THE HANDBOOK OF

EOO'EDBY IAHHEYWOOO CONSULTAHTEllllAiS:

ANO BARRY SANDYWEU MlCMAn GARDlNER,
GUtlAlAH HADWJNI ~
OOHERINE SOUSSlOfF
BLO O M S B U RY
 Critical Approaches to the Study of
Visual Culture: An Introduction to the
Handbook
BARRY SANDYWELL ANO JAN HEYWOOD

OVERVIEW OF CONTENTS
The coflection of original papers forming this Handbook has
been assembJed lo facililate access lo recen! thought and
research in the study of visual culture. The volume has been
organized nlo five main sections , each prefaced by an
introductory overview. This chapter provides background lo the
Handbook of Visual Culture and the field of visual culture as a
whole.
The chapters are grouped as follows. In lerms of cantenl
Part One, 'Hislorical and Theoretical Perspectives', conlains
chapters tha! primarily deal with the historical conlexts and
theorelical orienlalions in the study of visual culture. Part Two,
'Art and Visuality' , facuses predominantly upon issues and
questions linking art, aesthetics and visual culture; it also opens
the exploration of diverse art practices and the transformations
of public space and relaled topics. Part Three, 'Aesthetics ,
Politics and Visual Culture' , explores the dialeclical relationships
that exisl belween aesthetic structures and everyday life, in
particular the role of aesthetic formations in material culture,
fashion and costume, the spectacular transformation of the
political imagination and resistance lo Ihe aesthelicizalion of
daily life. Part Four, 'Practices and Institutions of Visual Culture',
explores different 'regions ' of visual culture, including
photography, television, cinema, cultures af consumption and
visual rhetoric. Finally, the chaplers in Part Five, 'Developments
in the Field of Visual Culture', deal with important issues of
visual knowledge , method and methodology, the impact of the
global digital revolution upon visual experience , Ihe emergence
of everyday 'reflexive sociologies' as a response lo consumer-
led capitalism, visuality in performative conlext, Ihe prospects of
allernative methods of visual research , and the emergence of
new forms of Iransdisciplinary visual analysis. Of course lo
some exlent Ihese clusterings are somewhat artificial as many
individual chaplers contain both descriptive, crilical and ,
occasionally, polemical orienlations (Ihus a reader does not
have to wait un!il Part Five lo gain a sense of future critical
direclions and changes thal need to be made lo the current
!heory and practice of visual studies).
The brief edilorial inlroduclions lo each of Ihese five parts
locale Ihe intelleclual backgrounds tha! underwrite many of the
individual chaplers, poinling oul Ihe hislOry and conlexl of Ihese
engagements with seeing and visualization and how they have
influenced and conlinue lo influence research and theorizing
carried out wilhin Ihese differenl traditions. Where appropriate
each chapler also provides a 'Further Reading' section in
addilion lo the references contained in the chapter. We have
striven lo identify Ihe most !heorelically relevan! and up-to-dale
readings, withoul neglecling older traditions and texts where
these offer valuable insighls , in order lo assist students of visual
culture lo orient themselves lo broader questions and issues not
directly discussed within the relevant chapter. We also include a
comprehensive bibliographical chapter Ihat maps the landscape
of visual studies for readers new lo !his field.

THE RATIONALE ANO APPROACH OF THE

HANDBOOK: TOWAROS REFLEXIVE VISUAL
STUOIES
The Handbook of Visual Culture has Ihree primary aims. First, in
its selection of contributions from a wide range of areas the
book has been designed lo reflect Ihe diversity and creativity of
visual culture research in the first decade of the twenty-firsl
century. Second, by commissioning new chapters from very
different perspectives it provides background knowledge for
Ihose who wish lo undersland the forces al work in the praclices
and instilutions of contemporary visual culture. And third , the
colleclion provides a guide and informalion resource to Ihe main
issues, themes and theoretical orienlalions wilhin Ihis rapidly
expanding field. Bul even more importanl, we wish lo encourage
Ihe reader lo reflecl upon Ihe posilions and argumenls
conlained in these chaplers and to queslion their Iheoretical and
subslantive claims about the place of images and visual
experience in today's global sociely, polilics and cullure. The
emphasis Ihroughout is upon underslanding visual experience
as embodied in social and cultural practices. This might be
called Ihe 'inslitutional' turn in visual sludies (prefigured by
George Dickie's theory of the instilutional conlext of art objects,
1974 l. Of course we are acutely aware thal the all-but-neglected
field ofvisual culture in the 1970s and 1980s has today become
something of an intellectual induslry (reflecled in Ihe explosion
of journals, textbooks, academic programmes and conferences
in Ihis fieldl. In fact Ihe landscape of visual s!udies is now filled
wilh a plelhora of theorelical superslructures and interpretalive
positions. The rise of !he new media and globalized visual
culture in particular-we mighl also say hybridized and diasporic
cultures-has become one of the driving force-fields of
contemporary knowledge production and cultural change.
One manifest danger in this situation of exponential
expansion is that the discrediled logocentrism and textualism of
previous cultural research in the 1970s and 1980s mighl be
simply replaced by a one-sided ocularcentrism. To avoid this we
need lo reconsider Ihe social and cultural contexts that have led
lo the expansion of visual studies and lo siluate this
development wilhin a wider critique of contemporary society and
inlellectuallife. We also need to provide a richer and more
philosophically nuanced conception of 'the visual' Iha! interfaces
wilh Ihe other senses as productive knowledge siles and critical
interventions in sociallife. Finally we need lo invent imaginative
research agendas and discourses to advance a mulli-sensorial
conception of visual experience and visual understanding. AII of
Ihese desiderata are part of a more general reflexive approach
lo social relations, social praclices and instilulions.
Traditional cultural theory has unlil quile recently been
dominated by linguislic and verbally based semiolic models of
'meaning production and reproduction '. This situalion is largely
Ihe oulcome of Ihe dominance of French social theory and
philosophy in Ihe 19705 and 19805. Yet despite this linguislic
bias even Ihe most extreme forms of 'Theory' (we use this
capilalized lerm as shorthand for 'Theory and Cullural Sludies'
and lo mark ils predominantly European philosophical
provenance) have had a Iransformalive effecl on Ihe Sludy of
Ihings visual. In different ways Ihe papers assembled in Ihis
collection a1l reflect Ihe intended and unintended consequences
of the Theory wars of the 19705 and 19805 and the legacies of
more constructive research in the last two decades. In the light
of Ihis fluid siluation we emphasize that any such Handbook
needs to be complemented by other perspectives, olher volees,
conversalions and experimenlallines of Ihoughl thal may not
have found a place in Ihe present collection. The inevilable
partialily and selectivity of any such anlhology should invite
crilicism and stimulale further thought (for example from Ihe
perspectives of Ihe sociology of knowledge, psychology of
perceplion , information and artificial inlelligence theory,
cognitive science, discourse theory, biomedical engineering and
neuroscience). 1

NEW VISUAL STUDIES

We also claim thal this is a Handbook wilh a difference. We are
nol providing a lextbook of instruclions or a 'how-to-do-it'
manual of melhods (such guides are available and are oflen of
great value as Sandywell's 'Bibliographical Guide' (Chapler 30)
later in th is volume argues). Ralher Ihan setting out canonical
perspectives and methods Ihat can be 'applied' or adopted
uncrilically, the Handbook has been expressly designed as a
site of provocations and reflective dialogues in and around its
main thematic seclions. The recurrent theme of interdisciplinary
exchange is reflected in the diverse intellectual origins of the
contributions to Ihis volume, which include Philosophy,
Sociology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Art History, Art
Practice, Aesthetics, Cultural Studies, Semiotics, Education,
Feminism, Geography, Theatre, Film and Television Studies
and Literary Theory. The very plurality of perspectives should
encourage reflection about the changing conditions and
dynamics of Ihe differenl farms of knowledge production wilhin
these intelleclual seltings and inslitutional spaces. This diversity
is itself symptomatic of Ihe transilion from the relatively insular
visual studies of the 1980s and 1990s lo the interdisciplinary
(and postdisciplinary) explorations of everyday visualities that
characterize the pasl two decades of post-Theory inquiry and
research. The exchange of conceptual perspectives and
methodological lools wilhin and between these new knowledge
formations promises lo create new conlexts of inquiry and
theories bearing upon the instilutionallife of seeing in everyday
life and the wider society. Contribulors and research in the fields
from which they come, are coming lo terms with history and
developmenl of visual culture research and theory in very
different ways. This is what one would expect, given Ihat visual
culture sludies has laken differenl forms and had differen!
impacts in , far example anthropology as opposed to art and
design history, film studies as agains! sociology.
We have marked this difference by arguing that critical
refleclion within visual sludies has moved from inter-disciplinary
to multi-disciplinary and finally lo trans-disciplin ary-and
perhaps in-disciplinary and post-disciplinary-research and
theorizing. This queslioning of disciplinary preconceptions and
historical inslitutional boundaries is ilself part of the larger
social, economic and cultural processes tha! theorists express
with the difficull concepls of postmodernization and globalization
(Bauman 2000 , 2007; Beynon and Ounkerley, 2001 ;
Fealherstone 1990; Giddens 2002; Hall et al . 2005; Nancy
2007; Rancire 2007; Sandywell 2009). Seen from Ihe
perspective of cultural change, Ihe contested transition from
modernism to poslmodernism mi9ht be considered as Ihe mos!
recent form of the mass culture Iheories of the 19305 and 19405
Ihat stimulated Ihe Sludy of popular culture and, latterly, of the
detailed analysis of popular visual forms. Ultimately it is Ihe
socioeconomic and cultural impact of globalization over the past
Ihree decades Ihat has 'scrambled' social relations and
Iradilional disciplinary inslilutions along wilh Ihe vasl changes in
economic and social circumslances of millions of people
worldwide. And one of !he key cullural mechanisms of !he
pOSlmodernization of daily life is the emergence of the Internet
and new communicative media as !hese have transformed
visual experience and ts analysis.
The passage from modernsm to postmodernism Iha! has
witnessed the re-direction of Cultural S!udies from traditional
questions of economic determinism, ideology and
representation lowards Ihe micro-analysis of everyday life, the
vision-salurated cultures of materal life, and Ihe sociology of
ordinary social practices and embodiments has had a significan!
impac! upon the field of visual sludies. However, this shift has
not wholly negaled an older framework, wilh a characlerislic
dichotomy. That is the grand historical narrative of the structural
changes-Ihe socoeconomic, poltical and technological
'mechanisms'-behind the shift from modernity to postmodernily
remains intacl, if only as a hugely powerful discursive fea!ure of
politics and policy, as well as that parallel slory, al once
'complex' bul also invoking the 'olher', of micro phenomena at
the level of our ever-myslerious everyday life, variously
understood as effecls, responses, sponlaneous quotidian
creative praclices and so forth. Such post-Enlightenment
struggles with subjects and objecls-or freedom and
spontaneity on one hand and self-imposed rules and forms of
self-objectificalion on the olher-are embedded in our 'modern'
form of life , our cultural grammar (Pippin 1991 , 1997, 2005).
 On a theoretical level we have moved from a sometimes
quasi-elitist theory of 'the culture industry' to a more demotic
Iheory of Ihe dynamics of global cullure induslries as Ihese
impact upon Ihe configurations of everyday life . However,
questions of significance and value-once predominantly
localed in high culture , in aeslhetics, ethics and criticism- are
more relevanl than ever, given Ihe inslrumenlal success and
economic power of Ihe culture industries in Iheir penetration of
the life world. It has become evidenl thal in coming lo terms with
Ihese seismic social , polilical and cultural changes we need lo
acquire new levels of sophisticalion and reflexivity in
deconstrucling Ihe hislory, struclure and dynamics of visuality
and visual culture in contemporary life.
The new visual studies mighl also be called 'reflexive visual
studies' given their aim not only to describe and analyse visual
media and communicalion Ihrough visual imagery but lo
excavate and display the generative conditions, assumplions
and implicil methods al work in visual analysis (and lo use Ihis
knowledge of the interfaces between operative assumptions and
visual worlds as a force of crilicism and transformation in the
wider society). One requirement of these new explorations is the
imperalive lo resisl defining visual studies substantive/y (or
Ihemalically in terms of phenomenal 'fields', 'domains' or
'regions'}-a Iradilional analytical strategy Ihat produces an
impossibly wide realm of phenomenal objects-and instead lo
define visual studies strategically and tactically in lerms of
specific problems and queslions-for example in exploring Ihe
exislential, ethical , social and political functions of visual life, Ihe
blurring of dislinctions belween high and low cu!ture, the
wandering of visual signifiers within everyday materialities , and ,
perhaps even more importanl, of asking radical queslions aboul
the transformative dynamics al work in visual experience from
Ihe earlier 'urhislory' of visual media lo the globalized digital
worlds of cyberspace. However, any such acknowledgement of
a shift in Ihe condilions under which one can ask existenlial,
ethical , aeslhetic and politics queslions does not enlail the
conclusion Ihallhey have become irrelevanl or impossible. They
remain as important and urgent as ever.
In this sense Ihe queslions thal were Iraditionally posed by
such modernist disciplines as aeslhetics and art history now
inlerface with the postmodern problematics of such perspectives
as the study of power, gender and ideologically stralified
'differences', the implosion of aesthetics within everyday life, the
diverse cultural funclions of science and lechnology,
postmodern geography and so on. Continuing in Ihis vein,
recent research has begun lo pose explicitly reflexive queslions
about the relationships between seeing, social practices and
knowledge produclion , vision and power, visual ways of Ihinking
and wider aesthetic, ideological and cultural formations. We will
relurn lo Ihis definitional problem later in Ihe section 'The Visual
Turn?' .
We might take the 'colonization' of everyday life by visual
media as a specific example of new forms of visual space. The
globalization of visual media-what sorne have called the global
society of the spectacle or, more generically, Ihe
postmodernization of everyday life-has forced every academic
programme in visual culture lo resolve Ihe paradox that lo know
the real world we have to examine the mediations and re-
mediations of visual forms ; indeed to gain any kind of
knowledge requires something like a genealogy of the
heterogeneous work of images and interpretive traditions thal
are more ancient Ihan sociallife itself (the vicissitudes of the
concept of ideo/ogy might be explored in th is contexl). The
resurgent interest in socially conslructed institulional sites and
cultural processes is again a prominent theme of such emerging
problematics as global media sludies, mediology and new
cultural sludies (for example Hall et al. 2005; Hall and 8irchall
2006; longhursl el al. 2008; McGowan 2007 ; McRobbie 2005;
Turner 1996).
Locating our bearings in the complex worlds of
contemporary life is only possible through the mediations of
image-saturaled slorylelling and narralives thal make up the
larger part of a living culture. What sociologists have called 'Ihe
practices of everyday life' have come to be overwhelmingly
mediated by visual forms and the ways in which we discuss and
analyse our visual experiences. Major social instilutions-
including syslems of educalion, enlertainmenl induslries and
political systems-have been reconfigured in response to the
impact of new media. In lurn Ihis concern for Ihe popular, the
quotidian and the everyday has forced a general change of
focus from a high-allitude concern with semiolic codes,
generative struc!ures and meta-Ianguages to a more
micrological and self-referential focus upon vernacular modes of
embodiment, performances and social practices tha! involve all
Ihe senses in shaping whal passes for experience and reality
(eL Howes 2006). In this sea-change exclusively linguistic
concepts have proved inadequate as a general model of
medialed and re-mediated cultural processes (cL Mitchell
1994a). Indeed the emergence of a range of Iransdisciplinary
problematics in the last decade-including Media Sludies,
Inlernet Studies, Cyberculture Studies, Cognitive Science,
Information Theory, Globalization research (Globalizalion
studies), Cultural Geography, Consciousness Studies,
Animalion Sludies, and Ecophilosophy-is symplomalic of
deeper crises and changes within text-dominated university
syslems as these respond lo global shifts in Ihe larger
information economy. In this contexl it is worth noting Ihe
resilience of Ihe texl, Ihal is ils capacity lo re-Ierrilorialize and
set i!self in command, a power which stems from ils abSlraction ,
Ihe insignificance of the signifier and ils related promiscuity; sel
this againsl the slubborn 'this-ness' or 'haecceily' of the material
image . The imperial text is highly resilient, particularly adept in
reappearing in ways claimed lo be contrary to purportedly
conventional textual forms .
1I has become clear Iha! Ihe lask of working Ihrough Ihese
contradictory pro cesses and implementing more
Iransdisciplinary perspeclives will have lo inform Ihe agendas of
future Iheorisls and researchers. Whalever the ullimate shape
of these emerging constellations we believe that future
explorations will continue to be committed lo Ihe values of
dialogue, criti cal debate , cross-disciplinary exploration and the
willingness to create new concep tual formalions, methodologies
and philosophical alliances in returning to the things
Ihemselves. However, Ihe conceplual and methodological
flexibilily advocated by this approach lo visual studies is not at
the expense of Ihe importan! insights lodged within relatively
separate disciplines and praclices. Such visual phenomena,
experiences and ideas~some related lo sensory speciafization
and embodiment, some lo conceptual frameworks thal divide up
the worfd in differenl ways, some lo different histories-
frequently challenge or resist translalion. Rather than Ihe
definitive establishment of any post-disciplinary quasi-discipline
of visual studies, Ihe new siluation is defined by the need lo
encounter visual and somalic phenomena crealively and
sensitively, attentive to what disciplines and practices offer, bul
also whallhey obscure and limil. Post- or a-disciplinarity is
improvising, no! allowing inlerpretation to be 'settled ', either by
discipline or routinized indiscipline.
On a more practical level these new developments pose
more immediate questions for those developing course
programmes and curricula in Ihe field of aesthetics, new media
and new visual studies. If il is the case tha! we are moving from
linear-verbal and writing-dominated paradigms lo
multidimensional hybrid paradigms based on digilalized
audiovisual informabon (see Flusser 2004 ; Gitelman 2006 ;
Johnson 1999; Kittler 2009; levy 1997, 1998; lisler 1995;
Manovich 2001 ; Mcluhan 1989; MitcheIl1994a,b; Poster 1990,
1995, 2001 , 2002 ; Robins 1996; Silver and Massanari 2006;
Stephens 1998; Terranova 2004; Zielinski 2008) Ihen Ihe most
urgen! task is lo conslruct transactional and interactional siles
that facililale dialogues across alllhe constituencies concerned
with the vicissitudes of visual meaning and cultural formations in
the emerging informabon sociely. Comprehensive programmes
of visual s!udies musl, in principie, be mullidisciplinary,
Iranscullural and global in design and delivery. Such
programmes musl be capable of theorizing the material
dynamics embedded in systems and institutions of meaning as
these are increasingly transformed Ihrough digilalization. We
will need lo pursue difficult forms of refleclion by asking: Whal
kind of syllabus, reading lisl, leclure series or library could
accommodale the infinite and expanding realms of visual
knowledge? How should we acquire Ihe compelences to
inlerpret non-Weslern art? How can we keep track with the
hybridized subcultures of the contemporary world?
Turning lo Ihe condilions for visual study and practice, in the
UK visual art and design educalion and training evolved
independently, inilially in colleges of art and design , then in
Polylechnic departments. With Ihe conversion of Polytechnics
in!o universities in 1992, these courses joined with other arts
and humanities subjecls in a unified university seclor. Recenl
years have seen considerable pressure on creative visual and
material praclices lo make Ihemselves more 'academic', or al
leas! to claim Ihe conceptual and methodological rigour
supposedly characteristic of 'research'. Yel the stimulus and
benefits of visual sensibility and thinking lo olher largely lext-
based arts and humanities subjecls are almost enlirely
unrecognized. 2 Where are the 'Creative Seeing' programmes
Ihat mighl complemenl well-established 'Creative Writing'? How
should we develop Ihe 'close seeing' of image-based cultural
forms and digital media lo parallel the lask of close readings of
literary texts commended by strucluralist and post-slructuralist
paradigms? What analytical and synoptic competences would
empower a teacher lo provide explicil inslruction in 'crilical
visual studies' within the mediascapes of a globalized society?
Whal would be Ihe visual equivalent of crilical social theory?
How can future studenls be trained lo analyse Ihe visual
lopographies created by cyberspace, lo undersland and
in!ervene within the expanding universe of creative industries
based upon electronic image processing? Whal philosophical
and insti!utional changes would be necessary lo create reflexive
programmes of cultural criticism? And so on. Clearly one of the
most urgent tasks for teachers and researchers is to ereate
more strategic, holistic, critical, comparative, multisensorial
frameworks and reflexive inter-cultural methodologies for visual
inquiry (a 'route-map ' of such strategic directions-what we then
called the hermeneutics and politics of vision-is included in our
earlier collection of chapters , see Heywood and Sandywell
1999, 'Appendix: The Original Project' , pp , 238-50).

CRITICAL THEMES
Ultimalely, having an experience becomes idenlical wilh laking
a pholograph of il, and participaling in a public evenl comes
more and more lo be equivalenl lo looking al il in pholographed
fonn. Thal mosl logical of nineleenlh-cenlury aeslheles,
Mallarm, said Ihal everything in Ihe world exisls in order lo end
in a book. Today everything exisls lo end in a pholograph.
(Sontag 2002: 24)

We have suggested that one of the fundamental requiremenls

of the new visual studies is to approach visual phenomena
reflexively from eriOca/, culturally spec'fic and hisfon'cal
standpoints. But like the heteroglossial eharacter of the
contemporary academy, critical thinking about the visual forms a
speclrum of interests dislribuled unevenly aeross exisling
disciplinary formalions. Our starting poinl is the view that the
new visual studies have no realislic allernative other than lo
build upon and exploit the energies released by the many forms
of critical discourse and media theorizing of Ihe last three
decades. This is particularly Irue with respect to what has been
called the postmodern turn and the wider impact of
poslstructuralisl problematics in social theory (for example in the
burgeoning research that has accumulated Ihanks lo feminisl
theorizations of vision , social space and society).
Within a larger horizon and time-frame, programmes of
visual enquiry will need to reconnect to perspectives that
transcend Ihe history of Cultural Studies and lead back inlo the
deep-hislory of European inslitutionallife. By deconstrucling
such poslmodernisl programmes we also need lo problemalize
Ihe exclusively 'Eurocenlred' paradigms of Iradilional
cultural/visual theory and be open to non-European and
comparalive accounls of image awareness and consciousness
(tor example Davis 1999). We are reminded that the concern for
modes of significalion and signifying praclices is nol a recenl
intellectual invention. John Berger in his path-breaking lectures
Ways of Seeing had already poinled the way lo more concrele
studies of gendered power in understanding the visual field.
Being 'shocked' by pasl Iheories of meaning and signification
might help loosen the overwhelming textual orienlation of critical
studies. Here again how we break Ihe grip of such texl-cenlred
disciplines like art history, museology and media studies will
prove crucial lo Ihe development of a more robusl social theory
of visual forms, visual space and visual inslitutions.
To Ihis end we have emphasized the importance of
developing self-reflexive perspectives lowards the current status
of 'visual studies' and commend new configuralions of the visual
as complex, helerogeneous and dynamic sociocultural
formalions in Iheir own right. However, by opening up traditional
perspectives we do nol claim to lay down rules or preempt the
explorations of olhers. The promise of Reflexive Visual Studies
converges on three recurren! Ihemes: firsl. that we need to
question and relhink many of the earlier formulations and
implicil frameworks of visual studies programmes (Martin Jay's
contribution lo this volume, 'Scopic Regimes of Modernity
Revisited' is exemplary in returning lo and revising his earlier
path-breaking essay (Jay 1992 ) on Ihe historicily of 'regimes of
seeing'), second, Ihal we need to crilically recover the history
and philosophical presupposilions of earlier forms of visual
analysis and our commonsense understandings of audiovisual
experience (exemplified in Barry Sandywell's programmatic
chapter on the hisloricily of visual knowledge), and Ihird , Ihal we
need lo imagine and invenl new forms of research and
alternative methodologies- and perhaps even metadisciplines
-in response lo Ihe lransformational forces of digitalizalion and
cyberspace as these are reconfiguring social relations and
everyday life (for example lo uncover both the aestheticizing
and the de-aeslheticizing torces at work in conlemporary
society). In all of these respects we claim thal the 'piclorial' turn
cannot simply replace the 'Iinguistic' turn of traditional cultural
studies.
More Ihan a decade ago, in an earlier collection of essays on
interpretation and visual culture (Heywood and Sandywell
1999), we diagnosed Ihe prospecls of visual sludies in Ihe
following way:

The visual field has begun lo be explored with a thoroughness

and global understandin9 tha! is unique in the history of human
self-reflection. Recent work on Ihe work of seeing, vision,
perception, and culture has taken explicitly historical and
hermeneutic directions. Indeed , lo borrow an expression from
Martin Jay, the topic of 'visuality' presents itself as a radical
discursive 'force field ', 'a non-totalized juxtaposition of changing
etements, a dynamic interplay of attraclions and aversions,
wilhout a generative first principie, common denominator or
inherent essence' (1993, 2). Recenl work from sociology and
social Iheory have been al the forefronl of this revaluation of
visual metaphors and ideas- wilness Ihe recenl collection of
essays edited by Chris Jenks (Visual Culture , 1995), David
Lowe's History of Bourgeois Perception (1982), Elizabeth
Chaplin's book Sociologyand Visual Representafion (1994),
Paul Virilio's Vision Machine (1994) as well as majar texts
exploring 'the denigration of vision' in social thought (Jay's
Downcast Eyes, the colleclion of essays edited by David
Michael Levin, Modernity and the Hegemonyof Vision (1993)
and the more recent collection edited by Stephen Melville and
BiII Readings, Vision 8nd Textuality (1995)). From \he
contributions of these importanl inlervenlions we are gradually
realizing the extenl lo which the project of modernity has been
salurated by the problemalics of viewing and visualisation. We
are also now fully aware Iha! Ihe latter are Ihemselves open to
sociocultural and hislorical analysis in their own right. (1999: ix-
 ,).
Ten years of scholarship and critical reflection has seen a
massive explosion of theoretical and empirical research on the
material presence of imagery, artworks and visual culture in
society. As a response lo the globalization of media , the
appearance of convergen! and interactive media, and the
digi\izalion of culture we have become aculely aware of Ihe
'specularization' of sociallife and with il the spread of new
technologies Iha! visibilize ever more spheres of prvate and
public life (from the family, schooling, religion lo the social
organizalion of science and polilics). Terms like 'surveillance',
'panopticon', 'society of the speclacle' , 'gaze', 'image', 'screen
culture', 'digital mage processing', and 'ways of seeing' have
become commonplace across the human sciences. What earlier
Iheorisls somewhal innocenlly called 'Ihe visual field '-we might
think of the path-breaking explorations of John Berger, Svetlana
Alpers, Michael Baxandall , Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag,
Norman Bryson , Barbara Stafford , W .J.T. Mitchell and others-
has today become a global space of material performances and
practices. In !he world of late-capilalisl societies, visual culture
has become one of the most dynamic global industries of the
age. The fusion of the political economy of visuality and the
emerging new media technologies has crealed Ihe
transinstitutional and transnational virtual topographies that we
refer lo as 'cyberspace'.
In the light of these unparaHeled Iransformations it is no
accident that Ihe field of visual studies has tself moved beyond
its exploratory and preparadigmalic stage influenced by
Iradilional art history and cultural hisloriography lo a more
forthrighl acceptance of the material, neurobiological, cognitive,
social-hislorical and cultural processes tha! mediale visual
experience. The coming of cyberspace has forced many to
rethink their assumplions aboul visualily as Ihe new information
lechnologies have produced qualilatively new forms of seeing
and inleraclivily on a global scale. Where older Iheories of art
and media sometimes tended to dematerialize Ihe operalions of
visualily, today many researchers are acutely aware of the
concrete effects and operalions of visual apparatuses in the
contexl of particular organizalions of seeing, speclalorship and
surveillance.3 Dlder liligious disputes about disciplinary borders
have given way lo inlerand crossdiscipl inary dialogues. In
areas such as Art History, Film Studies, Culture and Media
Sludies exploralions of Ihe inlerstices and interseclions of
disciplinary perspeclives have become much more significanl
and productive , And as we move inlo Ihe firsl decades of Ihe
new millennium one of the recurren! motifs of work in this area
- a Iheme as evidenl in Ihe laler writings of Sluart Hall as in Ihe
work of Slavoj ZiZek, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Kittler, Nicholas
Mirzoeff and lisa Cartwrighl- is Ihe shift away from
inlerdisciplinary collaboralion lo more resolutely mela- and
Iransdisciplinary Ihinking and a growth of reflexive self
awareness with regard to methodological and epistemological
issues that cut across Ihe natural sciences, arts, social sludies
and philosophy. Today the emerging programmes of 'visual
sludies' are exerting an irresistible pressure for change upon all
the arts, sciences and humanities.
The diversily of voices, emphases and theoretical slrategies
exemplified by Ihis colleclion attesls lo Ihe remarkable growth of
Ihe field of visual studies. Yel despite Ihe manifesl differences in
approach and diversily of Iheorelical backgrounds Ihere has
emerged a remarkable set of overlapping concerns-
philosophical , theorelical and Ihemalic- running Ihrough Ihe
Handbook. Taken together we believe thal this unique mosaic of
Ihemes forms a creative malrix of ideas Ihat mighl acl as
conceptual markers for more radical experimenls in visual
research and teaching.
Among these distinclive fealures we would single out Ihe
following:

The explicil concern with queslioning the hislorical and

philosophicallraditions that inform the available paradigms
 of visual thinking across the arts, humanities and sciences.
This concern for the genesis and genealogy of interpretive
traditions is part of a broader philosophical effort to restore
human activities and practices to their sustaining
experiential contexls and forms of life (a projecllhal
involves integratons of research agendas concerned wilh
the senses in hislorical and comparative perspeclive). In
this respecl theorists fike Conslance Classen and David
Howes have spoken of 'Ihe sensual revolution' or 'sensory
turn' in the humanities and social sciences (Howes 2006:
402; cf. Classen 1993 and Howes's conlribulion lo Ihis
volume).
The inlerdisciplinary nature of many of the chaplers
(exemplifying a desire to move beyond Iradilional
disciplinary boundaries and frameworks that have lended to
focus more or less exclusively upon painting and pictorial
arts, performance arts, television , cinema and related visual
media). This shitt might also be underslood as a loosening
of the le between particular visual forms and conventional,
modish or aulhorilalive ways of talking aboul them. 4 An
active engagement with Ihe visual field in explicitly self-
refleclive and deconslructive terms (an engagemenllhal
commends self-analyses of Ihe guiding assumptions and
melhods of inquiry as inlegrallo every form of visual and
audiovisual research).
A common concern lo develop more reflexive frameworks
of visual research and visual teaching thal are bolh
Iheorelically informed, historically specific and empirically
concrete.5
An emphasis upon the 'polilics of the visual' Ihat relates Ihe
organizalion of visual praclices and visual subcullures lo
Iheir concrete performative settings and material contexls
in everyday social life.
A commilment lo diverse projecls of imagining new ways of
Ihinking about visual praclices and inslilulions Ihat
articulale wilh Ihe seismic changes in global sociely and
 culture, espedally wilh force fields linked lo 'new
technologies' and emerging forms of information culture
indexed by the problemalics of 'globalizalion',
'digitalization' , and 'cyberculture' (Sandywell 2009 , 2011 ),
In the context of the global turn, an emphasis upon
Iheoretical openness, diversily and expliciUy elhical and
poltical concerns in imagining fulure developments in the
rapidly changing world of visual identities and forms of life,

To summarize , despite differences of emphasis and diverse

theoretical backgrounds , al1 of the voices in this collection
concur that the field of visual culture and visual studies is one of
the most creative and dynamic zones of contemporary
inlellectual life. The new visual studies promise lo open Ihe
academy to olher voices and praclices inlent upon transforming
Ihe landscape of everyday life. The challenge posed lo Ihe
Iradilional universily and lext-based university curricula is lo
have Ihe imagination and will lo creale slruclures Ihal facililale
radical dialogue across the established disciplinary boundaries.
Ultimalely he success of Ihese programmes will depend on
macro- and micro-agencies-from govemmental departments to
individual scholarly enlerprises-with Ihe imaginalion lo invesl
resources lo encourage and sustain these new developments.
While we know a greal deal aboul visually and visual culture
Ihe 'field of the visual' is still one thal inviles new Iheories and
inlelleclual perspectives. In whal follows we wish lo
conceplualize 'Ihe visual' less as a discretely bounded domain
of study-traditionally occupied by art hislory, media sludies ,
film studies and Ihe like-and more as an underlying
problemalic thal informs Ihe disciplinary concerns and research
programmes of all Ihe arts, sciences and philosophy. As an
inlersecting clusler of Ihemes and problems-whal we might
call a fransverse problematic- visua l culture lends itself to a
multiplicily of Iheorelical interventions and programmalic
inquiries. Investigalions into praclices of seeing Ihus necessarily
interface wilh wider frameworks of thought, among these
aesthetics , the philosophy of culture, sociology, politics,
anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, the psychology and
physiology of vision and neuroscience. Byencourag ing
researchers lo queslion disciplinary boundaries and Iradilional
conceptual tools, the 'visual problematic' provides a rich
resource of reflexivily and further attesls lo Ihe vilalily of exisling
work and the promise of future research.

SOME PRELlMINARY DISTINCTIONS

While lerminology is often nebulous and ill-defined we need
some operational clarity in locating the chapters in this
collection. Bearing in mind Ihat language ilself is inevilably
contested and subject to contextual determinalion, we might
establish a number of conceptual issues thal should prove
useful to those wishing lo work productively wilhin the visual
field. The following brief discussion has accented the
operational and melhodological implicalions of these conceptual
tools.

Th e Visual

The visual (usually appearing in quotation marks as 'the visual')

is the mosl generic lerm designating the entire multifaceted field
of visual experience. Like the word 'culture', references to the
visual, 'visual field /s' and visual experience are in one sense
completely ordinary. lf we denaturalize and historicize the
concept of perception we generate Ihe category of 'seeing' or,
more simply, visua/ity. Visuality, Ihen, refers lo the presence
and workings of image-mediated phenomenon operating in the
organization of human experience. Today the field of vision
would include the arts, the crealive work of the media and Ihe
buill environments-or as sociologists might say 'art-worlds',
'media-worlds' and 'architectural worlds'. But it would also
nclude everyday or vernacular visual cultures- both mass
popular culture and the routine organizalion of mundane
ecologies for differenl societies and cullures, the spaliolemporal
syslems of domestic arrangemenls, the unnoticed visual spaces
of everyday social interaction , Ihe reconfiguration of urban
space and the social processes this facil itates. Until quite
recenlly the 'seeing' and analysis of the spaliolemporal
slructuring of quotidian life as a serious domain of research was
all-bul-nonexislent. Today we see the outline forms of more
robust institutional theory and research focused upon the
cultural praclices that mediale everyday life and social space
(Massey 1984, 1994, 2005; Rose 1993; Smith 1987;
Sheringham 2006; Soja 1989, 1996).
To inhabil a culture is to belong lo its orderings of visual
space , ils strucluring of environmenls and meaningful siles as
contexts of aclion and interaction. As with the performances of
routine conversation, f1uency in these spatial domains is
assessed immanenlly in terms of Ihe operative capacities lo
negotiate these 'subworlds' and universes of meaning . In the
activilies of daily life praxis takes priority over theory. We move
through differenl 'provinces' of social space. We listen lo music,
we are surrounded by mages, we experience Ihe virtual worlds
of digilal culture at particular limes and in specific places. To
funclion compelently any sociely Iypically requires individuals to
internalize Ihe dominant audiovisual order as a taken-for-
granled field of aciion. Individuals are 'socialized' inlo
prescribed identities and roles 'tuned' lo these spatiotemporal
singularilies. In Ihis way children engage in social activities and
visual practices before they are capable of formulating anything
like a theory or meta-theory of those activiies. Visual
competences-like linguistic competences-are acquired
wilhoul deliberate Ihought or reflection . Here the concepl 'field '
also marks the everyday invisibility of routinized practices of
seeing and idenlily. Visual worlds- Ihink of domestic artefacls ,
public space and architeclural struclures-are, so to speak,
constantly 'in play' as Ihe vital horizon of identity-formations in
ordinary life. But like many of the praclices of everyday life the
horizon of visuality is typically taken for granted . The complex
origins and slrucluralion of inslilutional space is ignored as an
analytic concern. Inslitutional sites are encountered al the level
of 'the lived ' rather than 'the reflected' (thus the everydayness of
visual perception remains silenl about lts underlylng
neurological, biological and psychological mechanisms). What
we call 'the visual', then, signifies Ihe vast and Iypically
unremarked phenomenal orderings that configure and
accompany every individua l and social activity. Ifwe can
supplement traditional aesthetics focused primarily upon the
analysis and evaluation of 'fine ar1'6, Ihe visual turn today
discloses a remarkable field of everyday aesthetic concerns,
singular jUdgements and practical experiences . Once we
overcome the traditional condescension towards the everyday
we revea! the unexp!ored !andscapes of everyday aesthetics
(Saito 2007) . We reclaim the aesthetics o, everyday life but only
on the condition thal we relurn what is called 'art' to the wider
community, to an en!arged horizon of subjects and Iheir diverse
concerns, although not at the expense of types of experience
and 'values' traditionally nurtured by the arts .

Visuafity
The comp!ex instilutions of visua!ily come into focus when Ihe
unnoticed rea lms of the visual are seen as problematic or
extraordinary. What is striking here, and whal matters, is what
we mighl call 'invisible visibility', thal combination of the ulterly
obvious-on wh ich our capacily lo live a life necessarily
depends- and the radical elusiveness of everyday life. In this
contexl 'instilution' is shorthand for the organized articulations of
social practices and their sustaining material resources,
personnel and interactional processes. In hislorical lerms
institutions of visuality have been mediated by relations and
representalions of class, gender, age , elhnicity and 'race ' (here
again we return to Ihe theme of identity formations as a central
focus of gender theory). Or, even more directly, by the
transformative effect of such new visual technologies as
photography, cinema and digitalized oplics. Once this 'alienalion
effect' is set into molion we begin to notice Ihe remarkable
unremarkableness of ordinary perception and visual practices.
On a broader historical scale, the social organization of seeing
is Iransformed inlo a problem, a cultural and hislorical puzzle:
how do differenl cultures and subcullures organize and envision
Iheir worlds?, why did Ihese socielies come lo view Ihe world in
Ihese ways?, how do different subcultures envision everyday
life, creale arl and interprel the visible?, how do we see Ihe
world? Everyday praclices of seeing-including the making of
arlefaclS, visible signs and ar1works can Ihen be revealed as
'anthropologically' strange and research-worlhy.
Asking hislorical queslions aboul instilutional conlexts
funclions like an elhnomethodological 'breaching experiment'
enabling Ihe analyst to appreciate the diverse and mullifarious
involvements human beings have wilh the visual surface in all
Iheir remarkable singularity and concreteness. Of course major
advances in science and , especially, in Ihe neurobiology of
vision and cognitive processes has hislorically been decisive in
Ihis 'problematizalion' (indeed one of the earliesl
transdisciplinary sources of inquiry into the dynamics of vision is
Ihe experimental work of the physiologisl Hermann 'Ion
Helmholz (1821~94)) . Even earlier we might mention the impact
of microscopy in Ihe work of Ihe English scientist Robert Hooke
(Micrographia, 1665) as an exemplary episode in the
emergence of modern forms of descriplive 'seeing'. In terms of
ils influence, Hooke's work remained a paradigm case of the
power of rigorous observation and descriptive imagery in early
modern science. Many olher examples of Ihe transformalive
impact of optical media and inslrumenlalion mighl be cited
(Kittler 2009).
By approaching vernacular perception as problematic we
experience a sudden dtournement, a vertigo of disorientalion
and , hopefully, wonder {again, we might mention the reception
of Hooke's Micrographia Ihal more or less eslablished the
aulhorily of the Royal Society and physical research in
seventeenth-century Britain). What was previously an unnoticed
resource-the visual field-now turns into a topic of thought and
inquiry. Through the researches of a range of new sciences the
familiar has been relativized and assumes the character of
unfamiliarity, the ordinary assumes the appearance of the
extraordinary. And , of course, this 'defamiliarizing' operation can
take many forms and re sult in different 'seeings' (we should
recall tha! like modern science one of Ihe functions of artworks
is lo perform Ihis 'Iransfiguration of the commonplace' (Danto
1981 ) by reordering our laken-for-granled assumptions and
perceplions of the world).
We can also make analogous daims for Ihe
phenomenological tradition originating in the writings of Edmund
Husserl and Martin Heidegger and the sociological traditions of
ethnomelhodology and reflexive social inquiry (Blum 1974;
Garfinkel1968; Sandywell et al. 1975). The hislorical
predecessor of Ihis kind of aesthetic distanciation that creales
new techniques of observalion and new forms of knowledge is
Ihe recurrent appearance of Ihe carnivalesque and ludic
episodes tha! turned everyday life 'upside down' (Bakhtin 1968).
By means of such symbolic reversals we are , in Waller
Benjamin 's terminology, 'shocked' into new insighls and profane
illuminations (Benjamin 1969; also Benjamin 2008; cf. Bryson
2004; Foster 1987). In different ways and using different media
Ihe hislory of modern science and modern art is a conlinuous
record of such transformative shocks to commonsense beliefs
and assumptions. Any kind of critical theory of vision, social
space or society presupposes some kind of operative
defamiliarization (in recent years these operative strategies
have sheltered under the general rubric of 'postmodernism').
When visual experience is transformed into an explicit topic
of inquiry the term 'visuaJity' can function both as a placeholder
for the phenomenological qualities of seeing and visual
phenomena more generally (qualilies hat lend lo get occluded
when expressed in Ihe visual predicates that enter ordinary
language and everyday judgements about visual experience)
and, more analyticaUy, as a concept thal emphasizes Ihe craft,
techniques and processes of seeing (expressed more directly,
Ihe practices of seeing available lo a given community, sociely
or whote culture). The radical extension and Iransformation of
praclices of looking is , of course, one of Ihe major functions of
new art form s, new sciences and visual technologies (Crary
1990). The genealogy of pholography reveals a reciprocal fietd
thal enfolds the discourse of science and pholographic science
(Wilder 2009). An analogous formation operales in the
science/technology/cinematic constellation (Cartwright 1995).
The coming of cinemalic technologies not only crealed new
forms of knowledge and expertise configured around cinemalic
art (sel design, art direclion, monlage, special effecls, colour
technology, ediling, film processing, managemenl and
distribution, image slorage and archiving, film music and so on),
but also revolulionized scienlific medicine and Iherapeulic
observalion. For example those professionally con cerned wilh
Ihe origins, slruclure and dynamics of visualily could assume a
more 'disengaged', reflective and analytic attitude towards the
visual phenomena (again photography's and film's complex and
creative relationship with the conduct of modern scientific
research is paradigmalic of these emergenl configuralions).
Rather than 'living in' visual experience we experience
estrangemenl and adopl an invesligative orienlation towards Ihe
conditions , mechanisms and structures of visuallife.
Habituated forms of perception and commonsense
assumptions are brackeled by Ihe virtual spaces of screen
imagery. Through the magical zones created by visual
lechnologies we slop and wonder and in the space of Ihis
aslonishment ask questions aboul previously hidden
phenomenal orders. What appeared solid and universal now
appears mutable and relative. Through such 'shocks' Ihe
visualily of everyday life is Iransformed into an analytical,
scientific, aesthetic and reflexive topic (cf. Jacobsen 2009;
Merleau-Ponly 1962; Onians 2007; Johnstone 2008; Saito
2007; Sheringham 2006). The invisible is made visible and we
turn to the 'showing' of seeing (MitcheIl2002 ). This 'bracketing'
of the visual field as a laken-for-granled attilude enables Ihe
inquirer lo 'see that even something as broad as the image does
nol exhausl the field of visuality; thal visual sludies is nol Ihe
same thing as image studies, and that the sludy of the visual
image is JuSI one componenl of Ihe larger field' (Milchell 2002:
178-9).

Visibifiza tion
Visibilizalion designates Ihe social and malerial condilions,
machineries and processes Ihal make differenl modalilies of
visualily possible. Research inlo social visibilizalion is
particularly concerned wilh Ihe aclivilies, lechniques and
performalive slalus of seeing, spectalorship and Ihe
lechnological expansions of visual experience Ihrough optical
media. As an analyticallheme Ihe concept of visibilizalion is
inseparable from Ihe sociological question as lo who imagines ,
designs and Iransforms visual ideas and image 'blueprinls' inlo
real works, arlefacts and technological apparatuses. Who is
licensed lo produce visibilizalions as a routine operalion of
particular social activities and organizations (who has Ihe
responsibilily and sanclionable power lo reframe social objecls,
reconfigure categories of objecls and process the products of
visibllizalion)? Who is empowered lo reproduce (or lo conlesl)
Ihe dominant ways of seeing? In general we assume Ihat
powerful groups and inslilulions in a sociely prescribe Ihe forms
of empirical visibility-sites of vision-along with Ihe operalive
praclices of Ihe wider cullure. We also assume thal every form
of social inleraclion presupposes some type of observational
scene (involving prololypes of actual or virtual surveillance). The
simple fact of seeing olhers lurns oullo involve a complex sel of
construclive procedures and inlerprelive 'work'. Even ghosls
require a speclral stage. Individuals and groups who conlrol a
society's 'visibility machines' also control the 'scenes of
appearance' which can be linked lo surveillance slralegies,
discourses and Ihe mobilizalion of socio-symbolic power. Bul
once in existence such scenarios canstrain the kinds of
inleraclion Ihey facililale. As Milchell righlly observes, visual
culture 'is the visual construclion of the social, no! just the social
conslruclion of vision' (2002: 170).
MitcheU's chiaslic inversion beco mes self-referenlial when
we realize Ihal every model of knowledge and every programme
of educalion is ilself a kind of seeing. The lheorelician's ways of
'seeing vision'-by, for example asking afler Ihe visual
canslruction of Ihe social-is ilself a suitable lopic for hislorical
analysis . Cultural capilal becomes Iransformative when il is
linked up to social apparatuses and 'vision machines' jusi as a
society aclualizes ils values only when these are Iranslaled inlo
speclacles and scenes of normative inscriplion. From Ihis
perspective a society is a grid of visual networks composed-in
Foucault's idiom-of normalized siles and helerotopias. Today
these 'relations', 'Iink-ups' and 'externalizations' are carried out
in ways thal relale local cultures lo evenls on a Iruly global
scale.
Bul 'visibilizalion' may also be extended lo Ihe particular
work of singular arts and cultural forms-Ihe specialized forms
of experience, subjeclive intenlionalities and dialogical
possibilities made possible by the available machineries of
visual experience and practices of looking (Slurken and
Cartwrighl2001 l. I1 should also be extended lo praclices tha!
cantesl and resisl the dominant forms of visualization (Haraway
1991 l. We need lo be reminded Ihal subversive images, jusi like
critical verbal acts, are potentially dangerous phenomena that
can have serious implicalions for the wider social and polilical
order. The story of modernist art and music is liltered with such
transgressive inlervenlions. The iconic inslance of Osip
Mandelslam's fateful 'Ode lo Stalin' mighl be taken as an objecl
lesson in the dangerous consequences of audiovisual
intervention (Mandelstam 2003 ).

Visual Techno logi es

Visuallechnologies refer lo Ihe apparaluses and mechanisms
Iha! provide the conditions of the possibility of visibilization!s
(ranging from the 'biological apparalus' of neural networks lo the
technological apparatuses Ihal extend and transform human
perceplion). With Ihe transilion lo a global socia! order we move
from an age of 'mechanical reproduction' lo an age of
'eleclronic' and 'digital reproduclion'. The shift from analogue
lechnologies like lilhographic reproduclion and emulsion-based
pholography lo digital lechnologies is one of Ihe major changes
thal has revolulionized Ihe rules governing Ihe visual field. In
general the focus upon the 'machineries' of visibilizalion opens
new paths inlo Ihe Iradilional research practices of art hislorians
and art critics (cf. Onians 2007). We might cite recent research
on Ihe hislorical uses of Ihe camera obscura, linear perspeclive
lechniques, pholographic media, multimedia digitallechnology
and Ihe like. In general such apparaluses are 'composed of
lines of visibilily, ullerances, lines of force, rines of
subjeclivalion , lines of cracking , breaking and ruplures thal all
inlertwine and mix together and where some augmenl Ihe
others or ericil olhers through variations and even mutations of
the assemblage' (Deleuze , 'Whal 15 a Dispositin' (1989), in
Deleuze 2007: 347).

Visibifty Machines
Visibilily (or aeslhelic) machines are specific inslruments and
apparatuses thal generale or facililale Ihe generation of-
visible displays, siles and scenes of oplical inlerpretation:

Visibitily [Deleuze is discussing Foucault's analyses of

visibilizalion processes] does nol refer lo a generallighllhal
woutd iIIuminale pre-exisling objecls; il is made up of lines of
lighllhal form variable figures inseparable from an apparalus.
Each apparalus has ils regimen of lighl, Ihe way il falls, softens
and spreads, dislributing Ihe visible and Ihe invisible, generaling
or eliminaling an object, which cannol exisl wilhoul il. This is nol
only IfUe of painting bul of archileclure as well: Ihe 'prison
 apparalus' as an oplical machine for seeing wilhoul being seen .
If Ihere is a hisloricily of apparaluses, il is Ihe hislory of regimes
of lighl bul also of regimes of ullerances. (Deleuze, 'Whal Is a
Dispositir?' (1989), in Deleuze 2007: 344)

Aeslhetic machines are artefacls , devices , instruments,

apparaluses and lechnologies which extend (and in some cases
Iransform) human awareness, perception and sensual
consciousness through visual simulacra : from older and no less
wonderful technology ,like damp, dimly lil cave walls (Lascaux
lo Plato), a piece of paper and a penen, the camera obscura,
through lo more recenllight machines and artificiallechnical
sensoria (magnifying lenses, spectacles, magic-Ianterns,
dioramas, the telescope, microscopes, cameras, x-ray
lechnology (radiography), body scanners (Magnelic-Resonance
Imaging), wriling machines, lasers, magnetic resona tors,
lelevisual technologies, etc.) , cognitive machines , recording
machines, artificia l intelligence machines, prosthelic devices ,
lelegraph, typewrilers, maps and so on. The Iransformalive
power of such machinery has frequently been described in
'magical' or 'dream-like' terms (photography capturing Ihe
ghoSIS of the past, cinema as an oneiric medium, etc.). While
Ihe idea has Darwinian precedents and, more specifically,
origins in the nolebooks of his conlemporary, Charles Babbage
(1801 - 71), the model of machinic production might be
considered as a generalization of Charles Baudelaire's thought-
provoking maxim: 'A painting is a machine'. Poslmodernists
have taken the Iheme lo heart in Iheir nolions of the machine a
criture and vision machine (et. Virilio 1989, 1994). Paintings
are image machines. Maps are power machines. Photography
is an evidence machine. Cinema is a dream machine. This is
Ihe same idiom Ihat permitted Walter Benjamin's well-known
homology: 'lhe camera introduces us to unconscious oplics as
does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses' 1936) 1992:
230 ; et. Sontag , 'Melancholy Objects', in 2002). Today we would
invert Baudelaire's phrase in describing Ihe digilal machineries
of telecommunicalions: 'Digital machines are painling Ihe world' .
Through digitization we revolutionize the relationship between
the visible and the invisible, the real and the virtual, actuality
and dream , self and other. Pholography, as Susan Sontag
observed , 'though nol an art form in ilself, has the peculiar
capacily to turn all ils subjecls into works of art . .. Now all art
aspires lo the condition of photography' (2002: 149).
We are entirely comfortable wilh Ihe synesthesia that
enables us lo 'see' with sound (as in ultrasound lechnologies) or
to visualize the workings of the brain through magnetic waves.
Today Ihe conducl of modern science has become inseparable
from the revelatory work of such prosthetic instruments. If Ihe
lelescope is the paradigmalic aeslhetic machine of Ihe
seventeenlh century, pemaps the camera (including Ihe more
advanced machines of cinematography) wiJl one day be
considered as the paradigmatic aesthetic machine of Ihe
nineleenlh century (Benjamin had already formulated Ihe Ihesis
in relalion lo photography and cinema in the 1930s) and the
laser or digital lighl machine as the aesthetic machine of the
twentielh century. Speaking generically, we migh! respecify the
vasl and heterogeneous universes of materia l culture ,
technology and lelecommunications as no! only information
media , but as 'embodimenls of mind ' (cf. McCulloch 1989),
exlensions of human praxis (McLuhan 1989, 1994), and 'lools of
living' (the eye itself being nature's greal contribulion lo Ihe
development of infinilely exlended aeslhelic machinery). Thus
the digital apparatuses of contemporary advertising , popular
cu lture, film, archileclure and Ihe designed environmenl are all
intensive domains of materialized aeslhetics based upon the
Iransformalive powers of visuallechnology (an expanded
concepl of lechnological embodiment which demands the
crealion of a new cultural science of Prosthetics). Such a
prosthetics would have as ils central theme Ihe sociocultural
construction of embodied subjectivilies and objectivilies and
Iheir social , elhical and poltical consequences ,

Visual Subjectivationl Objectivation

Subjectivalion and objeclivation refer lo Ihe processes and
praclices thal construcl 'subjectivilies' and 'objectivilies' in
different historical regimes and social orders. Speaking of Ihe
library as a visibilily machine , Alberto Manguel reflects:
'Entering a library, I am always struck by the way in which a
certain vision of the world is imposed upon Ihe reader Ihrough
its categories and its order' (2008: 47). A physical organization
like a library or museum prescribes ways of seeing and acting
upon ils users. 11 is nol merely a physical space bul a grammar
of social inleraclion. ti s, in Ihis sense, an image machine . Bul
from this perspeclive all powerful social organizations and
inslilutions creale visual domains in which ceriain forms of
selfhood are prescribed or proscribed.
The visual lurn is Ihus also a turn towards a renewed interesl
in the self and conceplions of selfhood and 'modes of
spectalorship' as Ihese are correlated lo the changing
organizations of visual experience within larger political
constellalions. A library is Ihus bolh a mirror of Ihe universe and
a lechnology of Ihe self. The central conlention here is thal
different lechniques and apparatuses of visibilizalion give rise lo
different forms of space , subjeclive orienlalion and self-
experience. Just as lexts always enlail an 'implied reader' so
visual artefacls always presume an 'impUed spectator' (the
library, in Manguet's sense, would projecl an 'implied browser',
a flaneur/flaneuse both following and resisling Ihe rules of lis
categorical systems). And Ihese projected
'speclators/readers/lisleners' vary in time and space. A
melancholic eye thus elicits a melancholic glance from the
objects in ils visual freid . As Iril Rogoff observes: 'Spectalorship
as an invesligalive freid underslands thal what Ihe eye
purportedly sees" is dictated to il by an enlire se! of beliefs and
desires and by a sel of coded languages and generic
apparatuses' (1998: 22). The 'spaces of seeing', 'praclices of
looking', and 'forms of selfhood' they faci litate are themselves
products of particular modes of production (Benjamin (1936)
1992, 2008), socioeconomic formations of tived space and lime
(Gregory 1994; Lefebvre 1991 ; Soja 1989, 1996), gendered
ways of seeing (Berger 1972; Haraway 1991 ; Pollock 1988) and
'scopic regimes' (Jay 1993). Ac!s of percep!ion are bolh routine
exlensions and everyday expressions of a cullure's obsessions
and sensibilities.
As a general heurislic assumption we would hypolhesize a
complex relationship or internal 'dialeclic' operaling belween
discursive formations, visual struclures and embodied forms of
selfhood. The empirical exploralion of Ihe grammars of differenl
visual regimes and subcultures-what Martin Jay has called Ihe
contesled terrain of scopic regimes-opens paths lo a more
expliciliy social and historical analysis of pas! and present visual
praclices and lo the forms of material embodimenl and
differential selfhood Ihese facililate. Somewhat surprisingly the
precise empirical analysis of Ihe lived experiences of differenl
visuallife-worlds and hislorical cullures-the vasl panorama of
different forms of visual consciousness-is of quite recenl
provenance.

Visual Engagement
Visual engagement refers lo Ihe embodied encounters,
dialogical transactions and inlerpretative advenlures of visual
life. Here the one-dimensional and monological concept of
'subjeclive conslilution' to be found in modernisl and
postmodernisl theory needs lo be radically modified lo
accommodate Ihe active appropriations of visual experience by
self-reflective, inleractive, embodied human agenls. The
contingencies of spectatorship and interpretalion mean thal
whal has been called Ihe act of seeing is rarely passive and
disinlerested. Ralher, praclices of seeing are typically aclive
and engaged (for example as the virtual siles of desire and
pleasure localed in different class, gender and 'race'-based
rela tionships), The term 'speclalor' has unfortunate
connolations Ihat are Ihemselves rooted in older positivist and
reflection is! views of subjecIs encountering objects (for example
where Ihe Iradilional concepl of Ihe museum and of museum
studies was premised on spectalorship, of disengaged subjects
viewing curious artefacts and objects). Where older Iheorelical
frameworks, particularly Ihose seeking lo exhibit quasi-scientific
rigour, from Struclural Marxism , Semiotics , Critical Theory , and
early Feminism , poslulated a relalively fixed mode of passive
spectatorship, the new theorizalions openly admil heterogeneity
and mulliplicily in modes of perception and correlated forms of
subjeclivity.7
From Ihis perspeclive every modalily of lived experience-
perception , memory, anticipation, interpretation, judgement and
so forth- is differentially embodied and historically contingent. A
'full-bodied' social phenomenology based on these insights
would be one where Ihe social forms of memory, perceplion,
action and interaction are recovered together and integrated into
a more encompassing account of incarnate awareness and
situated knowledge drawn upon by individuals and collectivities
in projects of self-underslanding (if space permilted we would
explore the implications of these constellations for concepts of
memory, identity and cullurallransmission). Where earlier visual
research methodologies posited a passive 'spectator' and
'dominated' object, we now see realms of corporeal agency
interwoven with complex vectors of affeclivity and pleasure. The
'sensory-turn' in general epistemology entails a renewed focus
upon the materiality and corporeality of visiono
A more existential and performative concept of 'material
encounter' Ihus helps lo Iransform the passive 'object' of visual
experience into an active facilitator of concrete kinaesthetic
praclices and meanings. While no doubt spectators will continue
to 'gaze' and 'watch' , while museums and art galleries will
predominantly remain archives of aesthelic objects, Ihe possible
modalilies of empirical visuality are much more interactive,
diverse and complex. Acls of seeing are precisely actions,
modes of praxis bordered by contingencies and unanticipaled
consequences. Viewing 'seeing' in isolation from social action
and interaclion is precisely an 'abstraction' from the contexls of
lived experience. In realily perceplion is inlerwoven wilh active
world orienlalions, moral and ideological discourses, From this
perspective every act of seeing-including the acls of seeing we
call 'science' and 'knowledge'-is shot through with gendered,
racialized and other cultural mediations. Thus the pictorial
artwork, the photograph and cinematic image now appear more
like grenades of possible meanings and inlerpretative openings
upon possible worlds rather than inert planes of colours, lines
and lextures. By reactivaling Ihe gendered and racialized
structures of ways of seeing we can return to the work of art
history and art practice with renewed eyes.
We might Ihen reclaim the polysemic word 'art' as a
portmanteau term for every kind of act or instrument Iha!
engenders reflexive awareness of being in the world. Whal is
called 'art' is nol simply a passive medium of class ideologies or
gendered power. It is more deeply an articulation and revelalion
of historical social relations, Moreover, as seeing is Ihoroughly
socialized every act of seeing is acquired in relation to Ihe wider
fabric of educalion and learning in a particular culture . To see
'art' as an embodiment of knowledge and learning provides new
dialogues wilh Iradilional art history. We see things logether; we
'read' the world by applying common interprelive repertoires.
We view the world and lalk aboul the world in shared idioms.
Knowledge is always an anticipated oulcome of dialogical pacts.
This relational and dialogical reorientalion also leads lo
systematic reappraisals of the diverse functions of older
represenlalional artworks, painting traditions, icon faclories in
the late medieval period , modes of representation in the Middle
Ages, Renaissance painling schools, Enlightenmenl visual
cultures. modern regimes of visual replication, modern science ,
museology, cinematic flnerie and so on. Art history, Ihe epic
story of modern ism othe canonical works of the European avant
gardes become candidales for reapproprialion in sociocultural
terms as particular organs of societal reflexivity,
This paradigm shift towards models of active reception and
processes of interpretative selfdefinition mighl be considered
as part of a more radical inlegralion of phenomenological
hermeneutics and gendered inquiry that informs the reflexive
lurn in conlemporary intellectuallife.

Visual Performance
Of course, every such 'zone of encounter' presupposes a
medium of material images and , typically, contested complexes
of image repertoires and discourses. Visual performance
indexes the concrete enactmenls of visual forms and praclices
as a dialogical work of situated , collaborative, signifying
performances. Sensilized by Ihe concepl of performance we
again underline the radical sociality of visual media . We now
see Ihat from its oldest origins 'art' has been a mode of social
engagement, an interrogation rather than a reflection of the real.
In general we not only do things with visual media, we do things
with others to realize particular ends (and such acts and values
are invariably conflictual). From the perspective of praxis, visible
artefacts and artworks begin to assume a much more complex
provenance and diverse functionality in the genesis of meaning.
Recall , for example, that the Romanlic image of the isolated
painter is a product of an essentially modern conception of art
and in no sense reflecls the practices of earlier traditions of
painting where the craft involved cooperative performances
involving a number of different skilled practitioners and artisanal
conventions. The 'finished product' was thus a kind of
palimpsest of laminated inscriptions, each layer compiled like a
trace of unlrained and trained competences (art historians
recognize this 'Iayering' by using Ihe designalion 'from the
school of x'- that is that certain 'Titians' are actually in part the
work of Titian's apprenlices and col1aborators).
It might be more fruitful lo adopt the idea of collective
inscriplion as a general model of art and culture. The emphasis
on ihe trans-subjective dimensions of cultural production and
inlerpretation restores Ihe interplay belween image , verbal
media and active appropriations across Ihe whole field of
silualed social inleraclion. By underlining the siluated social
character of visual 'events' we also underline the historical
specifics of occasioned encounters-Ihe partial and fractured
transactions human beings have wilh visual objects and
artefacts thal are already framed and colonized by powerful
material systems and normative conslraints. We see, in Michael
Baxandall's terms, with 'period eyes' (1988). Perhaps every
society produces the eyes it deserves, A culture insulated
againsl movemenl and travel produces a slalic and limeless
sense of things. Historically, aspects of the world seen from
female slandpoints have differed significantly from the world
viewed through male eyes. Cultures that proscribe figural
represenlalion find compensatory release in worlds of
labyrinlhine geometrical designs and verbal imagery (Haldon
and Brubaker 2010). The world seen from a moving train is
radically different from the world viewed on foo! (Schivelbusch
1986; Kern 1993).
In phenomenologicallerms, Ihe zones of engagemenl
mentioned above are cultural envelopes of embodied
intentionalily that are normatively linked with Iheir experienlial
'correlates' (for a phenomenology of lived-place and landscape
in these visceral terms see Charles Tilley's The Phenomenology
of Landscape (1994), Edward Relph's Place and Place-Iessness
(1976) and Jeff Malpas's Place and Experience (1999)).

Visible Cultures/Cultures of Vis ibility

If Visual Studies defines its topic as Ihe invesligation of visual
cultural practices we should immediately warn Ihat Ihere is no
homogeneous 'object' indexed by the phrase 'visual culture',
What we see are always visual cultures. By highlighling Ihe
plural phrase 'cultures of visibility' we draw altention to the
importance of invesligating sociocultural differences and
normative social multiplicities (these pluralized lerms underlining
heterogeneity, complexity, conflicl and 'polyphony' as normal
features of the ongoing particularities of culturallife).
 The pluralized and modal concepl of vision also reminds
analysls to respect the singularity of different practices,
technologies and media. Thus we should re sisl collapsing one
medium into another or 'flattening ' the diverse practices of
seeing by Iranslaling Ihem inlo some monological concept or
theory. One example is Ihe importance of defending the
singularily of visual art and its resistance lo facile approprialion
and theorelical Iranslalion. It is Ihe very ambivalence and
singular 'spaceless spatialily'-Ihe punctum--of Ihe artwork Ihal
facilitates a range of determinate and inde!ermina!e visual
experiences and discourses. This in essence is the
phenomenological leaching Ihat what survives every reductive
Iranslalion inhabits Ihe sphere of singularily. In Ihis respecl we
can learn a great deal from some of Ihe more refleclive
praclices of traditional art hislory with Iheir inlensive focus upon
Ihe malerial densily and performalive characlerislics of singular
artefacls and artworks.
Here we have in mind Ihe 'immanenl melhodology' of
approaches lo Ihe artwork where the lask is no! to describe Ihe
visual artefacl or performance from afar---codifying and
mapping the work from a high-alti!ude-bu! lo 'enter into', lo
open a dialogue, lo surrender lo and be conlesled by Ihe
complexity, ambigui!y and ambivalent experiences released by
Ihe work in question. From Ihis perspeclive, artworks are
provocalions and in!errogations of the world before !hey are
reflections or representalions of pre-formed experience. Before
we search for meanings and conslrucl interprelations we have
lo surrender lo Ihe dislurbing 'embodied presence' of Ihe
artwork and related aeslhelic forms (Roland Barthes, for
example identifies singularity as the essenlial fealure of Ihe
pholograph-suggesting a definilion of photographic art as 'Ihe
impossible science of Ihe unique being' (2000: 71. In this
conlext we also underline Ihe importance of rethinking the
materiality of art practices- the sheer haecceity of painterly
works , for example-as a way of resisling and contesting
dominan! ways of reading Ihe tradition of art history. lan
Heywood's reflections on the cubist moment in modern art in
this Handbook analyses the materiality of early rnodernist art
and suggests other ways of addressing Ihe standard story of
modernism in the arts. Merleau-Ponly's late reflections on the
painterly work of Paul Czanne interfaces with his own version
of phenomenological thought lo creale an alternalive form of
embodied and participatory phenomenology (see Merleau-
Ponly, The Visible and the Invisible ( 1968) and The World o(
Perception (2008. An ana!ogous apprecialion of the malerial
singularity of ar1works can be found in the work of Theodor
Adorno and the kind of close reading practices that Walter
Benjamin undertook in his Arcades project (Benjamin 1999b ,
2008; cf. Buck-Morss 1989). A recent exponent of a similarly
image-pervaded literary art is the novelist and critic W. G.
Sebald (1944-2001 ; the interplay of discourse and photography
in Sebald 's fictions is a central Iheme in Carolin Duttlinger's
work (2006.
The general 'ethnographic' task af entering inta Ihe
occasioned particularity of a social practice or organ ization with
the aim af recovering Ihe meanings thal practice has for
participants is a commonplace in certain forms of reflexive
saciolagy (for example de Certeau (1998) and Sandywell (1996)
- Ihe Iheme is also recovered and defended in Gillian Rose's
chapter in the Handbook) . For related empirical stud ies of Ihe
differential work of 'visibility machines' see Ihe collection edited
by Lynne Cooke and Peter Wollen, Visual Display: Culture
beyond Appearances ( 1995). See also the references under
'Technoculture and visual technology' in the bibliographical
chapter by Barry Sandywell in this volume . Sandywell's 'Seven
Theses on Visual Culture' in this volume addresses sorne of
Ihese theoretical concerns.

THE VISUAL TURN ?

Reality has always been interpreted through the reports given
by mages; and philosophers since Plato have tried lo loasen
 our dependence on images by evoking the standard of an
image-free way of apprehending the real. (Sontag 2002: 153)

Sontag's neat formulation needs immediate qualification. Plato's

work is of course as full of images and ideas Ihal depend on
vision as it is of compelling Ihealre, narrative and myth, the
'allegory of Ihe cave' being the mosl famous example. Much Ihe
same could be said of Ihe presence of visual ideas in
Descartes , Hegel , Nietzsche , Wittgenstein, Husserl or
Heidegger. Rather than Ihe facl thal certain key ideas gain
explanatory and melaphoric power from vision , visual images
are critical lo their teaching . So while the prominence of the
visual in older philosophy and Iheory cannol be denied, are we
being unduly optimistic in anticipating a new phase in theorizing
and emprical research in the ever-expanding field of visual
studies? Certainly Ihere are signs thal rigid jties and
assumptions in the way of Ihis change are breaking down. Whal
will emerge is partjally hislorically contingent, and ji is importanl
lo heed the warnings of Stafford (1996) and others about
growing visual illiteracy, ironically amid a culture suffused by Ihe
image, but also one taking itself to be somehow naturally f1uent
and at ease with Ihe visual. While sorne have spoken of a
'pictorial' or 'iconic' turn by analogy wilh what Richard Rorty
famously called the 'Iinguislic turn' in modern philosophy, the
general strategy advocaled here is lo move away from linguistic
and texl-based models centred upon the linguistic signifier
towards irnage-based semiotic and intertextual rnodels of visual
experience and image life.8
Once we accept Ihat every 'reality' or 'form of life'
construcled by human beings is image-based we have a new
incentive lo focus inlensively upon the onlology and sociology of
image formations.
There are clearly dangers in Ihinking thal lhis 'piclorial' turn
has suddenly discovered visual experience and perceptuallife .
This is clearly not Ihe case as even Ihe briefest encounler wilh
the writings of Husserl , Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and others in
Ihe phenomenological Iradilion witl confirmo Once we begin to
'read' Ihe tradition of Western philosophy for Ihese Ihemes we
find Ihal visuality has been a conslant concern from Plalo and
Arislolle down to Descartes, Kant, Hegel and beyond . Indeed
we find thal in many of the canonical wrilings of this Iradilion
and againsl the generallogocentrism of other perspeclives,
visual experience-particularly everyday perception-has been
recurrently used as the paradigmalic model for other forms of
human inlentionalily. Husserlian phenomenology is in some
respecls the culmination of a deep-rooted European
ocularcentrism . Writers in the Marxisl tradition such as Theodor
Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Ernst 810ch were even more
intensively concerned wilh Ihe modern transformalions of the
visual field as were such modern art historians as Erwin
Panofsky, Heinrich Wlfflin and E. H. Gombrich. 9 The self-
inlerpretalion of modernily as an age of 'enlighlenmenl' and
self-reflection betrays Ihe same obsessive fascinalion wilh
Ihings visual. The inslilulional genealogy of Art History as a
discipline in the eighleenlh cenlury and 'image science' and
'pholographic science' in Ihe nineleenlh century offer further
examples of Ihe fascination with the image in European
inlellecluallife. This 'specular' legacy lives on in the hegemonic
grip of images and ideas cenlred upon theoria, mimesis and
representation Ihal continue lo organize everyday life and
inlelleclual culture to the present day (SandyweIl 1996, 2011 ; cf.
McNeill 1999; Thrift 2007) . Yel while notions of seeing have
been powerfully active in much of Western Ihought, a
proposition denoted by the lerm 'occularcentrism', il is importanl
lo avoid a simpl islic connecting of 'visual thinking' lo the
mechanics of ideology and the potitics of domination. Careening
from obliviousness lo Ihe visual lo reflex suspicion or
condemning il out of hand is precisely whal a new visual culture
studies would wanl lo avoid.
In the many juslified altempts to escape the frarnework of
logocentric perspectives and verbal paradigms Ihere is a danger
of abstracting 'the visual' from larger patterns of human
experience, of isolating acls of seeing from Ihe complex range
of sensory experience that is a normal condition for human
beings and human praxis. Against this tendency we emphasize
that such distinctions are to be seen primarily in analytical and
strategic terms. In reality visuality cannol be readily separated
from other sensory and affective modalities and , as many of the
chapters in this collection argue, we should begin thinking of the
human sensorium in developmenlal , multidimensional and
multisensorial terms (a rethinking of basic epistemological
categories Ihal Iransform whal we undersland by lerms tike
'knowledge' and 'underslanding'). However, il is important nol lo
neglecl an importanl legacy of cullural and artistic forms Ihal
have been concemed lo explore Ihe senses in relative, bul
certainly never complele, isolation. A key topic for visual studies
musl be Ihe particular bul various modes of 'visual thinking'
presenl in such forms.
Where we have Iradilionally carved up creative arts inlo
pictorial arts, literalure and music, loday il is Ihe crossings and
'synaeslhesia' within and between these domains thal have
stimulated reflection and relhinking; the Iheme of synaeslhesia
is particularly evident in film studies where Ihe concern for
'cinesthesia' and 'cinesthetic form ' is relalively well developed,
but is also present in reflections on Ihe body and metaphor in
painling (Wollheim 1987: 305--56). The currently popular idea of
'mixed media' and 'multimedia' experience woven from sound-
image-Iext ensembles is in fact prefigured by the multisensorial
nature of human inteltigence in its endless quest lo 'translate'
Ihe visual into the verbal and the verbal into Ihe visual (we
already recognize this inlerplay of 'showing' and 'Ielling' in Ihe
commonplace idea of 'visual music'-for example in the visually
rich orcheslration of Elgar, Mahler or Shoslakovich or Ihe
visualily of Ihe novel genre as a hybrid art of 'telting-showing').
Recenl research on Ihe neurophysiology of 'mirror neurons' has
even suggesled thal the evolution of the human cortex has
become hard-wired lo carry out Ihese intersubjeclive
'translations' between verbal and the visual experience. While
recent research in neuroscience has revealed extra ordinary
sensory specialization, thus presenting the problem of how
connections and networks operate, we might speculale Ihal the
networked multimodal organizalion of Ihe brain is reflected (al
several ontological removes) by Ihe multimodal or synaeslhelic
funclioning of perception , From conlemporary neuroscience and
Ihe basic phenomenology of Ihe human sensorium lo Ihe higher
reaches of aesthelic practice and technoscience we increasingly
find Ihat we are dealing wilh complex experimental interseclions
and conslellations of synaesthetic experience involving lactile,
audilory, olfactory, haplic as well as visual informalion.
11 becomes clear Ihallhe binary conlrasl belween 'showing'
and 'telling' is inadequate and misleading and thal an adequate
philosophy of the visual needs lo deconstrucl !his opposition
and explore spheres of experience where showing and lelling-
image and text-interact in productive ways. Perhaps even the
most elementary human competences are always already
experimenlal, dialogical and polyphonic. In 1948 Merleau-Ponty
was already speaking of sensory qualities as emerging from 'the
dialogue between me as an embodied subject and Ihe external
objecl which bears Ihis quality' (2008: 47). As an experiential
advenlure such 'dialogues' can never be grasped as apure
transmission of informalion nor as a purely abstracl verbal
'event'. To Ihink olherwise is lo allow a disciplinary classificalion
lo shape the transformative possibilities of concrete experience.
lndeed mandatory disciplinary commitmenls lo autonomy and
purity rema in abslrac! ideals in the face of such nomadic and
hybridized experiences. As Shohat and Stam argue, the visual:

never comes 'pure', it is always 'contaminated' by the work of

other senses (hearing, touch, smell), touched by other texts and
discourses, and imbricated in a whole series of apparatuses-
the museum, the academy, th e art world, the publishing
industry, even the nation stale--which govern Ihe production,
disseminalion. and legitimalion of artislic produclions ... The
visual. we would argue , is 'Ianguaged', jusi as language ilself
has a visual dimension .. . The visual is simply one point of
 enlry, and a very slralegie one allhis hislorieal momen!, inlo a
mullidimensional world of inlertexlual dialogism. (1998: 45)

The problem here, 'al Ihis hislorieal momenl' bul wilh ils
rools deep in modernily, is thal the abslraction and consequenl
power of the text Ihen tends lo dominate in many analyses of
this synthesis. As the history of both pragmalic Ihought and
Heideggerian hermeneutics has argued the simplest visible
Ihing is already a dialogical complex, a concretum of sensory
qualities, a node of affectivily and desire , a congealed history
Iha! opens out upon a genealogy of human praclices and forms
of embodiment (here Ihe investigation of material culture in ils
dense hislorical malerialily is a more inslruclive paradigm for
the new visual research ). From this perspective 'the visual' is an
open lolalily of sensory histories (for synaeslhesia and Ihe
interaction of Ihe senses see Richard Cylowic 2002 , 2003 and
David Howes 2006). Above all we need lo avoid Ihe templation
lo reify 'the visual' by abstracling visual forms and experiences
from the complex ecolog ical, cultural, lechnological , hislorical
and political conlexts of human experience. In this respect
William Milchell is correet in elaiming that 'Ihere are no visual
media. Al! media are mixed media, with varying ratios of senses
and sign-types' (2002: 170). This suggests the need for
phenomenological sensilivity to and respect fer such 'varying
ralios ', nol Iheir levelling in Ihe name of textual analysis or
mutlimedia technology.
lilerary practices-diverse modalilies of telling-are thus
also profoundly visual. The classical narrative forms of the novel
not only involve 'techniques like ekphrasis and description' bul
'more subtle strategies of forma l arrangemenl' Ihat involve
'virtual or imaginalive experiences of space and vision Iha! are
no less real for being ind ireclly conveyed Ihrough language'
(MitcheIl2002: 174). This, again, is a lesson Ihal we can learn
from the embodied phenomenology of lived experience: 'We are
rediscovering in every object a certain style of being Ihal makes
il a mirror of human modes of behaviour' (Merleau-Ponty 2008 :
53-4). From Ihe auspices of Ihese critical conceplions of
sensory experience we may say that the visual studies of the
future must be strategically intermodal, intermedial, and
intertextual .
Of course we are already unknowing victims of a dualist
mythology in even opposing 'the visual' and 'Ihe verbal' , Ihe
'realms ' of the visible and the sayable, what can be seen and
shown and what can be heard and read (recallthat ekphrasis is
an ancient trope that promised to translate visual images into
verbal representalions, iconic experience into texlual
meanings). Historically this hybridization is encoded in Horace's
maxim ut pictura poiesis. The idea of embracing Ihe visual by
mortgaging the verbal is a prime example of undialectical
Ihinking . In fact all such 'ecphralic' reductions simply avoid Ihe
complex problems associated wilh the dialecticaltexture of
everyday experience, perceptual inleraction and social
knowledge. The theme of the crossing of Ihe poetic and the
visual dates back lo Greek antiquily: the saying Ihat painling
was silent poelry and poetry speaking painting is attributed lo
Ihe poet Simonides (c. 556 Bc-468 BC).
This type of uncrilical reduclion and ontological 'flattening-
itself a product of our spontaneous representational ideology-
is particularly misleading in reslricling 'Ihe visual' lo 'Ihe pictorial'
or thinking of visuality as purely a question of the production ,
transmission , disseminalion and approprialion of images, as
though the 'image universe' stood diametrically opposed to a
nonvisual realm of verbal culture or discourse. To counter Ihis
kind of reification we commend the idea of an image saturated
universe , a world of everyday life relations organized by definite
social 'imaginaries' and visual practices . Here il might be more
useful lo think of the construction of the real in lerms of
inleracting networks of sensory information (in paren!hesis we
might note that even the term 'intertextual' is inappropriate by
re!aining ils overtly verbal resonances when analysing !he
interplay belween music, poetry, painting, sculpture and prose).
The mos! insisten! of such in!ermodal networks are !hose tha!
inlerlace diegelic and oplical forms (where words 'carry' images
and images are saturaled by verbal materials). Ancienl Graeco-
Roman art forms conlain endless examples of Ihis inlerplay of
audiovisual forms (cf. Squire 2009), And , of course , Ihis
inlermixing of verbal and visual ideologies conlinues lo Ihe
present day. Modern commercial iconography, for example is
pervaded by Ihis complex form of inlerwoven semiolics.
Againsl Ihe Plalonic Iradilion of refleclionism that posiled a
derivalive relationship between Ihing and image, image
formations and mage processing need lo be viewed as
Iransformalions of being, modes of exis!ence and his!orici!y.
Allhough we do nol have Ihe space to defend the Ihesis we
would claim !hal the basic building-blocks of social worlds are
images (or as we have elaboraled in later chaplers in Ihis
volume, mage networks).
While we should avoid Cartesian dualism and resolu!ely
refuse lo compartmenlalize Ihe verbal and Ihe visual, we accepl
Iha! Ihe analysis of words and language remain fundamenlal for
every visual inquiry. To this end we adopt a slrong version of
Ihe reflexivity thesis Ihat claims Iha! visual worlds are partially
conslituted by Ihe ways in which we speak and verbally
articulate those phenomena. This, of course , does nol remove
Ihe complexily, opaqueness and ambiguily of visible displays.
To borrow an older lerminology, visual forms are always-already
Iheory-Iaden. In Ihe ligh! of this Ihesis we postulale a complex
dialeclical relationship between image and tex!, invoking the
syncrelic idea of image configurations or intersensoriality as a
more useful melaphor for research in Ihis field (Ihe lalter notion
inlerfacing wilh Ihe recent rediscovery of corporeali!y and
performalivity in social and cultural Iheory). Thus while nol
privileging linguistic and lextual paradigms we would
nevertheless underline Ihe importance of exploring Ihe cultural
funclions of visual rhelorics and visual narratives-visual slories
-as reflexively conslitutive of phenomenal domains. This
places emphasis upon the dynamic-and often conlradictory
- lransactions between the worlds created by narrative and the
visible might easily pul the sayable back in the driving sea!.
Moreover, Ihis dialectic is nol uniQue to the 'higher rea lms' of
visual art, crilicism or philosophy. The inlerpenetration of visual
rhetorics and visual 'phenomena' in fact implicates the widest
spectrum of human competencies as these are found in
everyday 'imaginings' and 'interpretations' of experience. There
is, in other words, an immanent 'aesthetics of everyday life'
embodied in large slretches of human endeavours. The
recognition of 'significant form ' and playful experimenls with
visible configurations may welllurn out to be generic fealures
across a range of human experiences. Evidence is
accumulating that the evolution of the human brain and Ihe
emergence of 'mind' are co-implicated in dynamic forms of
pattern recognilion and synaeslhetic consciousness. Here the
constitutive 'dialogue' between the deep structures of human
cognition, visuality and discursivity opens up a range of
historical inquiries into the ways in which experience has been
semiotically networked and narralively organized by past
societies and cultures. Such narrative-medialed enquiries also
inlroduce a more radical sense of historicity as a precondition
for the new visual studies. lO
In the tight of these reflections we need to openly admit and
explicilly address the diversity and variabilily of the ways in
which 'the visual' has been approached , defined and Ihematized
in Iraditional and contemporary scholarship. The basic
conceptual slructures of these Iheories have been dominated by
linear, progressive and Eurocentric presupposilions. Thus ralh er
than being neutral inslruments some of our major conceptual
resources are themselves organized as particular ways of
seeing the world-and in an unconscious sense, ways of seeing
the world through 'Western' eyes. In fact critical knowledge of
the workings of these different 'visual metorics' and culturally
specific 'ways of understanding' presupposes a comprehensive
critique of many of the theoretical movements that have
organized debates and re search in Ihe social sciences,
humanities and philosophy over the past two or three decades.
Here the changing fate of philosophical ideas and philosophical
debates are themselves both topics and resources for a more
transdisciplinary review of intellectual cultures. PreciseJy how
such frameworks as Husserlian phenomenology, Heideggerian
and Gadamerian hermeneutics, Wittgenstein-inspired AnalylicaJ
Philosophy, Strucluralism, Post-Structuralism , Psychoanalysis,
Marxism and Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Semiology, New
Science Studies, Deconstruction, Gender Studies, Cultural
Geography have entered into the fabric of intellectual debate
and more general public concerns becomes an important focus
of inquiry.
We shouJd also emphasize that our 'cognitive maps' in
general, and more particularly with regard to whal we mean by
'visual culture' or 'the visual' are constitutive and not simply
passively reflective of our practices and forms of life (hence the
tendency within traditional visual studies to th ink of these
conceptual frameworks and the melhodologies and narratives
they sustain less as creative acts and interventions and more as
secure categorical grids to be 'applied' to visual culture) . Against
this we maintain that how we conceptualize visual culture is
itself a topic of considerable interest to reflexive inquiry. By
Ihinking in lerms of secure 'frameworks ', eslablished fields', and
neutral 'applications' we miss a fundamental reflexive
opportunily-Io engage in a genealogical inquiry into Ihe
particular origins of our own 'ways of seeing' and their
entanglemenls in forms of power and ideology Ihat can be dated
in centuries if not millennia. New visual techniques may
Iransform how we see and act in the world . Moreover, how we
have objectified 'the' visual-how we have produced the
concept of the visual -is itself a topic requiring exlensive
genealogical investigations.
Our alternative models of self-implicating 'nelworks' ,
'formalions' and 'configurations' suggest more fluid, temporal
and historical ways of proceeding in the study of visual
experience. For the new visual studies issues of melhod ,
methodology and philosophical self-understanding are to be
viewed as historically specific ways of interpretatively framing
and delineating experience for particular interests and purposes.
Each intervention and form of self-reflection (sociological, art-
historical , philosophical, iconological and so forth) has its own
specific locus within a socio-historical network of practices,
institutions and material contexts, Such networks are typically
open-ended and hybrid-like interactional formations. The
traditional blindness towards social differences and historical
hybridily in the very formation of our concepts and models is Ihe
first obstacle to be overcome in moving into more productive
zones. Each is a nelwork of discourse that musl be forced lo
account for its own possibility. In this context we can identify
wilh Ihe 'polycentric' approach lo visual culture advocated by
Ella Shohal and Robert Stam:

For us, art is born between individuals and communities and

cultures in the process of dialogic interaction. Creation takes
place not within the suffocating confines of Cartesian egos or
even between discreta bounded cultures but rather between
permeable, changing communities. (1998: 46)

The projecl of a more pragmatic, strategic and reflexive

dialogics of seeing is trans-disciplinary in opening up 'Ihe visual
field' to a range of 'olhers'. Our justified sceplicism towards
high-allitude Iheorizing and disciplinary definilions of 'objecls'
and 'fields ' extends lo sorne of Ihe major theoretical tradilions
and serves to underline the fundamenlal importance of 'Ierms',
'words' and vocabularies of the visual in Ihe development of
what we mean by 'visuality' and 'visual cul ture' (hence the
difficulties of securing a watertighl separation between Ihe
discursive and Ihe experiential), In reality the cognitive,
discursive and the experienlial fuse inlo one another like
inlerweaving layers of information ,11 So il is important that Ihe
specificity of visual Ihinking deposited in historical and
contemporary art and material culture is disclosed and
understood, nol carelessly consigned lo hastily drawn
'Cartesian egos' or 'bounded cultures',
 These caulionary observalions have led us lo emphasize Ihe
importance of developing more reflexive concepls and
Iheorelical frameworks when approaching Ihe 'universe of Ihe
image' (image networks, image repertoires, image creation,
image morphology, image polilics, image epislemology,
ontology, axiology and so forth) but also prompl more
comprehensive or synoplic ways of Ihinking thal can address
Ihe realm of 'word-images' as coeval with Ihe polilics of images
in conlemporary sociely and culture (see Sandywell 2011 ). In
Ihe light of Ihis reorienlalion we might consider Benjamin 's
chiaslic formulalion of a 'dialectical oplic' governing Ihe
mutations of 'art' and 'art worlds' as a particular path towards a
new cultural science of imagineering: 'as soon as Ihe crilerion of
authenticity ceases lo be applied lo artislic production , the
whole social function of art is revolulionized. Instead of being
founded on rilual, it is based on a different praclice : politics'
(2008: 25). However, since Benjamin's time, Ihere has emerged
anolher, and more ominous sense of 'imagineering', thal is the
explicil use of the social and nalural and sciences-including
neuroscience combined with informalion lechnology and
'creativity', lo design and market oplimally effeclive commodilies
for a capitalisl sociely of Ihe speclacle. As Stafford has
observed:

The convergence of advanced informalion lechnology wilh

cognilive science is, I fear, sidelining Ihe effortful and
deJiberalive aspects of thinking . One fa ll-out of Ihe merger
between aUlomaticity and high-speed processing is that the
making of cognitive meaning--emerging from acts of connecting
of which we are aware-tends lo gel lost. (2007: 191)

There is growing need in the social sciences and humanities

not only lo understand the cultural impact of digital technology
and cognitive science , but also lo mounl a Ihoroughly crilical
polilical economy of their applications.

WHAT IS 'VISUAL CULTURE'?

As might be anticipated there is no shortage of general
conceptions of the field of visual culture and visual studies. The
unprecedented expansion of courses and programmes
concemed with visual experience over the past two decades
has itself become part of the politicallandscape of modern
educational systems and modem societies. On an even broader
canvas, image creation, production and appropriation have
become cenlral to corpora te imagineering industries. Creating
and commodifying visual worlds is now inseparable from the
transnational activities of the global cultural industries. II is not
only the case, to exlend Guy Debord's well-known thesis, that
the universe of Ihose societies in which the capitalist mode of
production prevails now presents itself as an immense
accumulation of spectacles (Society of the Spectacle, Thesis 1);
rather the empire of Ihe visible now reaches into the
microscopically small and the unimaginably large (instruclion in
science now takes Ihe form of guided tours through the
subatomic world disclosed by electronic microscopy and the
cosmically violent galactic worlds revealed by radiotelescopy).
We have moved from the sociely of Ihe speclacle to the
universe of the spectacle. In sum , every branch of knowledge,
every social inslitution , every modern social system now relies
upon visual image making .
In the context of this commercialization of the visual we need
to be aware Ihat many, if nol all , of Ihese definitions cast as
much light on the purposes of their formulators as they do upon
the nalure of Ihe visual field ilself. They are, in olher words, self-
displaying conceptions-understandings and interprelations of
visual culture produced in the context of particular economic,
political and philosophical projects, theoretical paradigms and
empirical concerns. In this way the 'polilics of Ihe visual'
stretches from everyday popular media lo the realms of higher
education, art and cultural criticismoThis ubiquity of the visual
also stamps Ihe concepts and frameworks of visual culture with
an inescapable provisionality.
In the terminology of classical philosophy Ihe visual field
form a transnational tradition of critical research into media-ted
sociocultural practices and hybrid semiotic formations (see Hall
and Birchall 2006 ). The broad paradigm of Cultural Studies has
today blended with the equally comprehensive Iraditions of
European critical social theory, Media theory and
Communicalions sludies.12
This generic sociocultural framework then provides both a
definiron of visual sludies as the exploration of visual culture
and a projective sense of the most appropriate methods of
visual research (namely methods that emphasize investigations
of the social-structural and cultural conditions of visual
representations). This general approach to visual
representations has been Iypically influenced by the idea of a
general 'cultural studies' framework first explored in the context
of debates within British Marxism in the 1970s and 1980s and
associated with the writings of Stuart Hall and his colleagues
working in the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies. And just
as the posl-Althusserian debates in British Marxism formed a
crealive intellectual and academic site for Ihe importalion of
European Iheory-Gramscian 'cultural' Marxism, Saussurean
structuralism , Lacanian psychoanalysis, Bakhtinian dialogical
theory, Derridean deconstruction , Postmodernism, Genealogy
and so forth-so Ihe field of visual sludies and research has
been decisively shaped and reshaped by changing
methodological commitments reflecling the shifting debates
within and belween the different currents of psychoanalysis,
linguistics, deconstruction, genealogy, hermeneulics, feminism
and so forth as these movements have structured the field of
critical intellectual debate over Ihe past thirty or forty years.
The 'cultural studies' approach to visual phenomena now
reflecls many differenl kinds of influence and interests.
However, tensions persistenlly emerge belween a postmodern
hankering for a transcendence of disciplines, defined object-
domains and cognitive claims buttressed by rigorous
methodology, along with social-slructural narrative' history, on
Ihe one hand , and the practical , institutional imperalive lo
suggest thatjust such things , including the narrative of
narrative's demise, underpin visual cultural studies.
We come to the inevitable conclusion that in its genesis and
academic institutionalization the field of visual studies is both
contested in terms of its substantial defin ition and intrinsically
plural with regard lo an array of possble methods of analysis,
theoretical approaches and interpretative frameworks. This is
not a hislory that can be or needs to be repaired. Th is contested
tradition remains as a notable characteristic of academic visual
studies during the period of 'Theory wars' and still shapes many
of the emerging transdisciplinary paradigms of visual culture .
Rather than seeing Ihis situalion in negative lerms as an
obstacle to creative work we think of the open-textuality of visual
research as a provocation for more creative interd isciplinary
inventiveness and collaboration . In this respect it replicates
many of the debales over the nature and meaning of art and the
arts in society from the late 1960s to the present. It clearly
underlines the importance of public debate and political contexl
in the emergence and direction of academic research. However,
as Readings's (1996) stimu lating polemic suggesls , the reflexive
terms of any such debate may be uncomfortable for poltical
pieties prevailing in Ihe academy .
A similar cluster of queslions, for example , arises with
respect to the question as to whether there is a definition of the
fie ld of 'art' and 'aesthetics' thal would be acceptable lo partisan
interesls in Ihe contesled field of aesthetic crilicism? 'Aesthetics'
like 'culture' is also one of the most contested words in the
intellectuallexicon . The past two decades have, for exampte,
seen a shifl from Eurocenlred and 'contemporary' aeslhetic
questions lo global and historical problemalics , In this conlexl
we mighl broach the definitional problem by transforming the
more traditionallanguage of aesthetics and philosophica l
aesthetics . Thus what would be a 'useab!e' general definition for
a philosopher of film stud ies (cf. Cavell 1971 ; Shaw 2008) would
not necessarily be helpful for a semiologist or sociologisl of
cu lture, let alone a 'neuroart' historian (John Onians writes:
'Experiences are indeed "medialed", and Ihe exlenllo which
Ihey are medialed by words, images and olher forms of
discourse can conlinue lo be sludied using semiolics, bul
primari!y Ihey are medialed by neurons, so it is on neurons tha!
anyone inlerested in medialion shouJd really concenlrale' (2007:
2.
It is clear thal the field of visual studies-as with cullural
studies more generally- reflects the common experiences of
many of Ihe human sciences-particularly sociology,
anlhropology and political science-as these have developed
away from empiricisl meta-Iheories and embraced more
'poslmodern' and 'conlinenlal' slyles of analysis and theorizing.
The historical impacl of cullural and media studies-what their
crilics condemned as 'culluralism' -wilhin the Anglophone
academy in the 1970s and 1980s retains its polemical
significance for key contribulors lo the debale on visuality today.
We might, for example cite the generous definition provided by
Nicholas Mirzoeff:

Visual culture is concerned wi th visual events in which

information, meaning, or pleasure is sought by the consumer in
an interface with visual lechnology. By visual technology, I
mean any form of apparalus designed either to be looked al or
to enhance natural vision, from oil painting to television and Ihe
Internet. (1998: 3)

Mirzoeffs deconstruclion of the standard binaries-high and

low culture, elite and popular culture, mass media and fine art,
art and non-art and so forth-is wholly in keeping with the
Iradition of Cultural Studies. In a similar pluralistic spiril,
Malcolm Barnard (2001 ) has explored approaches lo the visual
field from the social sciences-particularly sociology, Marxism,
Semiology, Femin ism and Cultural Studies , concluding his
survey with an advocacy of a historically specific hermeneutics
of visuality (a posilion tha! is also explored in Ihe collection
edi!ed by lan Heywood and Barry Sandywell ( 1999. Barnard
singles out Ihe post-phenomenological French philosopher Paul
Ricoeur as one example of a dialectical synthesis of structural
and hermeneutic interpretations of cultural phenomena that
might open lines of inquiry for future research. Adapting ideas
from hermeneutics would reframe cultural studies as an attemp!
to disclose the meanings of visual forms in order lo inlerpret and
explain their func!ions in human life-worlds.
We should also point out that what orthodox media and
cultura! studies have traditionally sidelined has recently become
central to accounts of the visual. One such 'domain' is the
gendered characler of visual phenomena and the rela!ionships
into which the visual is folded; Ihis is no! to neglect the facl that
gender issues have been important for an earlier tradition of
visual scholarship including Roland Barthes's The Pleasure
the Text {1975}, Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative
o,
Cinema (1975), Erving Goffman's Gender Adverlisements
(1979) and Judith Williamson's Decoding Adverlisements (1978)
among these (for a comprehensive sample of such positions
see The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia
Jones (2003.

TOWARDS A RENEWAL OF VISUAL STUDIES :

DIMENSIONS OF A NEW VISUAL STUDlES
By correcting these elisions and oversights recen! work on
visibilization, what we might call the new visual studies, would
now include the sociology of visuality, !he politics and ethics of
visual cultures, the impact of technological transformations
involved in 'new media', digital visibilities, new aesthetics and so
on. More specific studies of everyday visualities have promoted
al!ernative methodologies hat avoid the generic positivism of
the Iraditional social sciences by emphasizing the reflexive
processes involved in Ihe processes of meaning-making,
performance and cultural interpretalion !hroughout everyday
life. 13
 Cultural ConsteJlations

Of course, methodological reflection and epistemological

reflexivity are only the beginning of a more radical
understanding of the layers of experience and self-
understanding involved in the intricacies of visual culture. Here
the analogy between 'old media' studies and 'new media'
studies (sociology of the Intemet, digitalization, global mobile
communications, computer-mediated interaction, cyber-
networked societies and so on) re-occurs in the secondary
literature. If this analogy can be sustained, new visual studies
would be postdisciplinary studies focusing upon the global
impact of the new technologies and the spread of global
visualities. Digital visualities are the new forms of inscription
characterizing the electronic age. These visible 'writings' form
the seeding grounds for new forms of culturallife and
community (inscriptions tha! actively create virtual communities,
new forms of communication , network sites, blog-culture and
the like). The investigation of these technolog ical inscriptions
might fin d their common ground in an extended concept of
'information' or 'information arts' (see Wilson 2002).
In this rapidly changing arena we might bracket substantive
and thematc defin itions of visual culture and look for
problematics and strategies: how do visual meda and visual
information funclion in a globalized world? What are the
dynamic interfaces between visualizations in the arts, sciences
and technology? How do different individuals and communities
use visual artefacts? What forms of inscriplion and writing have
emerged with the mobi le digital media? How are different
subjectivi!ies (audiences, agents, agencies, etc.) constituted
through Iheir particular modes of visual approprialion?
It is no accidenl that the adjective 'new' or 'novel' has
increasingly crepl inlo attempts to revilalize more traditional and
relatively unreflexive conceptions of aesthetics and art history
(the new art hislory described in Harris 2001 , 2006; Rees and
Borzello 1986), new media studies (Taylor and Harris 2008),
every photograph is a certificate of presence (2000: 87). The
'what-has-been' of photography is not immune from difference
and manipulation. Here, once again, we have come lo realize
that we are dealing wi th complex processes of active reading,
silualed interpretation and wilh much more slruclurally
differential and 'self-selected' audiences aculely aware of Ihe
rhetorical work of mediated meaning. We move from artworks to
helerogeneous art works (wilh a verbal infleclion). From works
framed by ind ividual signatures lo anonymous, collective,
unnameable cultural performances and webworks (iconically Ihe
Web and Cyberspace provide semanlic resources for self-
reflection and self-underslanding on a global scale). Yel while
recenllechnology provides Ihese opportunilies, il remains lo be
seen how much difference Ihey will evenlually make to everyday
pholograph ic practices, for example whelher they willlransform
il fundamenlally or whether il witl survive pretly much intacl, bul
with additions (Ihe widespread emailing and social network
exposure of images, Ftickr and so on).

Fun etions Not Essenees, Ta eties Not Struetures

In stressing Ihe 'produclive', 'praxical' and 'reflexive ' dimensions
of visual experience-in thinking in terms of the organization ,
dislribulion and workings of visual praclices in a given society-
we mighl proceed pragmatically and sketch alternative forms of
stralegic conceplualily. Thus ralher Ihan asking after the
essence or structure of 'the visual', we pursue the queslion of
Ihe ontogeny, siluated funetions and operations of visualily in
Ihe experience of individuals and communilies: whal are Ihe
origins and funclions of artworks, pho!ography, lelevisual media,
advertising rhelorics, digilal cinema , mobile computing? Here
genesis displaces substance.
In Ihis reorienlalion lowards Ihe hislory and social funclions
of visual praetiees and image dialogues we resist the reductive
idea Iha! Ihese functions coincide or, even worse , Iha! Ihey can
be conflaled (for example painting is simply an older form of
pholographic representalion or Ihe idea Ihat analysis is
complete when Ihe 'meaning' or 'interprelalion' of the image has
been secured). Even before we tum to the wandering signifiers
of deconstruclion we should attend lo Ihe facl of cullural
hybridily, diversity and global appropriation (what Ihe images
from non-European space wanl slill remains lo be seen). Here
we slill lack detailed empirical and elhnographic knowledge of
Ihe diverse funclions of images and , especial1y, of Iheir
participalion in local cultures across the world. Whal event-siles,
scenarios and conlexls define Ihe 'orders' of aeslhelic or
cinematic experience for different societies and subcultures?
How have more Iradilional visual media been Iransformed
Ihrough digitizalion? What kinds of socielal work do Ihe arts,
pholography, television, mainslream cinema , art cinema and so
on perform for differenl groups, societies and cultures? How do
audiences navigale Ihe complex media-Ied worlds of popular
culture and everyday life, blending religious imagery wilh
secular discourses? Here Iraditional metaphors and frameworks
organized around the slatic calegories of subslance and
predication need lo be displaced by transactional ontologies of
events, developmenlal processes and information networks.
As 'events' and 'processes' pay no respecl to disciplinary
borders Ihe general directive would be to explore questions and
problems thal sl raddle disciplines, problems with a 'Iransverse'
resonance and dynamic (for example Ihe cross-disciplinary
operalions of imaginalion, image-formations and imagineering in
different societies). In radically relhinking the 'being' of images,
in restoring the immanent dialogics of visual life, in returning lo
Ihe 'secret' life of signs we are only at Ihe beginning of
allernative conceptualizations. Indeed the expression 'new
visual studies' is ilself merely a provisional placeholder, a
lemporary site from where we might conduct skirmishes and
mount campaigns againsl rigid barriers, boundaries and
borders .

Systematic Reflexivity
We have argued that visual studies problematics are
increasingly concerned with individuals and communities who
are visually literate, who actively adopt positions with regard to
their experience, who interpret and change the dominanl
messages and-with new computer-based technologies-
transform media and create their personalized media-Ied life-
worlds and communicalion nelworks. The abilily lo digitally
produce , Iransform and circulate visual images plays a key role
in these new forms of audience reflexivity and inlerpersonal
communicalion. Here il is nol so much the liberalion of Ihe
signifieds of the image as the liberalion of Ihe 'means of image
production' tha! is currently transforming visual culture on an
increasingly transnational scale. We move , to borrow
Benjamin 's formula , from an age of mechanical reproducibility to
an epoch of digital replicalion . And this Iransilion has
Iransformed how we think aboul images and how we imagine a
world salurated by imaginary praclices.
The basic Iheorem here is Ihat Ihere are indefinitely many
modalilies of visibi1ity and forms of visual experience and in
response lo this silualion we urgenlly need a much more
historical and cultural phenomenology of Ihese modes, media
and forrns of communicalion as they aClually operate within the
material and lechnological systems of Ihe postmodern economy
and in Ihe interactional conlexls of day-Io-day life. The 'relurn of
Ihe Subjecl' in visual research needs lo be complemented by
Ihe 'relurn of Ihe Object' , by the rematerializalion of images with
all their poston!ological reflexivilies and complexities.

Vis ual Media as Ins trum ents o f Seff-Unders tanding

In the hght of this principIe we need to Iook for strategic

operations, procedures and taclics wilhin everyday social aclion
and inleraction ralher Ihan continue to pursue non-contextual,
eidelic and pseudo-universal definitions of 'the visual field '. Thus
ralher Ihan asking the substantive 'whal' (or 'whalness') il is
more fruitful lo ask after Ihe orig ins, uses and appropriations of
visual artefacls and media in Ihe conlexl of everyday life. How
do individuals and communities communicate with visual
media? The slralegic queslion 'How' leads inevilably lo Ihe
queslion of 'Who?'-who uses, appropriates, operates upon,
inlerprels, transforms visual objecls? Who produces and
consumes images? Who engages and interacts with visual
media? In turn Ihe 'who' queslion is looped back into the 'why'
question: why are visual media produced, used, reproduced,
changed, circulaled? Finally we are relumed lo Ihe enigma of
images themselves: what are images, what are Iheir demands?
And each of these questions leads back lo the central question
of 'subjectivation'-what forms of subjectivily, what forms of
selfhood, are crealed in and by visual performances. Who--
which individuals, groups and communities-Iake an interest in
Ihings visual? Inversely what Iypes of 'subjecl' are created by
different image orders and instilutionally sanclioned spectacles?
How do these interweaving processes of subjectivation and
objectivalion interacl and transform one another in the everyday
transactions of different visual worlds?

Visuality inlas Textuality

These programmatic agenda , of course, implicate even more
complex philosophical questions and larger issues of social,
political and cultural context-to what ends and why do we live
Ihese kinds of media-ted life? What are the connections
belween lextuallty and visualily? How do the dominant
metaphors of visuallife-until recenlly dominated by verbal and
lextual conceils-aclively shape and define our personal
horizons? How do visual worlds come lo be differenlialed into
'everyday life' , 'art worlds', 'advertising', 'popular media' and so
on? Whal are the differences between private and public visual
worlds? How are 'public spheres' dramatized Ihrough Ihe
interaction of verbal and visual means? How has Ihe perception
of visual artefacls and represenlalions changed over time (do
we look at photographs in 2010 as we did in 1910 or 1840?-
how would we research and invesligale Ihe mulalions
undergone by Ihese historical gazes?), In what way are Ihe
visuallegacies of earlier civilizalions also Ihe hislory of visual
barbarism?
Allhis poinllhe queslion of delimiling Ihe legilimale sphere
of 'visual studies' opens out upon difficult emprical, Iheoretical
and philosophical queslions concerning Ihe changing social,
lechnological, cultural and ethico-potitical slruclures of
modernily and poslrnodernity, The new agenda comes into play
immediately in foregrounding Ihe reflexive relationships thal now
exist between the visual field and the globalizalion of social
relations in an increasingJy mullicultural and diasporic world.
This interwoven problemalic of visuality, media and
informalion systems prefigures more self-crilical and reflexive
paradigms of visual cultural sludies where Ihe orienla!ions,
altiludes and ideas towards Ihe visual become as importanl as
Ihe forms of the visual Ihemselves. We do well lo remember Ihal
visual artefacls and media are firsl and foremosl 'exlensions' of
Ihe self (in McLuhan's sense) and , more problematically,
'Iechnologies of the self and 'arts of exislence' (in Foucauli's
sense, 1978). Bu! above all, they provide the lools and
instruments of self-underslanding and clues lo how Ihey were
used by individuals and whole soclelies (SandyweIl1996, vol. 1;
SandyweJl 2011 ).
Tradilional approaches have been torced lo come lo terms
with the idea that individuals adopl stances and altitudes
lowards Iheir lives, apply crilical slandards and crileria lo Iheir
aclivities, espouse beliefs and hold opinions aboul heir life-
worlds. They are, in Ihe sociological jargon , 'reflexively
knowledgeable agents', Ihey know 'for all practical purposes'
whal Ihey are doing. In principie some of Ihe forms of 'reading'
or 'modes of appropriation' carried out by differenl individuals
and communilies need lo be viewed as research 'objecls' in
Iheir own right. Moreover such 'interpretalions' may be criticalJy
aligned wilh Ihe inlerpretalive frames used by Iheorists and
researchers. Here we see a realm of inleraction ralher than a
discipline boundaries when necessary, the vocabulary of
'tactics' has a military flavour, a particular way of describingthe
outlook of visual culture studies perhaps derived in Mirzoeff's
case from the prevailing Gramscism of his time as a student of
Sluart Hall at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at
Birmingham. As set out here , the authentically reflexive politics
of writing in the spirit of the 'new visual studies' is inseparable
from particular substantive , interpretive and critical queslions
about visual culture. These kinds of substantives , plus the
reflexive perp!exities of writing more generally, are at Ihe core of
Ihis approach to Ihe study of visual culture. The reflexive
political challenge, lo which Barnard refers, is a highly indexical ,
singular effort that oflen runs againsl the grain, or powers, of Ihe
image-suffused language thal modernlty makes available.
If the term was not already appropriated by French
postslructuralism we mighl think of the projecl of new visual
sludies in Ihe plural as critical 'archaeologies of Ihe visible'
(Foucault1973 ; d. Gulting 1989; Shapiro 2003). Anolher name
for this reorientalion of cultural sludies is 'cultural politics'
(Jordan and Weedon 1995) or 'the politics of culture' (Lloyd and
Thomas 1998) where the emphasis is placed upon the social
and ethicopolitical contexts of research in the visual field. A
more appropriate designation would be the genealogy of
visibilities or visual imagineering. 16
Initially many of the advocates of visual studies as a
research field spoke of ils 'inlerdisciplinarity' as a virtue. Olhers,
however, see dangers of dispersion and vagueness in the
promissory stalements of visual studies programmes (the now-
classical nega!ive reaction to such programmes can be found in
the responses to Ihe 'Questionnaire on Visual Culture' (1996)
circu laled by the journal October). Ve! a Ihird posilion suggests
that visual studies poinl the way towards more radical
transdisciplinary formations as Ihe o!der organizalion of
university disciplines breaks down giving rise lo new models of
vision and new knowledge formalions:
 It is one of the characteristic features of this problematic that
there is no simple way of disentangling the social history of
perception from the arts of observation and the technologies of
visual culture. Indeed an adequate hermeneutics of the scopic
regimes of modern European culture needs to 'triangulate' all
three of these themes and to invent new forms of interpretive
inquiry that advance this understanding on several fronts.
(Heywood and Sandywell1999: xl

By adopling Ihe Ihird pos ilion we see Ihe 'field of visual

culture' less as a discrele and bounded 'domain' of social
research and more as a force-field Ihal is in Ihe process of
changing Ihe academic divisions of labour Ihal organize Ihe
human ities, arts and social sciences. Thus where we
Iradilionally focused upon national conlexls ('nalional
sociologies', 'art histories' and so on) we would now move
lowards globalized frameworks (where Ihe Iradilional 'nalional
Iradilions' are seen to have complex relalionships wilh colonial
and imperial powers). Where 'aeslhetics' was profoundly
Eurocenlred we now must entertain the idea of hybrid
aesthetics. Where sociallheory was 'nation-slale' oriented we
must now think in terms of global mobilities.
By opening the discourses of academic inquiry lo broader
public issues and to wider domains of social, ethical and political
debate we introduce a greatet sense of relevance and purpose
lo sorne of Ihe arcane debates about Ihe visual and Ihe verbal.
As many of the chapters in the Handbook suggest, Ihe
phenomena of visual cullure are inexlricably bound up wilh
issues thal are cenlralto the idea of the public sphere and
politicallife. Whatever our ultimale theoretical deslinalions,
research on Ihe funclions of images in sociely Ihal has taken
Ihe pOSldisciplionary turn musl enler Ihis lurbulenl space and
experience sorne of Ihe vectors and dynamics of Ihe field in ils
emergenl complexity. The future holds out Ihe promise nol
merely of a 'polilics of aesthelics' bul a more global 'politics of
vision'. We anticipate Ihal the nexl decades of creative inquiry
witl constitule unprecedented horizons and research agendas
far the visual studies af the future. 17

NOTES
1. Far examples of WOrK exploring Ihe inlersections between art and
science, and in particular between art, aesthetics and neuroscience
see Barbara Maria Stafford , Echo Objects: Tha Cognitiva Worl< of
Images (2007). For cross-disciplinary exchange between the arts,
sciences and technology see Stephen Wilson's Infarmalion Arts:
Inlersections of Art, Science, and Technology (2002) and Jitl Scott,
ed. , At1ists-in-Labs (2010). For Ihe dialogue between photography,
cinema and neuroscience see Warren Neidich, Blow-up (2003). On
the interaction of psychology, visual science and art see Richard lo
Gregory's Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing (1998). John
Onians has elaborated a new discipline of art history from the
convergence of research in art, biology and neuroscience, calting
this, appropriately, Neuroarthistory, tracing ils intetlectual genealogy
back to Aristotie, Pliny, Apotlonius of Tyana, Ibn al-Haytham
(Alhazen) and others (2007). Computation-based studies and
cognitive science form a major research cluster with innovative
ideas on the place of visual experience within a larger theory of
mind and neural science (for example Robert lo Solso's The
Psycho/ogy o( Art and the Evo/ution of the Conscious Srain , 2005).
Far resources from cognitive science, philasaphy and psychology
see Alva Noe and Evan Thampson, eds., Visian and Mind (2002)
and Alva Noe's account of visuality in terms of sensorimotor
functions and kinaesthetic activity, Action in Perception (2004) (also
Alva Noe and J. Kevin O'Regan , 2002). For Ihe dialogue belween
aeslhetics, social thought and hermeneutics see Heywood and
Sandywetl, Interpreting Visual Culture (1999). On the interplay
between art and social theory see lan Heywood, Social Theories of
At1 (1997) and Chris Jenks, Visual Culture (1995). For the
connuence of philosophy,life sciences and cybemetics drawing
upon post-melaphysical European philosophy see Ihe writings of
Gilles Oeleuze, Manuel de Landa and Paul Virilio. The emergence
of such Iransdisciplinary cotlaboralive theory and research suggesls
a more radical 'dialogue' between visual formalions and their
material, biological and ecological conditions A brief lisl of explorers
who have forged or are forging new forms of transdsciplinary inQuiry
would include Theodor Adomo, Giorgio Agamben, Arjun Appadurai,
 Alain Badiou, Mieke Bal, Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Mikhail
Bakhtin, Rosi Braidotti, Judilh Buller, Pierre Bourdieu, Cornelius
Castoriadis, Manuel Castells, Arthur Danlo, Jacques Derrida, Gilles
Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Vilm Flusser, Donna Haraway, luce
Iragaray, Martin Jay, Julia Krisleva , Bruno lalour, Michle le
Doeuff, Henri lefebvre, Jean-Francois lyotard, Alberto Manguel,
lev Manovich, Jacques Rancire, W, G. Sebald, Barbara Maria
Stafford, Charles Taylor, Francisco J, Varela, Gianni Vattimo, Paul
Virilio, Slavoj ZiZek,
2, See Slafford 1996 on Ihe situation in Ihe USA,
3, However, even in art hislory preference for Ihe immaterial was far
from universal, with examples ranging from Aby Warburg's passion
for a broad range of graphic forms to Michael Baxandall's careful
interpretations of Ihe cultural significance of the materials and
processes of painling, The concrete nature of the medium of
communication was, of course, al the centre of Marshall Mcluhan's
pioneering media theory,
4, For a slrikin9 and innovalive example outwilh Ihe colleclion, see
Michael Fried's inlerprelalions of recenl art photography (Wall,
Gursky, Struth , the Bechers el al.) via ideas developed wilh respecl
of eighteenlh- and nineleenth-century French painling and postwar
modernism,
5, For example KittJer 2009,
6, The term 'aesthetics' is used enormously widely, from references to
a specific Kantian and evenlually analytical philosophical tradition to
the much broader idea of values and experiences uniquely to do
with 'art', and of course 'art' can mean virtually anything these days,
Narrow descriptions of 'fine art' and 'aesthetic' struggle to make
much sense of either contemporary art or the experiences and
queslions it raises, The possibility and significance of critically
based definitions is, of course, a different malter enlirely.
7. Subjecls of study, disciplines, epislemes and Ihe institutional
edifices associaled wilh them ofien involved passive specta torship
as part of an attempt lo lidy up, organize and mobilize everyday,
scholariy and avanl-garde practices (bolh reproduclion and
experimentation). However, untidiness and heterogeneily are highly
resilienl, nol only beca use materials and processes often refuse lo
behave as requi red , bul also because Ihe subjecls oslensibly in
charge of disciplines and quasipolilical ideologies often fail lo
discipline themselves.
8. The 'pictorial turn has become associaled wilh the work of W.J.T.
 Mitchell and the Chicago school of visual studies (see his Iconology:
Image, Text, Ideology (1987); Picture Theory (1994); and The
Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era
(1994)) and with the intensive analysis of iconism in the writings of
Gottfried Boehm (Boehm speaks more broadly of the 'iconic turn';
for the lalter see Keith Moxley, 'Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn '
(2008)). Mitchell derides this imputation as 'the fallacy of Ihe
piclorial turn ' and rather links the contemporary inlerest in iconology
and pictorialism wilh Ihe closure of poslmodemism and commends
a renewed interest in 'pictures' and 'iconic' objects that tall outside
the textualist framework of poststructuralist theory (see Mitchell
2002: 171 - 2). For caveats and cautions with regard to the
expansionary claims of visual studies see James Elkins (2003),
W.J .T. Mitchell (2002) and Mark Posler (2002). In 'Showing Seeing',
Mitchell treats the pictorial tum as a rhelorical trope or 'narrative
figure ' rather Ihan a social or metaphysical condilion . Al besl il
should be used as a heuristic or diagnostic 1001 'to analyze specific
moments when a new medium, a technical invention , or a cultural
practice erupls in symploms of panic or euphoria (usually both)
about Ihe visual' (2002: 173). Such commonplace schemas are
'beguiling , handy for Ihe purposes of presenlisl polemics, and
useless for Ihe purposes of genuine hislorical crilicism' (2002: 173).
9. For Benjamin's ocular interests see Susan Buck-Morss, Dialectics
of Seeing (1989). For retranslalions of Benjamin's writings on visual
artefacts and media see Benjamin (2008). For classical art
hislorians see Donald Preziosi, ed. , The Art o( Art History: A Critical
Anthology (1998), chs. 3--5. For a comprehensive philosophical
demonslralion of the rich visual resources wilhin Ihe
phenomenological and hermeneulic Iradilion see David Levin's The
Opening o( Vision: Nihilism and the Postmodem Situation (1988) ;
The Philosopher's Gaze: Modemity in the Shadows o(
Enlightenment (1999); and his ediled collections Modernity and the
Hegemony o, Vision (1993) and Sites of Vision: The Discursive
Construction o( Sight in the History o, Phi/osophy (1997) .
10. Hisloricily also means recognizing and deconslructing Ihe
Eurocenlric, phallocentric, and logocenlric origins of our own
theoretical frameworks and discourses. Here we mighl think of
historicity as a mode of self-reflection created by modemity Ihat
problematizes the grounding presuppositions of traditional
investigalive projects and discursive formations. One of its recurren!
fealures is an acule self-consciousness about Ihe implicalive order
 'outcomes' of the different arts as different kinds of embodied
performance. The emphasis on lived experience and creative
embodiment in an expanded dramaturgy of art suggesls new kinds
of drama tic ontology and interactive strategies of appreciation and
interpretalion (a comprehensive philosophy of art mighl have to look
towards the cultural work of ballet. Iheatrical and filmic
performances ralher than to the Iwo-dimensional models of mimesis
and representation tha! have traditionally informed discussions of
art and culture). The key note was struck by Roland Barthes in his
last work, Camera Lucida where he writes: ' Photography is a kind of
primitive Iheatre, a kind of TabJeau Vivant, a figuration of Ihe
motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead'
(2000: 32). Hence like theatre artworks inevitably relum to the
themes of love and death. The polyphonic characler of
'performance studies' mighl also be seen as another example of an
essenlially Iransdisciplinary problematic (see Ihe essays in Erin
Slriff, ed. (2003) and Chrislopher Balme's overview (2008) for
recent perspectives and statements in 'performance studies).
14. Nicholas Mirzoeff is quite explicil on this reorientation: 'Everyday
life is the key terrain for visual culture, just as it has been for cultural
sludies. This represenls an elhical choice to concenlra te on Ihe
culture of the majority rather than the elite practices of a few, for
everyday life is the mass experience of modemity' ('Introduction lo
Part Two. Mirzoeff 1998: 125). New forms of critical theory provide
occasions where the interplay of art, media, science and technology
become commonplace (Wilson 2002: 11). Another sign of the times
is the revitalized interest in aesthetics and the philosophy of
aeslhetics, exemplified by Cambridge Universily Press's Studies in
New Art His/ory and Criticism, Blackwell's New Oirections in
Aes/he/ics. Routledge's series, The Art Seminar, and importan!
collections of essays concerned with the arts and aesthetic
questions (for example Oarry Hagberg's Art and E/hical Criticism
(2008) and James Elkins's Art History versus Aes/hetics (2006) and
more recently Halsall, Jansen and O'Connor, Rediscovering
Aesthe/ics: Transdisciplinary Voices {rom Arl History, Philosophy
and Arl Practice (2009)).
15. There appears lO be a new wave of speclacularty 'dumb'
advertising (for example Burger King and 00 Compare), although
whether Ihis is molivated by a conscious reaclion againsl being
'smart' or just the need to cut costs is not clear.
16. Work tha t already moves within this general orientation includes the
 following: the historical investigation of scopic regimes (Crary
(1990); Foucault (1971 , 1977); Gregory (1994); Jay (1992 , 1993);
Kem (1993); Lefebvre (1991 ); Maillet (2004); Murphie and Potts
(2003); Shapiro (2003); Soja (1989, 1996); Stafford (1996, 2007);
Virilio (1983, 1986, 1989, 1991a, 1997)); the global economy 01
visualization exploring transnational class-based visibilities (visible
and invisible classes, inequalities, social struggles , new lorms of
virtual space-time, urban formations and cityscapes): Amin and
Thrift (2002); Cresswell (2004 ); de Certeau (1988); de Landa (1992,
1997, 2002); Hardt and Negri (2000); Rancire (2006, 2007); Sibley
(1995); Thrift (2008); the exploration 01 gendered visibilities and
feminist perspectives in visual studies: Berger (1972); Bernal (1987,
2001 ): Chaudhuri (2006); Fuller (1980): Haraway (1991 ); Jones
(2003); McRobbie (1991 ); Mulvey (1989); Plant (1997). On race and
racialized visibilities: Bernal (1987, 2001 ); Paul Gilroy (1987);
Comell West (1990); Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1987, 1988,
1990). For general background studies see Jessica Munns and Gita
Rajan, eds. , A Cultural Studies Reader, Section 6 'Race studies'
(1995); Lisa Bloom, ed. , Wilh Other Eyes: Looking al Race and
Gender in Visual Culture (1999). More broadly the intersecting
areas 01 'Afro-American studies' and 'postcolonial studies' have
made important contributions to the role 01 visual representations in
the constitulion 01 racist altitudes, beliefs and institutional
formations {Gregory (1994); Said (1985); Spivak (1987, 1988,
1990); West (1990. Explicitly reflexive approaches to social
visibility and visibilization can be found in the essays collected in
Teresa Brennan and Martin Jay (1996); Chris Jenks (1995);
Nicholas Mirzoeff (1998). Visual Iranslormations through digitization
and global multimedia: Bolter and Grusin (2002 ); Levy (1997, 1998);
Lister (1995); Manovich (1993, 2001 , 2003); Nichols (1995); Plant
(1997); Terranova (2004 ); Turkle (1984, 1995): Wells (2004).
17. A local instance is the creation by the Department 01 Philosophy at
the University 01 York (Spring 2009) of the Centre for Research into
Imagination , Creativity and Knowledge (CRICK), with ils mission
statement that promises to 'focus on understanding the nature 01
creativity and innovalion, their relalion to the imagination, and Iheir
role in developing and extending the frontiers 01 human knowledge
in Ihe arts and humanities, Ihe sciences, and business'
(http://www.york.ac.ukJdepts/phil/crickJ I4May2009). For more
global examples 01 similar multidisciplinary projects crossing the
arts, humanities and sciences see Stephen Wilson, Information
Arts: Inlersections of Art, Science, and Technology (2002) ,
 especially pp. 41-8 and pp. 850-73 for details of these projects
(also the Web site hltp:llmitpress.mit.edulLeonardo for Leonardo:
The Intemational Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology).

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