Contents

We are being flooded with images every day. They affect us in a powerful yet mysterious way. Are we being secretly manipulated and seduced? How can we unmask the power of images and learn to deal with them in an adequate way? Images are mysterious, because they are cryptographic. Both, characters and pictographs can only be decoded with their special codes. Code-cracking skills for visual products can be acquired in this workshop for visual competence.

We offer as few as five image codes to crack all visual encodings. They are structured according to the development of man­kind. We know two pre-cultural (associated with evolution) and three cultural (associated with cultural development) image codes.

Visuelle kodar

Organisation

Image 1 — Biological code
Risk of life, preservation of life, sexuality
Hundreds of people hold their breaths as they watch the knives come flying and hit the red surface dangerously close to the naked legs — at the same time, high-heeled sandals stress the goal of self-preservation. Within a split second the consumer produces an involuntary reaction to the phylogenetic signals of this ad.

The biological code contains a tremendous potential of power and manipulation, since all recipients react intuitively according to their genetic behavioural patterns, pre-programmed by nature. And only after this first pre-notional reaction can the event be processed by means of knowledge, thinking, and language.

Image 2 — Archaic code
Facial expression and gesture
Without a single word! Referee Pierluigi Collina used nothing but his facial expression and gestures to control the international communication process in the boiling atmosphere of the 2002 World Championship Finals. He relied intuitively on man’s natural ability to process non-verbal signals in a highly selective mode. Body language signals flash the recipient with emotions, which trigger an evaluation process in the subconscious. This only takes a quarter of a second.

Only then is it possible to analyse, confirm or correct the visual evaluation through knowledge, thought, and language. The archaic code possesses an unfathomable potential of power and seduction, since it is directed at the recipients’ spontaneous emotions and involuntary reactions.

Image 3 — Conventional code
Signs
If it has not dawned on us before, we do realize that we are not born with the natural ability to grasp the meaning of traffic signs when we prepare for the driving test. We discover that every single one of them has its particular allocated and unchangeable meaning, which we have to memorize and remember. In the top row we may well recognise the triangular danger sign and the square sign-board, but which command has to be followed when the sign shows punctuation marks floating above the stretched arm of a man in standing position? To decode the hermetic mess-age of the bars and figures in the second row you would have to ask a veritable gangster. It might be feasible all over the world to provide orientation through seemingly obvious pictograms.

But how to understand allegories? What is the significance of a young woman with a bee-hive and an olive branch? What does the queen, seated with temple, sceptre, and a white horse represent? What is personified with wings attached to the head, a mirror in the right hand and a sphere with a put-on triangle in the left? The meanings of all conventionally encoded signs have been determined in writing and according to agreement within the respective societies, which allows each sign to be clearly defined. The reception process consists of understanding, getting one’s bearings and identifying — all based on knowledge that has been deliberately acquired.

Image 4 — Categorical code
Symbols
Melancholia, aliferous, sombre, and reflective, gazes into an unfathomable distance, her eyes resembling windows of the soul. The deep symbolism of this image is captured intuitively by the lingering spectator. Further exploration of such visual signs might lead into the maze of plurivalent ideas, possibly even beyond the reach of the rational mind, the sign does not belong to the conventional code but — due to its latent ambiguity — has to be considered a symbol.

Flexible code
The flexible code involves a wide range of levels of meaning.
To describe its key here would take us beyond the scope of this presentation.

Variations & Extensions

• Analyser reklamebilde og avdekk kodar, overlappande kodar og persepsjonsmønster.
• Definer kodar og persepsjonsmønster i nyhendeprogram på TV eller andre program i ulike TV-kanalar.

• Analyser spelefilmar og avslør kodane som blir nytta. Finn ut noko om reaksjonstida for dei ulike persepsjonsmønstera. Gjer greie for resultata i diagramform.