Economies of scale in the rendering of the unmanifest
I will propose that there is an importance in using the visual format in rendering sci-fi. A visual format is more rich and highly-dimensional (‘bandwidth’) than text.
For those who will be quick to cite how text stimulates the imagination, let me be succinct in saying that such text symbolically invokes your imagination, and that your imagination itself is channeling the unmanifest.
Text and writing is rooted in a symbolic process whereby our imagination is stimulated into certain forms. This is not dissimilar to a magical spell. The process is succinct and expansive, as with any art. Our imagination thus channels the unmanifest into thought and realization, which we may then choose to act upon. It is not yet manifest into creation. Visual form, though, is that final step where we create something. This is a manifestation, though it is not a “manifesting” of the unmanifest. The unmanifest is beyond the present, and ever extended like infinity. We can only bring ourselves closer to the unmanifest through these creations. Indeed, all people are moved closer to such realization of the unmanifest through experiencing the creations of art. We render some facet of the unmanifest, and it moves one step further into infinity. It is analogical of the escapement of time. The artist, when channeling the on manifest into an incarnation, may make choices about style quality texture and other elements of the art in an intuitive manner. Juxtapose this with the certainty and intentionality needed to craft words into writing. The bandwidth and high-dimensionality that we speak about visual form can abide this intuitive variation and constructivist addition. One other element contributes to the economy of scale of the visual arts: Exposure. The visual form can be experienced by four more people and this is important because it can be experienced far more rapidly. Psychologists and user experience designers commonly speak about the band with information available through visual form. One of the more famous information designers of our day, Edward Tufte, made this point exceptionally clear through the information pattern he called “Sparklines.” This is not to say that writing is without purpose in the face of visual form. Indeed literacy has taken a central role in The Enlightenment. I will, however, stop short on connecting the written word, as we experience it today, to the original word of the Divine in the Creation. Writing the Name may involve some yet-more-supernatural Then occurs today in books… Unless we presuppose that the entirety of a book itself is alike to the composition of symbols that I can occur in a painting. I think that, at this tenuous intersection of gematria and visualization, we may find a particularly-pure and effective rendering of the unmanifest with in our world.
