My name is Luyao Pan and I am from China. I am a second-year student expecting to major in Visual arts. Originally, what I expect to gain from this course is to expand my knowledge about contemporary technical arts while learning how to understand and create them. However, after the fundamental introduction, I notice that this course is more than what I thought it would be and I am very glad as that means a better opportunity for me to expand my worldview and comprehend the current conditions of the new era. Also, since I am dreaming of becoming a game designer, what this course aims to achieve is very meaningful to me that I believe it could help me to better understand the bigger image of the world, which means that it could be a boost for me to create better stories.
My chosen image is a photograph taken by myself on September 19th, 2013, which is four years ago. The picture was taken from a specific angle where it seems like that I am using two of my fingers to hold the bright full moon like holding a shining pearl, whereas the background is quite dark that the edge between houses, streets, and plants gets blurry. Meanwhile, due to the fact that the moon is so bright, the sky doesn’t seem quite dark even though it is at late night, which brings up an interesting contrast compared to the blurry darkness of the grounds.
The main reason why I chose this image is that it is the first image that came across my mind at the moment when Dr. Pina said that we needed to choose an image that we have a personal relation to; but still, this is not the only reason. Another reason would be that the date I took this photo is quite meaningful that it is the root of the significance of the image—it was Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival in terms of the lunar calendar. In Chinese culture, Mid-Autumn Festival implies the notion of reunion of the whole family and family members are supposed to gather and have a grand dinner together. However, because I have chosen to study abroad in Canada, I have not been able to spend the meaningful festivals like the Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival together with my family for about four years already as the Canadian holiday calendar are quite different from the Chinese holiday calendar. Besides, instead of celebrating the solar birthday, I used to celebrate the lunar birthday with my family, which is the day before the Mid-Autumn Festival, while I haven’t been able to do it since four years ago. Thus, this image reminds me of the past relaxed reunion time with my family which was full of happiness, warmth and sweet.
However, on the other hand, what the image reminds me is not negative to me; instead, what the old good time makes me think of is that I realized I have grown so much and become much more independent compared to the past me. From being homesick to overcoming all those difficulties brought by cultural shock, I notice that my strength gets stronger and I become tougher than the past. Also, the pleasant memories acted like a booster on my way of learning, driving me to become a better person in order to become the one who brings all those happiness to my family in the soon-coming future.
Week4 Challenge What is an image today? and Reflections on the article The truth of experience.
What the article has talked about are quite interesting as the idea of expanded photography was defined and explained in the article, corresponding the ideas that we have discussed during studio time. Expanded photography emphasizes the fact that image has already become a language in present days. It has also emphasized another important fact which was pointed out in class, that is, this new language has infinite possibilities, which allows us to express and share our personal sensation, memories and thoughts to the public, and vice versa, allows us to receive more of others or public thinking, knowledges and experiences. In this case, reading this article has helped me dig deeper into the understanding of the idea of image as a language through the analysis of what kind of role digital photography is playing within the “language” and what kind of contribution it has made for the development and comprehension of the language. My favorite passages are the followings:
“The photographical is a whole body of experience that embraces (and is mediated by) a great variety of relations, interests and possibilities to become the main manifestation and constitutive element of our human condition in the 21st century.”
“We need to refer to images (and image-making) in order to act politically, socially, and culturally. An expanded photography is now the set of conditions that facilitates our awareness of such interconnected layers a visual system that searches, finds and acts out meaning as it constitutes it (with or without camera).”
“Instead of assuming that photography is a mechanism that transforms reality into images, we can invert the terms and see the photographer as a translator, as a facilitator of narratives.”
“In fact, both producers and consumers become active participants in the process, since they become part of the information chain, a segment of the sequence of ‘knowledge’.”
The article has also triggered my thoughts about the question that was asked during class time— “what is an image today?” “what do our images reveal about our world?” and “what is the reality today?”
In my opinion, an image today is, as we have already discussed, infinite possibilities. While the development of technology has allowed us to somehow be able to show this kind of infinity, which corresponded to the idea of expanded photography, we would never be able to have full understanding of the TRUE ONE image of the world. Being lack of infinite imagination while being constrained by what we are able to reach, which in other words, the “reality” we considered as the true reality, it is impossible for human beings to fully comprehend “an image today”. An art work from Jeremy Shaw titled This Transition Will Never End would probably be the best “image” show what I considered as “an image today”.
Here is a link of the slides of screenshots of the work: http://jeremyshaw.net/transition/
It is a pity that I am not able to find the video version of it as the video version would convey the feeling of endlessness and infinity more effectively. This is a project that began in 2008 and went ongoing. It was a video that never repeated the transition scenes, and more transitions scenes are and will be adding to the video keeping the transition goes forever. In this case, the infinity and ongoing development of the transition sceneries reminds me of the infinity possibilities implicated within the image today, which I think it could be considered as the image of “image today”.
On the other hand, mentioning the reality, instead of considering the physical universe that we are living in as the “true reality”, I think what the images are able to represent is the “true reality”. This means that, in my opinion, the reality we believed to be reality is not the true reality anymore, while the true reality is as well impossible to be represented because of the physical and psychological limitations, just like the image. The boundary between the physical truth and the infinite imaginations implied within the possibilities an image today could achieve was blurred; moreover, because of the development of technology and the proposition of the idea of expanded photography, the role of the latter has reversed and become the “true reality”—the reality that we are not able to represent or fully understand.
After writing so much thoughts, I once again realize the fact that the “language” is much more powerful and more comprehensible than we thought, as I suddenly recognize that I am not able to express myself any better than what the artist’s work has conveyed. And this situation has once again emphasized the importance of gaining the ability to speak this language—the image.
The Technical Images
What is an image?
– Language
– Reflection
– Representation
– Experiences (mental) → Visual equations (literary/poetic/sound) → Experiences (mental)
– Visual equations: imaging technologies—prevalent worldviews
○ Technologies: Devices expand our limitations
○ Connection between imaging technologies and prevalent worldviews
§ Image–specific period of the history:
□ connection to reality
□ Representations: proportion, display, juxtaposition
§ Two stories: the image itself and the way it is depicted
□ Audiences’ connection with the image
§ Photography vs medieval images (oil paintings)
□ Medieval images:
® created by chosen ones (skilled artists) who has particular position within the society
® Limitations on imagination
® Reality was structured
□ Photography:
® First moment we are able to achieve something very important and different
® Accuracy of representation (compared to paintings)
® Expand the limitation
® Reality was something else which exists and can be taken for something
® Power brought by technologies
® Replacement of the real
® Photography is telling us about facts and reality–objectivity: image and the real are the same
◊ Documentary photography
◊ Scientific photography
} Etienne-Jules Marey: Motions & movements
– Motions → Something mechanical
} Obsession of technology
◊ Police pictures
§ Technologies bring possibility
□ How we see the world and how we see ourselves: who we are?
What is an image today? What do our images reveal about our world?
– We have the ability to choose our image and secondly create our own image
○ What it is supposed to do
○ Who you are showing/sharing to
○ Control of which kind of image we are interacting with
○ An image speaks to a certain worldview/reality
§ What kind of reality you are speaking to?
§ How do we understand for young?
– What is the reality today?
○ Uncertainty
○ Infinite possibilities
○ We live in very weird place
○ Our reality is just weird
No stop to revolution of technology
Course Goal: What is an image?
– Importance:
○ Assuming image as a language
§ To learn and read this new language
– Try to figure out what kind of language it is
– Try not to talk about the image too much
– How could we create something that speak to us.
Image (apple)
– Feel=thinking
– Graphical vs not-graphical (narrative vs not-narrative)
Completely Narrative
Comfort zone
– An image is something lives in itself, rely on itself
Individual page
– Combination of everything about this class
Tumblr vs Instagram
– Two different culture/community → two different images/language
– How the platform has created a certain commonality
Questions about image
– tricky
A → B
– B is an image
○ What is A?
§ A is not an apple, but what you relate to the word “apple” in mind, B is an image how you imagine an apple to be.
§ Memory/Experiences
§ Apple
§ Definitions/Concepts/Conventions/Culture
§ Emotions
§ Imagined
§ All of above at once
○ Is A real or not?
§ A is something that happened within us
§ Things we could never represent
§ Vague impression or transformation that are very different and personal
§ Subjective real
○ Where does B come from? (B’s source)
§ A: Translation of something that we would never recognize or have a direct experience of.
– Notion of representation: use something to represent something else
– What is reality?
○ Imagination; Illusion
– What can be shared?
○ How can we share emotion? → What artist is about
○ Emotion: intangible and subjective
– What make something objective?
○ Commonality
○ Objectivity is in fact a convention
– What kind of reality is an image?
Objectives
– General understanding of the questions related to the definition of images
– Our relation to them
Thesis of the class
– Images are becoming an important language
○ State of mind
○ Feeling
○ Thinking
– Complexity of the “language” (image)
○ Providing various possibility
– Enhance the new way of seeing a language
– Image: Multi-dimensional reality
– The process of translation from image to “language”
What is an image?
– Picture
– Representation
○ Implied the relationship/connection between A & B
○ Never able to explain something completely; there are always something we don’t know
○ Infinity of every single experience could never be displayed
○ Chemical equation: using the elements describing something that happened
– Purpose
○ To connect the multi-dimensional reality
○ Fulfill by the “chemical equation”
– Become a new language itself
– 2-D reality
– Involve richness
○ Infinity possibility of describing the world
○ Increasing differences and difficulties to find a common image of the world
○ However, digital images seem to be a possibility to finding the common image
What is an “Apple”?
– A word to describe the image we have in our mind
– Representation of something else
– Relationship between the thing and the sound of the word
○ No really connection between the sound and the thing that we have in mind
– Image is the common language we use
– An image is itself a convention/acceptance/agreement
○ Use widely because of the agreement
– Words are certainly images
– Michel Focault: (the word)…”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)
○ We could never know what the word is trying to tell; there is always a certainty of mysteries
○ The connection: never fully comprehend → the power of the sign
○ The area that we always trying to convey
○ Words and image are incompatible
Poetry
Imagery: the name given to the elements in a poem that spark off the senses
– Fall in love vs love arrives
○ Different experience
– Imagery spark off the Ecstasies mixed with pleasure and pain in love
– Representing/rallying the senses
– Use something to represent something else
Sound images
How do you experience the images?
– Something different but also something in common
○ Have something we share
– Powerful thing about art: show what is in common about us
○ Shared experience come from something deeper
○ Makes us share a common thing
○ (again) Spark off the senses
Surrealism
– Un Chien Andalou
○ Something that holds the power on us
– Andre Breton
○ The notion of describing what they are trying to do
– About dreams
○ Relations to “reality”
○ We live in a universe of images where we don’t know how to understand
○ Simply believe
Where does the image exist?
Why do we create images? What is our relation to images?
Technical images
– Using imagination
– “The significance–the meaning–of images rests in their surfaces”
– Created by technical means
– About human communication
– Writing: fundamental turning point where the world suddenly becomes bigger
– Technical Image → existance
○ Give a confidence that an image = truth
○ Seem to tell that we can trust this; it is true
– Medieval painting & Renaissance
○ A tool to show the imagination
○ Space of imagination
○ Representing the world in a very different way
○ How we perceive the world
○ Images created by very few chosen people
– Technical image
○ Same apply to technical image
§ Message of representation
○ Taking picture → take reality
§ Technology allow us to take image of the world
□ Allow us to take the reality
○ All of a sudden, everybody can do it
– Digital image
○ Image composed by pixels
○ A stream of pixel
○ A way of representation in which we have turned those elements into what we called data
§ Pixel: Base of information
□ Basic unit
□ An abstraction
□ Transformable
§ Our existence/ life is data
□ We are data
□ Clone
□ Exist in very different dimension
□ Very different kind of reality: We can change the blocks of life according to our will
□ How we describe ourselves
□ ALWAYS Reinvent or rediscover what an image is
○ Photography is very different from digital image
Discussion around Reading & What is an image today?
– Transcend established definitions
– Defined ourselves as a picture
○ Notion of image — Something that Defines us (social media)
– Translation vs Narratives
○ A PA B — C
○ A: Experience, Mental, Story, Song, etc.
○ B: Photography
§ Narrative → Story
□ Retelling something
□ Something involved through Time
□ We are always in a Journey
□ Implies development from one point to another through path
□ It’s about the path we go through, not the destination
□ Not just about A&B but aim for a further C — something that keeps developing
□ More intellectual complexed relationship between A & what is being given to others — B become something more developed
□ Expansion of time
□ Has a Roadmap Guiding audience
§ Translation → Image
□ Taking something and turn it into something else
□ Instant encounter
□ Not about time although it might take time to “translate”
□ Process more spontaneous
□ Create equation between A & B
– Photographer
– Autonomous image
○ Detached from function
§ Scientific
§ News
§ Weddm
○ Dissemination
– Photograph(?) Vs Images(?)
○ [Art + Technology] Historical
○ Magnum: documentary photography
○ Photography
§ Reality
§ Documentary: Something we can trust
○ Image
§ representation
§ Involved personal views
○ Media [real] ?
○ Notion of dissemination
– Contemporary image
○ [Real] ← ?
§ Question about reality become suspicious
Why image is such an important thing to us?
What is the power?
What makes an image Art?
Order & Disorder – The Story of Information
Invisible
– Information
○ w
○ Convey accuracy
Small ambits between
Information ←←← Essence →→→ Art
– Essence remain a ghost that can never be touched
Art is an information
What is art?–Andrei
How art can irritate us?
What is the link between art and unfreedom?
How images affect us?
Historical meaning of images
Language & Associations
– Make the thinking process conscious
○ A, B, & C
○ Process of translation & association
○ Express ourselves visually by creating associations
What is the common thing within those images? (Weekly Challenge)
– Visual ←→ Sound
○ Ways of associations have infinite possibilities
○ The association is what we care
○ The image is in between, is neither the visual nor the sound; the image is what connects them
○ An information image into an art image
The Century of The Self
– Create images that combine the information
The Society of the Spectacle
Guy Debord
Freedom ← Image → Oppression/control
Beauty –?– Freedom
“All art is useless.” — Oscar Wilde
What is an Image?
– Language
– Grammar? Vocabulary?
– Reflection/representation
– Emotion, experience, memory
What is our relation to images?
– Memories
– Power
– directionality
What is Art?
– Reception
○ Publics, spectacle, happening
– Expression
○ What is non-artistic expression? Does it exist?
– Sublimation
○ What is the sublime?
– What makes us human
– Information
– Emotion
What is the power images exert on us?
– Publics, spectacle, happening → Creates reality
○ How?
– Transportation
○ Temporal & spatial
– Reciprocity
○ Our power over images?
§ Domination? Is resistance possible? Emancipation?
Can images change society?
– Yes
– Reception & Translation (diversity)
– Suggestion (norms, customs)
– Can we put sublimation here?
Can Art change the World?
– Yes?
– Images & Art → differences?
– Society/World differences?
What is technology?
Connection between what shaman can do and what we can do without technology
Combination of worldviews
One foot in their Isolated universe while one foot in contemporary world
How these two worlds come together
Art might change society as a whole, but they do change us
Individual influence
|Texts
Technology: |Visuals (motion)
|Sounds
Experiment and experience
– Fail is important as well
How we are going to use images to comment on things?
Put what we have discussed into practice
– Technology
Objectives
– How artist dealt with the problems in the past vs at present
– Start by looking at the future
– Use this room as a place to enact a dialogue
Technology
– Fillipo Tomasso Marinetti
○ Trying to extend these new moments
○ “Forget about the past in order to see the future clearly”
○ Futurismo
§ We have to look at the future, imagine the future, and then we can create a present towards that future
§ Futurist reconstruction of universe
§ It’s not about art, it’s about reinventing the universe
§ Creating the future through this object
§ Destroy everything and invent the future that makes everything possible
§ Poems to be experienced instead of to be read
□ An act of performance
□ Create the future
□ Immense power
® Power of sound, of machines
□ A new language to celebrate the reality
□ Vision is important
– Russian Cubo-Futurism
○ Intersect with machinery
○ Share same intervention with Italian futurists
○ A slap in the face of the public taste
§ Noises
§ Show us something has to be done
§ Show us art as a language
§ Technology makes possible: we can invent everything and have access for everything
○ Become part of the revolution
○ Conventional with everything
○ Creating new future
– Fluxus
○ Everything that is unconventional is what they are looking for
○ John Cage
§ Music–talking vs Sound–acting
□ Music: talking about feelings, about relationships
□ Sound of traffic: acting; don’t need sound to talk to us
® Louder and quieter
® Higher and lower
® Longer and shorter
□ Experience directly through the noises; no need for a translator
□ Sound as a sculpture
□ Expect listening to be more inner listening
□ Music is more an outer listening
§ Accept that those sounds are meaningless
□ No make sense; just be there
□ It’s about experience
□ Creating those experiences that is not mean to have meaning
□ The sound has its own quality
□ Connect and dealing with those sound (energy?)
§ John Cage’s 4’33
○ Fluxus manifesto
§ More relaxed idea about art
§ Flow, relax
§ Playfulness gear to radical meaning
§ Reclaiming or separating from stylish art form, convention
§ Promote non-art reality
§ Art can be experienced everywhere in life; life can be experienced as art–life can be art
□ Art is not something that should be empower by exact fields
○ Fluxus
– The Net
○ Become an important figure in the computer revolution during the interact with Fluxus
○ The relationship between us as human and machine
§ “we create tools and use these tools to modify us”–we become the tool ourselves
§ “we creating technology, then we ARE the technology”
§ Everything is connected
§ Conflict between intellectual and technology
§ A culture as a whole
§ Importance of both art and science
§ Unabomber
□ Concern about prospect of technology
□ Contexts from which he immerse
□ Sees the danger of technology
○ Conjunction between artist and technologist is the imagined future
Think about what is an installation and what is a performance
The way to incorporate yourself into the work
Different approaches to the space
Relationship between the form of the work and what the work is about
Possibilities of different spaces, different materials, different objects, different projections at the same time
How to relate to the devices in a specific way
– Important possibilities
– How do we use them
– What is it to mean in a network condition that never existed before
– Device – Gate point to the relations
– Slack
Condition of being connected
Power of Images?
– What is an image and what is an image today?
○ Anything that allows us to access something else
§ Memory, Sound, Thoughts,
○ Our relationship to other things in the world
§ Central to everything
§ Our understanding of the world and our ability to deal with it
§ Allows us to share our way of being on the world
○ Relationship between images and history
§ Altarima Cave images–To Picasso:
□ “we haven’t changed ever since”
□ It’s nothing new
□ 20,000 years ago vs present
– How do they affect humans and their reality?
○ Is image possible to change the world?
– What are the ways in which images are used to persuade public opinion?
– Can you affect the world with your images?
Images and Technology
– What is the Relation between Images and Technology?
○ Technology has changed the characteristics of images
○ Technology affects the way we created images
○ Images are affecting technology
§ Reality waiting us to reach new information
– John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Power of Technology
– What is technology?
– Is technology an invention or discovery?
– What are the effects of technology on Your life?
– What is the relation/power dynamics between human and technology?
Technology
What is art
Relationship between Art and Technology
– Fluxus
– Uncertainty displayed with creativity
A Space Odyssey – The Dawn of Man, 2001
– Non-human become human
– Re-understand/imagine what can be done with these bones
○ First time to imagine new possibilities
– First time to overcome with our physical limitation
– Birth of man – Birth of technology
○ Our humanity is absolutely connected with technology
○ We are human because we created technology
○ Instrument of our evolution
– What is technology and what is humanity?
Koyaanisqatsi
– How technology is having an impact on who we are and how we become in the way we become?
My name is Luyao Pan and I am from China. I am a second-year student expecting to major in Visual arts. Originally, what I expect to gain from this course is to expand my knowledge about contemporary technical arts while learning how to understand and create them. However, after the fundamental introduction, I notice that this course is more than what I thought it would be and I am very glad as that means a better opportunity for me to expand my worldview and comprehend the current conditions of the new era. Also, since I am dreaming of becoming a game designer, what this course aims to achieve is very meaningful to me that I believe it could help me to better understand the bigger image of the world, which means that it could be a boost for me to create better stories.
Weekly Challenge: An Image in my Mind
My chosen image is a photograph taken by myself on September 19th, 2013, which is four years ago. The picture was taken from a specific angle where it seems like that I am using two of my fingers to hold the bright full moon like holding a shining pearl, whereas the background is quite dark that the edge between houses, streets, and plants gets blurry. Meanwhile, due to the fact that the moon is so bright, the sky doesn’t seem quite dark even though it is at late night, which brings up an interesting contrast compared to the blurry darkness of the grounds.
The main reason why I chose this image is that it is the first image that came across my mind at the moment when Dr. Pina said that we needed to choose an image that we have a personal relation to; but still, this is not the only reason. Another reason would be that the date I took this photo is quite meaningful that it is the root of the significance of the image—it was Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival in terms of the lunar calendar. In Chinese culture, Mid-Autumn Festival implies the notion of reunion of the whole family and family members are supposed to gather and have a grand dinner together. However, because I have chosen to study abroad in Canada, I have not been able to spend the meaningful festivals like the Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival together with my family for about four years already as the Canadian holiday calendar are quite different from the Chinese holiday calendar. Besides, instead of celebrating the solar birthday, I used to celebrate the lunar birthday with my family, which is the day before the Mid-Autumn Festival, while I haven’t been able to do it since four years ago. Thus, this image reminds me of the past relaxed reunion time with my family which was full of happiness, warmth and sweet.
However, on the other hand, what the image reminds me is not negative to me; instead, what the old good time makes me think of is that I realized I have grown so much and become much more independent compared to the past me. From being homesick to overcoming all those difficulties brought by cultural shock, I notice that my strength gets stronger and I become tougher than the past. Also, the pleasant memories acted like a booster on my way of learning, driving me to become a better person in order to become the one who brings all those happiness to my family in the soon-coming future.
Week2 Challenge: What is an apple?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cZSR5SSjX312f386VKfYOUwDApLEBmnx8gioZNZ5NYw/edit?usp=sharing
Week3 Challenge: Image of an Image
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UaZg1thhGVVHYTNadLXgA3Eh0_Qx4bNFDP6LCkcPdUI/edit?usp=sharing
Week4 Challenge What is an image today? and Reflections on the article The truth of experience.
What the article has talked about are quite interesting as the idea of expanded photography was defined and explained in the article, corresponding the ideas that we have discussed during studio time. Expanded photography emphasizes the fact that image has already become a language in present days. It has also emphasized another important fact which was pointed out in class, that is, this new language has infinite possibilities, which allows us to express and share our personal sensation, memories and thoughts to the public, and vice versa, allows us to receive more of others or public thinking, knowledges and experiences. In this case, reading this article has helped me dig deeper into the understanding of the idea of image as a language through the analysis of what kind of role digital photography is playing within the “language” and what kind of contribution it has made for the development and comprehension of the language. My favorite passages are the followings:
“The photographical is a whole body of experience that embraces (and is mediated by) a great variety of relations, interests and possibilities to become the main manifestation and constitutive element of our human condition in the 21st century.”
“We need to refer to images (and image-making) in order to act politically, socially, and culturally. An expanded photography is now the set of conditions that facilitates our awareness of such interconnected layers a visual system that searches, finds and acts out meaning as it constitutes it (with or without camera).”
“Instead of assuming that photography is a mechanism that transforms reality into images, we can invert the terms and see the photographer as a translator, as a facilitator of narratives.”
“In fact, both producers and consumers become active participants in the process, since they become part of the information chain, a segment of the sequence of ‘knowledge’.”
The article has also triggered my thoughts about the question that was asked during class time— “what is an image today?” “what do our images reveal about our world?” and “what is the reality today?”
In my opinion, an image today is, as we have already discussed, infinite possibilities. While the development of technology has allowed us to somehow be able to show this kind of infinity, which corresponded to the idea of expanded photography, we would never be able to have full understanding of the TRUE ONE image of the world. Being lack of infinite imagination while being constrained by what we are able to reach, which in other words, the “reality” we considered as the true reality, it is impossible for human beings to fully comprehend “an image today”. An art work from Jeremy Shaw titled This Transition Will Never End would probably be the best “image” show what I considered as “an image today”.
Here is a link of the slides of screenshots of the work: http://jeremyshaw.net/transition/
It is a pity that I am not able to find the video version of it as the video version would convey the feeling of endlessness and infinity more effectively. This is a project that began in 2008 and went ongoing. It was a video that never repeated the transition scenes, and more transitions scenes are and will be adding to the video keeping the transition goes forever. In this case, the infinity and ongoing development of the transition sceneries reminds me of the infinity possibilities implicated within the image today, which I think it could be considered as the image of “image today”.
On the other hand, mentioning the reality, instead of considering the physical universe that we are living in as the “true reality”, I think what the images are able to represent is the “true reality”. This means that, in my opinion, the reality we believed to be reality is not the true reality anymore, while the true reality is as well impossible to be represented because of the physical and psychological limitations, just like the image. The boundary between the physical truth and the infinite imaginations implied within the possibilities an image today could achieve was blurred; moreover, because of the development of technology and the proposition of the idea of expanded photography, the role of the latter has reversed and become the “true reality”—the reality that we are not able to represent or fully understand.
After writing so much thoughts, I once again realize the fact that the “language” is much more powerful and more comprehensible than we thought, as I suddenly recognize that I am not able to express myself any better than what the artist’s work has conveyed. And this situation has once again emphasized the importance of gaining the ability to speak this language—the image.
Class notes for Week 4
The Technical Images
What is an image?
– Language
– Reflection
– Representation
– Experiences (mental) → Visual equations (literary/poetic/sound) → Experiences (mental)
– Visual equations: imaging technologies—prevalent worldviews
○ Technologies: Devices expand our limitations
○ Connection between imaging technologies and prevalent worldviews
§ Image–specific period of the history:
□ connection to reality
□ Representations: proportion, display, juxtaposition
§ Two stories: the image itself and the way it is depicted
□ Audiences’ connection with the image
§ Photography vs medieval images (oil paintings)
□ Medieval images:
® created by chosen ones (skilled artists) who has particular position within the society
® Limitations on imagination
® Reality was structured
□ Photography:
® First moment we are able to achieve something very important and different
® Accuracy of representation (compared to paintings)
® Expand the limitation
® Reality was something else which exists and can be taken for something
® Power brought by technologies
® Replacement of the real
® Photography is telling us about facts and reality–objectivity: image and the real are the same
◊ Documentary photography
◊ Scientific photography
} Etienne-Jules Marey: Motions & movements
– Motions → Something mechanical
} Obsession of technology
◊ Police pictures
§ Technologies bring possibility
□ How we see the world and how we see ourselves: who we are?
What is an image today? What do our images reveal about our world?
– We have the ability to choose our image and secondly create our own image
○ What it is supposed to do
○ Who you are showing/sharing to
○ Control of which kind of image we are interacting with
○ An image speaks to a certain worldview/reality
§ What kind of reality you are speaking to?
§ How do we understand for young?
– What is the reality today?
○ Uncertainty
○ Infinite possibilities
○ We live in very weird place
○ Our reality is just weird
No stop to revolution of technology
Week 3 class notes
Course Goal: What is an image?
– Importance:
○ Assuming image as a language
§ To learn and read this new language
– Try to figure out what kind of language it is
– Try not to talk about the image too much
– How could we create something that speak to us.
Image (apple)
– Feel=thinking
– Graphical vs not-graphical (narrative vs not-narrative)
Completely Narrative
Comfort zone
– An image is something lives in itself, rely on itself
Individual page
– Combination of everything about this class
Tumblr vs Instagram
– Two different culture/community → two different images/language
– How the platform has created a certain commonality
Questions about image
– tricky
A → B
– B is an image
○ What is A?
§ A is not an apple, but what you relate to the word “apple” in mind, B is an image how you imagine an apple to be.
§ Memory/Experiences
§ Apple
§ Definitions/Concepts/Conventions/Culture
§ Emotions
§ Imagined
§ All of above at once
○ Is A real or not?
§ A is something that happened within us
§ Things we could never represent
§ Vague impression or transformation that are very different and personal
§ Subjective real
○ Where does B come from? (B’s source)
§ A: Translation of something that we would never recognize or have a direct experience of.
– Notion of representation: use something to represent something else
– What is reality?
○ Imagination; Illusion
– What can be shared?
○ How can we share emotion? → What artist is about
○ Emotion: intangible and subjective
– What make something objective?
○ Commonality
○ Objectivity is in fact a convention
– What kind of reality is an image?
Week 2 Class notes
Objectives
– General understanding of the questions related to the definition of images
– Our relation to them
Thesis of the class
– Images are becoming an important language
○ State of mind
○ Feeling
○ Thinking
– Complexity of the “language” (image)
○ Providing various possibility
– Enhance the new way of seeing a language
– Image: Multi-dimensional reality
– The process of translation from image to “language”
What is an image?
– Picture
– Representation
○ Implied the relationship/connection between A & B
○ Never able to explain something completely; there are always something we don’t know
○ Infinity of every single experience could never be displayed
○ Chemical equation: using the elements describing something that happened
– Purpose
○ To connect the multi-dimensional reality
○ Fulfill by the “chemical equation”
– Become a new language itself
– 2-D reality
– Involve richness
○ Infinity possibility of describing the world
○ Increasing differences and difficulties to find a common image of the world
○ However, digital images seem to be a possibility to finding the common image
What is an “Apple”?
– A word to describe the image we have in our mind
– Representation of something else
– Relationship between the thing and the sound of the word
○ No really connection between the sound and the thing that we have in mind
– Image is the common language we use
– An image is itself a convention/acceptance/agreement
○ Use widely because of the agreement
– Words are certainly images
– Michel Focault: (the word)…”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)
○ We could never know what the word is trying to tell; there is always a certainty of mysteries
○ The connection: never fully comprehend → the power of the sign
○ The area that we always trying to convey
○ Words and image are incompatible
Poetry
Imagery: the name given to the elements in a poem that spark off the senses
– Fall in love vs love arrives
○ Different experience
– Imagery spark off the Ecstasies mixed with pleasure and pain in love
– Representing/rallying the senses
– Use something to represent something else
Sound images
How do you experience the images?
– Something different but also something in common
○ Have something we share
– Powerful thing about art: show what is in common about us
○ Shared experience come from something deeper
○ Makes us share a common thing
○ (again) Spark off the senses
Surrealism
– Un Chien Andalou
○ Something that holds the power on us
– Andre Breton
○ The notion of describing what they are trying to do
– About dreams
○ Relations to “reality”
○ We live in a universe of images where we don’t know how to understand
○ Simply believe
Where does the image exist?
Why do we create images? What is our relation to images?
Technical images
– Using imagination
– “The significance–the meaning–of images rests in their surfaces”
– Created by technical means
– About human communication
– Writing: fundamental turning point where the world suddenly becomes bigger
– Technical Image → existance
○ Give a confidence that an image = truth
○ Seem to tell that we can trust this; it is true
– Medieval painting & Renaissance
○ A tool to show the imagination
○ Space of imagination
○ Representing the world in a very different way
○ How we perceive the world
○ Images created by very few chosen people
– Technical image
○ Same apply to technical image
§ Message of representation
○ Taking picture → take reality
§ Technology allow us to take image of the world
□ Allow us to take the reality
○ All of a sudden, everybody can do it
– Digital image
○ Image composed by pixels
○ A stream of pixel
○ A way of representation in which we have turned those elements into what we called data
§ Pixel: Base of information
□ Basic unit
□ An abstraction
□ Transformable
§ Our existence/ life is data
□ We are data
□ Clone
□ Exist in very different dimension
□ Very different kind of reality: We can change the blocks of life according to our will
□ How we describe ourselves
□ ALWAYS Reinvent or rediscover what an image is
○ Photography is very different from digital image
Week 5 Challenge: The Image of the Image II
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aAYyrqp-XMlPwy6om0bnareY6nom1XhxtOasIkZRoKs/edit?usp=sharing
Week 6 Challenge: Midterm Reflection & Image of Peer
Group Members: Luyao Pan, Caixi Li, Chenhan Yao
OneNote Page: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AubnPln-kZ3Nki4ldNYg5ko33jhQ
Image of Chenhan Yao:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11aKC6r7lEPS7FxCSPfS09ViQRrPcziLCMR1zoGZyUwI/edit?usp=sharing
Week 9 Challenge: Technology and Humans Today
Response to my relationship to technology: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BOJhArOcVYdSlTP-oVrrxHbsYkKadX4a
Week 10 Challenge: New Ways of Life
Response to the chart: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B20e7VoRJjSkMDdGV6xurfMRUMUv5QlF-GEm0Oz04dA/edit?usp=sharing
Week 5 Class Notes
Discussion around Reading & What is an image today?
– Transcend established definitions
– Defined ourselves as a picture
○ Notion of image — Something that Defines us (social media)
– Translation vs Narratives
○ A PA B — C
○ A: Experience, Mental, Story, Song, etc.
○ B: Photography
§ Narrative → Story
□ Retelling something
□ Something involved through Time
□ We are always in a Journey
□ Implies development from one point to another through path
□ It’s about the path we go through, not the destination
□ Not just about A&B but aim for a further C — something that keeps developing
□ More intellectual complexed relationship between A & what is being given to others — B become something more developed
□ Expansion of time
□ Has a Roadmap Guiding audience
§ Translation → Image
□ Taking something and turn it into something else
□ Instant encounter
□ Not about time although it might take time to “translate”
□ Process more spontaneous
□ Create equation between A & B
– Photographer
– Autonomous image
○ Detached from function
§ Scientific
§ News
§ Weddm
○ Dissemination
– Photograph(?) Vs Images(?)
○ [Art + Technology] Historical
○ Magnum: documentary photography
○ Photography
§ Reality
§ Documentary: Something we can trust
○ Image
§ representation
§ Involved personal views
○ Media [real] ?
○ Notion of dissemination
– Contemporary image
○ [Real] ← ?
§ Question about reality become suspicious
Why image is such an important thing to us?
What is the power?
What makes an image Art?
Order & Disorder – The Story of Information
Invisible
– Information
○ w
○ Convey accuracy
Small ambits between
Information ←←← Essence →→→ Art
– Essence remain a ghost that can never be touched
Art is an information
What is art?–Andrei
How art can irritate us?
What is the link between art and unfreedom?
Trying to translate the music into something else
Week 6 Class Notes
How images affect us?
Historical meaning of images
Language & Associations
– Make the thinking process conscious
○ A, B, & C
○ Process of translation & association
○ Express ourselves visually by creating associations
What is the common thing within those images? (Weekly Challenge)
– Visual ←→ Sound
○ Ways of associations have infinite possibilities
○ The association is what we care
○ The image is in between, is neither the visual nor the sound; the image is what connects them
○ An information image into an art image
The Century of The Self
– Create images that combine the information
The Society of the Spectacle
Guy Debord
Freedom ← Image → Oppression/control
Beauty –?– Freedom
“All art is useless.” — Oscar Wilde
Week 7 Class Notes
What is an Image?
– Language
– Grammar? Vocabulary?
– Reflection/representation
– Emotion, experience, memory
What is our relation to images?
– Memories
– Power
– directionality
What is Art?
– Reception
○ Publics, spectacle, happening
– Expression
○ What is non-artistic expression? Does it exist?
– Sublimation
○ What is the sublime?
– What makes us human
– Information
– Emotion
What is the power images exert on us?
– Publics, spectacle, happening → Creates reality
○ How?
– Transportation
○ Temporal & spatial
– Reciprocity
○ Our power over images?
§ Domination? Is resistance possible? Emancipation?
Can images change society?
– Yes
– Reception & Translation (diversity)
– Suggestion (norms, customs)
– Can we put sublimation here?
Can Art change the World?
– Yes?
– Images & Art → differences?
– Society/World differences?
Week 8 Class Notes
What is technology?
Connection between what shaman can do and what we can do without technology
Combination of worldviews
One foot in their Isolated universe while one foot in contemporary world
How these two worlds come together
Art might change society as a whole, but they do change us
Individual influence
|Texts
Technology: |Visuals (motion)
|Sounds
Experiment and experience
– Fail is important as well
Week 9 Class Notes
How we are going to use images to comment on things?
Put what we have discussed into practice
– Technology
Objectives
– How artist dealt with the problems in the past vs at present
– Start by looking at the future
– Use this room as a place to enact a dialogue
Technology
– Fillipo Tomasso Marinetti
○ Trying to extend these new moments
○ “Forget about the past in order to see the future clearly”
○ Futurismo
§ We have to look at the future, imagine the future, and then we can create a present towards that future
§ Futurist reconstruction of universe
§ It’s not about art, it’s about reinventing the universe
§ Creating the future through this object
§ Destroy everything and invent the future that makes everything possible
§ Poems to be experienced instead of to be read
□ An act of performance
□ Create the future
□ Immense power
® Power of sound, of machines
□ A new language to celebrate the reality
□ Vision is important
– Russian Cubo-Futurism
○ Intersect with machinery
○ Share same intervention with Italian futurists
○ A slap in the face of the public taste
§ Noises
§ Show us something has to be done
§ Show us art as a language
§ Technology makes possible: we can invent everything and have access for everything
○ Become part of the revolution
○ Conventional with everything
○ Creating new future
– Fluxus
○ Everything that is unconventional is what they are looking for
○ John Cage
§ Music–talking vs Sound–acting
□ Music: talking about feelings, about relationships
□ Sound of traffic: acting; don’t need sound to talk to us
® Louder and quieter
® Higher and lower
® Longer and shorter
□ Experience directly through the noises; no need for a translator
□ Sound as a sculpture
□ Expect listening to be more inner listening
□ Music is more an outer listening
§ Accept that those sounds are meaningless
□ No make sense; just be there
□ It’s about experience
□ Creating those experiences that is not mean to have meaning
□ The sound has its own quality
□ Connect and dealing with those sound (energy?)
§ John Cage’s 4’33
○ Fluxus manifesto
§ More relaxed idea about art
§ Flow, relax
§ Playfulness gear to radical meaning
§ Reclaiming or separating from stylish art form, convention
§ Promote non-art reality
§ Art can be experienced everywhere in life; life can be experienced as art–life can be art
□ Art is not something that should be empower by exact fields
○ Fluxus
– The Net
○ Become an important figure in the computer revolution during the interact with Fluxus
○ The relationship between us as human and machine
§ “we create tools and use these tools to modify us”–we become the tool ourselves
§ “we creating technology, then we ARE the technology”
§ Everything is connected
§ Conflict between intellectual and technology
§ A culture as a whole
§ Importance of both art and science
§ Unabomber
□ Concern about prospect of technology
□ Contexts from which he immerse
□ Sees the danger of technology
○ Conjunction between artist and technologist is the imagined future
Week 10 Class Notes
Think about what is an installation and what is a performance
The way to incorporate yourself into the work
Different approaches to the space
Relationship between the form of the work and what the work is about
Possibilities of different spaces, different materials, different objects, different projections at the same time
How to relate to the devices in a specific way
– Important possibilities
– How do we use them
– What is it to mean in a network condition that never existed before
– Device – Gate point to the relations
– Slack
Condition of being connected
Week 12 Class Notes: Main Questions
Power of Images?
– What is an image and what is an image today?
○ Anything that allows us to access something else
§ Memory, Sound, Thoughts,
○ Our relationship to other things in the world
§ Central to everything
§ Our understanding of the world and our ability to deal with it
§ Allows us to share our way of being on the world
○ Relationship between images and history
§ Altarima Cave images–To Picasso:
□ “we haven’t changed ever since”
□ It’s nothing new
□ 20,000 years ago vs present
– How do they affect humans and their reality?
○ Is image possible to change the world?
– What are the ways in which images are used to persuade public opinion?
– Can you affect the world with your images?
Images and Technology
– What is the Relation between Images and Technology?
○ Technology has changed the characteristics of images
○ Technology affects the way we created images
○ Images are affecting technology
§ Reality waiting us to reach new information
– John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Power of Technology
– What is technology?
– Is technology an invention or discovery?
– What are the effects of technology on Your life?
– What is the relation/power dynamics between human and technology?
Technology
What is art
Relationship between Art and Technology
– Fluxus
– Uncertainty displayed with creativity
A Space Odyssey – The Dawn of Man, 2001
– Non-human become human
– Re-understand/imagine what can be done with these bones
○ First time to imagine new possibilities
– First time to overcome with our physical limitation
– Birth of man – Birth of technology
○ Our humanity is absolutely connected with technology
○ We are human because we created technology
○ Instrument of our evolution
– What is technology and what is humanity?
Koyaanisqatsi
– How technology is having an impact on who we are and how we become in the way we become?
Waking Life – About Evolution
Week 12: Final Discussion
Poster on OneNote: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AubnPln-kZ3NlS5s9DVq4OXuYGlO