Media Ecology and Images

Listening and looking at Caldwell’s and Ariel’s last presentations got me to thinking about the relationship of the natural to the digital. It is still the still image, more than any other form of media, that I feel is the outward representation of that brink and process. If perception and time all play a relevant part in the play of time and space (and how that interplay is (or can be) perceived) is central, then I think the still image is as well.

Hansen states that, “In this posthuman perceptual regime, the selection of information is no longer performed exclusively or even primarily by the human component (the body-brain as a center of indetermination)” (99), and I remember looking at that quote as I sat through Ariel’s really well-conceived presentation.

I wonder if the still image might best be reconsidered almost as a GUI, a basis from which to launch into the studies or applications or processes of human perception. The ability to drill down, to capture detail, to edit, provide frames of reference, to contextualize, to link… these are the things that have traditionally been fulfilled by the still image.For all of these things the still image could make for a launch point.

The natural world even provides for framesets through bioregions, continents, bodies of water, planets, etc. All of these things are energized through light, and a split second “framing” of that light might allow for an ability to realize the greater schemes that allow the natural world to work, and might serve as a blueprint for a truer media ecology of balance and flow.

-Mike vW