how does boyah feel about the following excerpt?

[strongbad]

http://modvisart.blogspot.com/2006/11/v-flusser-image-technical-image.html

the introduction for a couple of books that i had to read for my eng 335 class (augmented reality  )

he uses a lot of abstract concepts and analogies, but it's an interesting perspective on the way that we percieve media and does a good job explaining how technical images project lots o bias

[strongbad]

btw somebody should move this to philosophy

[Hippopo]

TL;DR:  Fussler is an authoritative douche who vaguely defines "image", and fails to understand that "text" is a visual representation of auditory language.  Text is not a visual representation of visual representations like he claims.  Thus his primary relationship crumbles.

-----

Well....

Fussler has outlined the foundation for a interesting idea, but he fails to articulate any convincing arguments.  This is because he does not understand the relationship between images and text.  In fact, it seems he is confused about what these terms are and how they relate to humanity.

Let's take a closer examination so I can present this more clearly.  According to Fussler, "images" are "significant" 2-D "surfaces"  that signify the "out there," abstract the "out there," and make the "out there" understandable to us.  I believe this can be described differently;  Images are visual 2-D renderings of worldly particulars, and they allow humans to access an understanding of these particulars.  I assume he is talking about drawings and cave paintings, but I am not sure.  His terminology is a bit vague here.

Regardless of his vagueness, this creates the assumption that humans cannot access any worldly particulars without the aid of images.  In fact, he explicitly states this:

"Man "ek-sists," which means that he has no immediate access to the world. Images are meant to render the world accessible and imaginable to man."

This premise seems to be ungrounded, and needs to be put under scrutiny.  What is preventing man from accessing the immediate world?  How do images provide a different type of access for mankind?  How can humans access images but not any other particulars of the world?  

It seems that images truly are "significant" if not a completely unique objects in the universe.  After all, it is the only object human beings seem to have access to (with the possible exception to text). Unfortunately Fussler fails to answer any of these concerns.

However, he does scrape the surface of something interesting.  Let me quote:

"The world becomes image-like, a context of scenes and situations. This re­versal of the function of images may be called "idolatry," and we cart[sic] currently see how this comes about: omnipresent technical images have begun magically to restructure "reality" into an image-like scenario."

In this passage, Fussler is talking about the prehistoric man in relation to images.  Personally I believe he does not have the authority to do this.  However, this passage is interesting to think about. Personally, I cannot imagine people idolizing the Fusslerian image in the sense of 2-D renderings.  This would be absurd.  It would be akin to saying the Mona Lisa or any great painted masterpiece shielded mankind from actual reality.  But I can see "image" in this sense equating to a more Sartreian understanding of first negation.  But alas, I shall not go into detail with that here.

To continue, Fussler makes another authoritative claim that mankind created linear writing in response to the "screening" of the "out there" by "images."  With the advent of linear writing, mankind also miraculously gained the ability to conceptualize.  

This cannot illustrate more perfectly Fussler's elementary understanding of mankind.  Conceptualization needs to be a precursor to written language.  This is because language alone cannot exist without a way to conceptualize.  In fact, images cannot exist without mankind's ability to conceptualize.  I cannot fathom how Fussler came to this conclusion.

But perhaps I am being too harsh.  Maybe Fussler just has a failed understanding of vocabulary and does not know what conceptualization actually is.  So perhaps we should instead only refer to it in Fusslerlian terms.  That is: "the capaci­ty to abstract lines from surfaces, to produce and to decipher texts."  In other words, he's describing the ability to "read"...

Now let us turn our attention to "text":

"Texts do not mean the world, but the images which they tear up."

Fussler wants to make the claim that text is one step further removed from the world than images, and both are in a unique relationship with each other.  He does this by saying that text represents images.  Again, according to his 2-D rendering definition of the word "image", this would be absurd.  Text does not refer to images, but to auditory symbols.  They are nothing more than visual representations to auditory language.  Surprisingly, Fussler doesn't recognize this fact.  He clings to the idea that text represents only images.  In actuality, text is nothing more than an image itself.

Perhaps it is one step further removed from an image.  After all, it is derives from language, and language derives from the "out there."  But still, the unique relationship between images and text that Fussler describes does not exist.

And thus his theory seems to collapse.

And even if I am mistaken, arguments such as this:

"As Christ­ianity fights paganism, it absorbs images and itself grows pagan. As science fights ideologies, it absorbs images and itself grows ideologi­cal."

or...

"Textolatry reached a critical stage in the 19th century. In the strictest sense, this was the end of history."

Are mere hearsay in his article and are without any proof or examples.  It is therefore impossible to come to the conclusion history came to an end in the 19th century, and that any shift in humanity will take place in the near future from these premises.

Peace~

[Hippopo]

PS: I thought that article was lame.  I only read part one though... I didn't really want to continue.

[strongbad]

lol wow that was harsh
i agree that he is a little too abstract and i think that can lead to a lot of misunderstandings.
that was actually an awesome analysis on some of it, since i'm currently writing a 5 page essay based loosely around the concepts mentioned in this excerpt

i'm not a huge fan of flusser in general. by the way, that first section that you read is just a preface for his main idea

[snoorkel]

The specific capacity to abstract planes form the space-time "out there," and to re-project this abstraction back "out there" might be called "imagination." It is the capacity to produce and decipher images, the capacity to codify phenomena in two-dimensional symbols, and then to decode such symbols.

disgusting

The meaning of the image as it is disclosed by scanning, then, is the synthesis of two intentions: the one manifest in the image itself, the other in the observer.

disgusting

Such space-time as reconstructed from images is proper to magic, where everything repeats itself and where everything partakes of meaningful context. The world of magic is structurally different from the world of historical linearity, where nothing ever repeats itself, where-everything is an effect of causes and will become a cause of further effects. For example, in the/historical world, sunrise is the cause of the; cock's crowing; in the 'magical world, sunrise means crowing 'and'1 crowing means sunrise. Images have magical meaning.

disgusting

Images are mediations between man and world. 'Man "ek-sists," which means that he has no immediate access to the world. Images are meant to render the world accessible and imaginable to man. But, even as they do so, they interpose themselves between man and the world. They are meant to be maps, and they become screens/ Instead of pre­senting the world to man, they re-present it, put themselves in place of the world, to the extent that man lives as a function of the images he has produced. He no longer deciphers them, but projects them back into the world "out there" without having deciphered them. The world becomes image-like, a context of scenes and situations. This re­versal of the function of images may be called "idolatry," and we cart currently see how this comes about: omnipresent technical images have begun magically to restructure "reality" into an image-like scenario. What is involved here is a kind of oblivion. Man forgets that he prod­uces images in order to find his way in the world; he now tries to find his way in images. He no longer deciphers his own images, but lives in their function. Imagination has become hallucination.

this part seems drastically more relevant than the rest, but I don't think it is his thought, lol

The present is not the first time that this inner dialectics of image mediation has taken on critical dimensions. In the course of the second millennium, B.C., man became equally alienated from his images. Some men then tried to recall the original intention behind images. They attempted to destroy the screen in order to open the way to the world again. Their method was to tear the image elements out from the surface and to align them. They invented linear writing. In doing so, they transcoded the circular time of magic into the linear time of history. They created "historical consciousness" and history in the proper meaning of the term. Ever since, historical consciousness has been committed to a struggle against magical consciousness, and we may observe this commitment against images in the Jewish prophets and some Greek philosophers, more especially in Plato.

I vomited

The struggle between texts and images poses the question of the relationship between text and image. It is the central question of histo­ry. In the Middle Ages, the question took the form of the struggle be­tween Christian fidelity to texts against the idolatry of the heathens. In modernity, the question takes the form of the struggle between textual science and imaginary ideologies...

painful


mostly it seems airy to me, more "hypertext criticism" bs by people who think they're cool because they say 'meta-codes' and 'transcode' a lot. some of the stuff he says is pretty Ok but the whole premise he's going on is meaningless to me. like this:

Textolatry reached a critical stage in the 19th century. In the strictest sense, this was the end of history. History, in this strict sense, is the progressive transcoding of images into concepts, progressive explanation of Images, progressive demagicification, progressive conceptualization. Where texts are no longer imaginable, there is nothing more to explain, and history ceases.

wtf this means nothing???


//

lol wow that was harsh
i agree that he is a little too abstract and i think that can lead to a lot of misunderstandings.
that was actually an awesome analysis on some of it, since i'm currently writing a 5 page essay based loosely around the concepts mentioned in this excerpt

i'm not a huge fan of flusser in general. by the way, that first section that you read is just a preface for his main idea

I think the problem is that he's not nearly abstract enough. that excerpt was painful to read because of how polar his thinking is, like

"The struggle between texts and images poses the question of the relationship between text and image. It is the central question of histo­ry. In the Middle Ages, the question took the form of..."
"Their method was to tear the image elements out from the surface and to align them. They invented linear writing. In doing so, they transcoded the circular time of magic into the linear time of history..."


I kind of agree with his ideas about "technical images" degrading the value the "real truth" in text, but I think he fails to gauge the syncretic nature of history and does a lot more to divide things in his philosophy than unify them. it seems like a bland summary of hegel's or heidegger's views on perceiver-object relationships, in the most brutally objective terms. maybe he is a victim of technical image-induced illiteracy lol

[Hippopo]

I agree with Snorkil.  This articles has a faint undertone of phenomenology.  I think there might be a some value to this article, but his style of argumentation is horrible.

Honestly, does anyone else get the feeling that he was trying too hard to sound smart?

[Socks]

i can't even bring myself to read that, and that ought to tell you something.

[snoorkel]

I agree with Snorkil.  This articles has a faint undertone of phenomenology.  I think there might be a some value to this article, but his style of argumentation is horrible.

Honestly, does anyone else get the feeling that he was trying too hard to sound smart?

I think he was just trying a little too hard to sound modern. apparently he died in 1991, so the last fascinating world-changing thing he saw before being annihilated was the rapid spread of personal computers and electronic text... that's what it sounds like, a 60-70 yo writing dumbfounded by technology. but failing to see the actual philosophical value of technology