Codognet Codognet Codognet - Ancient Images

Codognet's look into the semiotics of web based items (images in particular) goes along a deep historical path. He begins his writing by showing several examples through out history where images were integrated into text and used as indexes. He talks about Comenius and how he tried to create a "pictorial dictionary". This shows the power that images had as signifiers for specific things. Comenius is quoted in Codognet's writing as having said "[images are] the icons of all visible things in the world..." This shows early thinking in regards to how powerful an image could be and how much it could represent.

Transitioning from the philosophical age to the digital age, Codognet makes an interesting reference to binary code and how it was included in transmitting images from space back to Earth. The digitization of pictures and images being the main focus of course. Codognet makes this reference to begin, even though he follows it up philosophical talks of images and then comes back to the digital age, the talk of images being displayed on computers. He describes the aspects of binary code and the lines of resolution for the images. This whole discussion of having a separate interpreter, in this case the televisions or computers that display the binary code AS images, to display images is interesting. In the digital age without something to interpret data and display it as the all important image (or even video) a person is lost. Whether that be a web browser to interpret html code and display images or something like a programming language that instructs the computer to display an image to the screen, an interpreter is most important. Also, this is drastically different from how images were seen before, as simple printed pictures used to supplement text. It just shows the change that technology brings upon us.

Another interesting point about the need for the interpretation of data to display images is the contrast of that idea to what images are initially used for. Codognet talks a lot about how images are used as interpreters and supplements of text. For instance, he makes reference to the philosopher Tomasso Campanella and his desire and dream of a city where the walls were painted with images that would serve as a "encyclopedia". The pictures on the wall would serve as a better alternative to text in regards to delivering data to the viewers. In this sense, it seems that images are objects that are used to better interpret text, at least in Campanella's eyes at least. He is quoted as saying that young children would be able to understand slightly complex science mainly from looking at the images on the walls.

So it's interesting to relate that to the digital age where something is needed to decipher the code for an image to be displayed on a screen. If images provide a good way to decipher text and provide a better understanding of it, it seems contradictory to need something that deciphers "code" in order to see those images. An infinite loop perhaps where something that is used to interpret text now needs an interpreter of its own to be seen in this modern age of computers. An interesting thought if nothing more.