Problems with Closure, part 4

In my last post, I pointed out the assumption that pictures are not connected to any mental apparatus. I now continue on to show how that affects analysis of sequential images…

Assumption #3: Absence of Mind

By minimizing the contribution of the mind, a simple theory like closure can easily emerge. The images’ meanings are “out there in the world,” so all the mind needs to contribute is possible ways to pull those meanings together. Since no mind is found in the actual images, its placed instead between the images. Transitions just become a surface grafted onto this encompassing unifying process, where the “mind” “fills in the gaps.”

But, what is it "filling in the gaps" with? It must carry some information in order to do this.

Of course, the non-mental explanation says that we understand closure because we’ve had experiences in life that allow us to combine events in images. True enough. This is an appeal to the things being referenced. However, it still can’t escape the mental part of receiving those experiences and drawing upon them to understand images (i.e. doesn’t the mind then have to do something in order to make those experiences understood?).

This view casts the mind as a “magic box.” Stuff goes in, a conscious understanding is reached, but how did it do it? Cognition! Ok, yes, that’s true, but now tell me what that cognition is and how it works. You can’t just say “the mind does it” – you need to say what the mind does to be able to say that “it” does anything. Otherwise you’re just making an empty statement.

Closure doesn’t really say anything about the content of the panels, saying that meaning is created in the space between them. It cedes out a non-role to the “mind,” thereby passing the buck of meaning making to the ether. This makes closure essentially a faux cognitive process. And this is also why it can be extended to apply to just about anything at all.

Instead of a non-principle like “closure,” we can lay out mental schemas for events (and more) in our minds that allow for understanding sequential panels. Rather than a generalized magic that the “mystical mind” performs, this actually identifies the contribution of the mind.

My first model had three of these:

1) Environmental Phrase: unified various environmental elements at the same state
2) View Phrase: combined the same element at the same state
3) Temporal Phrase: unified elements of state changes

These "phrase structures" could then embed into each other, forming a hierarchy showing exactly what the mind brings to the table. While the panels are linear, the structures of understanding are not. Note also, by formulating these rules, they inherently pose constraints to which sequences come out.

My newer approach builds off of this further to stipulate actual grammatical roles, while rejecting the schemas above (because they don’t work entirely). You can see a glimpse of this new approach in the essay "Initial Refiner Projection", though that’s only a small part of it.

In all of these, a contribution of the mind is identified. It is not magically glossed over, and it imbues the power of meaning making to the images themselves in concert with given mental rules.

Once you come to this conclusion though, it raises some other important questions:

Where do these mental schemas come from? (learning or genetics?)
How many are there, and how do they work?
Do these structures connect to other mental domains?

All of these are very important questions, and just the sort of thing that will hopefully occupy a good deal of time and effort in cognitive science in the years to come.

Another cycle

My birthday gift to all of you is another page of "Karuna".

Problems with Closure, part 3

In my last post I pointed out that pictures are not believed to have constraints on them, and that the mind must place constraints on any sort of understanding:

Assumption #2: The Veil of Iconicity

This assumption is that pictures are “out there in the world,” not learned information, and thus not mental phenomena. McCloud shows this underlying belief by stating:

“Pictures are received information. We need no formal education to “get the message.” The message is instantaneous. Writing is perceived information. It takes time and specialized knowledge to decode the abstract symbols of language.” (p. 49)

This belief is formed because images are most often iconic, meaning that they derive their meaning through resemblance to what they reference. A picture of a person is known to refer to a person because we know what people look like in the world. Note, there are three parts to this equation: the picture of a person, people in the world, and the concept of people in our minds.

However, just because they look like what they mean, it doesn’t mean that pictures aren’t conceptual information. Through this resemblance, we forget that it actually requires a mind to understand these images, and thereby discount its contribution to understanding. Images just seem like what we experience in the world: we don’t seem to need any special understanding to know the world, so thus we don’t need special understanding to know images.

Upon closer reflection, this is somewhat of a ridiculous mistake. If I draw a picture, how can it not be connected to my mental understandings? It came out from my mind, why wouldn’t its reception need to go through my mind too!? I had to learn how to draw, doesn’t that mean I had to learn how to understand drawings too!?

Considerable studies have shown that the understanding of images is clearly not so transparent. Often, this is found in native communities like Australian or Amazon aborigines who couldn’t/can’t understand aspects of "Western” representation. In the past, this was haughtily used to justify their intelligence as "primitive" compared to Ameri-Europeans. Really, this is just a case of not having fluency in the conventionality of a graphic system (natives for the Western system(s), and Westerners for the native systems). Science is rife with these sorts of examples treating the world “objectively” while really being unable to see beyond the petri dish that oneself is standing in.

Because images look like what they represent, we gloss over the mental component for understanding them, and in turn is misplaced for sequential images. I’ll take this up in my next post.

Problems with Closure, part 2

The first problem with closure isn’t a direct one, but a tendency of the way our culture treats graphic images as a whole. As a topic, it also happens to nicely correspond to my new article up at comixpedia:

Assumption #1: Artistic Freedom

In line with an “Art” perspective, there is a tacit assumption that “anything goes” with regards to graphic creations. Because “Art” is supposed to be about innovation and interpretation, anything visual is regarded as free from constraints of any sort. This is why transitional approaches like McCloud’s allow for a “non-sequitur” transition, because it’s a catch-all for any panel-to-panel relationship that might seem odd.

Closure, as an idea, allows for this sort of “anything goes” freedom, because it only involves one-to-one panel relationships. Since only two panels are looked at, it escapes the types of constraints posed by an approach that focuses on the relationship of multiple panels to each other.

Of course, if our minds are involved at all, then there must be constraints. How could the mind function without them! Even given the Art perspective, constraints aren’t easy to find anyways because people tend not to find them unless they are broken. And if constraints exist to make people make sense, it usually means that they aren’t broken all too often in daily use.

This is also a concern about the difference between the understanding and interpretation positions that I mentioned in my last post. As cognitively wrong something might seem at a base level of understanding, we can still consciously give explanations for how it might make sense under the right "interpretation." Again, the trouble comes from thinking these are the same thing.

All this concern about “mind” leads to the next underlying assumption though, which will be discussed in my next post…

Passing Judgment

I've got new article up at Comixpedia discussing how intuitive judgments can lend towards developing a theories on the structure of visual language. I'm trying a new approach with this one, which I'm hoping to do more of: I'm laying out basic principles of methodology, and then leaving the actual theorizing to the readers. Its sort of an instructional textbooky approach.

So, my question to those who read this is: Do you like this sort of thing? Want more of it? I'd like to hear your feedback...