Mimesis and Indexicality
We now have capacity to mimike in such a way we can create truthful representations of the real world (indexicality)
Art can only be copy vs. art has capacity to be an indexicable reality (forms of evidence of real world)
The birth of the ‘image’
The myth of Dibutades daughter tells of a young woman who traced the contour of her lover’s shadow on the wall, as he was about to leave for battle, thus, according to the myth, giving birth to drawing.
Our capacity to copy in pictures began at that moment
Capacity to reproduce reality
The tracing of an outline is a leftover of reality / part of reality. Like a footprint / fingerprint.
Plato and the Mimetic Arts
In his theory of mimesis, plato claims that all art is mimetic by nature; art is an imitation of life. He believed that idea is the ultimate reality. Art imitates idea and so it is imitation of reality.
Art only ever imitates ideas, so it’s a imitation of reality.
Plato creates dialogues;
Socrates – Can you tell me what imitation is?
Glaucon – I don’t know you tell me
So socrates sets out to teach glaucoma what it is.
Imitation is like taking a mirror to the world and the reflection is just the copy of reality.
For plato a man who simply holds up a mirror to the world is an imitator and a creator of ‘appearances’ only.
Socrates: What is the art of painting designed to be? An imitation of things as they are, or as they appear.
Glaucon: of appearance
Socrates: then the imitator is a long way off the truth and can do all do all these things as he touches on a small part of reality. Plato
Consigns it to a poor relation of reality – a trickery
Telling us something prophetic as this match the world we now occupy. We can easily be tricked by digital mimicry.
Plato gives an example of a carpenter and a bed. The idea of bed first came in the mind of carpenter. He gave physical shape to his idea out of wood and created a particular rendition of ‘bed’.
The painter follows this by imitating the particular ‘bed’ of the carpenter in his picture of a ‘bed’. In this way Plato seeks to prove that the painter’s chair is twice removed from reality.
If we all followed the same procedure we would all produce completely different ‘beds’.
Plato gives first importance to philosophy as philosophy deals with ideas were as art and poetry deals with illusion – things which are twice removed from reality.
So to Plato, philosophy is superior to art and poetry, philosophy seeks to understand reality as it explores the ‘real’ world of concepts and ideas.
Art on the other hand explores the ‘world of appearances;, of mimetics.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave’.
‘All in all, then,’ The Shadows of artefacts would constitute the only reality people in this situation would recognise’.
Allegory – telling story about something (when you’re really talking about something else – like lord of the flies).
Prisoners in cave forced to face certain way so can only see the shadows on the wall of the men moving behind them.
The shadows are their reality / that is their world.
If you were to take one of the prisoners and take them into the light and see the real world, they would be blinded by the light, but after they have become accustomed to it what would they think of their shadow reality.
Would they think their fellow prisoners still in the cave were blinded, compared to his enlightenment of this new reality.
One group of individuals who ask questions and want to know more. One group that are ignorant and don’t want to ask questions – happy to live in the blanketed reality.
Plato suggests you shouldn’t trust what you see, as it is the only sense you can’t trust. But do we all see in the same way?
Does that mean we all interpret reality different or is there not just one reality we’re living in.
Plato and Aristotle on Art as Imitation (Mimesis)
Plato’s Republic
Art is imitation, and therefore it is only deceptive and exists as a falsity.
Cons of mimesis:
For knowledge: An imitation is at three removes from the reality or truth of something (example of bed) and cannot help us ‘know’ the ‘truth’ of the world.
For Moral and Psychological well being: A good imitation can undermine the stability of even the best humans by making us feel sad, depressed, and sorrowful
Aristotle
Art is imitation, but imitation can help us learn and understand things.
Says mimesis is a good thing.
Like simulations – flight simulator allows pilots to get good at flying so they don’t kill people when they have to fly in real life
Pros of mimesis:
Imitation is natural to humans from childhood, it is how children learn, and we can all learn from imitations.
Imitations (in narrative) can be a form of education that provides moral insight and fosters emotional growth.
Tragedy is the imitation (mimesis) of certain kinds of people and actions
A successful tragedy produces a katharsis in the audience
Cathartic – allows you to go through experience of learning – make you feel better about yourself / e.g. if you go to movie and it makes you feel better about your life.
Mimesis has the capacity to provide cathartic experiences.
Can perceive image as a negative thing we should distrust – won’t allow us to connect with reality.
Think of mimetic image in Aristotle terms as something positive as it allows us to produce something we wouldn’t be able to in another way so can produce something positive.
Neither of them are making a claim images are truthful.
Aristotle says it’s close, but a different kind of truth.
Optical images and indexicality
Optical images are any images made with optical equipment (not with human eye).
The term indexicality stems from the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, and his categorisation of signs into icon, symbol and index.
3 ways we can represent the world; three types of sign
icon sign – anything that resembles something else (sign based on resemblance). (picture of house)
a symbol – is a sign based on culturally agreed rules
(such as different languages)
an index – is a sign that has some casual relation to the object it signifies
All traditional art is iconic – based on idea of resemblance. Describe in words like a poem would be symbols.
Index are things like photographs. Image only possible as light that bounces of objects and reflects to photograph paper in camera. Leaves a physical image. Have not made the image yourself.
Indexicality has become a key term in discourses on the lens based image. It stands to mark the direct relation photographs or films have to an outer reality, the way the photographic/fimic image is a physical trace or consequence of the world it depicts.
Why the term ‘camera doesn’t lie’ existed. Used to be more trustworthy method.
Indexicality remains a key term for it seems to capture a distinct feature of photography that sets it apart from earlier forms of image making, such as painting and sculpture.
The peculiar way in which photography makes use of light (existing light, light that is ‘out there’) in producing an image is something that imply cannot be denied. In other words a kind of ‘truth’.
However in a digital age indexicality, and the ‘truth’ of optical images is far from stable (think here about the ‘new mimetics’ of computer manipulated and generated imagery and Baudrillard’s ‘Simulacra’ and ‘hyperreality).
Digital camera when takes pictures turns it into binary code unlike a traditional camera.
Digital image doesn’t have same direct translation to reality that old cameras had.
Can’t be sure of any picture anymore.