On systems

Alfredo Cramerotti

A visual system sits at the crossroad between image, thought, word and time; it exemplifies the mutability (and complexity) of life. A visual medium then brings about not only the message, but the psychic state that enable us to understand that message: A mental structure, a way of thinking and feeling that expresses itself in everything we say, write, build and develop, from architecture and advertising to film and fine art.

The presumed coherence of visual practice is constantly called into question by coupling with other system of visual fabrication, communication or representation (text, painting, impression, graphic design, photography, light projection, object construction and oral commentary). It is an environment made of relation-building amongst sign and signal, people and objects. Our visual actions extract meaning upon which build further relations and effects, either autonomously or through conscious arrangements. In Burnham's words, "Where the object almost always has a fixed shape and boundaries, the consistency of a system may be altered in time and space, its behavior determined both by external conditions and its mechanisms of control."

We live now according to a system of visual editing; we became a wider, complex system in which users double as creators.