Visibility in Progress

Abstract

My theme is visibility, a topic that happens to be close to professional activity of visual design and disciplinary field of visual communications. I intend to develop this theme in two stages: first, I'll try to consider how far visibility is present all over world nowadays; then, I'll try to analyze how visibility is produced. The period we live in sometimes has been defined as a of image; and at other times as a of written word. Some have spoken of a return to the global village, a return to a civilization of a second degree oralityI promoted by electronic technologies. In any case, a very visual civilization, even if it is now also audio-visual, or more precisely multisensoreal, as is promised by so-called virtual reality. The general tendency is to emphasize importance of visual in our daily lives and in scenario of our technological future. In opposition to this kind of interpretation, some speak of visual in a very critical way; they talk about a civilization of blindness, a blackout civilization. Paul Virilio, for instance; a French urbanist who defines himself as a dromologist, which means a student of velocity; has become one of those critical voices by offering closeup observations of a series of phenomena in our society and technology.2 According to Virilio, dissemination of technological innovations into our culture has prompted an acceleration of every single process and of all processes at same time. This speeding up process alters normal process of communication, which has a relatively slow rhythm, with an instantaneous kind of process that is called switching or transducing. The time of transducing is governed by electronic devices; while still, relatively slow, rhythm of communications is defined by human organs and mind. Heavy stimulation can pass through body of a person invaded by transducing processes, but it does not really interfere with mind. The surrounding world is then seen as a world of dysphoriathe contrary of euphoria-which means essentially experience of a world of depression caused by a substantial impoverishment of communication and, even more, by a substantial deprivation of sensory pleasure. I recall, for instance, a very harsh indictment of air travel industry by Virilio: velocity is achieved at expense of treating passengers as bodies on stretchers, or even as corpses in storage drawers of a morgue. This article was originally presented as ICOGRADA inaugural lecture at PIRA/RSA Design Conference, London, April 1, 1992