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Images, so Vilém Flusser (1989), “mostly point out something in space-time ‘out there’ which they are supposed to make conceivable to us as abstractions (as reductions of the four space-time dimensions to the two planar ones).” During contemplation, we can let our gaze wander, moving with our intention in connotative symbol complexes, establishing relationships, breaking up before and after. A meaning forms in which linearity no longer plays a part, the logic of cause and effect is suspended. They make the world imaginable, their character is magical. Linear writing further promotes abstraction and corresponds with representational thinking, and therefore with a different consciousness. In this way the past can be deciphered as a long struggle between image and text, magic and term.