Seeing with the Body: The Digital Image in Postphotography

Author(s): Mark B. N. Hansen

Source: Diacritics, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 54-84
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566429
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SEEING WITH THE BODY
THE DIGITALIMAGEIN
POSTPHOTOGRAPHY

MARKB. N. HANSEN

In a well-known scene from the 1982 Ridley Scott film Bladerunner,Rick Deckard
scans a photographinto a 3-D renderingmachineanddirectsthe machineto explore the
space condensed in the two-dimensionalphotographas if it were three-dimensional
[see fig. 1]. Following Deckard'scommandsto zoom in and to pan right and left within
the image space, the machine unpacksthe "real"three-dimensionalworld represented
by the two-dimensionalphotograph[see figs. 2-3]. After catching a glimpse of his
target-a fugitivereplicant-reflected froma mirrorwithinthe space,Deckardinstructs
the machine to move around behind the object obstructing the two-dimensional
photographicview of the replicantandto framewhatit sees [see figs. 4-5]. Responding
to the printcommand issued by Deckard,the machine dispenses a photographof the
replicantwhich is, quite literally,a close-up of an invisible-indeed nonexistent-part
of the two-dimensionaloriginal[see fig. 6]. And yet, following the fantasyof this scene,
this impossible photographis-or would be-simply the image of one particulardata
point within the data set comprisingthis three-dimensionaldata space.
As fascinatingas it is puzzling, this scene of an impossiblerendering-a rendering
of two-dimensionaldataas a three-dimensionalspace--can be relatedto thecrisisbrought
to photographyby digitizationin two ways. On the one hand, in line with the film's
thematicquestioningof photographyas a reliableindexof memory,thisscene foregrounds
the technical capacity of digital processing to manipulatephotographs.In this way, it
thematizes the threatposed by digital technologies to traditionalindexical notions of
photographicrealism.On the otherhand,in whathas turnedout to be a farmoreprophetic
vein, the scene presentsa radicallynew understandingof the photographicimage as a
three-dimensional"virtual"space. Such an understandingpresupposesa vastlydifferent
materialexistence of the photographicimage: insteadof a physical inscriptionof light
on sensitivepaper,the photographhas become a dataset thatcan be renderedin various
ways and thus viewed from variousperspectives.
The first position correspondsto the argumentsmade by William Mitchell in his
now classic book, TheReconfiguredEye. In a comprehensiveanalysis of the techniques
andpossibilitiesof digitalimaging,Mitchellconcentrateson demarcatingthe traditional
photographicimage from its digital doppelgdinger.While the specter of manipulation
has always hauntedthe photographicimage, it remains the exception ratherthan the
rule: "Thereis no doubt that extensive reworkingof photographicimages to produce
seamless transformationsand combinationsis technically difficult, time-consuming,
and outsidethe mainstreamof photographicpractice.When we look at photographswe
presume,unless we have some clear indicationsto the contrary,thatthey have not been
reworked" [Mitchell 7]. To buttress this claim, Mitchell sketches three criteria for
evaluatingtraditionalphotographicimages: (1) does the image follow the conventions
of photographyand seem internallycoherent?(2) does the visual evidence it presents

54 diacritics31.4:54-84
Figs. 1-3. Stills from Blade Runner(Ridley Scott, 1982), courtesy of WarnerBrothersHome Video.Rick
Deckardnavigates a two-dimensionalimage as a three-dimensionalspace.
Figs. 4-6. Stills from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), courtesy of WarnerBrothersHome Video.Rick
Deckardnavigates a two-dimensionalimage as a three-dimensionalspace.
 supportthe captionor claimbeing madeaboutit? and(3) is this visualevidenceconsistent
with otherthingswe acceptas knowledge [43]? Clearly,with the developmentof digital
imaging techniques, these criteria and the constraint imposed by the difficulty of
manipulationlose theirsalience.The result,accordingto Mitchell,is a "newuncertainty
about the status and interpretationof the visual signifier" [17] and the subversionof
"ourontological distinctionsbetween the imaginaryand the real"[225].
These conclusions and the binary opposition on which they are based need to be
questioned.Beyondthe morassof difficultiesinvolvedin anyeffortto affirmthe indexical
propertiesof the traditionalphotograph,we must evaluatethe adequacyof Mitchell's
conceptionof digitization.To this reader,Mitchell'sdepictionof digitalphotographyas
manipulationof a preexistingimage imposes fartoo narrowa frameon whatdigitization
introduces.We might do better to describe digital photographyas "synthetic,"since
digitization has the potential to redefine what photographyis, both by displacing the
centralityaccordedthe status of the photographicimage (i.e., analog or digital) and by
foregroundingthe procedures"throughwhich the image is producedin the first place"
[Manovich,"Paradoxes" 4]. Digitalphotography,thatis, uses three-dimensional
computer
graphics as a variant means of producingan image: "Ratherthanusing the lens to focus
the image of actualreality on film and then digitizing the film image (or directlyusing
an arrayof electronic sensors), we can ... constructthree-dimensionalrealityinside a
computer and then take a picture of this reality using a virtual camera also inside a
computer"[4]. In this case, the referentof the "virtual"picturetakenby the computeris
a data set, not a fragmentof the real. Moreover,the perspectivefrom which the picture
is taken is, in relationto humanperception,wholly arbitrary:"Thecomputerizationof
perspectivalconstructionmadepossible the automaticgenerationof a perspectivalimage
of a geometric model as seen from an arbitrarypoint of view-a picture of a virtual
world recordedby a virtualcamera"[Manovich,"Automation"6].
With this deterritorializationof reference,we reachthe very scenariopresentedin
the scene from Bladerunner-the moment when a computer can "see" in a way
profoundlyliberatedfrom the optical, perspectival,and temporalconditions of human
vision.' Withthe materialfruitionof the formof computervision imaginedin this scene,
in otherwords, we witness a markeddeprivilegingof the particularperspectivalimage
in favorof a totalandfully manipulablegraspof the entiredataspace,the whole repertoire
of possible images it could be said to contain.
Whatis fundamentalhere is the radicalresistanceof this dataspace to any possible
human negotiation. Thus, one way of making sense of this negotiation would be to
understandthis data space as a form of radical anamorphosis,in which the cumulative
perspectivaldistortionsthat lead to the final image do not mark a "stain"that can be
resolvedfromthe standpointof anothersingle perspective(howevertechnicallymediated
it may be). Unlike Holbein's TheAmbassadors,where an oblique viewing angle reveals
the presenceof a skull within an otherwiseindecipherableblob, and unlikeAntonioni's
Blow-Up, where photographicmagnificationdiscovers a clue initially invisible in the
image, what we confronthere is a multiply distortedtechnical mediationthat requires
the abandoningof any particularperspectivalanchoringfor its "resolution."
This transformativeoperationfurnishesa case studyof whatKateHayleshas dubbed
the OREO structureof computermediation:an analog input (the original photograph)

1. Indeed,Manovich's characterizationof automatedsightfurnishes what is, infact, a wholly

apt depiction of this scene: "Now the computer could acquire full knowledge of the three-
dimensional worldfrom a single perspectival image! And because the programdeterminedthe
exact position and orientationof objects in a scene, it becamepossible to see the reconstructed
scene from another viewpoint.It also becamepossible to predict how the scene would lookfrom
an arbitraryviewpoint"["Automation"15].

diacritics / winter 2001 57

undergoes a process of digital distortion that yields an analog output (the close-up)
[Hayles]. If we are to understandthe impact of this complex transformation,we must
not simply attend to the analog outsides, but must deprivilege our modalities of
understandingenough to allow the digital middle to matter.Paradoxically,then, the
imperativeto find ways of "understanding"the digital middle becomes all the more
significant as computer vision parts company with perspective and photo-optics
altogether.Indeed, the apotheosis of perspectivalsight marksthe very moment of its
decline:due to the intrinsicunderdetermination of the image, vision researchersquickly
realizedthatthe perspectiveinherentto photographicoptics was an obstacleto the total
automationof sight,andthey went on to developother,nonperspectivalmeans,including
"range finders" such as lasers or ultrasound, as the source of three-dimensional
information.2
No one has expressedthe culturalsignificanceof this unprecedentedmomentmore
pointedly than art historianJonathanCrary,who cites it as the very motivationfor his
reconstructionof the technical historyof vision:

Computer-aideddesign, synthetic holography,flight simulators, computer

animation, robotic image recognition, ray tracing, texturemapping, motion
control, virtual environment helmets, magnetic resonance imaging, and
multispectralsensors are only afew of the techniquesthatare relocatingvision
to a planeseveredfroma humanobserver.... Mostof the historicallyimportant
functions of the humaneye are being supplantedby practices in which visual
images no longer have any referenceto theposition of an observerin a "real,"
opticallyperceived world.If these images can be said to referto anything,it is
to millionsof bits of electronicmathematicaldata. [Crary1-2, emphasisadded]

The work of the culturaltheorist-like thatof the new media artist-begins at the very
pointwherethe humanis left behindby vision researchers;the apotheosisof perspectival
vision calls for nothingless than a fundamentalreconfigurationof humanvision itself.

Machinic Visionand HumanPerception

In a recentdiscussionof whathe calls "machinicvision,"culturaltheoristJohnJohnston

correlatesthe digital obsolescence of the image with the massive deterritorialization
of
informationexchange in our contemporaryculture. In a world of global, networked
telecommunicationsassemblages,Johnstonwonderswhetherwe can still meaningfully
speak of the image as having any privilegedfunctionat all:

Unlike the cinematic apparatus, . . . contemporary telecommunications

assemblages compose a distributed system of sentience, memory and
communicationbased on the calculation (and transformation)of information.
Withinthe social space of these assemblages..., the viewingor absorptionof
images constitutesa generalform of machinic vision .... As a correlativeto
both these assemblages and the distributedperceptions to which they give
rise, the image attains a new status, or at least must be conceived in a new
way. . . . In the circuits of global telecommunications networks, .. . the
2. See in this regard,Kittler'srecentdiscussion of the digital image in "ComputerGraphics:
A Semi-TechnicalIntroduction."I discuss Kittler'sposition in my essay "TheAffectiveTopology
of New Media Art."(This discussion does not appear in the revised version of the essay, namely
chapter6 of New PhilosophyforNew Media.)

58
 multiplicityof imagescirculating... cannotbe meaningfullyisolatedas material
instancesof cinema(or television)and brain.Manyof these images, of course,
are perceived, but their articulation occurs by means of another logic: the
incessant coding and recodingof informationand its viral dissemination.The
image itself becomesjust one form that informationcan take. [Johnston46]

For Johnston, the informationalinfrastructureof contemporaryculture quite simply

necessitatesa radicaldisembodimentof perception.As he presentsit, this disembodiment
follows upon and extends the disembodimentto which Gilles Deleuze (in his study of
the cinema) submits Bergson's conception of perception as the selective filtering
performedby an embodied center of indetermination.(For those to whom this is less
than familiarterritory:in the first chapterof Matter and Memory,Bergson sketches a
monist view of matterand memory accordingto which perceptionwould involve not
something in addition to matter [such as idealist positions maintain], but ratherthe
subtractionor "diminution"from the universe of images as a whole precisely those
images which are relevant for a given perceiving body. Accordingly, perception [or
perceived matter]would be itself a part of matteras a whole. Furthermore,Bergson
goes on to insist that perceptionis always mixed with affection and memory,bodily
faculties thatmarkthe positive contributionof the body to the process of perception.In
Cinema1, Deleuze appropriatesBergson's conceptionof perceptionqua subtractionas
an altogetheraptdescriptionof how the cinematicframeworks;in orderto do so, however,
he is compelled to disembody the center of indetermination,such that the process of
subtractionis no longer mixed with the contributionof the body, but is instead the
function of a purely formal, technical agency--the camera.3)For us, the interest of
Johnston'sextensionof Deleuze's disembodimentof Bergsoncomes at the precisepoint
where it diverges from Deleuze: namely, where the disembodimentof perception is
correlatedwith the contemporaryachievementof automatedvision. Not only does this
correlationbringto materialfruitionthe universalflux of images thatDeleuze claims to
discoverin the cinemaof the time image, butit marksthe veryculminationof the image's
function as a privileged vehiclefor perception. Reconceived in the context of today's
global telecommunicationsassemblages,the image is said to comprise

the perceptual correlative of actions in and reactions to a milieu (Bergson),

buta milieunowdefinedby a varietyof agentsand subagentsin human-machine
systems. WhileDeleuze never explicitly describes this new machinic space,
nor the specific kindof vision it elicits, both are anticipatedin his Bergsonian
studyof the cinematicimage, where the viewer is always already in the image,
necessarily and inevitablypositioned withinafield of interactingimages, with
no means to step back, bracketthe experience,and assume a critical distance.
... [O]nce the brain no longer constitutesa "centerof indeterminationin the
acentereduniverseof images,"as it didfor Bergson, and is itself decomposed
into distributedfunctions assumed by machines, perceptioncan no longer be
simply defined in terms of the relationshipbetween images. [57]

Johnstonpartscompanywith Deleuze fromthe momentthathe correlatesthe digitization

of the image with the technicaldistributionof cognition beyondthe humanbody-brain:
as functions formerlyascribedto it "havebeen autonomizedin machines operatingas
parts of highly distributedsystems,"the brainhas become a "deterritorializedorgan"

3. I exploreBergson'sconceptionof perceptionandDeleuze'sappropriation
of it at great
lengthin thestudyfromwhichthisessayis excerpted,New PhilosophyforNew Media.

diacritics / winter 2001 59

[45].Theresultis a "generalizedandextendedconditionof visuality"-machinic vision-
in whichthe taskof processinginformation,thatis, perception,necessarilypassesthrough
a machiniccircuit[45].4 In thisposthumanperceptualregime,theselectionof information
is no longer performedexclusively or even primarilyby the human component (the
body-brainas a centerof indetermination).
It is hardlysurprising,then, thatwhat Johnstonrefersto as the "digitalimage"can
only be "perceived" by a distributed machinic assemblage capable of processing
informationwithoutthe distancethatformsthe conditionof possibilityfor humanvision:
". .. for the digitalimage thereis no outside,only the vast telecommunicationsnetworks
thatsupportit andin which it is instantiatedas data"[39]. The digital imagehas only an
"electronicunderside"which "cannotbe renderedvisible"preciselybecauseit is entirely
without correlation to any perceptual recoding that might involve human vision.
Accordingly,the digital image is not really an "image"at all: far from being a correlate
of the imaginarydomain of sense experience, it designates the "objective"circulation
of digital data-Kittler's endless loop of infinite knowledge5-emancipated from any
constrainingcorrelationwith humanperceptualratios.
Despite his professed commitmentto machinic vision as resolutely posthuman,
however, Johnston's analysis is significant, above all, for the (perhaps unintended)
contributionit makestowardreconfiguringhumanvision for the digitalage. Specifically,
Johnston'smachinicvision mustbe differentiatedfromthe automationof vision explored
above, and the humanmust be resituatedin the space of this very difference:whereas
visual automationseeks to replace human vision tout court, machinic vision simply
expands the range of perceptionwell beyond the organic-physiologicalconstraintsof
human embodiment.One way of understandingthis expansion (Johnston'sway) is to
focus on its transcendenceof the human;another,more flexible approach,however,
would view it as a challenge to the human, one that calls for nothing less than a
reconfigurationof the organic-physiologicalbasis of vision itself. Takingup this latter
perspective, we can see that machinic vision functions precisely by challenging the
humanto reorganizeitself. In this sense, machinicvision canbe understoodas profoundly
Bergsonist,since it occasionsan expansionin the scope of the embodiedhuman'sagency
in the world, a vast technical extension of "intelligence."
In anothersense, however,machinicvision wouldappearto ignorethe core principle
of Bergson'stheoryof perception-the principlethattherecan be no perceptionwithout
affection:

4. Perceptionqua machinic vision thus requires "an environmentof interactingmachines

and human-machinesystems"and "afield of decodedperceptionsthat,whetheror notproduced
by or issuingfrom these machines,assume theirfull intelligibilityonly in relationto them"[27].
5. Kittler conceives of the digital condition as one of medial convergence or technical
dedifferentiation:

The generaldigitizationof channelsand informationerasesthe differencesamong

individualmedia.Soundandimage,voiceandtextarereducedto surfaceeffects,known
to consumersas interface.Sense andthe sensesturninto eyewash.. . . Insidethe
computers themselveseverythingbecomesa number: quantitywithoutimage,sound,
or voice. And once opticalfibernetworksturnformerlydistinctdataflows into a
standardized seriesof digitizednumbers,anymediumcanbe translated
intoanyother.
Withnumbers,anythinggoes. Modulation,transformation, synchronization;delay,
storage,transposition;scrambling,scanning,mapping-atotalmedialinkon a digital
basewillerasetheveryconceptof medium.Insteadof wiringpeopleandtechnologies,
absoluteknowledgewillrunasanendlessloop.[Kittler,Gramophone, Film,Typewriter
1-2]

60
 ... we must correct, at least in this particular,our theoryof pure perception.
Wehave arguedas thoughourperceptionwerea part of the images,detached,
as such, from their entirety,as though, expressing the virtual action of the
objectuponour body,or of our bodyuponthe object,perceptionmerelyisolated
from the total object that aspect of it which interestsus. But we have to take
into account thefact that our body is not a mathematicalpoint in space, that
its virtual actions are complicatedby, and impregnatedwith, real actions, or,
in other words,thatthereis no perceptionwithoutaffection.Affection is, then,
that partor aspect of the inside of our body which we mix with the image of
externalbodies; it is what we mustfirst of all subtractfrom perception to get
the image in its purity. [Bergson,Matterand Memory58, emphasisadded]

For Bergson, any "real"act of perceptionis always contaminatedwith affection-both

as a factor determiningthe selection of images and as a contributionto the resulting
perceptualexperience.What this means, of course, is that there simply can be no such
thing as "machinicperception"-unless, that is, the humanplays a more fundamental
role in it thanJohnstonwants to acknowledge.Thus, what Johnstondescribesas a new
"machinicspace"shouldbe understoodless as an expansionof the domainof perception
itself thanas a vastincreasein the flux of informationfromwhichperceptioncan emerge.
Rather than demarcatinga new deterritorializedregime of perception-a "gen-
eralizedconditionof visuality"-what the phenomenonof machinicvision foregrounds
is the urgentneed, at this momentin our ongoing technogenesis,for a differentiationof
properlyhumanperceptualcapacitiesfrom the functionalprocessing of informationin
hybrid machine-humanassemblages, of vision proper from mere sight. Only such a
differentiationcan do justice to the affectivedimensionconstitutiveof humanperception
andto the activerole affectivityplays in carryingout the shift froma mode of perception
dominatedby vision to one rooted in those embodied capacities-proprioception and
tactility-from which vision might be said to emerge.
Precisely such a differentiationand an altogetherdifferent understandingof the
automationof sight informs the aesthetic experimentationwith computer vision and
image digitization that is my focus here. For today's new media artists,the historical
achievementof so-called"visionmachines"6comprisesnothingif not a felicitouspretext
for an alternativeinvestmentin the bodily underpinningsof humanvision. At the heart
of this aesthetic approachto the automationof sight is an understandingof the vision
machine as the catalyst for a "splitting"or "doubling"of perceptioninto, on the one
hand, a machinic form, mere sight (roughly what Lacan, and Kittler following him,
understandas the machineregistrationof the image') and, on the other,a humanform
tied to embodimentand the singularform of affectioncorrelatedwith it, vision proper.
Such a splittingof perceptionis simply the necessaryconsequenceof the vast difference
between the computerand humanembodiment:whereas"vision machines"transform
the activity of perceivinginto a computationof datathatis, for all intentsandpurposes,
instantaneous,humanperceptiontakesplace in a rich andevolving field to which bodily

6. The term is Paul Virilio'sand, in accord with my distinctionhere between "vision" and
"sight,"would better be renderedas "sight machine."
7. Lacan developshis materialistnotionof consciousness in SeminarII. Kittlerappropriates
it in his understandingof the technicalproperties of computergraphics: ". .. in a 'materialist
definition'of consciousness any 'surface'suffices where the refractionindexbiuniquelytransfers
individualpoints in the real to correspondingthoughvirtualpoints in the image.So-called Man,
distinguished by his so-called consciousness, is unnecessaryfor this process because nature's
mirrorscan accommodatethese types of representationjust as well as the visual center in the
occipital lobe of the brain" [Kittler,Literature131].

diacritics / winter 2001 61

modalities of tactility, proprioception, memory, and duration-what I am calling
affectivity-make an irreducibleand constitutivecontribution.As the pretext for an
alternativeinvestmentof the embodied basis of humanvisual perception,this splitting
is fundamentalfor any aestheticredemptionof the automationof sight. While theorists
like Deleuze andJohnstonmiss the call for suchan investment,new mediaartistsdirectly
engage the bodily dimensionsof experiencewhich surface,as it were, in responseto the
automationof vision. Their work can thus be said to invest the "other side" of the
automationof vision-the affective source of bodily experience that is so crucial to
reconfiguringhumanperceptionin our contemporarymedia ecology.

ReembodyingPerception

To contextualizethis aesthetic investmentof the body, we would be well advised to

revisitthe workof FrenchmediacriticPaulVirilio-the theoristof the "visionmachine"
as well as the proximatetargetof Johnston'scritique.More thanany othersource, it is
Virilio's critical insight into the basis for automation-the technificationof perceptual
functions traditionallybound up with the body-that informs what I would call the
"Bergsonistvocation"of aestheticexperimentationswith embodiedvision.
Farfrombeing the nostalgichas-beenof Johnston'simagining,Virilioshows himself
to be just as attentiveto the advantagesof technificationas he is to its humancosts. In
this sense, his evolving analysisof the vision machinecan be said to pursuetwo equally
importantends. On the one hand, it functions as a critique of the disembodying of
perceptionthat informs the historical accomplishmentof what Virilio has termedthe
"logistics of perception,"the systemic technicalrecoding of formerlyhuman-centered
perceptualratios. But on the otherhand,Virilio's analysis forms the basis for an ethics
of perceptionrooted in a defense of the body as an ever-evolving perceiving form.
Accordingly,the verypositionfor whichJohnstonberatesVirilio-his refusalto abandon
the phenomenology of the body-takes on a newfound and decisively positive
significance:as the "victim,"so to speak,of the logistics of perception,thebody becomes
the site of a potential resistance to-or more exactly, a potential counterinvestment
alongside of-the automationof vision. ContraJohnston,Virilio's concern is not the
body as natural, but the body as an index of the impact of technological change: the
body as it coevolves with technology,and specifically,as it undergoesself-modification
throughits encounterwith automatedvision.
GivenVirilio'ssensitivityto the bodily costs of technification,it is hardlysurprising
thathis position stronglyresonateswith our understandingof the transformationof the
image. As the culminatingmomentof a fundamentaltransfigurationin the materiality
of the image, the vision machineinstantiatesprecisely what is radicallynew aboutthe
digital image: the shift in the "being"of the image from the objective supportof a
technical frame to the impermanent"mentalor instrumental"form of visual memory.
With this new materialstatus comes a profoundshift in the scope of the technological
recoding of perception:from this point forward,it is the time of perceptionitself, and
not its materialsupport,thatforms the "object"of technicalinvestment:

Any take (mentalor instrumental)being simultaneouslya time take, however

minute, exposure time necessarily involves some degree of memorization
(conscious or not) according to the speed of exposure .... The problem of
objectivisation of the image thus largely stops presenting itself in terms of
some kindofpaper or celluloidsupportsurface-that is, in relationto a material
referencespace. It now emerges in relation to time, to the exposuretime that
allows or edits seeing. [Virilio, VisionMachine 61]

62
To this shift in the object of technicalinvestmentcorrespondsa profounddisplacement
of the humanrole in perception.In contrastto earliervisualtechnologylike the telescope
and the microscope (not to mention cinema itself), which function by extending the
physiological capacities of the body, contemporary vision machines bypass our
physiology(andits constitutivelimits)entirely.Whatis importantis notjust thatmachines
will take our place in certain"ultrahigh-speed operations,"but the rationaleinforming
this displacement:they will do so "notbecause of our ocular system's limited depthof
focus ... but because of the limited depth of time of our physiological 'take"' [61]. In
short, what we face in today's vision machines is the unprecedentedthreatof our total
irrelevance:because our bodies cannotkeep pace with the speed of (technical) vision,
we literallycannot see what the machinecan see and are thus left out of the perceptual
loop altogether.Thus when he pronouncesthe image as nothing more than an "empty
word,"Virilio brings home just how profoundlyintertwinedthe body's epochi is with
the digital obsolescence of the image.8
What most critics-Johnston included-fail to appreciateis thatVirilio's analysis
does not culminatewith this bleak diagnosis of our contemporarysituation.Not only
does he repeatedlyinvoke the necessity for an ethics capableof addressingthe splitting
of perception,but his intellectualtrajectorywitnesses an increasingattentivenessto the
violence of the vision machine'srecodingof embodiedhumanfunctionsas disembodied
machinicfunctions.In so doing,Viriliomanagesto raisehis analysisof the visionmachine
above the limiting binary-human versus machine-that he is so often accused of
reinscribing.For in the end, what is at stake in his analysis is neither a resistance to
humankind'sfall intotechnologynoranembraceof a radical,technicalposthumanization,
but something more like the possibility for a technically catalyzed reconfigurationof
human perception itself: a shift from a vision-centeredto a body-centeredmodel of
perception.
Nowhere is this potentialperceptualreconfigurationmore clearly on display than
in the incisive analysis accordedthe virtualcockpit in Open Sky.HereVirilio pinpoints
the fundamentaltradeoff of visual automation:embodimentfor efficiency. A hi-tech
helmet that functions in the place of the instrumentpanel and its indicatorlights, the
virtualcockpitcombinesthe superiorityof machinicprocessingwith the drive to recode
complexly embodied capacities as instrumentalvisual activities, entirely purified of
any bodily dimension:"sinceth[e] type of fluctuating(real-time)optoelectronicdisplay
[offered by the virtualcockpit] demands substantialimprovementin human response
times, delays caused by handmovementsare also avoidedby using both voice (speech
input) and gaze direction(eye input)to commandthe device, piloting no longer being
done 'by hand' but 'by eye,'by staringat different(real or virtual)knobs and saying on
or off . .." [OpenSky93]. Exampleslike this lend ample testimonyto Virilio's complex
interestin the dehumanizingeffects of automation:far from being simple moments in
an inexorably unfolding logistics of perception,technologies like the virtual cockpit
serve above all to expose the concrete costs of visual automation.Indeed, in Virilio's
hands, such technologies are shown to functionprecisely by mountingan assaulton the
domain of embodied perception;they thereby expose just how much the recoding of
human vision as an instrumentalfunction of a larger "vision machine"strips it of its
own embodiedbasis.9
8. "Don'tforget,"he remindsus, "that 'image'is just an emptyword... since the machine's
interpretationhas nothing to do with normal vision (to put it mildly!). For the computer,the
optically active electron image is merely a series of coded impulses whose configurationwe
cannot begin to imagine since, in this 'automationof perception,'image feedback is no longer
assured"[VisionMachine73].
9. "Ophthalmologythus no longer restrictsitself to practices necessitated by deficiencyor
disease; it has broadenedits range to include an intensive exploitationof the gaze in which the

diacritics / winter 2001 63

 This concernwith the correlationbetween automationandthe recodingof the body
seems to have motivateda subtle yet significantshift of emphasisin Virilio's research,
a shift thatcentersaroundthe role to be accordedthe invisible or the "non-gaze."Forif,
in Warand Cinemaand The VisionMachine,Virilio tends to assimilateblindnessto the
visionless sight of the vision machine, in Open Sky, he begins to speak instead of a
"rightto blindness."Ratherthanyet one more domainfor machiniccolonization-the
"latestand last form of industrialization:the industrializationof the non-gaze" [Vision
Machine73]-blindness becomes the basis for an ethics of perception:"itwould surely
be a good thing if we ... asked ourselves aboutthe individual'sfreedom of perception
and the threatsbroughtto bear on that freedom by the industrializationof vision...
Surely it would then be appropriateto entertaina kind of right to blindness .. ." [Open
Sky 96]. More than simply a right not to see, the right to blindness might best be
understoodas a right to see in a fundamentallydifferentway. For if we now regularly
experience a "pathologyof immediate perception"in which the credibility of visual
images has been destroyed, isn't the reason simply that image processing has been
dissociated from the body, from the very source of our visual sensibility [90]? Doesn't
the all-too-frequentcontemporarypredicamentof "notbeing able to believe your eyes"
in fact compel us to find other ways to ground belief, ways that reactivatethe very
bodily modalities-tactility, affectivity, proprioception-from which images acquire
theirforce and their "reality"in the first place?'0

ExpandedPerspective

New media artistscan be said to engage the very same problematicas machinevision
researchers,thoughto markedlydifferenteffect.As interventionsin today'sinformational
ecology, both exploit the homology between humanperceptionand machinicrendering;
yet whereasthe projectof automationpushes this homology to its breakingpoint, with
the resultthatit bracketsout the humanaltogether,new media artexplores the creative
potentialimplicit within the reconceptualizingof (human)perceptionas an active (and
fully embodied) renderingof data. In a recent discussion of the digitization of the
photographicimage, GermanculturalcriticFlorianR6tzerpinpointsthe significanceof
this rathersurprisingconvergence:

depthoffield of humanvision is beingprogressivelyconfiscatedby technologiesin whichman is

controlledby the machine.. ." [93].
10. In his brilliant analysis of the "nobilityof vision," Hans Jonas shows how touch and
other bodily modalities "conferreality"on perception:

Realityis primarilyevidencedin resistancewhichis aningredientin touch-experience.

Forphysicalcontactis morethangeometrical contiguity:it involvesimpact.In other
words,touchis the sense,andthe only sense,in whichthe perceptionof qualityis
normallyblendedwiththeexperienceof force,whichbeingreciprocal doesnotlet the
subjectbe passive;thustouchis thesensein whichtheoriginalencounter withreality
as realitytakesplace.Touchbringsthe realityof its objectwithinthe experienceof
sensein virtueof thatby whichit exceedsmeresense,viz., theforce-component in its
originalmake-up. Thepercipientonhispartcanmagnifythiscomponent byhisvoluntary
counteractionagainsttheaffectingobject.Forthisreasontouchis thetruetestof reality.
[147-48]

Jonas'sanalysisforms thebasisfor myconsiderationof virtualrealityenvironmentsin "Embodying

VirtualReality."

64
 Today,seeing the world is no longer understoodas a process of copying but of
modelling, a renderingbased on data. A person does not see the world out
there, she only sees the model created by the brain and projected out-
wards .... Thisfeature of perception as constructionwas... unequivocally
demonstratedby attemptsto mechanicallysimulatetheprocess of seeing... in
which the processing. .. has to be understoodas a complex behaviorsystem.
In this context,not only does theprocessing stage move into theforegroundas
against the copy, but [so too does] that organismonce taken leave of in the
euphoric celebrationof photographicobjectivity,an organism whose visual
system constructs an environment which is of significance to it. ["Re:
Photography"17-18, emphasisadded]

Ri~tzer'sclaim underscoresthe functional isomorphismbetween machine vision and

humanperceptionthatforms the foundationof contemporaryvision researchas well as
the impetusfor artisticengagementswith visualtechnologies.At issue in bothis aprocess
of constructionfrom "raw"datain which rules internalto the machineor body-brainare
responsiblefor generatingorganizedpercepts-"data packets"in the case of the machine;
"images"in that of the human.
Of particularinteresthere is the inversion to which Rdtzer subjects the trajectory
followed by vision research:for him, what is centralis not how the humanprefigures
the machinic, but ratherhow the mechanical simulation of sight recursively impacts
upon our understandingandour experienceof humanvision. It is as if the very capacity
to simulatesight furnishedthe impetusfor a reconfiguration-indeed, a reinvention-
of vision itself. Beyond its contribution to our understanding of the material
transformation of the image,Raitzer'sanalysisthuspinpointsthepotentialfor the machinic
paradigm to stimulate artisticpractice.By revealing that embodied humanbeings are
more like computer-vision machines than photo-optical cameras, the functional
isomorphismbetweenmachinicsight andhumanperceptionunderscoresthe processural
natureof image construction.Ratherthanpassively inscribinginformationcontainedin
our perceptualfields, we actively constructperspectivalimages throughrules internal
to our brains.
We must bear in mind, however,thatthis homology between humanand computer
"perception"becomes availablefor aestheticexploitationonly in the wakeof the splitting
of vision intoproperlymachinicandhumanforms.Accordingly,if ourperceptualprocess
is like thatof the computerin the sense thatboth involve complex internalprocessing,
the type of processing involved in the two cases could not be more different:whereas
vision machinessimply calculatedata,humanvision comprisesa "brain-bodyachieve-
ment."Not surprisingly,this differenceholds significancefor the aestheticimportof the
homology as well: whereas machine-vision systems abandonperspective entirely in
favor of a completely realized modelization of an object or space, aesthetic
experimentations with human visual processing exploit its large margin of
indeterminationnot to dispense with three-dimensionalityaltogether,but expressly to
modify our perspectivalconstructions."
It is precisely such modification that is at issue in much recent experimentation
with the impactof digitizationon the traditionalphotographicimage-perhaps the most
developed field of new mediaartpractice.By opening extravisualmodes of interfacing
with the digital information encoding the digital (photographic) image, such
experimentationforegroundsthe specificity of humanprocesses of image construction.
11. In his treatmentof digital design, architectBernardCacheinsists thatdigitallyfacilitated
topological spaces should not be opposed to Euclidean space-as they so often are-precisely
because of their experientialdimension,that is, their capacity to be experiencedby us [Cache].

diacritics / winter 2001 65

Fig. 7. Tamdas animationdepictinga "synthetic"
The Garden(1992). Computer-generated
Waliczky,
worldfrom a child's viewpoint;compels the viewer to adopt a "waterdrop"perspective.

In so doing, it pits humanimage constructionagainstthe analogprocessof photographic

rendering,thusdrawingattentionto the centralrole playedby embodied(human)framing
in the contemporarymediaenvironment;at the sametime, it underscoresthe fundamental
difference between human and computer processing by deploying the latter as an
instrumentfor the former.This doublevocationexplainsthe apparentparadoxof aesthetic
experimentationswith the digitalinfrastructure of the photograph:the fact thatexploring
the "image" beyond its technical framing (that is, as the photographicor cinematic
image) necessarily involves some significant engagement with the technical (that is,
with the computerand its constitutivemode of "vision").In so doing, this double voca-
tion manages to introduce the concrete Bergsonist imperative motivating such
experimentation:the imperative to discover and make experientiablenew forms of
embodiedhumanperspectivalperception which capitalizeon the perceptualflexibility
broughtout in us throughour coupling with the computer.
Consider,for example, new media artistTamaisWaliczky'sTheGarden[see fig. 7].
This computer-generatedanimation depicts a "synthetic"world oriented aroundthe
figureof a child who plays the role of point of view for the cameraandthus anchorsthis
point of view, and also thatof the spectator,withinthe space of the image.As she moves
around in the image space, the child remains the same size, while the objects she
encounters change size, angle, and shape in correlation with the trajectory of her
movementsthroughthe space. By identifyingthe viewer's perspectivewith that of the
child,Waliczkycompels the viewerto deterritorializeherhabitualgeometricperspective
and assume what he calls a "waterdropperspective"(in a waterdrop,as in a bubble,
space is curvedarounda centralorientingpoint of view). Thus, The Gardenplays with
the flexibility of perspectivein a way specifically correlatedwith humanembodiment,
and indeed, in a way designed to solicit an active response.As one commentatorputs it,

66
the work "sets the viewer a task that proves to be hardto grasp--to adopt a decentered
point-of-view"[Morse28]. By disjoiningthe point of view of the space it presentsfrom
our habitualgeometricviewpoint, TheGardenin effect challengesus to reconfigureour
relationto the image;andbecausethe act of enteringinto the space of the image operates
a certain alienation from our normal experience, it generates a pronouncedaffective
correlate.We seem to feel the space more than to see it. Moreover,because it seeks to
reproducethe "sphericalperspective"of a child's viewpoint on the world, The Garden
actively forges concreteconnectionsto othermodes of perception-for example,to the
"egocentric"viewpoint characteristicof children-where seeing is groundedin bodily
feeling. As a form of experimentationwith our perspectivalgrounding, The Garden
thus aims to solicit a shift in perceptualmodalityfrom a predominantlydetachedvisual
mode to a more engaged, affective and proprioceptivemode.
In his recent work on hypersurfacearchitecture,culturaltheorist Brian Massumi
grasps the far-reachingimplicationsof such an alternative,haptic and prehodological
mode of perception:

Depthperceptionis a habit of movement.Whenwe see one objectat a distance

behind another,what we are seeing is in a very real sense our own body's
potential to move between the objects or to touch them in succession. Weare
not usingour eyes as organsof sight, if bysight we meanthe cognitiveoperation
of detecting and calculatingforms at a distance. We are using our eyes as
proprioceptorsandfeelers. Seeing at a distance is a virtualproximity:a direct,
unmediatedexperience of potential orientings and touches on an abstract
surface combiningpastness andfuturity.Visionenvelopsproprioceptionand
tactility. ... Seeing is never separatefrom other sense modalities. It is by
nature synesthetic, and synesthesia is by nature kinesthetic. Every look
reactivates a multi-dimensioned,shifting surface of experiencefrom which
cognitivefunctions emerge habituallybut which is not reducibleto them. [21]

Not only does Massumi broadenperceptionbeyond vision, in orderto encompass all

the sensorymodalitiesof bodily life, buthe also suggeststhatthe perspectivalflexibility
we areexploringhere is a consequenceof the primordialityof such bodily "vision."On
the accounthe develops, optical vision derivesfromproprioceptiveandtactile "vision,"
as a particularlimitationof its generativevirtuality.We might thereforesay that new
media arttaps into the domainof bodily potentiality(or virtuality)in orderto catalyze
the active embodied reconfiguring of perceptualexperience (or, in other words, to
"virtualize"the body).

Haptic Space

Precisely such a transformationof what it means to see informsthe work of new media
artists engaged in exploring the consequences of the digitizationof the photographic
image. In divergentways, the work of Waliczky,Miroslaw Rogala, and Jeffrey Shaw
aims to solicit a bodily connection with what must now be recognizedto be a material
(informational)flux profoundlyheterogeneousto the perceptualcapacitiesof the (human)
body.By explicitlystagingthe shiftfromthetechnicalimage(forexample,the photograph
or the cinematicframe)to the humanframingfunction,the worksof these artistsliterally
compel us to "see" with our bodies. In this way, they correlatethe radical agenda of
"postphotography"with the broaderreconfigurationof perception and of the image
currentlyunderwayin contemporaryculture. With their investmentof the body as a

diacritics / winter 2001 67

quasi-autonomous site for processinginformation,theseworksgive concreteembodiment
to the fundamentalshift underlyingpostphotographicpractice, what pioneering new
media artist Roy Ascott glosses as a "radicalchange in the technology of image-
emergence,not only how the meaningis announcedbut how it comes on stage;not only
how the world is pictured,or how it is framed,but how frameworksare constructed
fromwhichimage-worldscanemerge,in open-endedprocesses"[166]. By foregrounding
the bodily underpinningsof vision, the worksof Waliczky,Rogala, and Shaw transform
the digital photographinto the source of an embodied framingprocess that specifies
precisely how informationcan be transformedinto experienceableimage-worlds.
Unlike Waliczky'sTheGarden,MiroslawRogala'sLoversLeap does not presenta
virtualimagespace,butis firmlyrootedwithinthe traditionof photo-opticalperspective.12
Itjoins togethertwo large-screenvideo projectionsof the busy MichiganAvenuebridge
in downtown Chicago displayed accordingto a perspective system that Rogala calls
"Mind's-Eye-View." Two photographstakenwith a fish-eye lens areprocessedtogether
into a 360' "pictosphere"thatallows explorationalong a spectrumrangingfromstandard
linearperspective(whenthe angle of viewing tendsto coincide with the angleof filming)
to a circularperspective(when the two angles standat 180?from one another)[see fig.
8]. Withinthe space of the installation,the two video screensdisplay views of the same
image space from opposite orientations.Caughtinside the strangespace of the image,
the viewer-participantinteractswith the image by moving aroundin the installationor
by standingstill [see fig. 9]. Bodily movementengagesfloor-mountedsensorsthattrigger
shifts in the 360' image and that determinewhether the shifts are abruptor gradual,
while stasis triggerseither an animatedsequence of the city correspondingto a given
location along the spectrumof the image or a randomly selected video sequence of
daily life in Lovers Leap, Jamaica.The installationthus combines elements of chance
andviewercontrol:the viewer-participant's mountingsense of controlthroughmovement
might be said to be undercutby the randomjump cuts to virtualscenes of otherplaces.
As Rogala explains: "Whenthe viewer entersthe place, one becomes awarethat one's
movementsor actions arechangingthe view but won't realize how. This means thatthe
viewer is not really in control, but simply aware of his or her complicity. . . . As the
viewer's awarenessof the controlmechanismsgrows, so does the viewer's power"[qtd.
in Morse 95]. Still, as MargaretMorse observes,the viewer remainspowerlessto select
the contentof the experienceand can only modify its manner:the viewer chooses "not
what is seen, but how it is viewed" [Morse 95]. And, we might furthermoreadd, what
performsthe selecting is not the viewer's rationalfaculties, but her bodily affectivity,
which henceforthbecomes the link between her mentalexperienceandthe space of the
image.
In this sense, Rogala's installation might be said to recast the experience of
perspective not as a static graspingof an image, but as an interactiveconstructionof
whatTimothyDruckreycalls an "event-image." In the work,the digitizedimagebecomes
of
"thepoint entry into an experience basedon the abilityto rendercurvilinearperspective
as process"[Druckrey75]. Effectively,the image becomes an "immersivegeometry"in
which perspectiveloses its fixity andbecomes multiple.The resultis a kind of play with
perspectivein which the viewer's gesturesand movementtriggerchanges in the image
andtherebyreconstructthe imageas a hapticspace.Rogalaexplains:"movementthrough
perspectiveis a mentalconstruct;one thatmirrorsotherjumpsanddisjunctiveassociations
withinthe thoughtprocess"[qtd.in Morse94]. Moreover,it is the brainwhich functions
to "link"(though, importantly,not to "unite")the physical locality in which the user-
participantfinds herselfwith the virtualdimension."Thegoal"of the installation,Morse

12. Documentation of Lovers Leap can be found at www.rogala.org.

68
Fig. 8. Miroslaw Rogala, Lovers Leap (1995). Two video screens display views of a 3600 "pictosphere";
viewers'physical movementwithinthe space triggers movementof image.

Fig. 9. Miroslaw Rogala, Lovers Leap (1995). Close-up of 3600 pictosphere of downtown Chicago taken
with 'fish-eye" lens.
concludes, "is to externalizean internalimage in the mind, allowing the viewer to stand
outside and perceive it" [96]. Not only does LoversLeap thus suggest a new relationto
the photographicimage-since, as Druckreyputs it, "theusefulnessof the single image
can no longer serve as a recordof an event" [75]--but it foregroundsthe shift from an
optical to a haptic mode of perceptionrooted in bodily affectivity as the necessary
consequenceof such a shift in the image's ontology and function.'3
WhereasRogala'sworkmanagesto uprootperspectivefromits photo-opticalfixity
without abandoning Euclidean space, Waliczky's work embraces the flexibility of
computer mediation and, ultimately, computer space itself in order to confront the
anthropomorphicbasis of perception with the catalyst of the virtual image.14 In The
Way,for example,Waliczkyemploys what he calls an "inverseperspectivesystem":as
threedepicted figures runtowardbuildings,these buildings,ratherthan getting nearer,
actuallymove fartheraway [see fig. 10]. In TheGarden,as we've alreadyseen, Waliczky
employs a "waterdropperspectivesystem"which privileges the point of view not of the
spectator,as in traditionalperspective,but ratherof the child, or more exactly, of the
virtualcamera,whose surrogateshe is. And in Focusing, Waliczkydissects a 99-layer
digital image by making each of its layers available for investigationby the viewer.
What one discovers in this work is that each part of the image explored yields a new
image in turn,in a seemingly infinite, and continuouslyshifting,process of embedding
[see fig. 11]. Indeed,Waliczky'sworknot only furnishesa perfectillustrationof Deleuze's
claim thatany partof the digital image can become the link to the next image,'5but also
foregroundsthe bodily activity of the viewer as the filteringagent:what it presentsis a
trulyinexhaustiblevirtualimage surfacethatcan be actualizedin an infinite numberof
ways throughthe viewer's selective activity.
Waliczky's use of computer space to unsettle optical perspective takes its most
insistentform in a work called TheForest.Initiallyproducedas a computeranimation,
TheForestuses two-dimensionalelements (a single black-and-whitedrawingof a bare
tree)to createthe impressionof a three-dimensionalspace.To makeTheForest,Waliczky
employed a small virtualcamerato film a series of rotatingcylinders of various sizes
onto which the drawingof the tree has been copied. Because the camerais smallerthan
the smallestcylinder,the viewer sees an endless line of trees in staggeredrows, when in
actualitythe trees aremountedon a set of convex surfaces[see fig. 12].As Anna Szepesi
suggests, Waliczky's work combines vertical movement (the movement of the trees),
horizontal movement (the movement of the cylinders), and depth movement (the
movement of the camera). This combination, argues Szepesi, produces movements
running in every direction. The result is a thorough transformationof the Cartesian
coordinatesystem, a replacementof the straightvectors of the x, y, and z axes with
"curvedlines that loop back on themselves" [Szepesi 102]. And the effect evoked is a
sense of limitless space in which the viewer can find no way out. Szepesi explains:"The
baretrees revolve endlessly aroundtheir own axis, like patternsin a kaleidoscope.The
resulting illusion is complete and deeply alarming:the infinity of the gaze leads to a
total loss of perspective"[103].
Yet TheForestdoes not presenta "posthumanpoint-of-view,"as Morse claims;nor
does it restorethe conventionsof Euclideanvision withina non-Euclideanimage space.

13. As if to reinforcethis shift, the work includes a "distorted,circular image,"a kind of

anamorphicstain--"eerie fish-eye images that look like a ball with buildings growing out of
them" [Morse 95, citing Charlie White]-that does not resolve itself into a photo-optic image,
but rathercalls into being a "mentalconstructof the omniscientgaze made visible" [Morse 95].
14. Documentationof Waliczky'sworkcan befound at www.waliczky.com.
15. See Deleuze, Cinema2, Conclusion.I discuss Deleuze's remarkson the digital image in
"Cinemabeyond Cybernetics."

70
Fig. 10. TamdsWaliczky,The Way (1996). "Inverseperspective system" causes objects to diminishin size
as the depictedfigures run towardthe viewer

Fig. 11. Tamads Waliczky,Focusing (1998). Interactive,ninety-nine-layerdigital image; illustrates the po-
tentialfor any part of image to generate a new image.
Fig. 12. TamdsWaliczky, drawingfed throughvirtualcamerayields
TheForest(1993). Two-dimensional
illusionof an infinitethree-dimensional
space.
Rather,by embeddingexperientiablevantagepoints within warpedimage spaces, The
Forest opens alternatemodes of perceiving that involve bodily dimensions of spacing
and duration-modes that,in short,capitalizeon the flexibility of the body, and indeed,
on the cross-modal or synesthetic capacities of bodily affectivity. In this way, it
exemplifies the mechanismdriving all of Waliczky'swork: namely,the inversionof a
normal viewing situation, such that the image becomes the stable point of reference
aroundwhich the body might be said to move. Morsediscernssomethingsimilarin The
Way:"Astationaryviewer can interprethis or herown foregroundpositionto be moving.
The resultis puzzling, an enigma thatin any case suggests an ironic or dysphoricvision
of motion into what is usually associatedwith the futureor the pathof life" [Morse311].
We must insist, moveover,that what operatessuch an "interpretation" or "suggestion"
is precisely the capacity of the installation to tamper with our ordinary embodied
equilibrium: in a reversal of the of
paradigm cognitive linguistics (where meaning
schematacan be tracedbackto embodiedbehavior),whatis at stakehereis a modification
atthe level of embodiedbehaviorthatsubsequentlytriggersconnotationalconsequences.16
These two distinctengagementswith photo-opticalperspective--one moredirectly
alignedwith traditionalphotography,the otherwith the virtualimage of computervision
research-come together in the work of Jeffrey Shaw. Consider, for example, his
coproduction,with Waliczky,of an interactiveinstallationversion of The Forest.The
aim of this installation is to expand the interface between the human viewer and
Waliczky'sanimatedvirtualworld:to open it not simply to the viewer's internalbodily
processing, but to her tactile and spatial movement.To this end, Waliczky's world is
madenavigablevia the interfaceof an advancedflightsimulator;usingajoystickmounted
on a moving seat, the viewer is able to negotiate her own way throughthe infinitely

16. For the notion of embodiedschemata in cognitive linguistics, see Johnson.

72
Fig. 13. JeffreyShawand TamdsWaliczky, InstallationVersionof TheForest(1993). EmbedsTheForem
withinflightsimulatorinterface;couplesillusionof infinitethree-dimensional
spacetopossibilitiesof bod
movement.
recursivevirtualworldof TheForestandto experienceherjourneythroughthe physical
sensationsof movementthatthe flight simulatorproducesin her own body [see fig. 13].
In effect, theprocessof mappingmovementonto thebody functionsto framethe limitless
"virtual"space as an actualizedimage.
More firmlyrootedin the traditionsof past image technologies,Shaw's own recent
worksdeploy multiple,often incompatibleinterfacesas navigationdevices for the virtual
image spaces his workspresent.17By employingthe navigationtechniquesof panorama,
photography,cinema, and virtualreality,he makes their specificity both a theme and a
function of his work. Rather than collapsing the technologies into some kind of
postmodernGesamtkunstwerk,Shaw layers them on top of one anotherin a way that
draws attentionto the materialspecificity distinguishingeach one. The effect of this
juxtapositionof incompatiblemedia framesor interfacesis to foregroundthe "framing
function"of the embodied viewer-participantin a more direct and insistent way than
either Rogala or Waliczky do. Ratherthan presentingthe viewer-participantwith an
initially destabilizinginteractionaldomain, Shaw empowersher as the agent in charge
of navigatingmediaspace:it is the viewer-participant'sbodily activity-and specifically,
her synesthetic or cross-modal affectivity-that must reconcile the incompatibilities
between these diverse interfaces.Thus, as the viewer-participantgraduallydiscovers
the limits of the immersive environment,and correspondinglyof her own affective
processingof this environment,she gains a reflexive awarenessof herown contribution
to the productionof the "realityeffects"potentiallyofferedby the interfacepossibilities.
As exhilaratingas it is deflating, this awarenessserves to place the viewer-participant
within the space of the image, although in a mannerthat, by constantly interrupting

17. My book New Philosophy for New Media devotes an extended discussion to Shaw's
career as the exemplaryneo-Bergsonistnew media artist [chapter 2].

diacritics/ winter2001 73
immersion,drawsattentionto the active role played by bodily affectivityin producing
and maintainingthis experience.
In two strikinginstances,thisjuxtapositionof competingvisual traditionsconcretely
exploits the contrastbetween the photographicimage as a static(analog) inscriptionof
a momentin time andthe image as a flexible dataset. In Place: A User's Manual,Shaw
deploys the panoramainterface in its traditionalform-as a photographicimage-
precisely in order to defeat its illusionist aim. By giving the viewer control over the
projection,the frame,andthe space it depicts, and by foregroundingthe reversibilityof
the screen (which allows the panoramato be seen from the outside), Shaw opens the
photographicspace of illusion to variousforms of manipulation-all involving bodily
movement-which serve to counteractits illusionisticeffects [see fig. 14]. Photography
is thus transformedinto the "condition... of anothermovement, that of movement
within virtual space" [Duguet 41]; it becomes the pretext for a movement that is
simultaneouslywithin the viewer's body and the virtual space and that is-on both
counts-supplementary to the static photographicimage. This effect of introducing
movement into the photographfrom the outside-and its inversionof the conventions
of the traditionalpanorama-is madeall the morestrikingby thecontentof thepanoramic
image worlds:desertedsites or sites of memorythat,in starkcontrastto the touristsites
featuredin the nineteenth-century panoramas,arethemselveswhollydevoidof movement
[see fig. 15].
In The Golden Calf (1995), Shaw deploys the photographicimage as the basis for
an experience that reverses the movement foregroundedin Place and, by doing so,
inverts the traditionalpanoramicmodel itself. The work features a white pedestal on
which is placed an LCD color monitorconnected to a computervia a large five-foot
cable. The monitordisplays an image of the pedestal with a computer-generatedimage
of a golden calf on top. By moving the monitoraroundthe actualpedestalandcontorting
her body in various ways, the viewer can examine the calf from all possible angles-
above, below, and from all sides [see fig. 16]. The monitorthus functionsas a window
revealingan immaterial,virtualobjectseeminglyandparadoxicallylocatedwithinactual
space [see fig. 17].Yet,becausethe calf's shiny skin has been "reflection-mapped" with
digitized photographsof the room that were capturedwith a fish-eye lens, this virtual
object also becomes the projectivecenterfor a virtualpanoramicrepresentationof the
space surroundingthe viewer,andone, moreover,thatbringstogetherpastimages (again,
photography'sontologicalfunction)with the presentexperienceof the viewer.Whereas
in Place the actualpanoramicimage becomes the pretextfor an explorationof virtual
space, both within the viewer's body and within the image itself, here the panoramic
image is itself the resultof a virtualprojection,triggeredby the images reflectedon the
calf's skin and "completed"by the embodied processing of the viewer. Ratherthan
enactingthe deterritorialization of the photographicimage into a kinestheticspace, this
work deploys photographyas an interfaceonto three-dimensionalspace. In this way, it
underscoresthe fundamentalcorrelationlinking photographyin its digitizedform with
the "reality-conferring" activity of the viewer's embodied movementin space and the
affectivityit mobilizes. If the viewer feels herself to be in the panoramicimage space, it
is less on account of the image's autonomous affective appeal than of the body's
production,withinitself, of an affective,tactile space, somethingthatwe might liken to
a bodily variantof Deleuze's notion of the "any-space-whatever."'8 Moreover,if this
18. Deleuzedefinesthe "any-space-whatever" in contradistinctionto a particulardetermined
space: "Itis a perfectlysingularspace, whichhas merelylost its homogeneity,thatis, theprinciple
of its metric relationsor the connectionof its own parts, so that the linkagescan be made in an
infinitenumberof ways. It is a space of virtualconjunction,graspedas pure locus of thepossible.
... Space itself has left behindits own co-ordinatesand its metricrelations.It is a tactile space"
[Cinema 109]. I discuss Deleuze's concept in relationto new media art in "AffectiveTopology."

74
Fig. 14. JeffreyShaw,Place:A User's Manual(1995). Interfaceplatformcombininga 3600panorama with

Fig. 15. JeffreyShaw,Place:A User's Manual (1995). Close-up of panoramicphotographof deserted site
of memory.
Fig. 16. JeffreyShaw,The Golden Calf (1995). Invertstraditionalpanoramicmodel by requiringviewer to
align virtual image of golden calf sculptureon a pedestal in physical space.

Fig. 17. JeffreyShaw,The Golden Calf (1995). Close-upof monitordisplayingimage of golden calf sculp-
ture.
penetrationinto the image necessarily involves a certain fusion between actual and
virtualimage space, it foregroundsthe brain-body'scapacity to sutureincompossible
worlds in a higher transpatialsynthesis.
In sum, the digital environmentsof Rogala, Waliczky,and Shaw foregroundthree
crucial "problems"posed by the digitizationof the technical (photographic)image: the
problems, respectively, of processural perspective, of virtual infinitude, and of the
indifferentiationof virtual and actual space. In all three cases, what is at stake is an
effortto restorethe body's sensorimotorinterval-its affectivity-as the supplementary
basis for an "imaging"of the digital flux. Rogala's deformationof photo-opticalnorms
rendersperspective as process and maps it onto the body as a site of a varianthaptic
point of view. Waliczky'sperturbationof perceptualequilibriumforegroundsthe active
role of the body requiredto frame virtualspace as a contingentactualizedimage. And
Shaw'sdeconstructionof the illusionaryeffectsof photographicrepresentation highlights
the bodily basis of human perceptionand the infraempiricalfunction that allows the
body to confer reality on actualand virtualspace alike.

EmbodiedProsthetics

All of these aestheticexperimentationswith the digitizationof photographyexemplify

the Bergsonistvocation of new media art:in variousways, they all channelperception
throughthe computer,not as a technical extension beyond the body-brain,but as an
embodied prosthesis, a catalyst for bodily self-transformation.In so doing, they all
foregroundthe body as the agent of a sensorimotorconnection with informationthat,
unlike the sensorimotorlogic inscribedinto the movement-image,must be said to be
supplementary.
Insofarat it defines the creativemarginof indeterminationconstitutiveof embodied
framing, this supplementarysensorimotorconnection is precisely what defines the
Bergsonist vocation of new media art. We can understandit to be the result of a
contemporary refunctionalizing of the two productive dimensions of Bergson's
understandingof the body: through it, the subtractivefunction of the body and the
singularizingcontributionof affection and memory are broughtto bear on what is, in
effect, an entirely new world-a universe not of images but of information.As the
privilegedvehicle for thisrefunctionalizing,new mediaartfacilitatesa bodilynegotiation
with the processuralenvironmentthatis simultaneouslya reconfigurationof the body:
a broadeningof its functionas centerof indetermination.By wideningthe correlationof
body and technology well beyond anythingBergson could have imagined, new media
artworksvastly expand his theory of embodied prosthetics:'9indeed, the experience
they brokerfostersthe interpenetration of technologyandperceptionandtherebyextends
the scope of the body's sensorimotorcorrelationwith the universeof information.New
mediaartmightthusbe saidto create,or ratherto catalyzethe creationof, new modalities
throughwhich the body can filter-and indeed give form to-the flux of information.
ArchitectLarsSpuybroekgraspsthe profoundimpactof thisnew modelof embodied
prostheticsfor our understandingof the body:

[T]he body'sinnerphantomhas an irrepressibletendencyto expand,to integrate

every sufficientlyresponsiveprosthesis into its motor system, its repertoireof
movements,and make it run smoothly.Thatis why a car is not an instrument

19. In line with this theory,new media art would comprisean instance of the augmentation
of experiencethroughintelligencethatBergson, in CreativeEvolution,associates generally with
technology.

diacritics / winter 2001 77

 or piece of equipment that you simply sit in, but something you merge
with. ... Movementscan only be fluent if the skin extends as far as possible
over the prosthesis and into the surroundingspace, so thatevery action takes
place from withinthe body, whichno longer does thingsconsciouslybut relies
totally onfeeling. ... [E]verythingstarts inside the body,andfrom thereon it
just neverstops. Thebodyhas no outerreferenceto directits actions to, neither
a horizon to relate to, nor any depth of vision to create a space for itself It
relatesonly to itself. Thereis no outside:thereis no world in whichmyactions
take place, the body forms itself by action, constantly organizing and
reorganizing itself motorically and cognitively to keep "inform." ["Motor
Geometry"49, emphasisadded]

Ratherthan extending our senses outward,as the dominantunderstandingwould have

it, embodied prostheses impact experience because they augment our tactile,
proprioceptive,and interoceptiveself-sensing or affectivity:

[E]very prosthesis is in the natureof a vehicle, somethingthat adds movement

to the body, that adds a new repertoireof action. Of course, the car changes
the skin into an interface,able to change the exterior into the interior of the
body itself The openness of the world would make no sense it if were not
absorbed by my body-car The body simply creates a hapticfield completely
centeredupon itself in which every outer event becomes relatedto this bodily
networkof virtualmovements,becomingactualized inform and action. [49]

As a "vehicle"in precisely this sense, new media art configures the body as a haptic
field, therebyallowing it to exercise its creativeproductivity.
Because of the crucial role it accords the computeras an instrumentalinterface
with the domainof information,however,new mediaarttransformsthis hapticprosthetic
functioninto the basis for a supplementarysensorimotorconnectionwith the digital. In
the process, it helps unpack what exactly is at stake in the shift from an ontology of
images to an ontology of information,from a world calibratedto humansense ratiosto
a world thatis, following Johnston'sand Kittler'sdistinctbut complementaryinsights,
in some sense fundamentallyheterogeneousto the human.Following this shift, we can
no longer consider the body to be a correlateof the materialflux, and its constitutive
sensorimotorintervalcan no longer define the image as the basic unit of matter.Rather,
precisely because it is heterogeneous to the flux of information, the body and its
sensorimotorintervalcan only be supplementalto this flux-something introducedinto
it or imposed on itfrom the outside,from elsewhere.Put anotherway, the sensorimotor
intervalcan no longerfurnishthe basis for deducingthe body fromthe materialuniverse,
but insteadnow designatesa specificfunctionof thebodyitselfas a systemheterogeneous
to information.20Thebody,in short,has becomethe crucialmediatorbetweeninformation
andform (image):the supplementalsensorimotorinterventionit operatescoincides with
the process throughwhich the image (what I am calling the digital image) is created.
Once again, architectLars Spuybroekpinpointsthe profoundsignificance of this
transformationin the haptic prosthetic function.2'As an embodied prosthesis, the

20. Inthissense,I canagreewithDeleuzethattherehasbeena breakwiththesensorimotor

logic of the movement-image withoutendorsinghis rejectionof the body.Simplyput, the
sensorimotor connectionis no longerinternalto theimage,butrathersomethingthatis imposed
throughtheprocessofframinginformation (andthuscreatingimages).
21. Virilioanticipatesthis breakin his characterization
of the shiftfromnaturallightto
laserdeliveryof light:

78
computerlets us perceive movement itself in a way that fundamentallyalters what it
meansto see: the computer,Spuybroekmaintains,"is an instrumentfor viewing form in
time."When we see throughthe computer,"we no longerlook at objects, whetherstatic
or moving, but at movement as it passes throughthe object. Looking no longer implies
interruptingthe object to release images in space. Today looking has come to mean
calculatingratherthandepictingexternalappearance."Lookingnow meanscalculating
withthe body,andthe imagethatgets "released"designatessomethinglike its processural
perception:"we build machines. .. notjust to connectperceptionandprocess,but more
importantlyto internalizethese and connectthemwiththe millionsof rhythmsand cycles
in our body" [Spuybroek,"Motorization"].Insofar as it employs the computer as a
prosthetic"vehicle"to transformthe basis and meaningof vision, new media artcan be
thoughtof as an apparatusfor producingembodiedimages. It respondsto the eclipse of
the sensorimotorbasis of vision by fundamentallyreinvestingthe body's sensorimotor
capacities, and indeed by resituating the sensorimotor itself, transposingit from the
domain of vision to that of affectivity! In this respect, the automationof vision can be
seen to exert an impact on artthat is similarto its impact on (human)perceptionmore
generally:just as perceptionis compelled to rediscoverits constitutivebodily basis, so
too must artreaffirmits bodily origin and claim the image as its properdomain.

TheAesthetic Supplement

Ourexplorationof the supplementarysensorimotorimperativeof new media artreturns

us, once again, to the topic of the image and its reconfigurationin the context of
contemporary"digitalconvergence."To bring our explorationof the "digitalimage"to
a close, let us now correlateourpictureof the technicalbasis for contemporaryperception
with an accountof the aestheticconsequencesof the Bergsonistvocation of new media
art.To this end, we would do well to invoke RaymondBellour's insightful meditation
on the computerimage, where the problemof the (digital) obsolescence of the image is
recastin termsof the continuedpossibility for artisticdivergenceor a new "will to art"
(Deleuze)-the possibility,that is, for an aestheticinterventioninto what Johnstonhas
dubbedthe technical "underside"of the image.
Bellour'smeditationsucceedsin suturingthetechnicalhistoryof imagingtechnology
with the history of art in the age of its technical reproducibility.In the very process of
describing the technical "de-differentiation"of the image currentlyunderwayin our
emergentdigital culture,Bellour gives us a means to appreciatethe aesthetic stakes of
the automationof vision. Specifically,Bellour helps us graspexactly why our situation
is unprecedented.With the computerimage, he tells us, the ontology of the technical
"image"becomes radically autonomousfrom the perceptualanalogy to which it had
been bound (since the inventionof photography)in the form of a "doublehelix."22

Facedwiththissudden"mechanization of vision,"in whichthecoherentlightimpulse

of a laserattemptsto takeoverfromthefundamentally incoherent
lightof thesunorof
wemaywellaskourselveswhatis therealaim,theasyetunavowed
electricity, objective,
of suchinstrumentation-ofa kindof perceptionno longersimplyenhancedby the
lensesof ourglasses... butby computer.Is it aboutimprovingtheperception of reality
oris it aboutrefiningreflexconditioning,
to thepointwhereevenourgraspof howour
perception of appearances workscomes"undertheinfluence"? [VisionMachine94].

If we supplementthispicturewiththe scenario of directstimulationof the optic nerve,we confront

a situation where vision occurs in the total absence of light.
22. The "double helix" structureof the image concerns the intertwiningof two forms of
analogy specific to the technical era. As Bellour puts it, the double helix

diacritics / winter 2001 79

 Bellour begins his provocativeaccountof the contemporarystatusof the image by
confrontingthe following paradox:in a cultureas image-saturatedas ours, we no longer
know what an image is. As he sees it, the proliferationof images-the sheer varietyof
differentkinds of image and, we might add, the almost total flexibility broughtto the
image by digitization-does not tell us more aboutthe image, but becomes a problem,
an impedimentto our grasp of the image. There are, says Bellour, "fewerImages, as a
result of the virtuallyinfinite proliferationof images, which are characterizedby the
fissures and combinations(the vagueness)between theirdifferentforms ratherthanby
theirintrinsicfecundity"[173-74]. In the trulyremarkableanalysisthatfollows, Bellour
correlatesthis breakdownin the divide between the image and what is not image, and
the disappearanceof whathe calls "Images,"with the transformationoperatedby video,
and subsequently,by the computer.Video materializesthe power of the image as a
purely technical dimensionof the image; and the computerrendersthe deploymentof
this power technically autonomous from all correlationwith human perceivers and
perceptualprocesses.
For Bellour, the video image marks a wholesale revaluationof the image: video
incorporatesthe power of analogy, previously limited to the static or moving image,
directly into the materiality of the image. Due to its "natural"facility at destroying
(external)analogy,video is able to bringanalogymoreintimatelyinto the productionof
the image:"forthe firsttime,"notes Bellour,"thebodies andobjectsin the worldbecome
virtuallydisfigurable(and hence refigurable)accordingto a power which, in real time
or barely prerecordedtime . .. transformsthe representationsthat the mechanicaleye
captures"[181]. Put anotherway, this power of video involves a certainparadox,one
that arises directlyfrom video's correlationwith time: "videohas grippedanalogy in a
pair of pincers:on the one hand,it increasesits power tenfold, and on the other,it ruins
it. In effect, video extends the analogy directlyfrom movementto time; instantaneous,
real time . . ." [181]. If this correlationwith time means that the video image "can
appearto be born as a new image that cannot be reducedto the one that precededit"
[181-82], the reason is that video materiallysubsumes all of the analogies formerly
expressed in the divergences between the arts: "capableof attracting,absorbing,and
blendingall the previousimages of painting,photography,and the cinema, [video]
reducesall the passages thathad functioneduntil then amongartsand turnsthe .... passage
capacity both into what characterizes it in relation with each one of them and what
defines it (positivelyand negatively)with respect to the concept of art" [182, emphasis
added].Video thus marksa fundamentalpunctuationin Bellour's accountof the image
in the age of its technicalmateriality:insofaras it becomes the "passagecapacity"itself,
the video image subsumesdivergence-and hence the functionof artitself-within the
technicalcapacityof the image.
If the video image materializesthe power of divergenceat the level of the image's
technicalconstruction,the computerimage could be said to autonomizethis power by

doeshomagetotheextensionof natureforeseenbyscience.... Aboveall,itunderscores

theextentof theconnectionbetweenthetwoimportant formsaccordingto whichthe
analogyis constantlythreatenedand refashioned.The first form has to do with
photographic analogy,the way in whichthe world,objects,andbodiesseem to be
defined(alwayspartially,andjust roughly)in referenceto naturalvision,a certain
fixedstateof naturalvision,whichimpliesresemblance andrecognition. Thesecond
formconcernsthe analogypeculiarto thereproduction of movement.Thosearethe
twoforceswhich,separately areatstakeandaremisusedin a filmwhenever
andtogether,
theimagehasa tendencytowardsdistortion andthelossof recognition,
oritsmovement
orparalyzed
is diverted,congealed,interrupted, by thebrutalintrusion
of photography.
... [180]

80
decouplingit from all ties to perceptionand the perceptualbasis of analogy.23Now that
vision takes place in a form radicallyheterogeneouswith humanperceptualmodalities
-as the nonperspectivalprocessing of data-the technical (digital) infrastructureof
the "image"loses all intrinsicconnectionto the analogdomain.Insofaras it imperilsthe
very potentialfor artto produce"divergence"-the potential,thatis, for artto introduce
a divergencebetween the "seizure [of the world as such] and its seizure as an image"
[179]-the computerimage destroys,once and for all, the double helix structureof the
image:partingcompanywith all precedingimages (includingthe video image), it breaks
throughboth "edges"of the double-helix structure,renderingperceptionautonomous
from naturalvision and subsumingthe reproductionof movementinto the presentation
of time.24
With this diagnosis of the computerimage, Bellour's analysis not only converges
with the projectof automationanalyzedabove, butdoes so in a way thatforegroundsits
specifically aesthetic significance. For as Bellour sees it, the radical autonomyof the
computerimage necessitates a fundamentalreconfigurationof analogy: a realignment
of analogy with embodiedreceptionoutside or beyondthe double helix structureof the
modern technical image. Put anotherway, the computerimage raises a challenge to
analogicalunderstanding thatis unprecedentedin thehistoryof Westernart.By redefining
the "image"as a nonperspectivaldata set, computervision marksthe momentwhen the
ontology of the technical image becomes radically autonomousfrom the perceptual
analogyof naturalandcinematicvision. No longercan theretreatintoontologicalanalogy
functionto provokea new divergencefrom the technicalembodimentof perception,as
it did in the aesthetic avant-gardefrom at least Cezanne to Warhol,25for the simple

23. In schematic terms, we might say that the historical realization of the vision machine
breaks the "isomorphism"which had long bound together the technical basis of the image and
perceptual analogy and which therebyinsuredthepossibilityfor artistic divergence.
24. Intended to register something like an immanentmaterial dialectic of the image, the
double helix foregrounds the tenuous correlation between the two properly technicalforms of
analogy:photographicand cinematicanalogy.As Bellour explainsin thepassage cited infootnote
25, bothforms constantlythreatenand refashionanalogy, which mightbe understoodto exist in
the divergence between them, between natural and automated vision. Responding to such an
immanentdialectic of the image, art is caught between two extremes,both of which threatenit
with irrelevance:in the one case (photography),the immanentcorrelation with natural vision,
from which art (painting) has traditionallydrawn its privilege, appears to be at an end; in the
othercase (cinema),the veryfunctionof analogy(and withit thepossibilityfordivergence)appears
to be in peril, insofaras the image tends to escape all correlationwithnaturalperceptionin a bid
for its own self-sufficiency.
25. Bellour's understandingof art in the age of its technicalreproducibilitytakesofffrom his
postulation of a new form of divergence specifically correlated with the mechanizationof the
image.Thisform of divergenceis developedwithinthedomainofpaintingfromCUzanneto cubism:
"Itwas as if perceptiveanalogy, which hadfirst been pushed to thefore by photography,could
not burrowinto itself and hollow itself out to the point of eliminatingitself in favor of a sort of
mental analogy, until it had, on the contrary,expandedspectacularlyby winning the analogy of
movementover to its side. Thusthe ontologicalanalogy underlyingtheperceptualanalogy became
divided in a way that had never occurredbefore" [179]. Photography'saesthetic significance is
thus bound up with the challenge it poses to painting, and the subsequentreaction it catalyzes;
moreover,because of its technical nature-or more exactly, its capacity to operate a "passage,"
a leveling of the difference,between the image and the world-photography provokespainting
(i.e., art) to "retreat"to the mental domain, to subsumeperceptual analogy into ontological
analogy.A protractionof this same dialectic can be seen to informart in its postwar developments.
At each stage, as technologicalmediationthreatensart by reducingthe divergence,art responds
by seizing back thepower of analogy, or moreprecisely, by placing thepower of analogy beyond
the scope of the technical image. Yet,at the momentwhen technologymanages to incorporatethe
power of analogy directlyinto the image, this dialectic comes to an end. Subsequently,the source

diacritics / winter 2001 81

reasonthatthe ontologicaldomainat issue hereis one totallywithoutrelationto analogic
(human)perception.
If, nonetheless, we can still speak of the "image"in relationto the computer,it is
because the very flexibility the computerbringsto the image also possesses a potential
aesthetic functionthatmust from now on be seen not as a facet of the materialityof the
(technical)image but ratheras a reactionto the automationof vision on the partof the
(human)viewer-participant. Forall of its technicalautonomy,the computerimageretains
the trace of its origin in embodiedperception,as Bellour explains:

the very idea ofa calculatedimageobtainednot throughrecordingbutthrough

models, according to a form of expressionwhich, over and above language,
has dispelled the doubtsabout meaningand resemblance,does away with the
questionsof analogy.... But, on the otherhand, thereis still the eye: thereare
images, quasi images, what one sees, and what one foresees. The computer
imageis alwaysconnectedwithwhatit represents,no matterwhattheconditions
for theformation and appearanceof the representationare. ... [183]26

In short, the image names the demarcationfrom computervision of a supplementary

aestheticfigure:no longera functionof thetechnicalinterface,the imageis itself produced
from, and indeed in, the processingof computerdataby an embodiedhumanperceiver.
And it will remainrelevant-to recurto the questionthat opened our analysis-so long
as the computerremainscorrelatedwith humanperception.
When it is contextualizedin relationto aestheticconsiderations,whatthe specterof
"machinicvision" helps us to realize, then, is just how bound up the contemporary
image is, in all of its variousforms, with our embodied (human)capacities,on the one
hand,to projectmentalimages, andon the other,to embody images throughinteraction.
In fact, these conditionscould be said to redefinethe image as an aesthetic supplement
of computervision itself:

By programminglimited segments of nature, thus opening an access to the

invisible,and by recordingthis invisibilityin thecollectedtimeof naturalvision,
such images show that the computerimageproposes thefollowing paradox: a
virtualanalogy.In other words, an image that becomes actual and therefore
realfor eyesightto the extentthatit is, above all, realfor the spirit, in an optics
which, in the long run, is fairly close to what happenedwhenperspective was
invented,unless it is precisely the optics that is relativized.The eye becomes
secondary with respect to the spirit that contemplatesit and asks the eye to
believe it. But it is also because, in orderfor the image to be simulated,as well
as to be seen (that is its function as a spectacle, which remains),it has to be
touchedand handled (that is its properly interactivefeature). [185]

of artistic divergencemust comefrom outside the technical history of the image: that is, from a
reinvestmentin the humanbasis of imaging.
26. Not surprisingly,this supplementaryaestheticdimensionof the computerimagederives
from a similardimensionin the video image, which,Bellour states, "is still connected,even in its
digital transformations,withtheanalogyof theworld..." [182]. Howeverradicalits incorporation
of the image, the video image (and its digital remediation)remainsboundby what now mustbe
thoughtof as the predominantlyaesthetic (rather than technical)function of analogy,following
twopossible trajectories: "eitherthe image is transportedand immediatelyreaches the level of a
mentalanalogy ... ; or thedigital carries the analogical inside itself even if it is as thedivergence
between what the image designates and what it becomes..." [183].

82
Viewed in relation to digital art productionof the last decade, Bellour's stress on a
"spiritual"vision and a tactile interface can only appear(retrospectively27) prophetic,
announcing what have now clearly established themselves as the two fundamental
characteristicsof contemporarymediationsof the image: on the one hand, the passage
from interactivity to dynamic coupling with the image, and on the other hand, a
fundamentalshift in the "economy"of perceptionfrom vision to bodily affectivity.
And with the more general notion of an aesthetic supplement, Bellour grasps
precisely how the computerimage calls the body into play in a mannerunprecedented
in the history of art in the age of technical reproducibility.Now that the "image"has
achieved total flexibility (any point within the image, as Deleuze remindsus, forming
the potentialpoint of linkage for the next image), what serves to enframeinformation
into the form of the image can no longer be understoodto be a function built into the
technicalinterface.Computers,as we have been sayingall along,do not perceiveimages;
they calculatedata.In Bellour's terms,this situationnecessitatesa fundamentalshift in
how we situatethe operationof analogy(artisticdivergence):no longera functiondirectly
linkedwith the specificityof a particulartechnicalframe,analogymustinsteadbe derived
from the embodied user-participant'sinteractionwith the work. Such a supplementary
connection of the image with the form-giving potentialof humanembodimenthas, in
sum, become a necessarydimensionof ourexperienceof contemporarymedia:with the
total flexibility of information (Kittler's "digital convergence") in today's global
telecommunicationsnetworks,it is now only the reactionof the embodiedhumanuser-
or more bluntly,the constraintof humanembodiment-that gives form to information.
That is why we must follow the lead of new media artistsin reinvestingthe body as the
very origin of the image in all its forms.

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