Reaction to "image" by Kristine Nielsen

“The very phrase ‘word and image’ suggest that two different, perhaps incompatible things are to be shackled together.”

Nielsen makes the claim that an image alone is so difficult to grasp, that words have become a socialized additive to there existence and meaning. The way in which we view image (abstract) cannot be a medium of pure data; rather there are six categories to associate with image: graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, verbal and significant. We subjectively build context of image through these measures, allowing descriptive language to navigate these categorical spaces. Alone, the image “bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.” Particularly, our sensatory perception stimulates information into our brain, with an output of meaning void of the physicality, or actuality of the image itself. Therefore, our body controls the image, shaping filters, which are external to actual image and subjective to the viewer.