Ron
Burnett (President of Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver, and
Artist/Designer at the New Media Innovation Center), in How Images Think
starts a reflection about digital images. The ecology of world of images is
changed by the advent of digital images. That leads us to reconsider image. In
effect, digital images do not fit anymore with the traditional conception of
images as objects placed in front a passive spectator. In the digital world,
spectators become navigators and interact with pictures. That is why, instead
of the traditional notion de ‘viewing’ the author develops the notion of ‘visualizing’ :
a complex process involving a large and active participation of the viewer
including his perceptions, thoughts, daydreams, and projections (p. 200).
Digital images cannot be thought as traditional images for they are dependent on
the technology that supports them. They cannot clearly be detached neither of
human that produced and look at them nor of technology that carry them: they
are between humans and machines, in what Burnett calls a ‘middle ground’
or an ‘image world‘. And this is cause of the intelligence which has
been put in technologies needed for creating digital images that images are
seen as if they were thinking.

In
this book, Ron Burnett argues that this new kind of images change modifies the
relations between humans and machines.

The conferral of life upon inanimate objects is one
of the characteristics of image-worlds. The increasing plasticity of digital
images and modes of viewing means that distinctions between animate and
inanimate will weaken even further. This does not mean that inanimate objects
will somehow develop intelligence, but it does suggest that intelligence will
increasingly become a distributed phenomenon" (pp. 211-212).

So
images do not think by themselves but they take part of an intelligent process
which is not reducible to human thought.

The
thesis of the book is quite ambitious but we can regret that it leave us
unconvinced. The argumentation is too light and not clear enough to win over.
This is due in part of the fuzzy vocabulary used. For instance we do not know
of which kind of intelligence Burnett refers about. We could deplore that when
he talks about perception and knowledge he focuses too much on the general
picture, where some details would be appreciated. And when he affirms that
"the ability to use and create images comes from an innate disposition
that humans have" (p. 9) that sound like a lapalissade which is not an
argument or as a thesis that must be supported furthermore. This feeling of
confusion comes from the fact that the author uses technical vocabulary taken
from cognitive science and philosophy and employs it outside its context, so
that it loses its meaning.

If How
Image Think certainly does not have the last word in the reflection about
digital image and new technologies, it is however probably a book that every
one who wants to think about these questions has to read.

© 2004 Benjamin Sylvand

Benjamin Sylvand, student in
philosophy, working about the logic of concepts, at the Institut Jean Nicod
(CNRS-EHESS-ENS), Paris, France

Categories: Philosophical