“Listening to the image: photography between representation and discourse” presented by Rubinstein
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Posthumanism II
Presentation Title:
- Listening to the image: photography between representation and discourse
Presenter(s):
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Abstract:
Abstract
From Aristotle’s proposition that the soul never thinks without a mental image, to Kant’s call for non-representational ‘image-less’ rational thinking, and to the more recent attempts by post-modern philosophers1 to find dialectical solidarity between image-based, rational thinking and mathematical metaphysics, the exploration of the link between human thought and images has been an influential creative catalyst of Western philosophy and visual culture. In the present age of New Media and the worldwide web when images are stored and transmitted electronically as binary files, the question of whether thought can be expressed as (digital) image acquires new urgent significance, particularly given the mobile transmission, immersive gaming and virtual archiving that now become basic ingredients to our everyday lives. The question becomes: where can we locate the materiality of digital photographic images transmitted in rapid volleys across networks, shared between computers and beamed from one handheld device to another? How does materiality of the image emerge in an environment that no longer requires any concrete, physical presence?
