International Conference on Digital Arts within the International Research Conference in the Series Consciousness Reframed: Art and Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era. In cooperation with the Planetary Collegium, the University of Plymouth, England, and The German University in Cairo, Egypt is hosting the 13th Consciousness Reframed International Research Conference, entitled “Behind the Image and Beyond”. The conference is part of the Di-Egy Fest 0.1 and will take place at the German University in Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt, from March 31 to April 2, 2013.
Complexity,
multi-perspectivism and Tracking: A brief history of the Meaning of Image from
the Postmedia to the Postdigital ages
Sandra Álvaro
Abstract: The meaning and function of the image have been evolving over time. It has been separated from mimesis and given greater openness and an emergent meaning, to be adapted to the fluxes that characterize our contemporary society. Throughout this process Art has lost the primacy and exclusivity of the image to share it with science and its visualization procedures and with a social function, now disseminated through social networks.
This paper points out the decisive moments – and illustrates them with examples- through the evolution from the image in Postmodernity to the open and co-participated meaning of the Postmedia age image and the new relation with the real world that characterizes the image of the Postdigital situation; a situation where Postdigital art overtly challenges the image’s status of semiotic stability and rhetorical determinism, and empowers the viewer to transform and transcend what is seen through. Finally, we propose that the Postdigital condition, related to new advances such as augmented reality (AR), geopositioning devices, and ubiquitous informatics, is making the appearance of a new image type possible, here called Tracking-Image. This Tracking-Image is self-generated with data, from the flux of inputs generated in physical space and registered by networked users and sensors. These tracks are visualized on interfaces showing a complex and always-evolving reality. This image becomes the protagonist of a new encounter with the physical fluid reality that characterizes the Postdigital situation.
Keywords:
Allegory, Electronic Image, Interactivity, Open-Ended Semiosis, Postdigital Art, Postmedia Art, Tangible Computing.
Acknowledgments: the participation in this conference has been partially founded by Roberto Cimetta Founds. http://www.cimettafund.org/
