Books by Anke Coumans
Summary
According to the media philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) two basic structures are act... more Summary
According to the media philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) two basic structures are active within human communication. He calls them the discursive and the dialogic communication.This division is the result of two different methods of dealing with information. In the discursive method information is stored and kept in score, prevented from change. The dialogic method is a method to create new information and to provoke development. (Flusser 1998: 19). In a healthy society both ways of communication are kept in balance. Human beings feel lonely when the
discursive structure dominates. They loose contact with other human beings and are only related to a common shared static discourse. On the other hand, if the dialogic communication dominates, human beings are in contact with each other, but they can also feel isolated because they miss a common ground, a shared discourse.
The communication structure of the mass media, mainly dealing with the transfer of the technical images, is discursive. Information is not meant to change in the transfer from source to receiver. All receivers have to interpret the visual messages in a similar way. The message is understood as it is meant. Flusser emphasizes the lack of influence of the receiver on the
interpretation in the discursive communication. The receiver can only execute the program, the coding, of the visual message. As a consequence of the domination of the program in technical images he speaks of programmatic communication.
Human beings feel alone (not heard) because of the immense domination of this kind of communication in our society. Their voice is being ignored in mass communication. Flusser recalls to the design of a new kind of technical image to restore the balance: the dialogic image. The main problem to achieve this goal lies in the nature of the technical image itself.
Technical images are images produced by programs of apparatuses. Because of these apparatuses they can be distributed in multiple copies. The technical images pop up in public space without a trace of their origin. All images, technical images included, are magical. Because of its spatial
structure it is able to catch the gaze and keep it going from depicted element to depicted element. Flusser calls this the space of mutual significance. The magical nature of the image is intensified in the technical image as a result of the great similarity with the object depicted.
Because of this similarity the image can easily be confused with the object depicted. Technical images are conceptual images as they are (as words are) able to give a vision. They no longer only represent but comment as well. Because of the similarity, this vision is experienced as truth
itself. Receivers are confronted with a vision on reality, but they regard the vision, as the way reality should be. The programmatic technical image is programming its receiver and asks him to adept his reality to the program of the image. The absence of the author as source of the vision causes the magical power of the technical image.
In my PhD I am looking for the possibility of dialogical communication by means of technical images by researching a specific genre of technical images: the public image of the graphic designer. The central question of my research is: What are the possibilities for a public image, as being a technical conceptual magical image in public space, to cause a dialogical process of meaning in the receiver? The most important question to be answered, to break the power, to enlighten the programming, to unmask the message as being somebody’s vision and to open space for a dialogical process is: How can a technical image be founded it in a source, an origin
or a supposed maker? How can an image have a voice and say ‘I’? To detach the technical image out of the grip of the discursive communication structure and to give it dialogical possibilities we have to find semiotic possibilities for the technical image to say ‘I’.
Within the semiotic theory, Emile Benveniste (1902-1976) developed the discourse-histoire dichotomy to relate the semiotic ‘text’ to its source. Applied to images one can say that the supposed voice of the maker is present in the visible construction of the image still. These traces
of the construction, leading to the supposed maker, aren’t present in a histoire-image. Following Victor Sjklovsky’s (1893-1984) concept of alienation, one can say that an image is only experienced by the receiver as a discourse-image (as a construction leading to the supposed
maker), when the image is regarded as an alienated image. Only then the process of meaning can be called, as C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) would say, an example of conscious meaningful acting.
An alienated image can be defined as an image that has detached itself from the natural experienced images of reality. These images are strange in relation to ‘normal’ images, and not in relation to reality itself. The possibility of an image to present itself as image, as construction linked to a supposed maker, is therefore dependent on the frame of reference of the receiver of
the image. The frame of reference is culturally depended and contextually linked to the place and time of the receiver. What today is experienced as strange can tomorrow be experienced as natural. Continually designers have to develop new visual strategies to produce alienation. The
alienated image urges the viewer to act as, what Eco (1932- ) calls, a meta-semiotic, critical viewer, to look through the image and to expose the image as somebody’s programmed (designed) vision.
In contemporary visual culture five different dialogical strategies can be distinguished: (pure) alienation, synthesis, subversion, deconstruction and transparency. Alienation is the basic dialogical strategy in which a public image presents an unfamiliar strange image. This image collides with the familiar image in the frame of reference of the viewer. The alienation is mainly a matter of disturbed resemblance. Synthesis is the strategy in which a public image presents the combination of two semantic
elements colliding with each other. As a result of this collision the viewer has to come to his own interpretation. In subversion as visual strategy, the public image provokes an interpretation that challenges and undermines the dominant discourse. The image opposes the dominant meaning in society.
In the strategy called deconstruction, the public images help the viewer to recognize the (genre) codes programming the viewer. In this strategy the codes become visible because they are alienated. Exaggeration is the usual way of producing alienation.Transparency is the strategy of the public image in which the image detaches itself from reality itself by showing the process of visual recording. In this strategy the image shows itself as being a recording of something in front of the camera.
These strategies have two main characteristics. They all produce the presence of the ‘voice’ of the supposed author ‘audible’ through the image and they all produce a collision between two visual voices: one being natural, accepted and part of the dominant discourse, and one being
in collision with this natural discourse. Mikhael Bakhtin (1895-1975) considers these characteristics (voice and collision) as essential characteristics of each dialogue. Only when a public image no longer appears as a devine appeal to reality but as a interpretation of reality the image can ask the viewer to respond to the message of the image.
The public image asks the viewer to let his voice collide with the voice in the image. Only then, as Chantal Mouffe (1943-) and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) would agree, public space can become a space of public debate.
become a space of public debate.
Summary
According to the media philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) two basic structures are act... more Summary
According to the media philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) two basic structures are active within human communication. He calls them the discursive and the dialogic communication.This division is the result of two different methods of dealing with information. In the discursive method information is stored and kept in score, prevented from change. The dialogic method is a method to create new information and to provoke development. (Flusser 1998: 19). In a healthy society both ways of communication are kept in balance. Human beings feel lonely when the
discursive structure dominates. They loose contact with other human beings and are only related to a common shared static discourse. On the other hand, if the dialogic communication dominates, human beings are in contact with each other, but they can also feel isolated because they miss a common ground, a shared discourse.
The communication structure of the mass media, mainly dealing with the transfer of the technical images, is discursive. Information is not meant to change in the transfer from source to receiver. All receivers have to interpret the visual messages in a similar way. The message is understood as it is meant. Flusser emphasizes the lack of influence of the receiver on the
interpretation in the discursive communication. The receiver can only execute the program, the coding, of the visual message. As a consequence of the domination of the program in technical images he speaks of programmatic communication.
Human beings feel alone (not heard) because of the immense domination of this kind of communication in our society. Their voice is being ignored in mass communication. Flusser recalls to the design of a new kind of technical image to restore the balance: the dialogic image. The main problem to achieve this goal lies in the nature of the technical image itself.
Technical images are images produced by programs of apparatuses. Because of these apparatuses they can be distributed in multiple copies. The technical images pop up in public space without a trace of their origin. All images, technical images included, are magical. Because of its spatial
structure it is able to catch the gaze and keep it going from depicted element to depicted element. Flusser calls this the space of mutual significance. The magical nature of the image is intensified in the technical image as a result of the great similarity with the object depicted.
Because of this similarity the image can easily be confused with the object depicted. Technical images are conceptual images as they are (as words are) able to give a vision. They no longer only represent but comment as well. Because of the similarity, this vision is experienced as truth
itself. Receivers are confronted with a vision on reality, but they regard the vision, as the way reality should be. The programmatic technical image is programming its receiver and asks him to adept his reality to the program of the image. The absence of the author as source of the vision causes the magical power of the technical image.
In my PhD I am looking for the possibility of dialogical communication by means of technical images by researching a specific genre of technical images: the public image of the graphic designer. The central question of my research is: What are the possibilities for a public image, as being a technical conceptual magical image in public space, to cause a dialogical process of meaning in the receiver? The most important question to be answered, to break the power, to enlighten the programming, to unmask the message as being somebody’s vision and to open space for a dialogical process is: How can a technical image be founded it in a source, an origin
or a supposed maker? How can an image have a voice and say ‘I’? To detach the technical image out of the grip of the discursive communication structure and to give it dialogical possibilities we have to find semiotic possibilities for the technical image to say ‘I’.
Within the semiotic theory, Emile Benveniste (1902-1976) developed the discourse-histoire dichotomy to relate the semiotic ‘text’ to its source. Applied to images one can say that the supposed voice of the maker is present in the visible construction of the image still. These traces
of the construction, leading to the supposed maker, aren’t present in a histoire-image. Following Victor Sjklovsky’s (1893-1984) concept of alienation, one can say that an image is only experienced by the receiver as a discourse-image (as a construction leading to the supposed
maker), when the image is regarded as an alienated image. Only then the process of meaning can be called, as C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) would say, an example of conscious meaningful acting.
An alienated image can be defined as an image that has detached itself from the natural experienced images of reality. These images are strange in relation to ‘normal’ images, and not in relation to reality itself. The possibility of an image to present itself as image, as construction linked to a supposed maker, is therefore dependent on the frame of reference of the receiver of
the image. The frame of reference is culturally depended and contextually linked to the place and time of the receiver. What today is experienced as strange can tomorrow be experienced as natural. Continually designers have to develop new visual strategies to produce alienation. The
alienated image urges the viewer to act as, what Eco (1932- ) calls, a meta-semiotic, critical viewer, to look through the image and to expose the image as somebody’s programmed (designed) vision.
In contemporary visual culture five different dialogical strategies can be distinguished: (pure) alienation, synthesis, subversion, deconstruction and transparency. Alienation is the basic dialogical strategy in which a public image presents an unfamiliar strange image. This image collides with the familiar image in the frame of reference of the viewer. The alienation is mainly a matter of disturbed resemblance. Synthesis is the strategy in which a public image presents the combination of two semantic
elements colliding with each other. As a result of this collision the viewer has to come to his own interpretation. In subversion as visual strategy, the public image provokes an interpretation that challenges and undermines the dominant discourse. The image opposes the dominant meaning in society.
In the strategy called deconstruction, the public images help the viewer to recognize the (genre) codes programming the viewer. In this strategy the codes become visible because they are alienated. Exaggeration is the usual way of producing alienation.Transparency is the strategy of the public image in which the image detaches itself from reality itself by showing the process of visual recording. In this strategy the image shows itself as being a recording of something in front of the camera.
These strategies have two main characteristics. They all produce the presence of the ‘voice’ of the supposed author ‘audible’ through the image and they all produce a collision between two visual voices: one being natural, accepted and part of the dominant discourse, and one being
in collision with this natural discourse. Mikhael Bakhtin (1895-1975) considers these characteristics (voice and collision) as essential characteristics of each dialogue. Only when a public image no longer appears as a devine appeal to reality but as a interpretation of reality the image can ask the viewer to respond to the message of the image.
The public image asks the viewer to let his voice collide with the voice in the image. Only then, as Chantal Mouffe (1943-) and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) would agree, public space can become a space of public debate.
become a space of public debate.
Thesis Chapters by Anke Coumans
In this short essay, I would like to show the importance of an artistic response to the power of ... more In this short essay, I would like to show the importance of an artistic response to the power of the media within the public debate by means of two examples. In both cases I leave the Netherlands and head for Turkey’s mighty capital.
Naast dat autonomie als privilege of status quo een meerwaarde kan hebben voor een bepaalde groep... more Naast dat autonomie als privilege of status quo een meerwaarde kan hebben voor een bepaalde groep mensen die zich kunstenaars of ontwerpers noemen – omdat het hen mogelijk maakt zich aan het geruis te onttrekken, omdat het hen enige financiële ruimte biedt hun werk uit te voeren- , is het vruchtbaar het als een kwaliteit te beschouwen van wat we kunst noemen. De aanwezigheid van deze kwaliteit is noodzakelijk voor iedere samenleving. Kunstenaars en ontwerpers kunnen vanuit een bij hen ontwikkelde competentie - die wellicht ook weer autonoom te noemen is, maar daarover handelt dit artikel niet, tot de hoeders van deze kwaliteit worden beschouwd, en het kunstonderwijs als de instantie die deze mensen opleidt. Wellicht is deze autonome competentie een noodzakelijke voorwaarde voor de totstandkoming van werken die de potentie hebben een vorm van autonomie in toeschouwer te realiseren, maar ik zal me in deze tekst niet bezighouden met deze wisselwerking. Mijn onderwerp is niet hoe een autonoom werk tot stand komt, maar hoe een werk autonoom genoemd kan worden omdat het tot autonomie bij de toeschouwer kan aanzetten.
Talks by Anke Coumans
This article outlines the coming into being of the research domain Being Political in Art and des... more This article outlines the coming into being of the research domain Being Political in Art and design.It started with a group of artists and designers studying propagandistic image strategies as start of a broader investigation that deals with the relationship between arts and politics, the position of artists and designers within this world, and the way in which parrhesia as a concept challenges the artists to evaluate their position.
Papers by Anke Coumans
Artistic research is a relatively new form of research that makes use of the attitudes and method... more Artistic research is a relatively new form of research that makes use of the attitudes and methods of artists and designers during the research process. This simply implies that researchers work from a visual and associative perspective and have an open attitude that makes it possible for them to notice that which others may fail to see. For a better understanding, we will place artistic research next to three other research paradigms in this text: design-oriented research, practice-oriented research, and academic research. We do this in order to make the social relevance of artistic research visible, a notion that stems from the direct ambition to create a space for artistic research in which the elderly, caregivers, and researchers can gather new insights. Not only does this topic require extra attention because artistic research has a different social value, but also because it is still relatively young: artistic research needs to develop its vocabulary to make itself intelligible towards the already more developed forms of research. This article is an initial attempt in doing so.
In this essay I will discuss the specific nature of art practices in which the artist and his au... more In this essay I will discuss the specific nature of art practices in which the artist and his audience are moving away from the more traditional relationship in which the artist merely displays his art in museums or public spaces. The practices I am writing about consist of intimate and personal processes made possible by the grace of the artistic space that is separating itself from the coded space around it. In these practices the public takes on a different role than that of the passive spectator. The involvement of the public in what art is and can be becomes part of the experience. This turns art into something to be a part of rather than something that is simply handed over to you. More specifically, these art practices allow for a time and site-specific situated form of co-ownership, through which the artistic environment created by the artist becomes the condition for experiencing new ideas and insights. In relation to theatre, the French philosopher Jacques Rancière (1940-) writes in The Emancipated Spectator (2015) about “a theater without an audience” that “no longer tempts with its images but teaches the audience something that turns them into active participants rather than passive voyeurs”. (Rancière 2015: 9-10) These practices are not new. New is perhaps the shift of focus from public participation in processes of interaction towards developing a theatrical space that not only makes other types of expression possible, but also taking on other roles and with that, other perspectives. This notion will therefore be the main focus of this text. Whereas Jacques Rancière talks about the aesthetic space (Rancière 2007) because of its emphasis on sharing the sensory (le partage du sensible), in the case of situated art I’d rather talk about the theatrical or artistic space, indicating a space that corresponds to the domain of the arts. But one can also speak of a staged space, a space that has been constructed and is thus able to separate itself from the space around it. In any case, it is important that this space not only mobilises the senses but also the will to act.
In this lecture I scrutinize the assumed gap between art and society. What is the value of this g... more In this lecture I scrutinize the assumed gap between art and society. What is the value of this gap? And can we use art as medium for social objectives like empowerment and inclusion? Maybe the main question is: can art leave its domain or will this outside immediately become art?
In de openbaarheid, Smahk 2013
Mij interesseert de wijze waarop de door kunstenaars en ontwerpers gecreëerde beelden in gesprek ... more Mij interesseert de wijze waarop de door kunstenaars en ontwerpers gecreëerde beelden in gesprek gaan met bestaande beelden. Want als er iets is dat veel kunstenaars inmiddels begrijpen, is het de dominantie van het beeld in het publieke debat. En waarom zouden zij, als de meesters van het beeld, hun kwaliteiten niet gebruiken om het heersende beeld te ontmaskeren en tegen te spreken?
In dit korte essay wil ik aan de hand van twee voorbeelden het belang laten zien van een artistiek antwoord op de macht van de media op het publieke debat.
In the world around us we see what the images have taught us to see. If people go on holiday, tem... more In the world around us we see what the images have taught us to see. If people go on holiday, tempted by photographs in advertisements, they look for the images the travelling agent promised. That is what they take a picture of and this picture they post on Facebook. According to Flusser - and he thought of this way before the internet era – photographs are not representations, but programmes which ask reality to move towards the image. This becomes most painfully clear in plastic surgery, where women are trying to look like photo-shopped depictions of women. In war journalism, quite often photographers are facing a reenacted reality in front of their cameras, either or not created by themselves. They and the press officers in war zones know only too well what kind of images newspaper readers in the west want to see.
We are caught in a web of images, on which reality has slowly lost its grip. This is the basic problem professional photography and each self-respecting photographer is facing.
Drafts by Anke Coumans
In this article, different theoretical approaches are offered to analyse the ways in which artist... more In this article, different theoretical approaches are offered to analyse the ways in which artistic activism deals with propaganda and to understand the role of humour as a strategy that seeks to undermine polarising propagandas in general terms. Written in the context of the platform Borderline Offensive, we will specifically focus on the outcomes of Borderline Offensive projects that have taken place in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Borderline Offensive is a transnational and transdisciplinary consortium of artists and artist organisations from numerous European countries. The platform has received a grant for developing artistic strategies that use humour to counteract the way people become polarised in our contemporary societies. As stated in their own words: “We employ art, participation, and playful attitudes as tools for non-violent activism and creative transgression, in the fight against fear, populism, and existential anxiety”. The article focuses on the role that Borderline Offensive’s projects can play in dealing with contemporary propaganda as the main cause for the polarised society that we find ourselves in today. These projects draw on laughter and playfulness as a means to bridge poles, to bring people together and to beat polarising propagandas. This article therefore poses the question how can humour bridge poles through artistic interventions? To answer this, we will examine polarisation and refer to some of the projects in the framework of Borderline Offensive – to picture what this can look like in the practice of contemporary artistic activism.
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Books by Anke Coumans
According to the media philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) two basic structures are active within human communication. He calls them the discursive and the dialogic communication.This division is the result of two different methods of dealing with information. In the discursive method information is stored and kept in score, prevented from change. The dialogic method is a method to create new information and to provoke development. (Flusser 1998: 19). In a healthy society both ways of communication are kept in balance. Human beings feel lonely when the
discursive structure dominates. They loose contact with other human beings and are only related to a common shared static discourse. On the other hand, if the dialogic communication dominates, human beings are in contact with each other, but they can also feel isolated because they miss a common ground, a shared discourse.
The communication structure of the mass media, mainly dealing with the transfer of the technical images, is discursive. Information is not meant to change in the transfer from source to receiver. All receivers have to interpret the visual messages in a similar way. The message is understood as it is meant. Flusser emphasizes the lack of influence of the receiver on the
interpretation in the discursive communication. The receiver can only execute the program, the coding, of the visual message. As a consequence of the domination of the program in technical images he speaks of programmatic communication.
Human beings feel alone (not heard) because of the immense domination of this kind of communication in our society. Their voice is being ignored in mass communication. Flusser recalls to the design of a new kind of technical image to restore the balance: the dialogic image. The main problem to achieve this goal lies in the nature of the technical image itself.
Technical images are images produced by programs of apparatuses. Because of these apparatuses they can be distributed in multiple copies. The technical images pop up in public space without a trace of their origin. All images, technical images included, are magical. Because of its spatial
structure it is able to catch the gaze and keep it going from depicted element to depicted element. Flusser calls this the space of mutual significance. The magical nature of the image is intensified in the technical image as a result of the great similarity with the object depicted.
Because of this similarity the image can easily be confused with the object depicted. Technical images are conceptual images as they are (as words are) able to give a vision. They no longer only represent but comment as well. Because of the similarity, this vision is experienced as truth
itself. Receivers are confronted with a vision on reality, but they regard the vision, as the way reality should be. The programmatic technical image is programming its receiver and asks him to adept his reality to the program of the image. The absence of the author as source of the vision causes the magical power of the technical image.
In my PhD I am looking for the possibility of dialogical communication by means of technical images by researching a specific genre of technical images: the public image of the graphic designer. The central question of my research is: What are the possibilities for a public image, as being a technical conceptual magical image in public space, to cause a dialogical process of meaning in the receiver? The most important question to be answered, to break the power, to enlighten the programming, to unmask the message as being somebody’s vision and to open space for a dialogical process is: How can a technical image be founded it in a source, an origin
or a supposed maker? How can an image have a voice and say ‘I’? To detach the technical image out of the grip of the discursive communication structure and to give it dialogical possibilities we have to find semiotic possibilities for the technical image to say ‘I’.
Within the semiotic theory, Emile Benveniste (1902-1976) developed the discourse-histoire dichotomy to relate the semiotic ‘text’ to its source. Applied to images one can say that the supposed voice of the maker is present in the visible construction of the image still. These traces
of the construction, leading to the supposed maker, aren’t present in a histoire-image. Following Victor Sjklovsky’s (1893-1984) concept of alienation, one can say that an image is only experienced by the receiver as a discourse-image (as a construction leading to the supposed
maker), when the image is regarded as an alienated image. Only then the process of meaning can be called, as C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) would say, an example of conscious meaningful acting.
An alienated image can be defined as an image that has detached itself from the natural experienced images of reality. These images are strange in relation to ‘normal’ images, and not in relation to reality itself. The possibility of an image to present itself as image, as construction linked to a supposed maker, is therefore dependent on the frame of reference of the receiver of
the image. The frame of reference is culturally depended and contextually linked to the place and time of the receiver. What today is experienced as strange can tomorrow be experienced as natural. Continually designers have to develop new visual strategies to produce alienation. The
alienated image urges the viewer to act as, what Eco (1932- ) calls, a meta-semiotic, critical viewer, to look through the image and to expose the image as somebody’s programmed (designed) vision.
In contemporary visual culture five different dialogical strategies can be distinguished: (pure) alienation, synthesis, subversion, deconstruction and transparency. Alienation is the basic dialogical strategy in which a public image presents an unfamiliar strange image. This image collides with the familiar image in the frame of reference of the viewer. The alienation is mainly a matter of disturbed resemblance. Synthesis is the strategy in which a public image presents the combination of two semantic
elements colliding with each other. As a result of this collision the viewer has to come to his own interpretation. In subversion as visual strategy, the public image provokes an interpretation that challenges and undermines the dominant discourse. The image opposes the dominant meaning in society.
In the strategy called deconstruction, the public images help the viewer to recognize the (genre) codes programming the viewer. In this strategy the codes become visible because they are alienated. Exaggeration is the usual way of producing alienation.Transparency is the strategy of the public image in which the image detaches itself from reality itself by showing the process of visual recording. In this strategy the image shows itself as being a recording of something in front of the camera.
These strategies have two main characteristics. They all produce the presence of the ‘voice’ of the supposed author ‘audible’ through the image and they all produce a collision between two visual voices: one being natural, accepted and part of the dominant discourse, and one being
in collision with this natural discourse. Mikhael Bakhtin (1895-1975) considers these characteristics (voice and collision) as essential characteristics of each dialogue. Only when a public image no longer appears as a devine appeal to reality but as a interpretation of reality the image can ask the viewer to respond to the message of the image.
The public image asks the viewer to let his voice collide with the voice in the image. Only then, as Chantal Mouffe (1943-) and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) would agree, public space can become a space of public debate.
become a space of public debate.
According to the media philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) two basic structures are active within human communication. He calls them the discursive and the dialogic communication.This division is the result of two different methods of dealing with information. In the discursive method information is stored and kept in score, prevented from change. The dialogic method is a method to create new information and to provoke development. (Flusser 1998: 19). In a healthy society both ways of communication are kept in balance. Human beings feel lonely when the
discursive structure dominates. They loose contact with other human beings and are only related to a common shared static discourse. On the other hand, if the dialogic communication dominates, human beings are in contact with each other, but they can also feel isolated because they miss a common ground, a shared discourse.
The communication structure of the mass media, mainly dealing with the transfer of the technical images, is discursive. Information is not meant to change in the transfer from source to receiver. All receivers have to interpret the visual messages in a similar way. The message is understood as it is meant. Flusser emphasizes the lack of influence of the receiver on the
interpretation in the discursive communication. The receiver can only execute the program, the coding, of the visual message. As a consequence of the domination of the program in technical images he speaks of programmatic communication.
Human beings feel alone (not heard) because of the immense domination of this kind of communication in our society. Their voice is being ignored in mass communication. Flusser recalls to the design of a new kind of technical image to restore the balance: the dialogic image. The main problem to achieve this goal lies in the nature of the technical image itself.
Technical images are images produced by programs of apparatuses. Because of these apparatuses they can be distributed in multiple copies. The technical images pop up in public space without a trace of their origin. All images, technical images included, are magical. Because of its spatial
structure it is able to catch the gaze and keep it going from depicted element to depicted element. Flusser calls this the space of mutual significance. The magical nature of the image is intensified in the technical image as a result of the great similarity with the object depicted.
Because of this similarity the image can easily be confused with the object depicted. Technical images are conceptual images as they are (as words are) able to give a vision. They no longer only represent but comment as well. Because of the similarity, this vision is experienced as truth
itself. Receivers are confronted with a vision on reality, but they regard the vision, as the way reality should be. The programmatic technical image is programming its receiver and asks him to adept his reality to the program of the image. The absence of the author as source of the vision causes the magical power of the technical image.
In my PhD I am looking for the possibility of dialogical communication by means of technical images by researching a specific genre of technical images: the public image of the graphic designer. The central question of my research is: What are the possibilities for a public image, as being a technical conceptual magical image in public space, to cause a dialogical process of meaning in the receiver? The most important question to be answered, to break the power, to enlighten the programming, to unmask the message as being somebody’s vision and to open space for a dialogical process is: How can a technical image be founded it in a source, an origin
or a supposed maker? How can an image have a voice and say ‘I’? To detach the technical image out of the grip of the discursive communication structure and to give it dialogical possibilities we have to find semiotic possibilities for the technical image to say ‘I’.
Within the semiotic theory, Emile Benveniste (1902-1976) developed the discourse-histoire dichotomy to relate the semiotic ‘text’ to its source. Applied to images one can say that the supposed voice of the maker is present in the visible construction of the image still. These traces
of the construction, leading to the supposed maker, aren’t present in a histoire-image. Following Victor Sjklovsky’s (1893-1984) concept of alienation, one can say that an image is only experienced by the receiver as a discourse-image (as a construction leading to the supposed
maker), when the image is regarded as an alienated image. Only then the process of meaning can be called, as C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) would say, an example of conscious meaningful acting.
An alienated image can be defined as an image that has detached itself from the natural experienced images of reality. These images are strange in relation to ‘normal’ images, and not in relation to reality itself. The possibility of an image to present itself as image, as construction linked to a supposed maker, is therefore dependent on the frame of reference of the receiver of
the image. The frame of reference is culturally depended and contextually linked to the place and time of the receiver. What today is experienced as strange can tomorrow be experienced as natural. Continually designers have to develop new visual strategies to produce alienation. The
alienated image urges the viewer to act as, what Eco (1932- ) calls, a meta-semiotic, critical viewer, to look through the image and to expose the image as somebody’s programmed (designed) vision.
In contemporary visual culture five different dialogical strategies can be distinguished: (pure) alienation, synthesis, subversion, deconstruction and transparency. Alienation is the basic dialogical strategy in which a public image presents an unfamiliar strange image. This image collides with the familiar image in the frame of reference of the viewer. The alienation is mainly a matter of disturbed resemblance. Synthesis is the strategy in which a public image presents the combination of two semantic
elements colliding with each other. As a result of this collision the viewer has to come to his own interpretation. In subversion as visual strategy, the public image provokes an interpretation that challenges and undermines the dominant discourse. The image opposes the dominant meaning in society.
In the strategy called deconstruction, the public images help the viewer to recognize the (genre) codes programming the viewer. In this strategy the codes become visible because they are alienated. Exaggeration is the usual way of producing alienation.Transparency is the strategy of the public image in which the image detaches itself from reality itself by showing the process of visual recording. In this strategy the image shows itself as being a recording of something in front of the camera.
These strategies have two main characteristics. They all produce the presence of the ‘voice’ of the supposed author ‘audible’ through the image and they all produce a collision between two visual voices: one being natural, accepted and part of the dominant discourse, and one being
in collision with this natural discourse. Mikhael Bakhtin (1895-1975) considers these characteristics (voice and collision) as essential characteristics of each dialogue. Only when a public image no longer appears as a devine appeal to reality but as a interpretation of reality the image can ask the viewer to respond to the message of the image.
The public image asks the viewer to let his voice collide with the voice in the image. Only then, as Chantal Mouffe (1943-) and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) would agree, public space can become a space of public debate.
become a space of public debate.
Thesis Chapters by Anke Coumans
Talks by Anke Coumans
Papers by Anke Coumans
In dit korte essay wil ik aan de hand van twee voorbeelden het belang laten zien van een artistiek antwoord op de macht van de media op het publieke debat.
We are caught in a web of images, on which reality has slowly lost its grip. This is the basic problem professional photography and each self-respecting photographer is facing.
Drafts by Anke Coumans
According to the media philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) two basic structures are active within human communication. He calls them the discursive and the dialogic communication.This division is the result of two different methods of dealing with information. In the discursive method information is stored and kept in score, prevented from change. The dialogic method is a method to create new information and to provoke development. (Flusser 1998: 19). In a healthy society both ways of communication are kept in balance. Human beings feel lonely when the
discursive structure dominates. They loose contact with other human beings and are only related to a common shared static discourse. On the other hand, if the dialogic communication dominates, human beings are in contact with each other, but they can also feel isolated because they miss a common ground, a shared discourse.
The communication structure of the mass media, mainly dealing with the transfer of the technical images, is discursive. Information is not meant to change in the transfer from source to receiver. All receivers have to interpret the visual messages in a similar way. The message is understood as it is meant. Flusser emphasizes the lack of influence of the receiver on the
interpretation in the discursive communication. The receiver can only execute the program, the coding, of the visual message. As a consequence of the domination of the program in technical images he speaks of programmatic communication.
Human beings feel alone (not heard) because of the immense domination of this kind of communication in our society. Their voice is being ignored in mass communication. Flusser recalls to the design of a new kind of technical image to restore the balance: the dialogic image. The main problem to achieve this goal lies in the nature of the technical image itself.
Technical images are images produced by programs of apparatuses. Because of these apparatuses they can be distributed in multiple copies. The technical images pop up in public space without a trace of their origin. All images, technical images included, are magical. Because of its spatial
structure it is able to catch the gaze and keep it going from depicted element to depicted element. Flusser calls this the space of mutual significance. The magical nature of the image is intensified in the technical image as a result of the great similarity with the object depicted.
Because of this similarity the image can easily be confused with the object depicted. Technical images are conceptual images as they are (as words are) able to give a vision. They no longer only represent but comment as well. Because of the similarity, this vision is experienced as truth
itself. Receivers are confronted with a vision on reality, but they regard the vision, as the way reality should be. The programmatic technical image is programming its receiver and asks him to adept his reality to the program of the image. The absence of the author as source of the vision causes the magical power of the technical image.
In my PhD I am looking for the possibility of dialogical communication by means of technical images by researching a specific genre of technical images: the public image of the graphic designer. The central question of my research is: What are the possibilities for a public image, as being a technical conceptual magical image in public space, to cause a dialogical process of meaning in the receiver? The most important question to be answered, to break the power, to enlighten the programming, to unmask the message as being somebody’s vision and to open space for a dialogical process is: How can a technical image be founded it in a source, an origin
or a supposed maker? How can an image have a voice and say ‘I’? To detach the technical image out of the grip of the discursive communication structure and to give it dialogical possibilities we have to find semiotic possibilities for the technical image to say ‘I’.
Within the semiotic theory, Emile Benveniste (1902-1976) developed the discourse-histoire dichotomy to relate the semiotic ‘text’ to its source. Applied to images one can say that the supposed voice of the maker is present in the visible construction of the image still. These traces
of the construction, leading to the supposed maker, aren’t present in a histoire-image. Following Victor Sjklovsky’s (1893-1984) concept of alienation, one can say that an image is only experienced by the receiver as a discourse-image (as a construction leading to the supposed
maker), when the image is regarded as an alienated image. Only then the process of meaning can be called, as C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) would say, an example of conscious meaningful acting.
An alienated image can be defined as an image that has detached itself from the natural experienced images of reality. These images are strange in relation to ‘normal’ images, and not in relation to reality itself. The possibility of an image to present itself as image, as construction linked to a supposed maker, is therefore dependent on the frame of reference of the receiver of
the image. The frame of reference is culturally depended and contextually linked to the place and time of the receiver. What today is experienced as strange can tomorrow be experienced as natural. Continually designers have to develop new visual strategies to produce alienation. The
alienated image urges the viewer to act as, what Eco (1932- ) calls, a meta-semiotic, critical viewer, to look through the image and to expose the image as somebody’s programmed (designed) vision.
In contemporary visual culture five different dialogical strategies can be distinguished: (pure) alienation, synthesis, subversion, deconstruction and transparency. Alienation is the basic dialogical strategy in which a public image presents an unfamiliar strange image. This image collides with the familiar image in the frame of reference of the viewer. The alienation is mainly a matter of disturbed resemblance. Synthesis is the strategy in which a public image presents the combination of two semantic
elements colliding with each other. As a result of this collision the viewer has to come to his own interpretation. In subversion as visual strategy, the public image provokes an interpretation that challenges and undermines the dominant discourse. The image opposes the dominant meaning in society.
In the strategy called deconstruction, the public images help the viewer to recognize the (genre) codes programming the viewer. In this strategy the codes become visible because they are alienated. Exaggeration is the usual way of producing alienation.Transparency is the strategy of the public image in which the image detaches itself from reality itself by showing the process of visual recording. In this strategy the image shows itself as being a recording of something in front of the camera.
These strategies have two main characteristics. They all produce the presence of the ‘voice’ of the supposed author ‘audible’ through the image and they all produce a collision between two visual voices: one being natural, accepted and part of the dominant discourse, and one being
in collision with this natural discourse. Mikhael Bakhtin (1895-1975) considers these characteristics (voice and collision) as essential characteristics of each dialogue. Only when a public image no longer appears as a devine appeal to reality but as a interpretation of reality the image can ask the viewer to respond to the message of the image.
The public image asks the viewer to let his voice collide with the voice in the image. Only then, as Chantal Mouffe (1943-) and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) would agree, public space can become a space of public debate.
become a space of public debate.
According to the media philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) two basic structures are active within human communication. He calls them the discursive and the dialogic communication.This division is the result of two different methods of dealing with information. In the discursive method information is stored and kept in score, prevented from change. The dialogic method is a method to create new information and to provoke development. (Flusser 1998: 19). In a healthy society both ways of communication are kept in balance. Human beings feel lonely when the
discursive structure dominates. They loose contact with other human beings and are only related to a common shared static discourse. On the other hand, if the dialogic communication dominates, human beings are in contact with each other, but they can also feel isolated because they miss a common ground, a shared discourse.
The communication structure of the mass media, mainly dealing with the transfer of the technical images, is discursive. Information is not meant to change in the transfer from source to receiver. All receivers have to interpret the visual messages in a similar way. The message is understood as it is meant. Flusser emphasizes the lack of influence of the receiver on the
interpretation in the discursive communication. The receiver can only execute the program, the coding, of the visual message. As a consequence of the domination of the program in technical images he speaks of programmatic communication.
Human beings feel alone (not heard) because of the immense domination of this kind of communication in our society. Their voice is being ignored in mass communication. Flusser recalls to the design of a new kind of technical image to restore the balance: the dialogic image. The main problem to achieve this goal lies in the nature of the technical image itself.
Technical images are images produced by programs of apparatuses. Because of these apparatuses they can be distributed in multiple copies. The technical images pop up in public space without a trace of their origin. All images, technical images included, are magical. Because of its spatial
structure it is able to catch the gaze and keep it going from depicted element to depicted element. Flusser calls this the space of mutual significance. The magical nature of the image is intensified in the technical image as a result of the great similarity with the object depicted.
Because of this similarity the image can easily be confused with the object depicted. Technical images are conceptual images as they are (as words are) able to give a vision. They no longer only represent but comment as well. Because of the similarity, this vision is experienced as truth
itself. Receivers are confronted with a vision on reality, but they regard the vision, as the way reality should be. The programmatic technical image is programming its receiver and asks him to adept his reality to the program of the image. The absence of the author as source of the vision causes the magical power of the technical image.
In my PhD I am looking for the possibility of dialogical communication by means of technical images by researching a specific genre of technical images: the public image of the graphic designer. The central question of my research is: What are the possibilities for a public image, as being a technical conceptual magical image in public space, to cause a dialogical process of meaning in the receiver? The most important question to be answered, to break the power, to enlighten the programming, to unmask the message as being somebody’s vision and to open space for a dialogical process is: How can a technical image be founded it in a source, an origin
or a supposed maker? How can an image have a voice and say ‘I’? To detach the technical image out of the grip of the discursive communication structure and to give it dialogical possibilities we have to find semiotic possibilities for the technical image to say ‘I’.
Within the semiotic theory, Emile Benveniste (1902-1976) developed the discourse-histoire dichotomy to relate the semiotic ‘text’ to its source. Applied to images one can say that the supposed voice of the maker is present in the visible construction of the image still. These traces
of the construction, leading to the supposed maker, aren’t present in a histoire-image. Following Victor Sjklovsky’s (1893-1984) concept of alienation, one can say that an image is only experienced by the receiver as a discourse-image (as a construction leading to the supposed
maker), when the image is regarded as an alienated image. Only then the process of meaning can be called, as C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) would say, an example of conscious meaningful acting.
An alienated image can be defined as an image that has detached itself from the natural experienced images of reality. These images are strange in relation to ‘normal’ images, and not in relation to reality itself. The possibility of an image to present itself as image, as construction linked to a supposed maker, is therefore dependent on the frame of reference of the receiver of
the image. The frame of reference is culturally depended and contextually linked to the place and time of the receiver. What today is experienced as strange can tomorrow be experienced as natural. Continually designers have to develop new visual strategies to produce alienation. The
alienated image urges the viewer to act as, what Eco (1932- ) calls, a meta-semiotic, critical viewer, to look through the image and to expose the image as somebody’s programmed (designed) vision.
In contemporary visual culture five different dialogical strategies can be distinguished: (pure) alienation, synthesis, subversion, deconstruction and transparency. Alienation is the basic dialogical strategy in which a public image presents an unfamiliar strange image. This image collides with the familiar image in the frame of reference of the viewer. The alienation is mainly a matter of disturbed resemblance. Synthesis is the strategy in which a public image presents the combination of two semantic
elements colliding with each other. As a result of this collision the viewer has to come to his own interpretation. In subversion as visual strategy, the public image provokes an interpretation that challenges and undermines the dominant discourse. The image opposes the dominant meaning in society.
In the strategy called deconstruction, the public images help the viewer to recognize the (genre) codes programming the viewer. In this strategy the codes become visible because they are alienated. Exaggeration is the usual way of producing alienation.Transparency is the strategy of the public image in which the image detaches itself from reality itself by showing the process of visual recording. In this strategy the image shows itself as being a recording of something in front of the camera.
These strategies have two main characteristics. They all produce the presence of the ‘voice’ of the supposed author ‘audible’ through the image and they all produce a collision between two visual voices: one being natural, accepted and part of the dominant discourse, and one being
in collision with this natural discourse. Mikhael Bakhtin (1895-1975) considers these characteristics (voice and collision) as essential characteristics of each dialogue. Only when a public image no longer appears as a devine appeal to reality but as a interpretation of reality the image can ask the viewer to respond to the message of the image.
The public image asks the viewer to let his voice collide with the voice in the image. Only then, as Chantal Mouffe (1943-) and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) would agree, public space can become a space of public debate.
become a space of public debate.
In dit korte essay wil ik aan de hand van twee voorbeelden het belang laten zien van een artistiek antwoord op de macht van de media op het publieke debat.
We are caught in a web of images, on which reality has slowly lost its grip. This is the basic problem professional photography and each self-respecting photographer is facing.