@misc{Lexicon of Arguments, title = {Quotation from: Lexicon of Arguments – Concepts - Ed. Martin Schulz, 28 Mar 2024}, author = {Flusser,Vilém}, subject = {Picture (Image)}, note = {Blask I 26 Picture/Flusser: Thesis: The human forgets that he was the one who created the pictures. Imagination turned into hallucination. >Imagination, >Hallucination. --- Flusser I 111 ff Picture/Flusser: Specific definition: (sur)face covered with symbols. Definition Picture: A picture is a reduction of the "concrete" four-dimensional relations to two dimensions. Cave paintings in Lascaux, for example, can be regarded as "prospective projections": their intention was probably not to depict "concrete situations" (such as anatomy lessons) but to create desired situations: to serve a hunting magic. They do not want to show what ponies are like, but what you have to do to hunt them. On the other hand, for example, there is little magic on a street map: it does not show how roads should be, but how they really are. And yet it has a "value", showing the driver what to do to get into town. Then they're good pictures. I 112 For example, Lascaux: they are "good pictures" if they help to a successful hunt, and they do so if they reproduce the anatomy of the ponies correctly. Many pictures are pleasingly designed surfaces, neither streets nor ponies, and these are commonly referred to as pictures. I 135 Picture/Flusser: Technical images/techno-images: Pictures that do not mean scenes, but texts: For example, equations that lead to atomic bombs consist of unimaginable symbols. Therefore, the text that these equations cannot be regarded as meaningless. But the atomic bomb itself is unimaginable in a strange sense. And the same applies to the TV, the car, in short, to most of our technical products. If such texts work, they lead to even more insane codes. I 137 ff Technical Images/techno-images: We believe we criticize films, we think we understand TV programs: this is a dangerous mistake. Decryption is much more difficult. Traditional Picture: Scene picture < human Techno-images: Scene > Picture > human Traditional pictures are made by people, technical pictures are made by devices. I 138 In the traditional picture, the causal chain between scene and picture is interrupted by the human being. The technical images' causal chain is not interrupted, the technical image is a direct consequence of the scene, but there is no causal chain between reality and picture. The naïve belief that one does not have to learn to decipher cinema posters or advertisements contributes to the alienation that these pictures cause. Technical Text ↔ Apparatus Operator ↔ techno-image >Alienation, >Understanding, >Interpretation, >Interpretation("Deutung"). I 139 Def techno-images/Flusser: technical images are (sur)faces covered with symbols, which mean symbols of linear texts. For example, an X-ray of the broken arm is for the doctor both a map and a model of how the arm is to be treated, i.e. "prospective" and it is "beautiful" insofar as it is true and good. >Symbols, >Text. The specificity of the technical images is not to be found in the method of production (by apparatus) nor in the material (cathode tubes). Technical images are like all images symbols, but they do not mean scenes like traditional images, they mean concepts. Def techno-images: means terms, means texts. >Concepts. In this respect, traditionally created pictures are also technical images insofar they mean concepts: blueprints, diagrams, curves in statistics, etc. Strange kinship of technical images with ideograms: both are images that mean concepts. However, "concept" does not have the same meaning in both cases. >Meaning, >Meaning/intending. For example, one "feels" that the number "2", i.e. an ideogram, is a completely different kind of symbol than e.g. the photography of a bra in advertising, i.e. a technical image, although both terms mean. The essentially important of the technical codes always melts between the fingers. Ideogram translation into alphabetical code. "Two and two is four" and 2+2=4: the first seems to be the description of the second. We have the tendency to see to see pictorial scriptures in ideogrammatic codes, although they are linear. "2+2=4" is not the picture of a linear situation, however! It is the description of a scene! >Numbers, >Numerals. I 141 Ideograms: are not images but symbols of the type "letter". Def Scene: non-linear. Def Text: linear. Def ideograms: concepts which mean pictures. I 142 Ideograms are like technical picture above language. For example, you can also be translated with "Two and two makes four" and "Buy a bra!". Traditional pictures are "under language". They're being discussed. Although people can communicate with images, the belief that they are "generally understandable"is wrong. I 143 techno-images: the translation of technical images lies in a completely different direction beyond the spoken language than the translation of H20 into "water". "P", for example, means "Parking permitted" at first glance, but this new type of code has to destroy the alphabet over time. >Translation. Even if the "P" is replaced by the pictogram of a car. It could also be replaced by a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. >Convention. The way we learn to follow them is a different way than the way we learn mathematical formulas or alphabetical texts. >Learning. I 146 Technical pictures mean texts. For example, photography in the electron microscope depicts physical texts, the film depicts relationships from a film script, the statistical curve depicts relationships that set up economic texts with regard to an economic tendency. Technical codes a) Posters: directly understandable b) X-ray image: must be decoded. For example, when we hit the brake at a red traffic light, we do not pretend to read a text, but to see a picture where a foot hits a brake pedal. (See also Code/Flusser and Technology/Flusser). I 162 Techno-images/Flusser: only archeologists or biologists, astronomers or physicists use technical images "correctly", namely as symbols of concepts. Picture/Flusser: Video art does not provide technical images. Because they are not images there for concepts. I 163 Misbelief: technical images are codes of the mass media. Society is only interested in technical images that are broadcast amphitheatrically, and is left completely cold by the art discussion. >Society, >Art, >Aesthetics.}, note = { Fl I V. Flusser Kommunikologie Mannheim 1996 Blask I Falko Blask Jean Baudrillard zur Einführung Hamburg 2013 Fl I V. Flusser Kommunikologie Mannheim 1996 }, file = {http://philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com/listview-details.php?id=831962} url = {http://philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com/listview-details.php?id=831962} }