An alphabet is a collection of symbols (letters) that is used to represent the sounds of the words

that comprise a language.

RUPTURE
Non alphabetical systems use symbols to represent things objects, ideas or syllables.
The alphabetical system makes a connection between a mark and a sound.

Mocks a secret of sounds, that represent a word, that represents a thing.

That alphabet constitutes a breach between the auditory and visual experience: it gives the
reader/writer an eye for an ear easier to learn. Democratising effect.
Alphabet precision, nuance, adaptability.

Writing

Developed in Sumer (modern Iraq) between 8000 and 5000BC

Existed within a largely oral culture
Early use of writing was limited, only for government and ruling society.
Living in an oral culture

Orality shapes culture: it shapes our speech, thoughts and ideas. What writing brings to an
oral culture.

In an oral culture You know only what you recall.

What difference does writing make?

Writing: moves speech from the aural oral to a new sensory world that of vision, it transforms
speech as well as thought.

Writing creates context free language.

It allows ideas to travel far more easily
It objectifies ideas.
It remembers.
It facilitates analysis
It invents reading (literacy.

Writing and literacy are generally seen as forces for good. But there is a dark side to the spread of
writing that is present throughout its history if somewhat less obvious. Writing has been used to tell
lies as well as truth, to bamboozle and exploit as well as to educate, to make minds lazy as well as
to stretch them.
Writing is inhuman, it destroys memory, written texts are unresponsive, writing defenceless.
Full impact of writing and the alphabet centuries to be felt . The importance of geography,

TECHNOLOGY

An assemblage
Contested
Sometimes normalised

Gutenburg

The Gutemburg press

Bible 1450s

Fifty years after the press was invented, more than eight million books has been printed, almost all of them
filled with information that had previously been unavailable to the average person. There were books on laws,
agriculture, politics, exploration, metallurgy, botany, bioguistics, paediatrics and even good manners.
Movable Type
Chinese antecedents replaced monolithic blocks - easier with Roman alphabet
Columbus
First European to reach the Americas after the invention of the printing press. Reported via best-selling printed
pamphlet
Book
New formats changing production techniques evolving cultures
Pamphlets
Common usage political themes quickly to produce easy to distribute
Newspapers
News, commercial imperative, journalism. .
Time binding
the distinctively human attribute of preserving memories andrecords of experiences for the use of subsequent
generations.
Example: newspapers, commercial printings, the telegraph, radio
Space binding
Influence cultural patterns in duration
Examples: saga, poems, published, books, archives, university.
Imagined Communities NATIONALISM a nation is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation
will never know most of their fellow members.

IMPACTS OF PRINT
Increased output
Standardisation easy distribution, exact replicas
Re-organisation of texts dealing with increased information within texts like page numbers, indexes, contents
etc, libraries, catalogues and curriculum
Fixity - knowledge, language (vernacular)

LEGAL IMPACT AUTHORSHIP and COPYRIGHT.

PRE TELEGRAPH

Mid 18th century

Print media well established
Widely literate (Western/Eurpean Society)
Conventional A to B travel by rail etc
Standard mail
Pigeons ( used by until WW1)
Horseback
EARLY TELEGRAPHS

Pre modern antecedents to the telegraph

Fire/smoke based signals
Roman telegraph towers.
Unique semaphore code.
Moving beam structure atop towers
Read visually by telescope
Completely Encrypted
3000 miles/556 stations

Electric Telegraphy

Limited Speed
Limited through put
Limited distance
Only works in clear/bright conditions
Expensive to run; skilled operators needed.
A robust fast code system: Morse code
Writing received messages to tape
Powerful current for longer distances.

Important commercial/industrial applications.

Fast alternative to postal communication
Over 23,000 miles built in the US from 1846 1852
Thousands of miles in other countries.

Life with the telegraph

Centered around the telegraph office
Charged by the letter
Transcrbed and sent by a clerk
Hand delivered.

News was, before the telegraph not that new.

Ambivalent initial response to the telegraph
Symbiosis between telegraph and print
Development of modern news industry
Birth of new agencies e.g. Reuters.

Observers vs writer: Bare , neutral cablese style

Imperialism: Telegraphic management of an empire
Commerce: Time, not geography, was important
Time: Development of time zones

IMPERSONALITY
SYMBOLISM
OPTIMISM

END OF THE TELEGRAPH

Automatic telegraphy
Rise of the telephone
But the telegraph did not disappear (yet)

TELEPHONE
INITIALLY SEEN AS A POTENTIAL BROADCAST MEDIUM. SIMILARIETIES INCLUDE CODE, NETWORK,
INFRASTRUCTURE OPTIMISM.

Inventions the name by which we call devices that seem fundamentally new are almost always born out of a
process that is more like farming than magic. From a complex ecology of ideas and circumstance that includes
the condition of the intellectual soil, the political climiate, the state of technical competence, and the
sophistication of the seed, the suggestion of new possibilities arises.

HENRY FOX TALBOT ENGLAND - CALOTYPE

LOUIS DAGUERRE FRANCE

- DAGUERROTYPE

The idea of photography

Camera obscura described as early as 10th century AD
Photography has become almost as widely practiced amusement as sex and dancing which means that, like
every mass art form photography is not practiced by most people than art. It is mainly a social rite, a defence
against social anxiety, and a tool of power.

Photographer imposes an order on scene, giving it a structure through:

Vantage point
Choosing a frame
Choosing a moment of exposure

Selecting a plane of focus.

Harold Evans (journalist) once famously said. The camera cannot lie; but it can be an accessory to untruth
(citied in Kember 145)
Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear anout, but doubt, seems proven when were shown a
photograph of it.

Etymology of amateur : amare to love

Ordinarily, the amateur is defined as an immature artist: someone who cannot or who does not want to
attain the mastery of his profession. But in the field of photographic practice, it is the amateur, on the contrary,
who is the attainment of the professional: for it is he who holds closest to the intelligence.

Roland Barthes
-

Influential text for theories of photography

Very personal text on his relationship to photograohs
Mourning his mothers death

STUDIUM polite interest, vague interest, rational response, information. a kind of general enthusiastic
commitment. The dtudium is that very wide field of unconcerned desire, of various interest, of inconsequential
taste. It s the same sort of vague, slippery, irresponsible nterest one takes in the people, the entertainments,
the books, the clothes one finds all right.
Punctum sting, speck, bruise, detail that captures/grips, what is poignant to you, a subjective, interior
response. the second element will break (or punctuate) the stadium It is this element which rises from the
scene, shoots out of it like an arrow and pierces me A photographs punctum is that accident which pricks
me.

Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Changing modes of visual production in the 20th century
Modern visual technologies such as photograohy and cinema fundamentally alter how we experience the world.
New visual technologies bring us closer to the realm of the everyday.

Understanding and perception of the everyday is expanding by these new visual technologies
Whole new layer of detail in capturing everyday life is made available
Capturing what the human eyes fials to notice.

Shifting of amateur/professional hierarchies, less emphasis on events and special occasions, attention to the
small and mundane.