Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

The image of the dot has been pervasive in the history of visual culture. Hieroglyphic dots on Urartian jars (9th-6th Century BCE) facilitated measurement of their contents. The dotting (“pointing”) of Arabic letters in 7th Century Kufic script altered (some say) original interpretations of the Qur’an. NASA, and then Carl Sagan, depicted the earth’s appearance from outer space as THE PALE BLUE DOT (Sagan, 1994). Media designers wax nostalgic for analog-era roundness as they work with the rectangular pixels of the digital era. Big data visualization tools rely on the dot to connect infographic images and thereby nail down data points. Visual artists have pressed the dot into service since late 19th Century Pointillism through the hundreds of dot-infused artworks of Yayoi Kusama (1950s to the present), who has claimed: “Polka dots are a way to infinity” (1968). In this paper, I track the appearance of the dot in visual culture, questioning its persistence and varied meanings across time. Throughout, based on theories of visual perception, I explore how the dot, in all its economy of production and simplicity of presentation, has been put to work in ways that challenge presumptions of rhetorical stability.