For an autonomous existence of images: an archaeological perspective

José Cláudio S Castanheira

doi:10.34019/1981-4070.2020.v14.30111

Abstract

Monitoring and interpreting an increasing number of images has become part of people’s daily lives. These images trigger a complex process of relations that can result in direct human or non-human actions over people, over services or over the very space. As part of a broader and widespread mediascape, the repertoire of images, its organization and connection to multiple devices and huge databases, make interpretation processes much more complex and beyond our reach. When arranged in a network, technical devices do not need to follow a logic narrative of facts. Paradoxically, they contribute to the construction of all possible narratives. This work proposes, from an archaeological perspective, that the intentionality of images, especially those that are produced and circulate in digital environment, is the symptom of a contemporary episteme that delegates to objects not just a functional autonomy, but also one of existence and of description of the world. The multiplicity of digital images makes of them Beings that exist beyond the human and that constitute a kind of continuous phenomenological machinic process, an awareness of the self and of the other.

Highlights

In Thomas Elsaesser (2018) work, we are invited to think about cinema from an archaeological point of view and as part of a larger set of communication practices born and developed over the last two centuries
The first major question that arises for those unfamiliar with the perspective of media archaeology is how to renew the approach to an object so thoroughly studied by more hermeneutical biases
The multiplicity of digital images makes of them Beings that exist beyond the human condition and that constitute a kind of continuous phenomenological machinic process, an awareness of the self and of the other

Summary

Introduction

In Thomas Elsaesser (2018) work, we are invited to think about cinema from an archaeological point of view and as part of a larger set of communication practices born and developed over the last two centuries. Based on Hayles’ (2012) proposals on the relationship with large databases as new tools for the humanities and from the expansion of the notion of agency by Latour (2013; 2005), we will think to what extent this proliferation of images brings us closer of a “truth” about the facts or relativize their very existence. This work proposes, from an archeological perspective, that the intentionality of images, especially those that are produced by and circulate in digital environment, is the symptom of a contemporary episteme that delegates to objects not just a functional autonomy, and one of existence and of interpretation of the world. To frame and look at things have become a much more complex activity

Database and narratives

Close to the machine

Conclusions