I wrote this on tumblr but it felt appropriate to post it here as well.

My Design for Interactive Media 1(DIM1) class is really different from anything else I've taken. Back in Swinburne, my Multimedia Design classes always focused on the technical aspects, like working with Illustrator and Flash, and never looked at the theoretical aspects like what colours and placement of objects do to the overall composition of a piece. I'm not saying its bad, it was just easier because I didn't have to critically analyse any visual media. DIM1 goes beyond technical skill.

In DIM1, we've been learning Photoshop techniques. However, unlike Multimedia Design, DIM1 has lectures. Not only that, these lectures have nothing to do with Photoshop techniques.Instead, we talk about so many things; remediation, pop-culture, composition, essentially anything and everything you can talk about regarding visual media. However what we've talk about most is semiotics: the study of symbols and icons.

Once we got in to symbols - The meaning of the word, How symbols convey their meaning, How they came to be- I started thinking about comics, Batman in particular. The definition of a symbol is basically a graphic metaphor. What the symbol represents isn't literal. A good example of this is the symbol for the American Republican Party. Their party symbol is an elephant, but it doesn't mean that the party is made up of slow, wrinkly, fat asses (though it sometimes seems like it), but I digress. The reason I ended up thinking of Batman is because not only has the Batman symbol become so recognisable around the world, it's that the character, or the persona of Batman, has in itself become a symbol within the story's universe.

For those of you unaware, Bruce Wayne has supposedly died, leaving the mantle of the Bat in need of a successor. Dick Grayson, the first Robin, reluctantly takes the position, with Wayne's child with Thalia Al Ghul, Damian Wayne, becoming the fourth official Robin. In the DC universe (the universe in which mainstream DC heroes exist in), it was imperative that no one other than a chosen few know that the original Batman has died. The reason for this is what Batman represents, what he symbolizes. To Gotham City, the Batman is a symbol of hope, justice, and courage. Since Gotham City is filled with supervillains, Batman's allies needed people to believe that the Batman was alive and fighting. They needed people to believe that he was immortal so they would not lose hope. The very fact that the original Batman has been replaced shows that the persona has become more than a person and has become immortalized as a symbol of all things good in a city enveloped in darkness.

The notion of someone transcending mortality through becoming a symbol got me thinking about graffiti artists. Through their anonymity, their only way to validate their skill and status among artists is through the symbols that represent their very being. However, due to this anonymity, wouldn't it easily be possible for multiple people to be represented by a single symbol, just like in Batman's case? If this is so, a graffiti artist who has kept their anonymity even after becoming successful would have achieved immortality through the symbols that represent them, and would only require someone else to mimic their work as a way of continuing their symbolic lifespan. Since the symbols are a representation of one artist, people would assume that the artist is still active, even if someone has replaced him.

The whole notion of symbolism in the art graffiti artists produce got me thinking about Banksy. I linked an article about Banksy in my previous post. He kept his true identity secret, and continues to put up artwork. Since no one knows who he is or what he looks like, people will associate the name Banksy with his works of art. In a way, the name Banksy has become a symbol in itself, since it is not associated to a person but to works of art which do not age. As long as they are preserved, Banksy's name will live forever. If someone were to mimic his style and take his persona -a ghost painter if you will- the name Banksy would then live on even if the original has stopped.

I guess what I've been rambling continueously about is that there's a reason for artists to want fame and recognition. Money may be a factor, but the most logical reason is that the art created is symbolic of the artist, and through that symbolism, the artist confronts his own mortality with the immortal work of his art. I think that's what everybody wants: to be remembered; to somehow cement yourself and show the world that you were here, and to tell someone -even if its just one person- that you existed.