Vantage Point and Image Worlds

Ron Burnett is interested in the role of images in society, in their uses and the ways in which they are interpreted into everyday life.
How people interpret an image is influenced by many a discourse that has infiltrated the human psyche, through various mediums. This perspective or 'vantage point' is an image communicated, that is a reflection of one's own self image.

I particularly like how Ron Burnett discusses the influence of media on self-image, the interpretation of world events, and the compression of space and time.

Here are some points he makes about media

* television's influence is far reaching. defying the limitations of medium

* Images are the middle man, between the different layers of 'complex image- worlds'

* Television has had a huge influence on the history of images

* Televisions focus has shifted from entertainment to news, that has compacted space, time and history into a set of "visual, oral and textual discourses, that are for the most part based on the sophisticated use of images"

* The readily availability of news at any time alters the context of the source.

* Images are more than just objects and signs. Live television is a "portal into a variety of experiences"

* "Images are both the outcome and pro-genitors of vast and inter-connected image-worlds. All of these elements may have been discreet at one time or another, but not anymore. Pictures of a series of crises, for example come from so many sources, that the parts become the whole, and the whole seems to have no end or even any parts."

* The broadcast of traumatic world events, become all encompassing. The way these images are read, experienced and stored in memory are a new development of the 21st century.

* Television uses text, sound and images, in an endless stream of information. The TV screen has become a multi-dimensional map, travelling across the world in seconds. World affairs are juxtaposed with reality TV, and crime fiction. "...Survivor, which is one of the best examples of the synthesis of reality/fiction ever created on television"

* Modern media's ability to convey a message far surpasses traditional ways of human interaction and conversation. This marks a shift in the ways humans communicate.

* "Television, radio and the Internet are always on. The media don't disappear, when viewers turn off electrical switches, just as electricity doesn't disappear when it is not being used"
This because of the development of a new natural and constructed world. The differentiation between natural and artificial have diminished.

* The use of images have changed the way humans see themselves, from individuals, to hybrid personae
" Identity no longer resides in one particular place, object or person" ( Jeff Wall. photographer)

*no images of human activity is separate from a variety of media or social context. Images seep into viewers lives from every angle imaginable. Viewers are less aware of the materiality involved with these images and have to juggle the many meanings conveyed thru these images. An example of this is how events on television are discussed as if the portrayal and the event are one.
"The event is internalized, personalized, and then discussed as if the images approximate 'being there' "