Week 2 - Image - Ars-onist

Has the digitalization of the image produced a necessary evil outcome?

It seems that our relationship with images was already complex even before the arrival of advertisements, television, and now most notoriously, the internet. As a result of the global reach and the amount of images the internet can produce there is now, as Mitchell put it, an “imagestic production equivalent of junk food.” However, the kind of imagery that we produce is all that not surprising. As images are in the likeness of things, we have created what is reflected from us, good and bad. The different technological mediums at our disposal is not far from its manipulation that makes us question its truth and essence. The reading then has us beg a philosophical question. Mitchell asks us why images receive both adoration and scorn, but a simple look at human character suggests a believable trajectory towards the treatment of the image.

The current attitude toward digital image seems to share some similarities with the resentment toward traditional image in its ancient days. In the last section “The Digital Image”, Mitchell suggests that the digital image should not be separated from traditional processes, as human perception treats them no differently than the analog. Combined with the previous two articles  from Kittler and Weibel, the common agreement is that traditional and digital media are mixing together into new forms of “images” that are much more accessible and reproducible. All in all, rather than breaking the link between media and image, we should reconsider our understanding of them as a whole, as Mitchell suggested: “The persistence of these qualities is what ensures that, no matter how calculable or measurable images become, they will maintain the uncanny, ambiguous character that has from the first made them objects of fascination and anxiety.” [1]

[1] W.J.T. Mitchell, “Image,” in Critical Terms for Media Studies, Ed. W.J.T. Mitchell and

Mark Hansen. Chicago: U Chicago Press, 2010, p. 47