Most thought, at least in my experience, happens through the medium of language. We use language as a primary means of communicating thoughts, ideas, and emotions with one another. We are taught early on to read and write. With the rise of email, IM, and the like, we have become a culture strongly oriented to the word.
Through all of this verbal bombardment it is important to remember that linguistic thinking is merely one modality of thought. As philosopher Martin Heidegger says, “What is spoken is never, and in no language, what is said.” What is spoken leaves out what is seen. And that which is seen, speaks.
Visual language is an amazingly powerful means of communication. Certainly advertising agencies have realized this. They utilize this knowledge to a great degree. Visual language suffers the same limitations as spoken language. Context is important. And with context comes the ability to read between the lines. One of my favorite visual context issues has to do with how children are dressed. In European, and European derived cultures like the United States, little boys are associated with the color blue while girls are associated with pink. In parts of India (and I can only imagine other parts of the world as well) the reverse is true. Rather than seeing pink as feminine, it is seen as the diminutive of red (a very masculine color) and as such a totally proper color for little boys.
Visual thinking, just like verbal thinking, necessitates an understanding of the cultural context and the larger visual vocabulary of that contextual visual language. The color example above is but one instance of visual language differing culturally. The meaning of shadow is culturally determined as well. In fact, I would argue that visual languages are as unique and distinct as verbal languages. Just as the collection of phonemes that make the word pronounced [fuhk] have a different meaning whether you speak English or Vietnamese natively, so too does red or shadow have different meaning depending on the visual language you speak.
Just as there are similarities between the verbal and the visual with regards to vocabulary, there are similarities in terms of grammar and syntax. Rather than issues like subject/object or verb/noun (although those concerns can arise) we have foreground/background or shadow/highlight.
While we can map similarities between the visual and verbal realms all day long, we must be clear that the two are distinct. Talking about visual ideas can be a nice way to begin a project. It can serve to frame a show before heading in to tech. It can be useful in terms of devising the palette of lights used by a designer. But once the lights are being turned on and off, and cues recorded, the thinking must be wholly visual. It does not help to sit there going “I wonder if turning on the head-hi will deconstruct the notion of theatricality better than the shins.” Or “rather than looking at the stage picture I’m going to take a moment to think if frame 6 blue or frame 7 blue in the scrollers is more romantic.” Or whatever. You turn a light on, see if it looks right, and adjust as needed. The thinking must be at the visual/emotional level rather than the verbal/rational level or the effort will fail.
I recently had a board-op say to me they wished I would not turn my mic off when speaking to my assistant because they wanted to know my thought process. I was honestly baffled by that response because the thought process is not talking, it is looking and then turning lights on, off, up, or down. “Channel 35 to 20 percent” is a thought. It is an idea. A hypothesis.
I write this blog because I find writing to be an enjoyable activity. I do not write this blog because writing about light and moving light through space/time are the same thing. They are not.
Back when I would work as a board-op, even if I did not like the work of the designer, I would watch every level change with rapt attention trying to decipher why they made that change and not another one. I would play games trying to see with their eyes and guess ahead of them what they would do next. When I was really paying attention I would be right in the zone with the designer almost like I was lighting the show myself. That is visual thinking.
Without visual thinking, without putting words aside and allowing the mind to focus wholly on what it sees before it, the creation of visual art is impossible. To improve my visual thinking I have recently taken up drawing again. When drawing, words not only don’t help, they hurt. One must turn off the verbal part of the brain and just look and see. If the line is correct move on to the next one. If it is wrong correct it. The right answer is in your mind’s eye.
It can be a lot of work to free a mind oriented to verbal language and allow it to think visually. It was not easy for me. In fact it was a lot of work. Words are seductive. It can be easy to get trapped inside a beautiful rhetorical flourish and not notice that it is masking a lie. Visual language can lie too. But one thing it can’t lie about is whether or not it looks good.
Close this browser window, pick up a pencil, and start looking. You’ll expand your vocabulary and improve your grammar at the same same time. And don’t forget to enjoy yourself.
