Page - 40 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

40 | Christian Wessely www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 17–44 the late 20th century, the text became more important again, and once more the technical framework played a role: the connection speed of the network for individual and private use remained relatively low until the late 1990s, such that the transfer of pictures and of videos in particular remained the exception.56 however, since the triumph of the interactive digital media, made possible by the exponential increase of network speed and the establishment of mobile devices as a normal form of network participation in the last two decades, an increased concentration on the (moving) image can be observed, yet without neglecting text completely. But in electronic media the nature of this text has changed again: it is used mainly to explain the pictorial representation. The text aims at either defining a picture that is inherently plurivalent, or it opens new horizons of meaning that cannot be seen clearly in the image as such. Language is increasingly con- tracted to slogans, onomatopoetic descriptions (*giggle*), acronyms (*rOfL*) or shortened without regard for grammatical conventions.57 the parallels with the comic are obvious: facebook, WhatsApp, instagram, and snapchat seem to function according to similar rules, just like the well-known medium of the illustrated booklet. so the comic could develop striking potential in the current media environ- ment. As we have seen, comics are characterised by abstraction, a compressed form of narration, concentration on images, and delimitation. Like comics, so- cial media is dominated by shortened, contracted language, and narrative is re- duced to a minimum. the image dominates the text but is still dependent on it. Abstract image elements that utilise characters are employed, as in the case of emoticons and memes. even more fascinating are the possibilities thrown up by the debate on virtuality, given new stimulus since 2014 by technical de- velopments. the promises of a “virtual [in the sense of ‘actual’] reality” that dominated the discussion in the 1980s58 have given way to a realisation that abstraction must remain, despite all the potential in technical improvement. in his book The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich has noted with reference to simulated reality: to support the idea of progress of computer graphics toward realism, researchers privilege particular subjects that culturally connote the mastery of illusionistic repre- 56 i experienced the dawn of the internet in the 1980s using a device called an acoustic coupler, which had a 300 bit/second transmission rate. today, for private use 100Mbit is not uncommon (a speed increase by 3x105). 57 Cf. Wessely 2005. 58 Moravec 1994, 86. hans Moravec, Ai researcher and robot engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, has written, “newest studies of the anatomy of the brain have shown that the most mysterious spiritual phenomena have a physical cause. i do no doubt that a mechanical process like data processing in a computer may induce intense spiritual experience [of the computer itself, my remark]” (my transla- tion).