Suhrkamp , Frankfurt/M. Notiz: dritte, autorisierte letzte Fassung, 1939 ): Behind the attribution of an aura as a property of the viewed and not as an attitude of the recipient towards his object, not only a remnant of the magical concepts of images is hidden, which on the one hand may still refer to the sacral-ritual origin of image competence, on the other hand, tends to have hermetic features as potential dominating knowledge; On the contrary, the potential of the picture recipients to use this form of communication to come to an understanding about the existing and possible conditions of their coexistence is buried. Ultimately, the conception of the monopolar reception situation leads to the view that images – more precisely, it should probably mean image carriers – as such, are active agents who first produce what is represented with them for the viewer (and independently of the viewer)(⊳ picture act theory). However, in this projection of an agent on the unsuitable image carrier, the conflict with the fundamentally bipolar sign-theoretical image approach is mitigated, as two agents are taken into account, only that the attribution of this predicate, at least for the image carrier, is – to put it mildly – unusual. The classic bipolar reception situation of communication Since sign uses are meaningfully derived from communication actions, they are always split among two carriers of activity capable of correspondingly complex actions: In communication theories, they are usually called 'sender' and 'receiver'. Karl Bühler developed the threefold relation of a carrier object used as a sign to 'sender', 'receiver', and 'referent' as an example for language in his Organon model with the relations 'expression', 'appeal', and 'representation' ([Bühler 1934a]Bühler, Karl (1965): Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Fischer , Stuttgart. ): In the use of signs, the sign carrier is the means to reach an understanding between the two sign-acting subjects involved with regard to something represented. The two action “poles” of the sign acts generally designate roles of the associated interaction scheme. These can be occupied by different agents but also by the same agent. The latter is the case, for example, with self-talk: A person then presents certain states of affairs to themselves that are important to them. In this way, he or she focuses their thoughts on that topic. Accordingly, the lonely viewing of a picture in an apparently monopolar situation could actually be understood as a kind of pictorial soliloquy and, thus, as fundamentally bipolar: someone shows themselves with the help of the picture carrier, whatever seems important to them to show, and thus focuses on their own thoughts on those aspects. Indeed, such an interpretation benefits the so-called “natural” images. However, in the case of other (“normal”) images, the reference to their production situation is largely undermined. Is it even possible to “be surprised by a picture” in this way? The essential problem here lies in the fact that in the case of images – as secondary media – the production and reception situations usually differ in terms of time. First, the sender and recipient usually do not know each other. In addition, because of the temporal distance, it is often impossible for them to ever get to know each other. Modifications of the communication concept are, therefore, necessary, which was geared towards communicating in primary media with the possibilities of communicative feedback given there (as well as in tertiary media). The bipolar communication model has to be expanded for secondary media, if only because this type of media is only available for the particularly complex class of conscious communication – i.e., sign actions. The quadrupolar reception situation of secondary media The transition from simple communicative interactions, such as expressive movements and signal behavior, to sign actions is characterized in the specialist literature in particular by the fact that the performance of behaviors, which is essential for the performance of communicative actions, is internalized (cf. [Mead 1968a]Mead, George Herbert (1968): Geist, Identität und Gesellschaft aus der Sicht des Sozialbehaviorismus. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. Nicht angezeigt: Original: <em>Mind, Self, and Society</em>. Hg. v. Charles W. Morris. Chicago, 1934 ). However, we do not simply rely here on the convenient spatial metaphor of a (mental) interior space in which the communicative self-representations are now to take place. More precisely, it is about the fact that they “are here detached from the communicative contexts into which they [.. .] are normally embedded, and can develop into the ability of a bodily self-presentation to be carried out solely for oneself" ([Ros 2005a]Ros, Arno (2005): Materie und Geist. Eine philosophische Untersuchung. Mentis, Paderborn. : p. 591). While a behavior presented with a communicative intention is modified, among other things, in such a way that its physical aspects are articulated particularly clearly and are particularly recognizable for the recipient, the reflection of the behavior shown now leads to a reduction of its externally clearly recognizable aspects: instead of clearly visible physical changes (e.g., the pronounced snarling of the teeth developed in wolves as a gesture from the initial element of a biting attack), very weak activation of the corresponding nerve tracts is now sufficient, a barely noticeable change in the associated muscle tone. In particular, the activities of presenting of one communication partner and the corresponding reactions of the other communication partner can now be related to each other. Through internalization, the other person's role can be systematically related to his own role by the communicator himself. Figure 1: Quadrupolar communication model Thus, individuals who can enter into sign actions are always to be understood as dyadic: any concept of an agent who only acts consecutively as a sender or receiver and not simultaneously cannot fall under this concept of conscious communication. The two poles of the bipolar communication model must now be understood as split in two since each of them fills the two roles of sender and receiver internally (see Fig. 1). Three interactions can be communicatively effective: (i) the internalized interaction between the self-model of the “active” sign actor (producer) and his idea of the “passive” communication partner (recipient), (ii) the internalized interaction of the idea a recipient has of the sender with the recipient's own self-model, (iii) the (external) interaction between the producer's self-model and the recipient's self-model. Furthermore, the coordination between the communicative sub-actions (i) and (iii) can be achieved via the external feedback of the recipient – his reactions including queries – (dashed line in the picture), the coordination between sub-communications (ii) and (iii) via further sign actions of the producers to these recipients. Figure 2: Quadrupolar communication model in secondary media In communication via secondary media, the communicative partial actions (i) and (ii) are decoupled from each other due to the temporal separation of the production and reception situations, while (iii) falls into two parts that can only be loosely “harmonized” with each other via the persistent sign carrier (see Fig. 2). The “monologue” reception situation of image use Figure 3: The two variants of the secondary medial use of signs in a “monologue” situation in the quadrupolar communication model: Decoupled reception with (a) imagined sender or (b) imagined receiver Mead's double-bipolar conception has decisive consequences for asynchronous communication, which quite frequently occurs with images. In particular, it leads to a version of reception aesthetics that is diametrically opposed to the monopolar approach: Whoever looks at a picture carrier as a picture simultaneously assumes the role of producer and receiver of the picture sign – he shows it to himself in the role of someone else. The ambiguity of the phrase 'in the role of someone else' in the previous sentence corresponds to the two possibilities: 'He in the role of the (imagined) sender (and the characteristics he ascribed to the sender) shows the image to himself' (Fig. 3 (a)) vs. 'He shows the picture to another whom he imagines as the recipient' (Fig. 3 (b)). However, this duplication does not only occur on the reception side: When producing the picture, the producer always has certain ideas about the recipient she is addressing. Correspondingly, for John Dewey as early as 1934, the concept of aesthetic experience is to be understood in principle in a situation of a sign action between producer and recipient that may be split in time but can only be thought of in connection (cf. [Dewey 1934a]Dewey, John (1934): Art as Experience. Minton, Balch & Company, New York. ). According to Matthias Vogel, Dewey basically differentiates between the following four aspects in analogy to the quadrupolar communication model (cf. [Vogel 2001a]Vogel, Matthias (2001): Medien der Vernunft. Eine Theorie des Geistes und der Rationalität auf Grundlage einer Theorie der Medien. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. : S. 139): (1) The aesthetic experience of the producer (P1) includes (a) an active moment insofar as P1 shapes an object K; (b) it includes a passive moment, insofar as P1 has to let impulses from K affect him to shape K according to Pn's assumed modes of perception. (2) The aesthetic experience of the recipient (P2) includes (a) an active moment insofar as P2 interprets an object K; (b) it involves a passive moment, in that P2 must receive momentum from K in order to interpret K according to P1's supposed intention. Depending on the imagined communication partners, there are different variants of the communication process and, thus, the understanding of the image achieved. That opens up the scope for theoretical considerations for the reuse and reinterpretation of image carriers beyond a single interpretation marked as historically correct. The reconstruction of the production-side communication intentions in the corresponding historical context with an assumed self-model of the producer and the recipients presumably envisaged by him forms one possible interpretation (albeit one that is of particular interest from an art-historical point of view) alongside many other interpretations induced by the reception side. The seemingly monopolar use of an image turns out to be a pictorial analog of a monologue that is necessarily dependent on communication. See also: Image semiotics Interaction and communication "Natural" images Picture act theory Sign, sign carrier, sign system Typologies of media

Notes Literature [Benjamin 1939a]Benjamin, Walter (2002): Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. In: Schöttker, D. (Hg.), Walter Benjamin: Medienästhetische Schriften. Suhrkamp , Frankfurt/M.[Bühler 1934a]Bühler, Karl (1965): Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Fischer , Stuttgart.[Dewey 1934a]Dewey, John (1934): Art as Experience. Minton, Balch & Company, New York.[Jonas 1961a]Jonas, Hans (1961): Die Freiheit des Bildens – Homo pictor und die differentia des Menschen. Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung, 15.[McLuhan 1962a]McLuhan, Marshall (1962): The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. University of Toronto Press, Toronto.[Mead 1968a]Mead, George Herbert (1968): Geist, Identität und Gesellschaft aus der Sicht des Sozialbehaviorismus. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.[Ros 2005a]Ros, Arno (2005): Materie und Geist. Eine philosophische Untersuchung. Mentis, Paderborn.[Schirra 1994a]Schirra, Jörg R.J. (1994): Bildbeschreibung als Verbindung von visuellem und sprachlichem Raum. DISKI, St. Augustin.[Vogel 2001a]Vogel, Matthias (2001): Medien der Vernunft. Eine Theorie des Geistes und der Rationalität auf Grundlage einer Theorie der Medien. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. Version 1: 2013 Responsible: Schirra, J.R.J. Editing: Halawa, Mark Contributions by: Joerg R.J. Schirra und Marcel Lemmes — (Note) Quote as: Schirra, Jörg R.J. (2013). Image reception as a communication process. (Ausg. 1). In: Schirra, J.R.J.; Halawa, M. & Liebsch, D. (Hg.), Glossar der Bildphilosophie. (2012-2026). [bildglossar.org/index.php?title=Glossar-English:Image_reception_as_a_communication_process].