We are living in a time when new information technologies and the on-going "globalisation" of media surround us with new systems of surveillance, virtual environments and an unprecedented proliferation of images. Contemporary information culture promises to enrich our knowledge of the world, extend our experience, and the so called 'global telecommunications' are said to be creating new forms of sociality, binding together new kinds of community, and protecting us from the dangers of the world (Robins 1996).

In the beginning, macro concepts as the control and ownership factors in the global information, such as the "traffic-system" of data circulation that neglect the perception process are juxtaposed with the action model or event within the framework of the 'process' school of communication studies. This comparative analysis is done in an attempt to theorise about the communication process from a phenomenological standpoint. In that platform, by modifying the well-known Shannon's and Weaver's (1948) transmission model of communication, the third participant -- the witness of a communication event -- is introduced and the structure of channel as an elementary network unit is discussed.

Then Maurice Merleau-Ponty's (1964) idea of perceptual dichotomy is taken as a starting point for the analysis of the phenomenon of witness, and the visual experience and communication are considered as an exchange of meanings -- within the framework of the semiotic method. This approach allows for a concept of communication matrix to be introduced.

In the second part, in the frames of communication matrix, the visual perception aspect is discussed (Baxandall 1988, Panofsky 1970), and the phenomenon of visual experience is explored in its historical varieties (Auerbach 1953, Debray 1995, Williams 1997, Hardt 1992). Finally the modern communication trends (Inglis 1994, 1996; Jay 1994, 1996; Lull 1990) are analysed, using the notion of communication matrix, and the phenomenon of witness is further examined through some ideological aspects of television.

And finally, a conception of communication matrix is introduced and the generic qualities of the message form are discussed in terms of the place of the viewer and entropy and ongoing development of communication networks.

KOMUNIKACIJA VIZUALNE ISKUSNJE V SODOBNIH MEDIJIH: SPECIFICNO IN SPLOSNO
COMMUNICATION OF VISUAL EXPERIENCE IN THE MODERN MASS MEDIA (in specific and in general)
Ljubljana, Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis, University of Ljubljana, 1997, 100 pp.
Hrachia Kazhoyan, Adviser: Dr. J. Vogrinc

	: Butterfly | thesis