Code
According to Vilém Flusser, a code is “a sign
system arranged in a regular pattern” (Towards
a Philosophy of Photography, 2000, p. 83); as a
whole, a fabric of symbols called a “culture” that
has been made by human beings (hence the “genetic
code” is not part of it).
Flusser looks at Western civilization in the
light of its current crisis, which presents itself
as a crisis of the alphabetic code and of linear
writing. With the invention of photography and
lm, and speeded up even more by the advent of
digital technical images (Technobilder), the alphabetic
code is being pushed out by new, postalphabetic
codes which are more ef cient for the
production, storage, distribution, and decoding
of information.
The code of technical images derives from the
alphabetic code, since, according to Flusser,
photography, lm, video, and computer images
are the result of scienti c texts, particularly from
the elds of chemistry and optics, and later from
electronics and computer science. Even so, we
have not yet learned how to deal with the new
codes. Whereas László Moholy-Nagy could still
pronounce the dictum that the illiterates of the
future would not be those who cannot read, but
those who cannot photograph (Moholy-Nagy,
quoted in: Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,”
in: Selected Writings, vol. 2, 1999, p. 527;
Moholy-Nagy, Malerei, Fotografie, Film, 1925),
Flusser’s central issue, freedom in the age of
digital codes, is even more contentious.
Just as in the beginning of text-based culture it was the literati who dominated the new code of writing, today it is the programmers of image- generating apparatuses who encode culture, both Western and Eastern. They as well – usually collectively working authors of linear texts (which have now become auxiliary texts) – create a gigantic literature of code hidden in the apparatuses and their applications. Uncovering, decoding, and recoding this literature of code is the act of freedom that Flusser calls “playing against the camera” (Towards a Philosophy of Photography, p. 80). It is a tricky game: The programmers of the iPhone are more powerful than Günter Grass.
Original article by Andreas Müller-Pohle in Flusseriana