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Marks, Pictures and Art: Their Contribution to Revolutions in Communication Iain Davidson 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract This paper addresses the question of the nature of art, how it came to be, how it fits with other communications revolutions, and the implications of the emergence of art as a means of visual communication. How did iconic imagery emerge from other markmaking among humans and their ancestors and what has been its significance? I situate visual communication as the second revolution of the six communication revolutions during human evolution: the emergence of language, iconic imagery, writing, printing, various means of communication at a distance, and the digital electronic revolution. I begin by discussing the context of deliberate production of marks in the environment, with emphasis on the relations between (1) the producer of the mark and the mark, (2) the producer of the mark and an informed observer at the time, (3) the mark and the informed observer in the absence of the producer and (4) the uninformed observer and the mark. It is fundamental that at some stage the producer intended the mark to represent something, a subject in the real or imagined world. I emphasize the importance of telling stories and singing songs in secular and ritual contexts. Out of this framework, I discuss some of the earliest objects called art in relation to their semiotic elements. I outline my arguments about how these semiotic categories were transformed in the emergence of pictures during archaeohistory. I go on to discuss how all these examples of image production connect to that which is called art in western society. I conclude by reflecting on the impact of these changes of means of communication on human cognition. Each of the revolutions involved changes in the relationships among the communicative act (sensu lato), the agent and receivers of the communication, the perception and interpretation of the communication and the persistence of it through time and ultimately across space. Keywords Signs . Meaning

* Iain Davidson [email protected]

1

Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia

Davidson

Sign Making: How Does it Become Art The enigmatic street artist Banksy produced an image (Fig. 1a) that exemplifies the convolutions of the possibilities that surround the question of what art is. Banksy was once reviled because his preferred medium was stencils on public walls, until people began to realize that he is a genius. Figure 1a is a photograph of that widely known image by Banksy. The photograph and the original image show a person spray cleaning a wall on which images of animals had been painted in the style of cave art. In producing this image, Banksy seemed to ask whether the behaviour of the reactionary conservative world in spray cleaning walls to remove his art—in unmaking the art— was equivalent to removing the ancient paintings in a cave. We may go further and ask whether the art is or was