Felix/Reader

Draft texts on Flusser: Towards a philosophy on photography

In Towards a Philosophy of Photography Vilem Flusser argues for the importance of a philosophy of photography and furthermore for this philosophy being significant for a philosophy on the modern, technical world. Therefore Flusser explains the distinct significance of photographic images as technical images, that differ from traditional images, and their facets of their creation, distribution, reception and inherent “universe”, that contribute to their distinctness. The term of apparatus for the camera forms an important part in this elaboration.

From Image to technical image

A first important property of photographic images is that they are likely to be understood as technical images. Technical images differ from what are just called images through their historic technical evolution. Beginning with an image, which’s terminology and meaning is derived from “imagination”: An image provides space for interpretation and can be ambiguous. It can be “scanned”, which means a synthesis of intentions that are manifested in the image and, belonging to the observer. Images were used for humans to understand the world. But as soon that is achieved the images stand in-between the humans and the world, obscuring instead of representing it. And, life becomes a function of images. At this point in the historical progression texts were used to, through “‘conceptual thinking’”, explain the images and through that the world behind them. But the growing complexity and dominance of texts resulted in a higher abstraction of both texts and images illustrating them.

Technical images were then invented to explain the abstracted texts. They were intended to speak a universal language, that everybody can understand equally and make “hermetic texts”, that are limited to a specific audience, capable of understanding their meaning. But these technical images did not bring images in the traditional sense back, but are images on a different level of abstraction: Technical images abstract from texts, that abstract from traditional images that abstract from the concrete world, whereas traditional images abstract from the concrete world directly. This is why they do not include the traditional magic of an image, but the magic of programming, which is why they are not able to “reduce culture to the lowest common denominator” but “grind up” in mass culture. They are differently created, through apparatuses, and have to be read differently because of their implemented additional layers in the process of creation.

The apparatus

What makes technical images distinct is their creation through apparatuses, which are cameras in case of photographic images. They differ from a tool by being invented through a product of culture, e.g. scientific texts. As a cultural object a camera is not a tool that creates consumer goods but a consumer product itself. This is because Flusser does not see the images it produces as a consumer good, what is the virtue of a tool, but as something that transmits information. The camera is not an extension of a human, as a tool is defined, but moreover, it involves its own programmed manners that interplay with the photographer.

The photographer is described as a “player” rather than a “worker”, because he_she is, no matter what his_her own intentions in creating the photograph are, “playing” with the camera to find the way the camera fulfils the intention of the photographer best. What the camera offers are a variety of symbols the player can get out of the device. An experienced photographer is therefore an experienced player, because he_she knows to play the game "best" and reaches the goal easier. A unity between photographer and camera merges, because they utilise each other to create an image. This unity is in search for now states of things/situations. The camera's interests thereby are to add another fragment to the universe of images and to get fed back with improvements in its own programs. The photographer's aim is to create and distribute a genuine new piece of information.

Information

From the terminology: Information: an improbable combinations of elements

In cultural analysis, Flusser asks to replace ‘work’ with ‘information’, because the post-industrial society is a “pure information society” (p. 52). This is argued throughout the book on the basis of photography. Photographs, he states, are the first post-industrial objects, because of them, for the first time, containing value differently, namely in the information they convey rather than their materiality. Their relation to ownership and value, ways of information-distribution and the attached distribution apparatus can be applied to any future concept of the post-industrial society. This is why information is a universally necessary aspect when arguing towards a philosophy of photography that is capable to serve as a “starting point for any philosophy engaging with the current and future existence of human beings.“ (p.75)

Informing objects

An object from the natural world is informed during its production, when it is brought from its natural habitat to the habitat of human beings. The information describes the extent to which the object is imprinted with a new, intentional form. Informed objects “acquire an unnatural, improbable form [and become] cultural.” (p. 23) The process of production is called "work", the object "a work". However the camera, which is an apparatus, is not informing the photograph it is producing: An apparatus is intending to change the meaning of the world (“symbolic”), rather than changing the world directly, which is the case for tools in the traditional sense. (p. 25) So referring to photographers, as well as “writers, painters, composers, book-keepers [and] managers” (p.25) and the objects they produce, Flusser asks to rethink the “categories of cultural criticism” and replace the category "work" with "information". The objects produced by the mentioned, include "books, paintings, scores, balance-sheets [and] plans”. They are not informed, but rather carry information: “They were not an end, but a means." Also photographs carry information, they distribute information.

Distributing information

Information is received, stored, passed on and created by human beings. Flusser calls this “mind”, specifically human, and further, that its resulting in culture, “i.e. improbably formed, informed objects.” (p. 49) “Communication” is, as Flusser states, the process of manipulation information, which consists of the creation of information (“dialogue”) and its subsequent distribution to memories, where it is stored in (“discourse”). (p. 49) Four methods of distribution are named: First, a sender to multiple-audience, formed as in a theatre, second, a distribution through a series of relay stations from sender to receiver, third a distribution through a dialogue, which enriches the information before it is passed on, and fourth, a transmission “into space, as on the radio.” Correspondences to “cultural situations” are clarified for each of the methods: First responsibility, second authority, third progress and fourth massification. “The distribution of photographs makes use of the fourth method“, because cameras are purely programmed for the transmission of information, Flusser states, and therefore the other methods do not apply within the camera’s programme, as valid for all image-creating apparatuses. (p. 50)

In practice, “gigantic complex apparatuses of photograph-distribution” (p. 53) reproduce and distribute photographs in various channels. These channels are structured, as Flusser describes the classification of information: “[I]nto indicative information of the type ‘A is A’, into imperative information of the type ‘A must be A’, and into optative information of the type ‘A may be A’.” For pure information these theoretical categories are influenced by each other. In case of photography they are more distinct. But nevertheless it is possible for a photograph to switch-over from one category to another and take a new significance each time it does so.

The pure information society

The materiality of a photograph is mistakenly interpreted as what carries the photographs value. This is not true, because photographs can be distributed by means of reproduction: From a camera negative as many copies as wanted can be produced, what makes the photograph as a thing practically without value: “Even though the last vestiges of materiality are attached to photographs, their value does not lie in the thing but in the information on their surface.“ (p. 51) This makes the photograph “the first of all post-industrial objects”, because “what characterizes the post-industrial [is that] [t]he information, and not the thing, is valuable.” In contrast to industrial objects, where the information cannot be detached from the object that carries it, the information of post-industrial objects such as a photograph can be easily detached and transferred to another carrier. This results in a new concept of ownership over the power of the information: Not the one who owns the photograph is in power, but the one who created it, i.e. “created the information it conveys.” (p. 52) This concept works for any traditional photograph and reaches its climax with digital photographs, because they do not even become materialised on the surface of an object.

Additional notes on Flusser

p. 52 power of reproduction shifts with sharing/socialmedia etc.

apparatus: feedback mechanism: aim of the apparatus is to encourage feedback

distribution apparatuses: impregnate photograph with decisive significance for its reception

p. 59 the more people take snaps, the more difficult it becomes to decode photographs

p. 60 illusion of reacting through interacting with photographs -> ritual acts

magical connection instead of assumed historical connection through depicted event

p. 62 reality is a symbol

p. 65 we are accustomed to permanently changing situation, although only redundant photographs appear: redundant photograph replaces another redundant photograph

p. 69 photographs consciously playing against the programme -> breakthrough

p. 70 summary of Universe

p. 72 work -> play through apparatuses

interest behind apparatus

apparatuses work for themselves not to follow human intention ( note: needs to be critisised)

p. 74 each aspect of photographic universe reflexts the programme of the apparatus

programmes obverser: act magically and functionally and automatically

p. 75 acts of liberation are assimilated by apparatuses and fed back into them

Philosophy of photography as basis for all future philosophical discourses