The mediasphere and the image maker

- Gaston Roberge

Any filmmaker addressing a group of professional photographers would certainly feel tempted to

discuss the similarities and differences between the art of film-making and that of still

photography. What I propose to discuss, however, has little to do with such questions. I wish to

discuss our common task as image makers. We often say, very wrongly, that we take pictures. In

fact, we do not take pictures, we make them, whether mobile or still, we make pictures, we make

images. By creating the image which surrounds us, we contribute to building up the environment

of our society, what I have called mediasphere.

The phrase mediasphere is used here by the analogy to a series of terms which all refer to mans environment, like biosphere (the zone around the earth where life is possible), atmosphere (the

mass of gases, chiefly air, around the earth) [add to these, stratosphere (the layer of atmosphere,

about seven miles from the earth in which there are little temperature changes); ionosphere

(part of earths atmosphere 25 to 250 miles away from the earth. The word biosphere was

coined by Suess. The noosphere is the terrestrial zone of thinking substance (Theilhard de Chardin: THE FUTURE OF MAN, pp.163 ff)]. Mediasphere simply means the network of

communication media which surrounds the earth. Thanks to that communication network men

and women throughout the world can relate to each other. This they do through exchanging

word-messages and image-messages. Today the entire planet is bathing in a flux of words and

images. That is why some specialists speak of logosphere (sphere of words) and iconosphere

(sphere of icons or images) meaning that today man is immersed in words and images as in

atmosphere. The media of communication are the physical channels of planetary communication.

They have become an extension of our nervous systems, or better still, they are in the process of

becoming a sort of nervous system for the whole of man and woman kind. Willy-nilly, through

this network, the human family is growing more united. We will have therefore to find ways to

live at peace. In the human body the two eyes usually work happily together, and so the two

hands and the two feet. All the members of the body contribute to the welfare of the whole body,

and this is made possible thanks to the nervous system. Now, with the development of the means

of communication, humankind is building up a nervous system that calls for the conscious

unification of the human family.

In the earlier times, our great, great, great grandfathers lived in the middle of fields or in the

forest. The images and sounds which contribute to their personal and mental life were

immediately available in their environment, and in most cases, were not man made. They may

have been a totem, images of some deities, houses or temples, but sight and sound came to these

people mostly from their natural environment. On the basis of this natural sensorial information, our ancestors endeavored to understand their personal and social relationship with

the environment. They evolved two modes of thinking and of expressing themselves: science, to

formulate the laws of the environment and art, to enter into communion with the environment, to

modify and enhance it to an extent. It is possible that in earlier times science and art were one

and the same activity. Today they have developed into two specialized branches, much to their

respective impoverishment. Hopefully, they will be re-united. New technologies, especially in

the sciences of communication and cybernetics will usher in the time when once again the artist

and the scientist will have to be one and the same person.

Be this as it may, art and science now have distinctive roles. The arts are means of expression.

They are a language, but infinitely more complex than ordinary verbal language, which in turn is

much more specific than the arts. Verbal language is rich in signification; the language of art is

rich in meaning. Signification is defined for once and for all. Meaning calls for interpretation. On

the other hand, sciences have created channels capable of conveying the verbal or art messages

to distant places, to countless persons. We now have techniques to create images and to convey

them to millions of people. It is estimated that half of humankind could see the first astronauts

landing on the moon. They could hear Armstrong saying: A small step for a man, a giant step for a mankind never before in its 2 million years of history had mankind been so united in one experience. Thus, the possibility of communicating among ourselves has grown to an extent that

could not have been imagined even a few decades ago. Take, for instance, your great great

grandfathers. How many kilometers could they travel in a lifetime under normal circumstances?

Perhaps hardly one millionth of the worlds circumference. Some of you have been around the world. You travel thousands and 1000 s of kilometers in yr. you travel greater distances in a

month than your great fathers in their whole lives. Astronauts now travel millions of kilometers

in week. The possibility of physical transport, of moving personally form one place to another, is

matched by an equal ease to convey messages, whether visual or aural, from one side of the

planet to the other, and even from one planet to another.

It is in this context of greater ease in communication that we, image-makers, do our work. Some

questions naturally arise: do our images enrich the environment? Do they contribute to the

expansion of human awareness, to the enhancement of perception? Do they call for a greater

activity of the mind? Even at a physical level, do they make demands on the organism, helping

the brain grow more sensitive? Or, are our images redundant and repetitious? Do they make us

all dull and dumb? These questions evidently arise in the fields of cinema, of advertising, and of

still photography.

A second set of questions relate to the values our images promote. Are our images haphazardly

born out of our technical gadgets or are they pregnant with meaning and signification? Do they

contribute to some form of communion, as essential requirement for the survival of the human

family, or do they emphasise artificial oppositions between castes, sexes, human groups? Those

necessary but logical distinctions are only too easily emphasised and transformed into

ontological but unnecessary oppositions.

Let us now answer too hurriedly the question raised above. But, for a moment, let us pause and

reflect on our personal experience, not as image makers, but as image consumers. There is no

way of computing accurately the amount of images we absorb in one day, and still less, the effect these images have on us. Yet, since the images around us are an important part of our

environment, like the air we constantly breathe, it is worth making an effort to become aware of

the presence- if not yet of the exact role- of the images in our lives.

You start the day by reading through the newspaper, thus absorbing a few dozen visual messages

which you rapidly classify, select or reject. Then, on your way to work or college you literally

circulate amongst a jungle of ads. Psychologists say it takes 1/10 sec. to read and ad. How many do you read while going to your office college? Dozens, surely. Your mind is immersed in

a mixture of messages. You absorb these as innocently and candidly as you inhale countless

micro-organisms in breathing. These messages are not inactive: they excite your pet desires,

pamper your need for affection, soothe your anxieties; they structure your mind, they set an order

of values. In a word, the visual environment re-creates you in its own image. And, what to say of

the mud-bath you take at Rupees 2 to 5 when you see a movie? You think the images are on the

screen? Wrong. The images are in you. This is the magic of the film: it appears on a screen but

lives in the spectators mind, like a parasite feeding on the soul of the spectator.

Man, the image maker, constantly image-in(es), takes in images. Indeed, man is fleeting image;

he is the screen on which the image of the world flickers endlessly.

There is a vital relationship between man and his environment through the image medium. Let us

now revert to our initial point: the image maker.

In the mediasphere the artist-scientist image maker is an ecologist, because he deals directly with

mans environment. He thus plays several roles all at once according to his individual talent: he is

a psycho-therapist, a teacher, a priest.

In order to appreciate fully the role of a image maker it will help to first get rid of the prejudice

according to which there is an inherent, necessary, opposition between man and his environment,

and therefore between natural images and cultural (i.e. man made) images. The images we make

use are natural as those of nature, because we ourselves are parts of nature. Of course, there is a

distinction between man and his environment. But the distinction need not become an

opposition. Unfortunately there is ample evidence that we create an enmity between nature and

us. We thought for centuries that we could dispose of nature, that it had infinite resources. We

have now grown up to the timely awareness that to dispose of the environment means to

catastrophe. I shall illustrate this by an example in a moment. What I wish to emphasise now is

that (a) we need not regret romantically the so-called natural surroundings of the apes and (b) we may trust power to create images conducive to the psychic and moral life of the human

community.

I said I would illustrate by an example the relationship of man with his environment. Say you

have a species of birds feeding on a species of insects. The more insects the more bird will eat,

the stronger the bird will become, the more the bird will develop. At the same time the bird will

become a specialist, it will become very skilful at catching this particular type of insect. This

situation is that of so-called positive feed back, where the more this, the more that. In the end the bird is likely to eliminate the insect on which it feeds unless there is a negative feedback that

prevents the bird to develop too much. But if the positive feedback is left to play uncontrolled

then the bird will annihilate the species of insect and the bird will find that since it has developed

and specialized to such a great degree in hunting that type of insect, by destroying its own

environment, viz. the insect, the bird will indirectly destroy itself and disappear.

This situation has developed in our society. Thanks to the progress of technology, we have

succeeded in preserving our population which has resulted in a marked increase in population.

The more population we have, the more technology we develop, and the more technology, the

more the population and so on..this is a chain of positive feedback which is bound to destroy us through destroying the environment, because we cannot dispose of it indefinitely. We will be

left in a desert before long unless we somehow grow wiser. The relationship between our

environment and us is such that there is no survival for us out of, or independent from, our

environment. And we, as image makers, are ecologists, creators of environment. I hope these few

thoughts do not sound too abstract or too far fetched and that they can help to develop a sense of

responsibility and a sense of pride for the role which still photographers and film-makers play in

our society.

Courtesy: FILM MISCELLANY 1 (Dec 1976)

A Publication of the Film and Television Institute of India.