Postimage: On the Future Evolution of the Image and its Theory

Abstract

This paper is part of a research project that addresses the future evolution of the image taking into account the increasing accuracy and autonomy of computer and machine vision. Taking the case of so-called mixed swarm systems, where human, animal and robotic agents (each with specific sensorimotoric and cognitive capacities) collaborate in a given task, the paper will address the implications of the postimage understood as a collaborative image and as a mode of interspecies collaboration (Haraway 2008). If with animal swarms, sensing is distributed yet coordinated within a given swarm (species), posthuman vision, on the contrary, is a collaborative vision distributed across species, that is, between machines/robots and humans/animals and any intermediary forms (cyborgs, biomachines, etc.), with vision understood as the gathering/exchange of data between human and non-human sensing systems. The postimage then comes to be defined as “the collaboration of visioning humans/animals, data/algorithms and, increasingly, autonomous machines” (Hoelzl and Marie 2017: 73). With this definition, the project intends to open up a new field of inquiry: that of postimage theory, at the meeting point of computer and machine vision, posthumanism and image theory.

REFERENCES

Braidotti, Rosi, 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity

Haraway, Donna J., 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnessota Press

Dorigo, M., Birattari, M., Li, X., López-Ibáñez et al. (eds), 2016. Swarm Intelligence. Heidelberg/New York: Springer

Hoelzl, Ingrid and Remi Marie, 2017. “From Softimage to Postimage,” Leonardo 50:1 (February 2017), 72-73. Posted online February 1, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_01349

Hoelzl, Ingrid, 2017 (forthcoming). "Postimage," in: The Posthuman Glossary, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova. London: Bloomsbury Academic.