Image as the Center of the World
In 1925, the remains of a group of Australopithecus Africanus, an early kind of proto-human that lived approximately 3 million years ago, were discovered in a cave in the South African valley of Makapansgat. A small jasperite pebble with an erosion pattern that strikingly resembled facial features was found next to the remains. The Makapansgat Pebble could only have come from a source 32 km away from the cave.[1]Therefore, it must have been carried to the cave and kept there by one of the hominids.
This pebble (image 55) points to an act of singling out an object not because of its use, value or functionality, but because of specific imaginative properties, both visual and symbolic. The object is singled out from others purely because of the way it looks. The fact that the hominid who found this pebble could see himself, or others, reflected in it most likely explains why he kept it. In this instance, imagination initiated the decision, not practicality. The figurative qualities of the object, the fact that it possesses forms resembling a pair of eyes, a mouth and a nose, go beyond its primary properties. This marks a distinctive development of visual sensibility in human history. Imagination makes visible what was previously unseen.
The Makapansgat Pebble is considered the oldest known manuport.[2] Although Wikipedia argues that the object cannot be considered art, as it was “found and not made”, I would argue that this act by the hominids is similar to the one performed three million years later by Marcel Duchamp (image 58). The manuport and the readymade have strangely similar definitions. The core difference lies in that the manuport is typically from natural origin, and the readymade is a prefabricated, most often mass-produced object.
Of course, if in 1913, Duchamp had used shells instead of a wheel and stool (image 59), the work would nothave stirred nearly as much conversation. However, both of these acts of singling out are ones of visual sensibility and curiosity. A recognition that an object can do more than it is supposed to. This is the imaginative power of objects. They can be dressed and undressed, made to look or mean something else. People are attracted by the possibility of an image.
I have created a dichotomous classification for images, Gelatin and Solid. This pair is important to measure an image’s capacity for sexiness, for allure. Gelatin images exist in movement and so naturally have more potential for sexiness. Like swimming in honey, this type of image has sensual tactile qualities. Solid images, however, stand on their own. They’re direct and stiff, and consequently, they have less potential for sensual appeal. These images are generally like tropes of themselves, “An image learned in books (…), blocks the imagination.”[3] When images are sexy, they form superficial, visual links with other images. As one form is linked with another, new visual possibilities emerge.
For instance, an image of a blue vase with a few colorful flowers is exactly that, exactly what I have written (images 60 and 61). I do not need to describe it much further for it to appear in one’s head. The mind will notreceive diverse impulses from this imagined image. It will think of one thing that it has seen multiple times. This habituality makes it harder for the image to be experienced as an event, rather than as an object. By contrast, Wayne Koestenbaum’s column “Legend” in Cabinet Magazine, in which he suggests possible captions for an image provided by the editors, illustrates the possibilities of a Gelatin image. Only sexy images could generate such sexy writing (image 17).
Here is an excerpt from Koestenbaum’s Pale Khakis with Dark Socks: “Avoid dark socks when you wear khakis. Spank anyone you can find. I love having temper tantrums. Authorities incarcerated me in a think-tank. I’m a tall version of Danny Bonaduce, who starred in The Partridge Family and later got involved with drugs. I’m a better singer than Danny Bonaduce, topless pin-up ne’er spanked by Shirley Jones.”[4] This description is the clear result of a very gelatinous image, as well as a very imaginative writer. The image that is attached to this piece of text contributes to a continuity of images that “alone can bring forth material and dynamic imagination.”[5]
The potential for sexiness in an image is important because it is intertwined with its imaginative qualities. As explored in Air and Dreams, the value of an image is measured by its imaginary aura.[6] Some images have lost their imaginative power (their sexiness), they have become habitual tropes. Instead of open, they are now closed. Instead of gelatin, they have become solid. The gelatin image’s energetic potential for becoming outshines its density of being. This frees us from heavy images and subjects them to change. Examples of Gelatin images are, for instance, images 3, 40, 99 and 102. Examples of Solid images are images 38, 78, 85 and 87.
When images are changing, we can experience them in an exhilarating way, one that requires neither reason nor words. They are as they are, and they rarely stay the same. This makes the moodboard the most imaginative moving surface. If we see less and imagine more, imagination can function completely as a seducer.
In this way, we can use the moodboard to deviate from the ordinary things, the typicality of images. Bachelard writes, “Perceiving and imagining are as antithetic as presence and absence. To imagine is to absent oneself, to launch out toward a new life.”[7] This leap creates a loss of boundaries and distinctions between things, meaning is recomposed again and again, and nothing is fixed in place. A sexy image is not predictable or categorizable. It is velvety, it has a deep, round center, and steep corners. It is balancing on one foot, extending its long limbs in our direction.
The images we encounter have the potential to renew our visual map, our mind. We must be mindful and understand our relationship with imagery, because it is constantly being challenged by the influx of images we consume online. It is impossible to be changed by everything, which makes it hard to be changed by anything.
The quantity of irrelevant images far exceeds the quantity of relevant ones. Thus, creating a visual shortage rather than a visual excess in today’s visual media culture.[8] Images may exist everywhere, but as a social force they are less powerful than the act of visualizing or imagining. Camiel Van Winkel, in The Regime of Visibility, further confirms Bachelard's ode to imagination, but now using the term visualization. He believes that an image’s ultimate quality is to facilitate visualization, rather than considering the image itself the ultimate vehicle for power and meaning.
So, the best quality an image can give us is the quality of imagination, the potential for an event, for movement, for multiplicity. Moodboarding is a testament to this imaginative act. More than a grouping of concrete, complete images, mood boards are images in movement, there to facilitate the visualisation of something, anything that is not the exact image itself.
[1] The waterworn Australopithecine Pebble of many faces from Makapansgat, A. Raymond Dart, South African Journal of Science,1974
[2] A natural object (like a stone, shell, or fossil) that has been deliberately taken by a person or hominin from its original environment and relocated without further modification, showing early signs of aesthetic appreciation or symbolic thought.
[3] Air and Dreams: An Essay On the Imagination of Movement, Gaston Bachelard, Dallas Institute Publications, 1988, 11
[4] Pale Khakis with Black Socks in Legend, Cabinet Magazine, Spring 2011
[5] Air and Dreams: An Essay On the Imagination of Movement, Gaston Bachelard, Dallas Institute Publications, 1988, 11
[6] Ibid., 2
[7]Ibid., 3
[8] The Regime of Visibility, Camiel van Winkel, NAi Publishers, 2005, 15