Objectives
- General understanding of the questions related to the definition of images
- our relation to them
- their influence on human life (cultural, social, historical, political and many other)
1. What is an image?
the word image is used in very different contexts with very different meanings:
Mental imagery (varieties of which are sometimes colloquially referred to as “visualizing,” “seeing in the mind’s eye,” “hearing in the head,” “imagining the feel of,” etc.) is quasi-perceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli.
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
-T. S. Elliot
Manifest vs Scientific: 2. The Philosophical Enterprise and the Images of Humanity-in-the-World: the major problem confronting philosophy today. This is the “clash” between “the ‘manifest’ image of man-in-the-world” and “the scientific image.”
Technical Images– human civilization has seen two fundamental turning points since its beginnings. The first occurred approximately during the second half of the second millennium, B.C., and may be defined as “the invention of linear writing”. The second — we are witnessing it — may be called “the invention of technical images.”
“Bergson gives us three images to help us think about the duration (…). The first is that of two spools, with a tape running between them, one spool unwinding the tape, the other winding it up. (…) Duration resembles this image, according to Bergson, because, as we grow older, our future grows smaller and our past larger. (…). Duration, for Bergson, is continuity of progress and heterogeneity; moreover, thanks to this image, we can also see that duration implies a conservation of the past. In this way learned ignorance recognizes that the natural universe itself, as a contracted image of God, has a physical center that can be anywhere and a circumference that is nowhere” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/)
What would be the characteristics of images? What is there function? What do they do?
Images are approximations:
Focault about the word: …”it is a secret that carries within itself, though near the surface, the decipherable signs of what it is trying to say” (35, THE ORDER OF THINGS)
Kosuth- One and three chairs
Memory as the image of an image/experience
Images are interpretations of reality/choice among possible realities.
How to convey an experience?
A concept?
A feeling?
Something we cannot fully comprehend?
2. Why do we create images? What is our relation to images?
Why have images accompanied us since the dawn of times?
What is it so compelling about them?
What make us create images?
Images and Power
Iconoclasm– Taller Buddha of Bamiyan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmUlwobfjbA
“Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them” (Exodus 20:3-5).
“Supported by the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, we declare unanimously, in the name of the Holy Trinity, that there shall be rejected and removed and cursed one of the Christian Church every likeness which is made out of any material and colour whatever by the evil art of painters…. If anyone ventures to represent the divine image (χαρακτήρ, charaktēr) of the Word after the Incarnation with material colours, let him be anathema! …. If anyone shall endeavour to represent the forms of the Saints in lifeless pictures with material colours which are of no value (for this notion is vain and introduced by the devil), and does not rather represent their virtues as living images in himself, let him be anathema!” (Wikipedia)
We create images and yet they change us
Berney- http://vimeo.com/23485454
Debord The Society of the Spectacle- http://vimeo.com/60945809
“The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.”
“When the real world is transformed into mere images, mere images become real beings and the efficient motivators of human behaviour” (6:55)-
They are the bridge to the future
What is a digital image?
What is a digital image made of?
- Pixel
- picture element /
- bit, bytes,
- image size / resolution /
Pixel’s non-existence: Suprematism/ Monochromatic painting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monochrome_painting–
… one can read a monochrome either as a flat surface (material entity or “painting as object”) which represents nothing but itself, and therefore representing an ending in the evolution of illusionism in painting (i.e. Rodchenko); or as a depiction of multidimensional (infinite) space, a fulfillment of illusionistic painting, representing a new evolution—a new beginning—in Western painting’s history (Malevich)
Homework:
Worth the watch :
This is an interesting video that doesn’t really use the vernacular of contemporary art, however still raises an interesting and problem that as a society we are confronted with more and more in the digital era. I find the format of this video to almost be a cliche of it’s own making. Nothing new just remixed, re-imagined.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftDjebw8aA#t=153