Imagery in the 21st Century
by Oliver Grau, Editor; with Thomas VeiglAs I began this review I began to think that the refrain “we are surrounded by images today” has lost its impact (despite my being among the guilty users of it). On the one hand, it seems that many of us notice the imagery.

Yet, on the other hand, as we increasingly engage with our visual culture certain norms for our critical investigations are also developing. I’m not sure where this leaves us. To be sure, the nature and complexity of our image-abundant culture is extraordinary. Images are no longer sparse and highly treasured. Rather, we have visual social media, scientific imaging tools, and even static objects like paintings populate the ever-changing screens of our mobile and desktop devices. Even those among us who have resisted some of the broad spectrum of electronic options (think Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, thousands of television channels, digital games, and virtual worlds) cannot escape this new world.

Overall, the book offers systematic and interdisciplinary reflections on expanding and novel forms of images and visualization.  Drawing on a number of experts, the twenty chapters highlight new efforts to visualize complex ideas, structures, and systems. In today’s information explosion the question of where what digital images represent and where they fit in the scheme of things becomes quite prismatic.  As a whole, the chapters are quite strong; they do not suffer from the unevenness so common in collections of conference papers, which this book is.  Of particular value is the breadth of the essays.  Researchers from the natural sciences and the humanities explore the wealth of diverse functionality that images have evolved to offer to our lives, that includes lab applications, social commentary, humanistic questions, and experimental art projects.  The spectrum of topics include: database economy (Sean Cubitt), telepresent images (Martin Schulz), ethical boundaries (Eduardo Kac), the emergence of a future web-based video aesthetic (Thomas Veigl), brain research (Olaf Breidbach), medical illustration (Dolores and David Steinman), interdisciplinary practices (James Elkins), the role of source code (Wendy Hui Kyong Chun), the interface (Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau), the museum (Peter Weibel), cellular automata (Tim Otto Roth and Andreas Deutsch ), cultural analytics (Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass) and a digital version of the Warburg Image Atlas (Martin Warnke).  Even this abbreviated list offers a glimpse into the diversity of efforts to expand visual competence through providing cross-disciplinary exchanges among the arts, humanities, and natural sciences. While this range makes the volume a valuable tool for examining this subject across disciplines, the title, Imagery in the 21st Century, is likely to seem a rash overstatement in a few decades, given that the century has hardly begun.

Chapters focusing on applications and innovations offer the most of substantive value, in my view. “Toward New Conventions for Visualizing blood Flow in the Era of Fascination with Visibility and Imagery” by Dolores Steinman and David Steinman falls into this category. Well written and comprehensive, these authors set the stage by pointing out that medical images (drawings, woodcuts, engravings) have always played a key role in educating practitioners and knowledge development. They then follow with case studies that illustrate their efforts to represent blood flow in the context of the living body and conclude with some commentary on medical imagery as art and in popular culture.

James Elkins’ chapter, “Visual Practices across the University: A Report,” also stood out. Elkins presents a brief summary of a book called Visual Practices across the Universitythat was published in German in 2007 and is little known outside of the German-speaking world. The essay summarizes an exhibition project that was initiated by sending email to faculty in the sixty-odd departments at University College, Cork asking for exhibition proposals from anyone who uses images in their work.  What stood out in his commentary is how differently scientists, humanists and artists think about images and imagery. In this case, he found that while most visual work in the university is done outside of the humanities, most of this work is invisible because the routine image making and image interpretation is not considered as important to the goals as what the images represent and the science that they make possible.

Oliver Grau, the editor, is a Professor for Image Science and Dean of the Department for Cultural Studies at Danube University, the author of Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (2003) [1] and the editor of MediaArtHistories. His collaborator, Thomas Veigl, is on the scientific staff of the Department for Image Science at the Danube–University Krems.  Their opening chapter, Introduction: Imagery in the 21^st Century, sets the stage well and is available at http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262015722chap1.pdf . Grau’s concluding section on “Media Art’s Challenge in Our Societies” offers an overview of image studies today.  Parts of the chapter are useful but, because some sections in it are so focused on his professional efforts to meet today’s challenges rather than the challenges overall, the text read like an infomercial at times.

Throughout the book it is clear that there are the endless options for image manipulation and that while new media presents us with both interactive opportunities it also raises challenging questions (about human autonomy, entertainment, interaction, etc.).  The editors note:

“Images increasingly define our world and our everyday life: in advertising, entertainment, politics, and even in science, images are pushing themselves in front of language. The mass media, in particular, engulf our senses on a daily basis. It would appear that images have won the contest with words: Will the image have the last word?” (p. 6)

Perhaps images will have the last word.  On March 12^th of this year (2012) theEncyclopaedia Britannica announced “it will cease publication of the 32-volume printed edition of its flagship encyclopedia, continuing with the digital versions that have become popular with knowledge seekers in recent decades.”  The press release also noted that “[The Encyclopedia Britannica] was originally published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1768 and has been in print continuously ever since [2]. When I grew up, like many of my generation, this book was like browsing the web.  I used to love to turn the pages, looking at the images and reading the articles that related to images that caught my fancy.

Of course, the Grau book itself raises another side of the question about whether images will have the last word. At this point in time it is not available electronically although sections of the text (without the images!) are on Google Books; moreover Google Books does not offer active links to all the many, many websites the Grau book references. Amazon’s page for the book does not link to a Kindle version.  Instead, Amazon has a link asking visitors to tell the publisher to offer a Kindle version.

So, will images have the last word? Perhaps. Or perhaps we need to ask: Is it a good thing for images to have the last word?  I did not think that the depth of this kind of question was fully addressed in the book since its focus was on the importance of understanding images as vital and dynamic parts of our world today. Thus, my primary concern about this volume, which I recommend overall, is that the reflections and analytical approaches offered did not seem to balance the euphony and cacophony of our experience today. While I’m not exactly sure how this relates to whether images will have the last word, I do know that at times all of the changing images surrounding me feel very cacophonic.  As a participant in the movement is to reverse the dominance of textual sources in our approaches to knowledge, as we celebrate our visual abundance, visualization methods, the distribution of images, and how imagery benefits our lives; it seems foreign to have evolved to the point that I think so much about the visual noise.  Even in this book I found that some of the projects seemed strikingly cacophonic, and thought that the theoretical assumptions of the authors overall are more biased toward euphonic reactions to our visual culture than the harshness and discordant qualities that are congruent with our visual culture?

Perhaps the next step is making sure we address that the cacophonic side is actively included in our critical analyses or imagery.  Grau does stress that using an historical lens is an aid in understanding our imagery today. This perspective opens the door for a balanced analysis of the visual and textual and I support him in this effort. Therefore, while the book is only a slice of the imagery picture today, I think readers will gain much from spending time with Imagery in the 21st Century.

References:
[1] See my Leonardo Review at http://leonardo.info/reviews/feb2003/GRAU_ione.html.

[2] “Encyclopaedia Britannica To End Print Edition, Go Completely Digital,” http://www.corporate.eb.com/?p=508.

	The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World by David Deutsch Reviewed by Richard Kade
	Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing by Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell Reviewed by John Vines
	Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience by Michel Meulders; edited and translated by Laurence Garey Reviewed by Amy Ione
	Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts by T. Bartscherer & R. Coover, Editors Reviewed by Rob Harle
	Through The Looking Glass by Francisco López Reviewed by Eugene Thacker

Also:

L|R|Q – Leonardo Reviews Quarterly
The fourth issue of Leonardo Reviews Quarterly is available to download as a PDF.

Please click here to start the download.

Real and imagined machines, including mental microscopes, thought translators, and polygraphs, have long promised to detect deception in human beings. Now, via fMRI and EEG, neuroscientists seem to have found what scientists, lawyers, and law enforcement officials have sought for over a century: foolproof lie detection. But are these new lie detection technologies any different from their predecessors? The Lying Brain is the first book to explore the cultural history of an array of lie detection technologies: their ideological assumptions, the scientific and fictional literatures that create and market them, and the literacies required for their interpretation. By examining a rich archive of materials about lie detection—from science to science fiction—The Lying Brain demonstrates the interconnections of science, literature, and popular culture in the development and dissemination of deception detection in the American cultural imagination. As Melissa Littlefield demonstrates, neuroscience is not building a more accurate lie detector; it is simply recycling centuries-old ideologies about deception and its detection.

]]> http://amyione-online.com/2011/05/12/the-lying-brain-lie-detection-in-science-and-science-fiction-by-dr-melissa-m-littlefield-phd/feed/ 0 http://amyione-online.com/2011/05/12/ann-leonardo-reviews-online-may-2011/ http://amyione-online.com/2011/05/12/ann-leonardo-reviews-online-may-2011/#comments Fri, 13 May 2011 01:43:18 +0000 ione http://amyione-online.com/?p=678 Compression & Purity
by Will Alexander
Reviewed by Allan Graubard

Interface Criticism: Aesthetics Beyond Buttons
by Christian Ulrik Andersen & Soren Pold, Editors
Reviewed by Ellen Pearlman

The Filming of Modern Life. European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s
by Malcolm Turvey
Reviewed by Jan Baetens

In Praise of Copying
by Marcus Boon
Reviewed by Amy Ione

Lumo: One Woman’s Struggle to Heal in a Nation Beset by War
by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Nelson Walker III
Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg

Paris 1919: Inside The Peace Talks That Changed The World
by Paul Cowan
Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg

Octopus Time: Bellmer Painting
by Herbert Lust
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher

A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-Siècle Art
by Alison Syme
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher

U-n-f-o-l-d: A Cultural Response to Climate Change
Museum of Contemporary Photography and Glass Curtain Gallery
Reviewed by Elizabeth Straughan, Deborah Dixon and Harriet Hawkins

The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction
Arthur B. Evans, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, Rob Latham, and Carol McGuirk, Editors
Reviewed by Enzo Ferrara

New Materials Received – May 2011
Compiled by Martyn Woodward

A team at UCSF published a study last week that found further evidence that multitasking impedes short-term memory, especially among older adults. Researchers there previously found that distractions of the sort that smart phones and social networks present can hinder long-term memory and mental performance.

A 2009 study at Stanford University found that, surprisingly, persistent multitaskers perform worse than infrequent ones on tests that require them to jump from task to task. It seems they were more easily distracted by irrelevant information thrown up during the evaluations.

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Free and Open to the Public
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Kim Wojtanik at 274-3102. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.

New computer methods have been used to shed light on a number of recent controversies in the study of art. For example, computer fractal analysis has been used in authentication studies of paintings attributed to Jackson Pollock recently discovered by Alex Matter. An international group of computer and image scientists is studying the brushstrokes in paintings by van Gogh for detecting forgeries. Sophisticated computer analysis of perspective, shading, color and form has shed light on David Hockney’s bold claim that as early as 1420, Renaissance artists employed optical devices such as concave mirrors to project images onto their canvases.

How do these computer methods work? What can computers reveal about images that even the best-trained connoisseurs, art historians and artist cannot? How much more powerful and revealing will these methods become? In short, how is computer image analysis changing our understanding of art? This profusely illustrated lecture for non-scientists will include works by Jackson Pollock, Vincent van Gogh, Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, Lorenzo Lotto, and others.

You may never see paintings the same way again.

Biographical Information
Dr. David G. Stork is Chief Scientist of Ricoh Innovations. The breadth of his interests and contributions is revealed through the academic departments and programs in which he has held faculty positions: physics, mathematics, electrical engineering, statistics, computer science, neuroscience, psychology, and art and art history. He has taught a variety of courses, including “Light, color and visual phenomena,” “The physics of aesthetics and perception,” “Optics, perspective and Renaissance painting,” and “Computer vision and image analysis in the study of art,” at a variety of institutions, including Wellesley College, Swarthmore College, Clark University, Boston University and Stanford University.

A graduate in physics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland at College Park, Dr. Stork also studied art history at Wellesley College. He has published seven books, including Seeing the Light: Optics in nature, photography, color, vision and holography, Pattern Classification, and HAL’s Legacy: 2001′s computer as dream and reality (the source of his PBS television documentary 2001: HAL’s Legacy). He has also edited volumes of SPIE proceedings, including: Computer image analysis in the study of art, Computer vision and image analysis in the study of art, Computer vision and image analysis in the study of art II. Dr. Stork holds forty U.S. patents and has published numerous technical papers on human and machine learning and perception of patterns, physiological optics, image understanding, concurrency theory, theoretical mechanics, optics, and image processing. He has served as an Artist-in-Residence through the New York State Council of the Arts, and was a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition and Chair of its Technical Committee on Computer Vision in Cultural Heritage Applications. He was one of four scientists invited to comment on David Hockney’s optical projection theory at the December 2001 Art and Optics Symposium at the New York Institute for the Humanities. He has made over 220 scholarly presentations on computer analysis of art in 17 countries, including in major museums such as the Louvre, National Gallery London, National Gallery Washington, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, van Gogh Museum, and many others.

For more information, please see Dr. Stork’s professional website.

Ithaca College | School of Humanities and Sciences » Volume 8, Number 1, Fall 2007 »

It was Snow’s essays on the “two cultures” that inspired Professor Robert Pasternack to begin the lecture series. Pasternak, chairman of the speaker series committee and member of the chemistry department, wrote to Lord Snow in 1964 and requested permission to use his name. Snow responded, “I am deeply touched by what you say and shall be honored to have your series of talks called the C. P. Snow Lecture Series.”

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