I. To live in a cave: an introduction
In his study „Arbeit am Mythos“ Hans Blumenberg defines the human being as an entity that tries to escape the absolutism of reality (Blumenberg, 2006, p.10), i.e. the powerlessness of the prescient human being agains the force of nature (e.g. thunder-storm, fieriness, disease). The human being uses all conceivable means to fight the absolutism of reality by searching for explanations for unexplainable things: the human being searches for „Erklärungen für das Unerklärliche, (...) Benennungen für das Unnennbare“ (Blumenberg, 2006, p.11). They produce myths to make their chaotic environment more liveable. Myths are a prescientific rationalizations of reality because they produce tales and images.

Due to these images the human being creates the ability to dissociate itself from the immediacy of reality. From Blumenbergs point of view, the retreat of early humans into caves and the invention of cave paintings is an manifestation of this behaviour (Blumenberg, 2006, p.16). By inventing myths mankind also invented media, which can be used as a shock absorber between mankind and the immediacy of the world. Media is not only a concept that has the function of a safeguard against the outer world, but provides also an interface, a facilitator that offers a window to the world and makes a controlled communication possible (Galloway, 2010). From this point of view our cities appear as a contemporary transformation of the Stone Age caves. Caves show the following symptoms (caves, villages and cities have in common): firstly, all these sites were – and still are – hideaways and panic rooms of mankind. Secondly, all these sites seem to inevitably provoke humans to produce signs and images, not only in written form (the first writings of mankind were done in the first cities, founded by the Sumerian) (Watson, 2005). In fact, these signs and images manifest themselves directly in space. As a result, they are constantly visible.

Space only becomes cultured if it possesses signs (Peirce, CP 2.275). Space, which possesses no signs, stays „wild“. The human being produces signs to distinguish cultured space and to delimit it from the wilderness.

Traffic signs and road signs satisfy the desire of humans for a rationalized order of space. All the other signs we produce (like graffiti or advertising) do not provide a logical order of space. They cover the environment with a mythologizing interface, This also allows a more distanced point of view. Moreover, it reveals the hidden laws of space not in a rational and logical manner but annotates it in a more associative way.

Since 2007, Sao Paolo is the only city in the world which bans advertisings in urban space by law. Revealingly, in Sao Paolo you can see more graffiti than in every other city in the world (ARTE, 2009).

Images and signs which are put in public space in addition to the logical information (traffic signs, road signs, maps) seem to be an evidence of the need of human beings for a mythological prescientific and pre-rational order of space. It seems that the human being is not satisfied with a purely logical information system, which is implanted in space. Apparently, the human being needs other resources to oppose absolutism of reality. Even the so-called „modern“ human being goes back to the instrument of creating myths. Roland Barthes particularly remarks that even photography, film or advertising can embody myths (Barthes, 1964). In addition to that he states that the important message of a myth is basically not the content communicated but the way in which it is communicated: „Da der Mythos eine Aussage ist, kann alles, wovon ein Diskurs Rechenschaft ablegen kann, Mythos werden. Der Mythos wird nicht durch das Objekt seiner Botschaft definiert, sondern durch die Art und Weise, wie er diese ausspricht.“ (Barthes, 1964, p. 85). McLuhan transfers this argument to media in general (McLuhan, 1967). Myths have to communicate with us. As well as cave paintings and Christian Myths, also contemporary signs and images which are put into urban spaces serve this need: they speak to us, weather we want to or not.

The main message in these figures in not „Believe!“ respectively „Buy!“. The main message in both examples is: something is looking at you and it is located in a higher dimension. Both pictures communicate that there is a superior power which cannot be explained in a rational way. By producing such messages, the human being embeds itself into a bigger context, which makes the environment more reliable.

II Contexts
The human being is a Homo Pictor (Jonas, 1994). It customizes his environment to his needs and desires by leaving sings and icons. Hans Jonas says that this skill marks a anthropological border: „Not an animal intervened at that place, where I can see this sign, it must have been a human being.“ As a result, the Homo Pictor transformed a natural state into a artificial state (Mittelstraß, 2004, p.961) and documented his own presence in space. Jonas states that only this conversion from nature to culture makes the human being a human being. As a result, it is possible to differ between human being and animal respectively human being and nature. The Homo Pictor marks his space with signs and icons and delimits it from the space of nature, wilderness and the non-denoted etc.

Initially this distinction happens by chance. First and foremost, signs are temporary communicators, which have their right to exist as the only connection between transmitter and receiver. Space which is permanently occupied by signs is only generated as a secondary effect of communication. But we have to assume that this side effect is not completely irrelevant to the human being. Otherwise we could not satisfactorily explain why we don ́t clear up the space and remove all those signs that we don ́t need for our communication processes any more. Why does the Homo Communicator (Baacke, 1973) not get rid of his signs?

1. Native language
There is no doubt about the question why we don ́t remove traffic signs or navigations systems every day and just put them into space when they are needed for someone ́s guidance. They behave like institutions, which are inscribed into space (Löw, 2000) and regulate social processes. It would be irrational if we redeveloped all these signs again and again. We need them too often. In addition to that, they are set out to be generally understandable, everywhere and every time. We could describe them as the logical symbol systems or the native-language sign systems of our societies because they always communicate meaningfully and understandably.

2. Foreign language
But how about all the other signs, which we produce in our environment? There are Graffiti on walls, writings on toilets, stickers on glass panes, posters on advertising collums? Firstly, these signs mostly don ́t conduce to pure information and they don ́t form a coherent and universally understandable language like traffic signs in a city. In fact, these signs are not organised, but arise anarchically and belong to different control systems which are not universaly understandable but merely comprehensible in isolated social units.

Secondly, these signs don ́t make sense as institutions which permanently mark the public space: on the whole, they don ́t regulate social processes. Undoubtedly, unique symbols, which only small groups can understand, can nevertheless have regulative functions (e.g. Hobo codes from migratory workers). But in consideration of the fact that insiders always belong to the minority, we have to ask the question: what do these non-universal symbol systems mean to those who don ́t belong to the circle of insiders? How does a society handle these foreign symbol systems? How can we lead back all those signs to a convincing and coherent meaning? We could describe them as the mythological symbol systems of our society.

3. Obscure contexts
How can we differ between logical and mythological symbol systems? Information can only be logically decoded, if we know about its particular context, in addition to the information itself. On the one hand, we should be aware of the specific code of the information in a semiotical sense. On the other hand, we should know about the punctuation (signification of the information within the whole communication process) in a sense of the communication process. Furthermore, we should care about both transmitter and receiver of the information. To turn the argument on its head: if we don ́t know enough about the context of information, its message enters the territory of the mythical.

4. Obscure encoding: territorial marking
Public space, seen as a media for communicative expressions, is ambivalent: although information points at an individual, it is nevertheless apparent for others. Therefore, we can notice two different strategies to channel information: First, encryption of the entire message. As a consequence, only a defined audience will be able to decrypt the information. All the other recipients won ́t be able to decode it. Nevertheless, they know that the information is not addressed to them.

5. Obscure punctuation: babes & strangers
The second strategy is, to transfer small packages of unencrypted information, which are isolated from their context. The entire context itself is only known by insiders. In turn, other recipients which are not meant to be addressed are able to read the single information packages but do not understand the message, because of the missing links. The excluded recipient does potentially not realize that the information is actually not addressed to him, while he is receiving those signals. As a consequence, he perhaps takes the message as referring to himself.

6. Obscure Transmitter: Words of God
Signs serve the needs of direct communication, adjourned communication or permanent communication between transmitter and receiver. Depending on the particular latency period between the moment of broadcast and the moment of reception, different types of media have to be used. Nevertheless, signs often outlast their intended life expectancy. As mentioned above, visible signs mark the human space. In addition to that, those signs, which outlast their own intended lifespan, sediment the human space and charge it with anachronistic meanings. Signs of former
communication processes are not merely passive hints from the past (like a footprint). In fact, they are active voices, which talk to us about incidents that are not up to date anymore. If signs outlast the latency period of the communication they belong to, they get rid of their own origin and context. They become signs which have forgotten their own transmitter. If a physically and logically allegeable emitter instance is missing, we displace the source of information to a metaphysical place. These signs become words of god. Examples of mythological sign production similar in kind are numerous.

7. Obscure Recipient
How about signs which indeed have an emitter, but are not addressed to a specified recipient? At first sight, a missing recipient seams to not be as productive for us as a missing transmitter. At least, signs that have disengaged themselves from their emitter have essentially made a contribution to the development of religions. Furthermore, it is quite normal that a human being is talking to himself, without addressing his words to a specified counterpart. However, we have to ask the question why we are actually doing that? Does this form of communication have any effect and does it make any sense? Obviously, a contingently effect can only affect the emitter, due to the fact that nobody else is involved to the communication process. A human being, who is talking to himself is potentially broadcasting sensible signs, but he already knows their meaning. That is why we usually have to categorise this communication as absurd. Initially, signs that have no specified receiver, come to nothing. Nevertheless, we produce signs without addressing them to an available recipient over and over: the message in a bottle, the house blessing or the Golden Record, which the NASA launched to the universe in 1977.

Why are we doing that? It seems to be absurd, to spill signs like milk that have no specified receiver. Just as a usual prayer, the conventional message in a bottle and the unconventional Golden Record are metaphysical information transfers which dislocate the reception of the information along the space axis and time axis potentially ad infinitum. By consciously displacing the receiver into the dark even into the netherworld, a ordinary cybernetic model of communication becomes practically impossible. If we get feedback anyhow, we are irritated. We are not prepared for that, because we would not have expected an answer or we would no longer have expected it. In any case, an imminent answer is definitely impossible. Nevertheless, the message in a bottle and the Golden Record do make sense for us, even though the answer is obscure. The appreciation for this form of communication is not describable as a successful information transfer to a recipient that potentially doesn ́t exist. It does also not fail because of the missing response. If it were like that, we would have quit that long ago. Just as the signs that miss their emitter, we can not logically decode those signs that miss their recipient. They can only be decrypted, if they are not only seen as occasional relicts of human communication and if we admit that the spatialization of signs has its
own meaning, which exceeds the intrinsic semiological meaning of the signs and produces a secondary semiological system (Barthes, 1964). For producing such superordinate symbol systems, it is required that a seemingly meaningless communication lasts as a document and makes the signs available for others as an evidence of the communication process. This assures that the effects of the signs do not disappear without a trace but have influence on ensuing ages.

8. Odds and Ends
The production of this secondary semiological system proceeds in two steps: logical communication turns into communication without context. In a debris of messages, coming from the dark and going into the dark, nevertheless not disappearing, but lasting as documents. After that, the Homo Communicator uses those messages to create his own mythology and makes himself to a Homo Crēditōris: „The originality of mythic thinking is, as the bricolage in a practical sense, the fact that we produce structured entities, not directly by means of other structured entities, but by using odds and ends [...], fossil vouchers of history, of an individual or a society.“ (Levi-Strauss, 1973, p. 35). By means of the bricolage, the human being constructs own explanatory models by producing own myths, where an entire coherence is missing. The amateur even uses the fund of existing myths for creating his new ones. As a consequence, different mythologies do not independently generate origin funds of symbols. Similarities between early Sumerian writings, the Gilgamesch epos or the Hebrew bible vouch for that (Watson, 2005). The symbol of the all-seeing eye also still appears under the same circumstances in most varied pictorial universes. Both similarities of content (the omnipresent gaze) and style (Horus type, hand type, flying eye type, triangle) are obvious.

III. The mythological city
The logical symbol systems of our cities, which I mentioned above, find strong competitors in mythological signs. They push into still unoccupied space: in Galata, a traditional business district in Istanbul, graffiti characteristically limits itself to the ground level rolling shutters of shops. These roller shutters go down in front of elaborate displays of the showcases after closing time.

During the day the business districts of Istanbul are littered with sings and symbols. Every
imaginable corner or reachable height is occupied to display the products on offer. At night, countless products disappear behind voiceless roller shutters without a trace. What remains is a lack of information, offering space for new signs, virtually provoking their appearance. In Galata it is quite ordinary that sprayers unhurriedly leave their Graffiti on closed roller shutters next to cafes and bars which are still opened in the early evening. They don ́t have to fear to be accused of vandalism. Kripoe, a sprayer, whose graffiti are well known in Berlin, systematically sprayed almost every roller shutter with his significant eye and bone symbols in the high street of Galata, even in the side alleys. This cannot be described as an undercover mission any more, which suddenly happened in the dead of the night. The result is too big and obvious. Nobody seems to be bothered about that.

1. Fictions
It is not relevant for the reception of mythological symbol systems of a city that the emerging signs don ́t form a coherent system at all, but rather an occasionally inconsistent formation. Today, the sciences of mythological studies assume that myths still are part and parcel of human entity, but are not received as literally true. In fact, todays myths can ́t (and won ́t) disguise their fictional nature (Mittelstraß, 2004, p. 953). Therefore, myths have to be described as a „visual allegorical expression of a life form, which – undisappointed – has lived up to the intangible, while endeavour to come to its senses, because we can already regard the effort to see reason as an aim, which exclusively cannot be missed.“ (Mittelstraß, 2004, p. 953). Under this circumstances signs that are independent of logically coherent and directly earmarked symbol systems, have a second meaning: we do not receive the message in a bottle, the house blessing, the graffito or the advertising as literally true, but merely as allegorical expression of our effort to denominate the uncertain and to make it manageable.

2. Dialogues
As shown above, the signs and symbols of our cities can be characterized by their missing contexts. Because of that, they provide an ideal fund for a playfully and fictional communication without consequences. A dialog on the wall of a toilet does neither have an emitter nor a specified receiver. As if by magic, a new story unfolds on the walls because of endless reactions and answers. This story can only be described as a myth. A dialogue that communicates with itself that arises from off and vanishes into off.

Current developments in advertising show similar tendencies: the achievements of recent advertising strategies like viral or guerilla advertising prove that advertising whose context is missing, definitely affects people. Advertising gets rid of its own broadcaster, but not to deceive us or to conceal its own intentions. By disposing of the emitter, advertising also initially does away with the literal receiver, i.e. the consumer. Just as the message on the wall of a toilet, advertising with dynamic contexts offers us the way to understand and recycle it as stock. Although we are aware of the fictionality of urban myths (it is interesting that this phrase has established itself as a term that describes the spread of rumour, which originally were planted by advertising companies), we do not banish them to the realm of the forbidden but we admit a dialogue between advertising and us as well as single messages on the wall of a toilet admit a dialogue between each other. The ways to interact within this dialogue are – because of the missing contexts – manifold: answering and modifying (Adbusting), affirming and retelling (Viral), associating and quoting.

3. Activation of the dialogues
As a conclusion, we can perhaps answer the question, which positive effect can wrenched from the mythological signs in public space and what we need graffiti and advertising for to symbolically acquire of our environment. By now, graffiti worked hard to equal the status of a contribution to the culture. But this contribution is restricted even in the graffiti research on the one hand to a subcultural or individual expression and consequentially the mechanisms of empathy and on the other hand to a menetekel function (Institut für Graffitiforuschung, 2002 / Graffitiverein, 2009). Advertising remains to struggle for that status. The sociological reception of advertising is – beyond critical arguments – limited to a indicator function. Advertising was an indicator for the wishes, needs and interests of our society (Ernst Primosch, n.d.). But this is not the insight, we can benefit from. It is rather its intention: advertising is developed to correspond to our wishes and interests respectively advertising rather generates them.

The effects of graffiti and advertising are always discussed under the same circumstances: they are always seen as fossil signs, with which the archaeologist has to infer to a condition of our society, of a subcultural movement or of single individuals. At best we can use those interpretations to anticipate future developments. Advertising and graffiti are always seen as passive endpoints of a discontinued communication process, as signs without junctions, but never as active voices of a communication, which is still in progress, i.e. as fragments that we can recycle in our myths that inscribe themselves into our symbolic systems and modify them. These modifications necessarily reflect themselves in our symbolically adoption of space. Symbolic systems that are earmarked and have the function to regulate social processes do not tolerate that. Urban planning, architecture and art in public space are too idle for that.

Peter Wendl ist founding member of urban-research-institute.org and works at the chair of Graphic-Desing/Visual Communication at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Nürnberg.


References:
ARTE Metropolis 11.2009
Baacke, Jürgen: Kommunikation und Kompetenz. München 1973
Barthes, Roland: Mythen des Alltags. Frankfurt a. M. 1964
Blumenberg, Hans: Arbeit am Mythos, Frankfurt a. M. 2006
Galloway, Alexander R.: Das müßige Interface, Köln 2010
Graffitiverein, Schematische Darstellung des Modells der Graffitipolygeneses im Kontext der Bildenden Kunst und ihrer räumlichen Situierung. n.D.
Institut für Graffitiforschung, Graffiti-News Nr. 48. 2002
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Levi-Strauss, Claude: Das wilde Denken, Frankfurt a. M. 1973
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McLuhan, Marshall: The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, 1967
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