The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.... Neuromancer. 1984

1.0 THE SUBJECT IN THE POSTNOCTURNAL CITYSCAPE.

The novel condition that the human visual system was forced to negotiate with, as a result of the development of

the modern city in the becoming of the 20th century; would only be the preface of a violent proliferation of

imagery, designated to forge and organize the visual territory of the

postmodern milieu, inflating the bandwidth amidst the subject and the object. ''If we think of light it has no

image, yet it creates images''

2.0 OUR EYES ARE WINDOWS OF THE WORLD.

In order to see, a light source is required, without light everything is black. Light emits photons which reach the eye, and bounce-off objects enabling us to see.

The human ocular system has been subject to change and particularly challenged in the last 60 years. What are the consequences of the ramification of electric light and visual imagery in all aspects of human life? Vision, the most sophisticated of the human senses, provides us with decisive information regarding the existing

world.— Visual perception is dependent on the stimulus the eye receives.

3.0 IT IS THE FAMILIARITY OF THE WORLD THAT BLINDS

US.Mediation of visual data in the postmodern spatial array of the postnocturnal cityscape can primarily be divided into

two types: Emitting light and reflecting light, the

combination of which bring into being the postnocturnal

infoscape or visual reality that we are all accustomed to.

4.0 THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE. For Marshall McLuhan in understanding media, what has premise is not the message

''per se'' but the medium, i.e. ''the medium is the message.'' In other words, the information delivered through the medium is peripheral, what matters instead is the

way the medium transforms us, alters the way we think and interferes with our nervous system, altering in essence human nature. Thus the real message of any

medium or technology is the change it evokes into human life. ''The message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces

into human affair'' (Mc Luhan 1964: 24)4.1 ELECTRIC LIGHT IS PURE

INFORMATION. McLuhan in fact makes direct reference to electric light in Understanding Media

(1964). ''Electric light is pure information '' he says. ''The electric light escapes attention as a communication medium just because it has no content […] For it is not till the electric is used to spell out some brand name that it is

noticed as a medium''(Mc Luhan1964: 25)

4.2 THE FORDHAM EXPERIMENT.The value of the division of the postnocturnal infoscape in reflecting and emitting

lit surfaces, could be better understood if one brings to mind the difference between the nature of the movie theater and the television screen. Cinema puts the viewer in accord with the perspective of the camera eye, in other words you have the same point of view with the camera. YOU ARE THE CAMERA. Television on the other hand places the viewer in opposition with the screen, the image is

thence ''tattooed''* on the face of the viewer prompting an ''inner trip.''* In other words YOU ARE THE SCREEN.

5.0 WESTERN CULTURE IS PRIMARILY OCULARCENTRIC. Neil Postman author of Amusing ourselves to death (1985),was once asked on a

television show what cyberspace was. Cyberspace he said, is the metaphorical idea for where your consciousness is supposed to be when you are using computer

technology, like the internet for example[...] The most interesting thing for me is that it made me think about where ones consciousness is located when interacting

with other kinds of media; for example when you are reading a book, where are you?Which is the space your consciousness is located? When watching television,

where are you ? Who are you? ('' The MacNei/Lehrer News Hour'')

5.1 LIT-FO-FLANEUR. ''What, in the end, makes advertisements so superior to criticism? Not what the moving red neon sign says — but the fiery pool reflecting in the asphalt.'' (Benjamin 1996:476 )—Which is the space one's consciousness is located

when enveloped within the postnocturnal infoscape? Where are

we Who are we?

6.0 THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY.

We are consumers of images, icons, signs, of the simulated reality that

takes hold of the city at night—there is no more night

—the postnocturnal mapping of the city is a simulation of its diurnal territory. Our consciousness is thus thrown into a simulation of

reality. Alfred Korzybski propagated that ''the map is not the territory,'' suggesting that people have the tendency to

confuse maps with territories or models of reality with reality itself.

(Korzybski 1933:750)

7.0 LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS.In Learning from Las Vegas (1972), Robert Venturi, Scott Brown and Steven Izenor

critically reviewed the modernists for

7.1 ARCHITECTURE AS COMMUNICATION OVER SPACE.Learning from Las Vegas, the team

proposed a re-turn to a more iconographic-symbolic

architecture, that would use surface as a communicator of ideas and information, preparing hence the way for today's media facade,

media architecture and urban screen enthusiasts. One of Venturi's most compelling

arguments, was that this means of mediation was far from new, and like other stained glass artists

communicating the word of God in Gothic temples; media façadists

should be considered contemporary carriers of

an ''ancient tradition '' expressed via iconography in architecture.

having turned the international style into ''dead duck'' architecture. Nevertheless what they mistook for the ''hoi polloi'' vernacular building, was clearly NOT the case.

(Las Vegas was a city build by gangsters, to rob people of their money). Yet Venturi's ideas have always revolved around the significance of the sign, and in the

case of Las Vegas the illuminated sign, which he saw as a masterpiece worthy to

7.2 GOD ARGUMENT. Either God exists or God does not exist.

a) In the case God exists, today He has been replaced by another god altogether; who is this new god?

b)In the case God does not exist, we as our forefathers in the past have been mislead into believing a hoax.

7.3 ICONOGRAPHIC ARCHITECTURE. Venturi's most ludicrous, latter-day

proposal articulates the idea of architecture as an iconographic

representation, emitting electronic imagery from its surfaces day and night.

(Venturi 1998:5)8.0 VISUAL AD.

[…] now a visual ad was forming; he winced, closed his eyes, but it did no good.

The pressure, applied directly to the audio-visual regions of his brain, had faded below spark point. He groaned and shook

his head to clear it. All around him the vague half-defined

echoes of ads glittered and gibbered, like ghosts of distant video-stations. Ads waited on all sides; he steered a careful

course, dexterity born of animal desperation, but not all could be avoided.

(Dick 1997:176-177)8.1 SMART PLANET.

Today, the development of the first intelligent billboards capable of custom

advertising are fact. ''Engineers in Japan have already developed a billboard that is capable of identifying a shopper's age and gender as they walk past to offer

them products that are more accurately suited to them. The signs, developed by Japanese electronics company NEC, use basic facial recognition software''

(Gray). IBM on the other hand as part of its Smart Planet program which's aim

is to use technology to make peoples lives easier and more efficient, plans to deliver customized advertisements to

individuals who carry compatible identity cards.

9.0 CENOPHOBIA. "All spaces have been colonized; not just all geographical spaces but all mental ones too" (Baudrillard 2003:74).The frantic civic habitation of electric light along with the mechano-digital proliferation of visual imagery in the city has led to the implosion of the 24-hour circle. Most evident in the technologically advanced societies, the visual labor demanded by still and moving images embedded in the architecture, public and private space, gadgetry, the marketplace and means of public transportation; allied with the capacity that electric light has to reveal, frame and figure what is, has led to the collective construction of another order, an order which structures our sense of space-time and mapping of the postnocturnal city. It is this multi-mediated visual rhetoric which is radically and utterly shaping our way of understanding, remodeling ultimately our perception of reality.

9.1 HYPERCITY.In order to function within a new reality, one must first repress his old notion of

the real. Postmodern society, drawing from culture and media has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, generating a simulation of the real, rather than reality itself —a simulacra. This simulacra, although expected to

represent something, has instead created the reality it seemingly refers to, thus has passed to the order of the hyperreal.''the generation by models of a real

without origin or reality'' (Baudrillard 1994: 1), or the simulation of a reality that never really existed.

10.THREE QUESTIONS.The inventors of a new medium will always defend their work as the more realistic and authentic way to experience the world. As Neil Postman had recommended in the past, media entrepreneurs have always been the most radical force in culture, however chiefly interested in profit they do not give much thought to cultural effects. Postman further suggested that there be three questions we should

always ask when confronted with a new technology:

Refrences:Alfred Korzybski. Science and sanity: an introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general systems and general semantics. Institute of general semantics. NY USA, 1933. Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan Press,1994Jean Baudrillard. Mass. Identity. Architecture: Architectural Writings of Jean Baudrillard. Ed. Francesco Proto. United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, 2003Marshall Mc Luhan. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man N.Y. McGraw Hill,1964Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects Bantam Books, 1967 Neil Postman. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin, 1985Paul Virilio. The vision machine. Indiana University Press, 1994 Philip K. Dick. Sales Pitch The Philip K. Dick reader Carol Pub. Group, 1997 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1972Robert Venturi. Iconography and Electronics upon a Generic Architecture: A View from the Drafting Room. MIT Press,1998Walter Benlamin. This Space is for rent. Harvard University Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 Harvard University Press,1996Richard Gray. Minority Report-style advertising billboards to target consumers. The Telegraph.Web. 01 Aug 2010''The MacNei/Lehrer News Hour''. PBS. Charlene Hunter Gault, July 25 1995, Television.