Towards A Philosophy of Photography

Vilem Flusser – Towards a philosophy of photography Reaktion Books 2000 96 pages

Introductionary notes

2 fundamental turning points in human culture can be obsverved: - The invention of linear writing (2500BC) - The invention of technical images (now)

Image – Text – History – Technical Image

Circular time of magic toward linear time of history

Hypothesis

The structure of culture is undergoing a fundamental change

Aim of the book

Make a contribution informed by philosophy to the debate on the subject of photography.

The image

Images are significant surfaces. The significance of images is on the surface (really?) Imagination is the ability to abstract surfaces out of space and time and to project them back into space and time. “The ability to encode phenomena into two-dimensional symbols and to read these symbols”p8. To reconstruct the abstracted dimensions, one has to “scan” the image: wandering and feeling over the surface. Scanning reveals the synthesis of two intentions: the structure of the image, the observer’s intention. Images are connotative complexes of symbols: they provide space for interpretation. The world isn’t directly accessible to human beings: images are needed to make it comprehensible. Images stand between human and the world, like maps (representation) and screens (dissimulation). From representation to dissimulation. Human becomes a function of the images. Human stop decoding and project them still encoded. Imagination has become Hallucination. Technical images are restructuring our reality into a “global image scenario”. Amnesia: human forget they created the images = the alienation of human being from their images = happened around 2500BC.

“They attempted to tear down the screens showing the image in order to clear a path into the world behind it. Their method was to tear the elements of the images (pixels) from the surface and arrange them into lines: they invented linear writing. They thus transcoded the circular time of magic into the linear time of history. This was the beginning of ‘historical consciousness’ an ‘history’ in the narrower sense (reductive?)’’p10

Historical consciousness – Linear time Magic – Circular time

Writing brings ‘’conceptual thinking’’ which consisted of abstracting lines from surfaces: producing and decoding them. Conceptual thought is more abstract than imaginative thought. “texts do not signify the world; they signify the images they tear up. Hence, to decode texts means to discover the images signified by them. The intention of texts is to explain images, while that of concepts is to make ideas comprehensible. In this way, texts are a metacode of images’’ p11

The question of the relation between texts and images. Evolution. Dialectical struggle. “Christianity struggled against paganism, it absorbed images and itself began pagan” Science vs Ideology = Science absorbed ideas and became ideological Text explains images but images also illustrate text. Conceptual thinking analyzes magical thought in order to clear it out of the way, but magical thought creeps into conceptual thought, Conceptual and Imaginative are reinforcing one another. Images became more conceptual, and texts became more imaginative. Conceptual images found in computer. Imagination found in scientific text.

Idolatry Textolatry: Christianity, Marxism = Faithfulness to the text, text is applied onto human life, life as a function of text.

If Texts become uncomprehensible, 19th century, history came to an end, there is nothing left to explain.

History is a progressive transcoding of images into concepts, a progressive disenchantment (taking the magic out of things), a progressive process of comprehension.

In order to make texts comprehensible again, technical images were invented, to put the text back under magic spell and overcome the crisis of history.

The Technical Image

“The technical image is an image produced by apparatuses.”p14 Image---(Pre-Historic)Text---Scientific text---Apparatus---Technical Image (Post-Historic)

“Ontologically, traditional images signify concepts whereas technical images signify phenomena”p14

Technical images are produced by means of optical, chemical and mechanical devices. They appear to be “objective” representations of the world, apparently non-symbolic. They are symptoms (an indication of the existence of something). They are on the “same level of reality as their significance”.p15

Their objectivity is an illusion. They are met-codes of texts. Like all images they represent abstract complexes of symbols. We see concepts. They are concepts encoded in a new way. “The imagination that produce them involves the ability to transcode concepts to images”p15

“any criticism of technical images must be aimed at an elucidation of its inner workings”p15

“The different between ancient and modern magic can be stated as follows: Prehistoric magic is a ritualization of models known as ‘myths’; current magic is a ritualization of models known as ‘programs’” p17

“The function of technical images is to liberate their receivers by magic from the necessity of thinking conceptually”p17

Photograph was the first technical image. The invention of photography is as decisive as the invention of writing. - Ref possible: The power of Images, The Dehumanization of Art

“Culture divided into three branches: that of fine arts fed with traditional images which were, however, conceptually and technically enriched; that of science and technology fed with hermetic texts; and that of the broad strata of society fed with cheap texts. To prevent culture breaking up, technical images were invented- as a code that was to be valid for the whole of society”.p18

In a way first technical images are the lowest common denominator for art, science and politics (universal values)

The Apparatus Extracts:

Technical images are produced by apparatuses. Roughly speaking, two kinds of cultural objects can be distinguished: the ones that are good for consumption (consumer goods) and the ones that are good for producing consumer goods (tools) Tools in the usual sense tear objects from the natural world in order to bring them to the place (produce them) where the human being is. In this process they change the form of these objects: They imprint a new, intentional form onto them. They 'inform' them: The object acquires an unnatural, improbable form; it becomes cultural. This production and information of natural objects is called 'work' and its result is called 'a work' Tools in the usual sense are extensions of human organs: extended teeth, fingers, hands, arms, legs. They simulate the organ they are extended from: An arrow simulates the fingers, a hammer the fist, a pick the toe. They are 'empirical'. When tools in the usual sense became machines, their relationship to human beings was reversed. The size and high price of machines meant that only capitalists were able to own them. Most human beings worked as a function of machines: the proletariat. The basic category of industrial society is work: Tools and machines work by tearing objects from the natural world and informing them, i.e. changing the world. But apparatuses do not work in that sense. Their intention is not to change the world but to change the meaning of the world. Their intention is symbolic. Therefore in cultural analysis the category 'work' must be replaced by the category 'infor- mation'. If one considers the camera (and apparatuses in general) in this sense, one sees that the camera produces symbols: symbolic surfaces that have in a certain way been prescribed for it. The camera is programmed to produce photographs, and every photograph is a realization of one of the possibilities contained within the program of the camera. With every (informative) photograph, the photographic program becomes poorer by one possibility while the photographic universe becomes richer by one realization. Unlike manual workers surrounded by their tools and industrial workers standing at their machines, photographers are inside their apparatus and bound up with it. This is a new kind of function in which human beings are neither the constant nor the variable but in which human beings and apparatus merge into a unity. It is therefore appropriate to call photographers functionaries. The camera illustrates this robotization of work and this liberation of human beings for play There are therefore two interweaving programs in the camera. One of them motivates the camera into taking pictures; the other one permits the photographer to play Every program functions as a function of a meta- program and the programmers of a program are functionaries of this metaprogram. Power has moved from the owner of objects to the programmer and the operator. These reflections make it possible to attempt the following definition of the term 'apparatus': It is a complex plaything, so complex that those playing with it are not able to get to the bottom of it; its game consists of combinations of the symbols contained within its program; at the same time this program was installed by a metaprogram and the game results in further programs; whereas fully automated apparatuses can do without human intervention, many apparatuses require the human being as a player and a functionary This tendency to subordinate thinking in letters to thinking in numbers has been the norm in scientific discourse since Descartes All apparatuses (not just computers) are calculating machines and in this sense 'artificial intelligences', the camera included