This article analyzes how the medical gaze made possible by MRI operates in radiological laboratories. It argues that although computer-assisted medical imaging technologies such as MRI shift radiological analysis to the realm of cyborg visuality, radiological analysis continues to depend on visualization produced by other technologies and diagnostic inputs. In the radiological laboratory, MRI is used to produce diverse sets of images of the internal parts of the body to zero in and visually extract the pathology. Visual extraction of pathology (...) becomes possible, however, because of the visual training of the radiologists in understanding and interpreting anatomic details of the whole body. These two levels of viewing constitute the bifocal vision of the radiologists. To make these levels of viewing work complementarily, the body, as it is presented in the body atlases, is made notational. (shrink)

Advertisements for high-technology products and services visualize processes and phenomena which are unvisualizable, such as globalization, networks, and information. We turn our attention specifically to the case of nanotechnology advertisements, using an approach that combines visual and sonic culture. Just as phenomena such as complexity and networks have become established in everyday discourse, nanotechnology seizes the social imaginary by establishing its own aesthetic conventions. Elaborating Raymond Williams’ concept of structures of feeling, we show that in visualizing nanotechnology, its stakeholders employ (...) spaces, verbs, and objects of feeling. These favorable nanotechnology structures of feeling are woven into the social imaginary, recursively producing the reality they describe. (shrink)

Scientists use visualisations of different kinds in a variety of ways in their scientific work. In the following article, we will take a closer look at the use of photographic pictures as scientific evidence. In accordance with Patrick Maynard’s thesis, photography will be regarded as a family of technologies serving different purposes in divergent contexts. One of these is its ability to detect certain phenomena. Nonetheless, with regard to the philosophical thesis of theory-ladenness of observation, we encounter certain reservations concerning (...) the status of photography and that of photographic pictures in the process of measurement in science. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is twofold: We will discuss suggested solutions both for the technological and for the psychological part of the problem of theory-ladenness appearing in the context of the use of photography in scientific observations. The essential proposal will be to follow Christian Suhm in his advice to make a distinction between theory-relativity and theory-ladenness. (shrink)

El giro crítico del arte conceptual en los años sesenta, la subsiguiente aparición de estrategias de hibridación y escenificación a finales de los setenta y, en paralelo, la institucionalización de la fotografía con su entrada al museo y el surgimiento de un pujante mercado fotográfico, constituyen el caldo de cultivo en el que se gesta la demanda de la teoría de la fotografía como disciplina con identidad epistemológica propia. Esta demanda se hizo explícita a través de las iniciativas llevadas a (...) cabo por Rosalind Krauss y Annette Michelson en el número 5 de la revista October en 1978, por Alan Trachtenberg en Classic Essays on Photography en 1980 y de modo más categórico por Victor Burgin en Thinking Photography en 1982. El presente artículo analiza los argumentos y posiciones intelectuales sobre la necesidad de articular un discurso teórico sobre fotografía, así como los aspectos epistemológicos y sociales asociados a la idea de teoría subyacente en cada una de las propuestas. Por último, se realiza una breve aproximación al ámbito teórico español a través de la publicación en 1984 del libro Estética fotográfica y en 1997 de El beso de Judas, ambos de Joan Fontcuberta. (shrink)

The controversy over imageless thought versus picture thinking , with the recent reconsideration of model-based reasoning in the physical sciences is briefly examined. The main focus of the article is on the role of instrumentally elicited images in the sciences, especially in the physical sciences, with special reference to optics, experimental particle physics and observational astronomy, against the background of the civilization of digital images, though to some degree every scientific discipline is implicated. Imaging, today chiefly in the mode of (...) electronic digital visual imaging, reaches into every phase of scientific inquiry, observational, experimental, simulational, even in mathematical research. The combination of algorithms and image-intensive science with the plethora of big data results in an epistemic pattern of "mathematical imagism". The epistemological issues regarding the image-intensiveness as of data-intensiveness of scientific research deserve further probing, in pursuance of the discussions of the ideal of mechanical objectivity in machine vision versus trained judgment in the selection and assessment of scientific images: as for now tacitly we depend on conventions regarding what we called "warranted imageability". (shrink)

Everyday (mis)uses of deepfakes define prevailing conceptualizations of what they are and the moral stakes in their deployment. But one complication in understanding deepfakes is that they are not photographic yet nonetheless manipulate lens-based recordings with the intent of mimicking photographs. The harmfulness of deepfakes, moreover, significantly depends on their potential to be mistaken for photographs and on the belief that photographs capture actual events, a tenet known as the transparency thesis, which scholars have somewhat ironically attacked by citing digital (...) imaging techniques as counterexamples. Combining these positions, this paper sets out two core points: (1) that conceptions about the nature of photography introduce imperatives about its uses; and (2) that popular cultural understandings of photography imply normative ideas that infuse our encounters with deepfakes. Within this, I further raise the question of what moral ground deepfakes occupy that allows them to have such a potentially devastating effect. I show that answering this question involves reinstating the notion that photographs are popularly conceived of as transparent. The rejoinder to this argument, however, is that to take the sting out of deepfakes we must, once again, become skeptical of the veracity of all images, including photoreal ones. This kind of critical mindedness was warranted before the invention of photography for both pictorial imprints and written accounts from various media sources. Given this, along with the fact that photographic trickery is nothing new, deepfakes need not push us into a post-truth epistemic abyss, for they imply a decidedly old turn. (shrink)

This essay examines Gaspar Noë's film, Enter the Void, in light of the work of both Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou. Arguing that the film shows to viewers the 'void' that separates subjects from objects, the essay also considers Noë's film in the light of drug literature and the altered states induced by cinema and describe by Anna Powell. Finally, the essay proposes that Enter the Void is a work of 'unbecoming' cinema, which in turn points to expansion of cinematic (...) form through the use of digital technologies. (shrink)

There is a sustained phenomenological tradition of describing the character of photographic pictorial experience to consist in part of a feeling of contact with the subject of the photograph. Philosophers disagree, however, about the exact cause of the ‘contact phenomenon’ and whether there is a difference in the phenomenal character between the pictorial experiences of photographs and handmade pictures so that, if a viewer mistakes the type that a token image belongs to, their sense of contact can alter. I argue (...) that the contact phenomenon is contingent upon, and triggered by, the viewer’s perceptual experience of the image, which may be subject to change depending upon how a viewer attends to an image. I develop a hybrid account to resolve how the perceptual and cognitive aspects of a viewer’s experience interact and produce the complex phenomenology, including conflicting mental states, that a viewer can undergo during the described experiences. (shrink)

Are we really sure to correctly know what do we feel in front ofan artwork and to correctly verbalize it? How do we know what weappreciate and why we appreciate it? This paper deals with the problem ofintrospective opacity in aesthetics (that is, the unreliability of self-knowledge) in the light of traditional philosophical issues, but also of recentpsychological insights, according to which there are many instances ofmisleading intuition about one’s own mental processes, affective states orpreferences. Usually, it is assumed that (...) aesthetic statements are intuitivelyclear and self-evident. However, a long tradition in psychological researchhas called the idea of introspective transparency and the infallibility of self-knowledge into question (Wilson 2002). This topic has only recently beenrecognized as an interesting problem in aesthetics (Melchionne 2011, Irvin2014). In this paper I will discuss the main shortcomings in introspective self-knowledge, mostly referring to psychological findings. As a consequence, thedevelopment of a folk psychological account of aesthetic experience could beneeded, investigating how people develop intuitive and naïve theories abouttheir aesthetic reactions, taste, and feelings, distinct from a more objectiveand empirically grounded account of how judgment and preferences areactually formed in ourselves, even on a neurobiological level. However, itwill also be argued that bypassing the individual judgment and his expressedchoices in favor of allegedly more objective levels of description would notbe an innocent step to take. (shrink)

The idea that photographs can be explained as traces made by the things they depict has been a recurring paradigm in theories about the nature of the photographic medium. Walter Benjamin, Charles Sanders Peirce, Susan Sontag, Andre Bazin and Roland Barthes are a few of the many theorists who have used the paradigm of the trace to explain the nature of photographs. The paradigm can also be argued to have been a significant influence in the work of prominent artists such (...) as Gerhard Richter, Adam Fuss and Cornelia Parker whose work has explored the photographic medium. Through an exegesis and accompanying photobook this thesis addresses the question as to why the trace has proven to be such an enduring paradigm for explaining the nature of photographs, and how the paradigm can be perceived in art practice in recent decades. The subject of the photograph as a trace is investigated through conducting a review of the history of theoretical uses of the paradigm of the trace to explain the nature of photography. The work of visual artists whose practice can be seen as in agreement with or in opposition to these theoretical approaches was also reviewed. In conjunction with this research a series of photographic works was produced using alternative photographic techniques including pinhole photography, photographs and techniques combining digital film projection and phosphorescent plates. Seeing photographs as traces links these forms of image making to one of humanity’s earliest “discoveries”, the ability to interpret traces found in nature. Through such a connection photographs can be seen as a continuation of humanity’s ability to read traces and thereby understand and deal with the passage of time, to buttress processes of memory and belief. This thesis thereby explores a key means through which the photographic object is explained and understood, at a time when the use of photographs as a means of documenting and understanding the world is expanding at an exponential rate. (shrink)

Images share a common feature with all phenomena of imagination, since they make us aware of what is not present or what is fictional and not existent at all. From this perspective, the philosophical approach of Kendall Lewis Walton—born in 1939 and active since the 1960s at the University of Michigan—is perhaps one of the most notable contributions to image theory. Walton is an authoritative figure within the tradition of analytical aesthetics. His contributions have had a considerable influence on a (...) broad range of topics, such as the role of categories in the understanding of the arts (Walton, “Categories of Art”. Philosophical Review, 79(3): 334–367, 1970), the ambiguous nature of emotions in the experience of fictional stories (Walton, “Fearing Fictions”. The Journal of Philosophy, 75(1): 5–25, 1978), the transparency of photographic images compared to other depictions (Walton, “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism”. Noûs, 18(1): 67–72, 1984) and, above all, the development of a general theory of fiction as imaginative activity. His 1990 book Mimesis as Make-believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts collects and re-elaborates articles Walton published on the subject since the 1970s. Though he does not attempt to give a definitive answer for what imagination is, Walton thoroughly investigates its role in all cases of representational works, describing depictions as a specific case of “make-believe” activity: images, in short, are specific props of a visual and perceptual “make-believe” game. (shrink)

Desde una respuesta tentativa a la pregunta qué es una imagen se busca establecer el modo en que pensamos en, con y contra las imágenes. Se concentra la indagación en dos tipos particulares de imágenes, las generadas por el aparato digital, con el fin de articular conceptualmente el modo en que las imágenes cobran sentido y cómo dicho sentido surge desde el estatuto ontológico que encierra dicho aparato en particular. Desde una respuesta operativa y desde el concepto de modo de (...) imaginar se propone que el modo de pensar en, con y contra las imágenes es una disputa política por controlar el modo de aparecer en las imágenes, es decir, por el control del plano estético y ontológico que encierra dicho aparecer. Dicha disputa política en el aparato digital se instala contemporáneamente en torno al objeto fascista de la representación. (shrink)