2012 / Imagines

Imagines

The abilities to look, imagine and dream have always belonged exclusively to man. Only we can create images, through which we have always tried to convey knowledge and emotions.
As soon as people working with images try to analyse complex shapes, they are shocked by the substantial insufficiency of scientific theories and suppositions regarding visual perception.
The great complexity of factors involved obviously makes it hard to precisely convey an image’s intentions. The need to convey incontrovertible meanings is exactly what sparked the “invention” of writing, an essential tool in human evolution. Maybe all writing is the gradual simplification of images perceived in reality, and codifying them establishes a link between them and thought or speech.
But all images keep their original values locked inside of them, albeit in a different way depending on the various cultures that saw them.
Thanks to the way we have been educated ever since we were children, we are able to read a text without really looking at it. Moreover, we have a strong prejudice that writing should only be looked at for its link with speech. But a text’s efficacy also derives from the visual sensations it can create by being either balanced or dynamic, from the shapes and colours of each of its letters. Writing is definitely the result of a combination of “scientific”/“artistic”, and “rational“/”irrational” knowledge, and its future seems destined to be a mix of ancient models and modern digital liquidness, which sometimes is helpful in finding the original meaning.
All of this seems destined to create a cycle, whereby images become art, then words and finally text; but once written, seen and, above all, read, it gradually regains its visual values. This is maybe one of the most dynamic processes of our mind that helps us to look at, imagine and “dream up” something new. And if, as Shakespeare said, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on”, maybe our dreams will help us to see.

The etymological root for “image” and “imagine” is the same, as they both derive from “Mimaginem”, from the Greek word “Mimos” or “Imitate”. The Latin term “Imagines” holds both the ability to create and the ability to imagine, which have been interconnected from birth. Setting off from this idea, we have chosen six quotes from writers, directors and designers in a bid to interpret these quotes visually, letting only our emotions guide us.