Art and Technology: Visual Literacy as an Effective Way of Manipulating the Environment

Abstract

‘Technology’ derives from the Greek word ‘?????’= techni (=art). The term ‘technology’ could be perceived as a means of control and imposition of man on his natural environment. Moreover, because of technological changes and the success of new products, the processes which reduce the feeling of uncertainty are strengthened. However, human standards secede from man and the equation of living organisms, human societies, systems, concepts is not slow to cast doubt upon the cybernetic control models which manipulate these equations and their natural surroundings. At a time when limits, symbols, associations, experiences no longer stand and the new postmodern world is made up of simulations that are not based on ‘reality’, visual learning sets constants, since it allows an insight in the perceptual relations of the surrounding forms and the internal structures. According to contemporary neurobiological findings, our everyday life is filled with secondary references to phenomena, while the brain is programmed to process authentic sensory data and compare causalities. In a pixel world, the distinct convention between perceptor and stimulus, signifier and signified does not exist. Art functions in an abstract way, not additionally. The structures of the work of art inform per se and not inductively. Therefore, the way of perception, analysis and use of image is based on a non-verbal neuronal organization.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p50