Abstract
The relationship between image and technique is significant for understanding generative AI’s effect. According to Kant, imagination is the art hidden in the depths of the human soul. Can we interpret this art as techne and see imagination itself as a matter of technique? This paper distinguishes between method, practice and technique. While the method calls for representation, practice demands texts and technique, the image. The image here becomes not a product but an aspect of technique. As special effects in movies show, the image is expected to reveal its technological constitution, not to hide it as a tool for creating illusions. While the bodily gesture of pointing is constitutive of representation, grasping is a phenomenological posture that underlies practice, and groping opens up techniques. We take a closer look at compression, which is both a technique for producing images, and also a model for images. Learning from Stiegler and Galloway, we show that compression is both exosomatic and generic. Our response to the generically compressed image calls for care and indifference. These theoretical claims will be examined in the light of 1) the film director Lars von Trier’s claim that the use of 100 fixed digital cameras in Dancer in the Dark is a continuation of the Dogma movement’s adherence to the hand-held camera 2) the techniques of painting at Ajanta (Indian, 2nd century BC to 650CE), that uses perspective as a technique not as a symbolic form as in European Renaissance painting.
Presenters
Sanil Viswanathan NairProfessor, Humanities and Social Scieences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2024 Special Focus—Images and Imaginaries from Artificial Intelligence
KEYWORDS
Compression, Technique, Care, AI
