İmgeler Nasıl Düşünür?

by Ron Burnett, Güçsal Pusar (Translator)

İmgeler Nasıl Düşünür'ü, yazarın görsel teknolojilerle son birkaç yolda yaşanan gelişmeleri ele aldığı, Türkçe basım için yazdığı önsözüyle yayımlıyoruz. Sadece tasarım, sinema gibi görsel bilgi işleyen alanlarda çalışan veya öğrenim görenlerin değil, özellikle televizyon ve bilgisayarlarından durmadan maruz kaldığı imge bombardımanını anlamlandırmak ve alternatif biçimlerde kullanmak isteyen herkesin mutlaka okuması gereken bir kitap.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Philosophy

295 pages, Paperback

First published March 22, 2004

Reviews

[Aimée]

The interaction of images with human imagination, human communication, and human culture influences behavior so profoundly that the metaphor of ‘thinking images’ might not be too far off. Burnett employs Latour and a host of others to argue that images have agency within the hybrid space of digital environments (a third space which is neither total reality nor total fantasy). Burnett argues that brain scans, the Internet, Virtual Reality, robotics, and computer games all use digital images which interact with individuals and cultures in ways that can potentially change the actors. As Burnett claims: “It is not so much the case that images per se are thinking as it is the case that intelligence is no longer solely the domain of sentient beings.” Burnett raises the question that viewers play a part in the creation of the images through the choices they are offered — yet who has the agency here? It’s not entirely the user, but it’s not entirely the technology either.

There are tensions among gamers and creators, and an increasing desire among users to control more fully every aspect of the games they play. An entire subculture has arisen devoted to transforming the look and feel of computer games through “hacking” and “patching” in order to overcome the organization of the game as well as the coding (Burnett 186). Burnett questions the aesthetic choices made about the interfaces that both separate and invite users into digital worlds. “When players talk about the look of a program, in this case a game, what are they talking about? It would be useful to develop some taxonomies of the “look” of digital games as well as digital environments (Burnett 189). By the way, who has done good research on video games and aesthetics?

[SY]

I picked this up at a secondhand book store. I love “old” new media art writing and it had a great and provocative title and so I had high hopes, but this turned out to be a super frustrating read and totally useless as a book of theory. I mean, come on, of course images mediate and “interface” in so far as … it is a “thing” that stands in-between sense and thought; and of course digital image-as-thoughts are distributed over networks, etc., - but none of these ideas were at all original even twenty years ago. The guy’s idea of what “thinking” amounts to, which was both poorly defined and shockingly impoverished, basically comes down to passing content on? - Or, if I’m being generous, some sort of cognitive power-redistribution event - which, is a thing, for sure, but that alone can’t possibly qualify as thinking in any meaningful sense?

[Jason Comely]

What came first, image or the viewer?

[Funda Guzer]

İmgeler üzerine yazılmış iyi kitaplardan birisi . Sanal gerçeklikle birleştiriyor .

[Tara Brabazon]

A provocative book with a provocative title, How Images Think probes the intentionality of images. It offers insight into screen environments, with attention to the multiple layers of mediation. For an upper undergraduate market, this is a fine book an the title and argument offers considered arguments for postgraduates to consider.