Technical picture
As technical picture or techno image of the designated media theorist Vilém Flusser of equipment produced images as distinct from "traditional" images, which he sees as intellectual, man-made translations.
Technical images as a stage in cultural history
Flusser's theory of technical images is embedded in a historical model of cultural history or media genealogy , in the course of which people continue to perform more and more abstractions. In his book Ins Universum der Technische Bilder , Flusser names five stages of cultural history (pp. 10-14):
1. The "level of concrete experience" that the "nature man" has in common with the animal.
2. The "level of grasping and handling", at which the human being confronts certain objects and uses and processes them in a targeted manner.
3. The level of traditional images. Traditional images are based on the fact that people step back from an object they have looked at and imagine it as an image , in order to then translate this imagination back into an external image. Traditional pictures are drawings and paintings. Sculptures and sculptures are also based on this principle.
4. The “level of comprehension, of narration, the historical level”, which is based on the invention of linear writing. Flusser understands linear writing as a counter-principle to the image. According to Flusser, image and text are in constant struggle with one another. The epoch of linear history , which ranges from the original narratives of the Bible to the modern concept of history as progress (for example in Hegel ), is only a historical intermediate stage for Flusser, although a significant one, measured against the much longer tradition of images.
5. The level of technical images is based on the ability to “calculate and compute”, that is, on the technical achievement of the devices and computers . Technical images differ from traditional images in that they are not based on an act of imagination, but on the automatic system of an apparatus. Insofar as the apparatus must be viewed as the result of scientific theories, technical images are therefore “indirect products of scientific texts” ( For a philosophy of photography , p. 13).
Flusser describes the process of cultural history as increasing abstraction and “the alienation of man from the concrete” ( Ins Universum der Technische Bilder , p. 10). He describes the first stage as belonging to a “ four-dimensional space - time”, while the second stage only includes three dimensions . The traditional images move in two dimensions (the surface), and the linear text with its principle of arranging letters in a line is one-dimensional . With the technical image, mankind has reached the most abstract stage in cultural history: “zero-dimensionality”. Technical images are made up of pixels , dots that condense into shapes (“swarms of particles”). They can no longer be understood and understood , but can only be calculated or calculated. ( Into the universe of technical images , p. 14).
Characteristic of technical images
The difference between technical and traditional images can be determined by the way they are produced: “Pre-modern images [are] products of craftsmanship ( works of art ), post-modern [are] products of technology ” ( Medienkultur , p. 22). In communicology , Flusser restricts this definition when he points out that techno-images are “not only technically generated images […], but also more or less traditionally generated images, if they mean terms” ( Communicology , p. 140).
Examples of technical images are photographs , moving images , video tapes , curves in statistics , diagrams , microfilms , slides , traffic signs as well as blueprints and sketches . ( Communicology , p. 140)
Images and realism
With his theory of the technical image, Flusser's theory of the technical image goes against the common notion that photographs reflect their photographed object almost suddenly. Technical images are by no means to be understood as symptoms or indices of a reality , as was long claimed for photography. They are not unmediated images of an external nature , but always conveyed through "apparatus programs" - even if you can no longer see it in the finished picture. They are not closer to nature than traditional images, but even further away from it.
For Flusser, technical images can only be adequately deciphered if one can decipher the “texts” behind them; Their understanding is therefore only possible on a technical, calculatory level. However, if you try to understand technical images like traditional images, you will ultimately remain blind to them, according to Flusser.
In contrast to this, a media theory oriented towards art and cultural studies sees specific production techniques implemented in the supposedly “traditional” image forms, which are inscribed in the image product (Bredekamp et al. 2008); In return, devices and arrangements are also subject to a paradigm of visualization, design and reproduction derived from visual culture .
See also
literature
- Vilém Flusser: For a philosophy of photography . Göttingen: European Photography 1983. ISBN 3923283482
- ders .: Into the universe of technical images . Göttingen: European Photography 1990. ISBN 3-923283-43-1
- ders., points of view. Texts on photography . Göttingen: European Photography 1998. ISBN 3923283490
- ders., Communicology , Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 1998. ISBN 3596133890
- ders., Medienkultur , Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 1997. ISBN 3596133866
- Oliver Bidlo : Vilém Flusser. Introduction . Essen: Oldib Verlag 2008. ISBN 978-3-939556-07-7
- Horst Bredekamp , Birgit Schneider, Vera Dünkel: The technical picture. Compendium on a style history of scientific images . Berlin: Academy 2008
- Kersten Reich u. a .: media and constructivism. An introduction to simulation as communication . Münster: Waxmann 2005, ISBN 3-8309-1450-4