Image information: a study from Harun Farocki

Abstract

Artistic renovation and the sociological and philosophical thinking in the field of art and technology since The Industrial Revolution have been intensified after the cybernetic turn. Image mainly becomes image-information; it is no longer imagerepresentation. In this sense, it is more and more important to understand the construction function and basis of these images in different social contexts, including artistic manifestations that deal with new technologies or even use them. However, this procedure of knowledge should contemplate not only a human point of view, in a kind of master and slave relation to these technologies, but also a machine perspective, that is much more difficult, because in this case it is necessary to comprehend the articulation between information, sensation and perception in a human-machine relation, not in an isolated model. It means that the triangle information-perception-sensation is to be considered as the problematic field of different social domains that somehow is related to invention. In other words, contemporary technologies call for a conceptual change in the notion of machine and, consequently, also a change in the cultural understanding of its functions and in the forms human being is related to it. This article intends to discuss these questions based on some selected works of the film director Harun Farocki.