Intro

If analyzed as a whole, the study proposed in this document employs methodological aspects of the image, understood as a visual referent which drives graphic recognition functions in a set of components belonging to the same family; furthermore, it deals with image as an element with the necessary physical attributes to regulate human-machine interaction processes. This practice will be based on the field of operation that uses image as one of its main bastions: the Internet.

The name of this engine for searching graphic signs in the web’s numerical space will make the reader think of stories already lived, completely comparable with the experimental archetype being determined. In 1996, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sent the Mars Pathfinder probe to Mars - still a virtual world - with the purpose of using a small jeep called Sojourner to collect samples that could clarify certain dilemmas about the composition of the red planet. graphinder is not just a pseudonym out of an English word game; it is also a project committed to the same mission of informative inquiry as the device placed in the Martian orbit by the NASA. As in this superb aerospace project, in our digital iconographic essay image becomes an instrument for the transmission of information references; it is the origin, the means and the end of a binary operation that aims at new approaches to the methodology of communication.

The proposed interface, called graphinder, acquires the characteristics of the traditional toponymic search, i.e. searching via text, through the well-known browsers; but, in this case, the element to be introduced - the original referent of the search - is a graphic fragment or a complete image that becomes the core of an exploration among an infinity of web images linked to the first one according to their distinctive graphic qualities. Thus, this is a new and accurate procedure for selecting information, which specifically manipulates the “graphic goods” - image formats included in the generic bit map - that ramble through the net, starting with the formal and -above all- color attributes of image as the vehicle and final purpose of the exploration. This way, according to the selective search philosophy favored by the Internet, once the image has been located our screen will automatically display the page/s that has/have any graphic nexus with the said image; after selecting one of these web addresses, the pre-established volume of information - text, hyperlinks, video, sound, etc. - is appropriately filtered.

This kind of study requires a prior survey of the potential group of persons and, specially, of the professional body which will receive the results of the programmed experience. Thus, among the foreseeable users of this new system, we could distinguish two different groups. On the one hand, experts on the various professional areas: plastic artists, architects, engineers, 3D graphic designers,... They handle, on a daily basis, visual information related to the different creative manifestations - advertisement, computer assisted design, virtual reality, multimedia applications... - which require the participation of iconographic resources in the regular development of their internal processes. On the other hand, those web users in general who need that information typology and decide to choose this method as a natural complement to the one which now prevails. The latter, as we already know, is based on the recognition of chains made of typographical characters using Boolean formulae and other procedures, such as searching by the subject fields that could contain the term proposed.

Any reader with a certain knowledge of the matter being discussed will understand the high complexity of the central idea behind our search system. In order to process the data flow required for a graphic file, it is essential to initiate mechanisms of substantial experimental cost. In addition, we should bear in mind that this methodological exercise reunites different aspects that pertain to the distinctive features of the generic image - color, size and shape - with different concepts closely related to the computational side of the study - interface, devices, binary graphic typologies, etc. Nevertheless, the initial objective of writing this project is to discuss the new systems of communication, such as the Internet, in which the graphic category plays an active role in achieving the goals that make, as we said at the beginning, easier to further develop human-machine interaction. Leaving aside the meta-technological aspects responsible for constructing a new being called cyborg (or, in other words, “a being stuffed with digital devices”), we will establish a sequence that, above all, defends the participation of the design method – and all its train of elements and instruments - as the requirement or paradigm to be achieved.

It should be noted beforehand that, even though the proposal for the graphic search engine could be undertaken from different practical approaches, in this case we will focus on the technical formulations that are helpful for the constructive part of the graphic work, whatever its genre. The following items explain actual elements that stem from the project.