How Images Think

Description:

Digital images are an integral part of all media, including television, film, photography, animation, video games, data visualization, and the Internet. In the digital world, spectators become navigators wending their way through a variety of interactive experiences, and images become spaces of visualization with more and more intelligence programmed into the very fabric of communication processes. In How Images Think, Ron Burnett explores this new ecology, which has transformed the relationships humans have with the image-based technologies they have created. So much intelligence has been programmed into these image-dependent technologies that it often seems as if images are "thinking"; ascribing thought to machines redefines our relationship with them and enlarges our ideas about body and mind. Burnett argues that the development of this new, closely interdependent relationship marks a turning point in our understanding of the connections between humans and machines.

After presenting an overview of visual perception, Burnett examines the interactive modes of new technologies -- including computer games, virtual reality, digital photography, and film -- and locates digital images in a historical context. He argues that virtual images occupy a "middle space," combining the virtual and the real into an environment of visualization that blurs the distinctions between subject and object -- part of a continuum of experiences generated by creative choices by viewers, the results of which cannot be attributed either to images or to participants.

Ron Burnett is President of Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver, and Artist/Designer at the New Media Innovation Center. He is the author of Cultures of Vision: Images, Media, and the Imaginary and the editor of Explorations in Film Theory.

Table of Contents:

List of Illustrations	viii
	Acknowledgments	x
	Introduction	xiv
1	Vantage Point and Image-Worlds	1
2	Imagescapes, Mind and Body	39
3	Foundations of Virtual Images	57
4	Imagescapes as Ecology	71
5	Simulation/Viewing/Immersion	93
6	Humans-----------Machines	117
7	Peer-to-Peer Communications/Visualizing Community	143
8	Computer Games and the Aesthetics of Human and Nonhuman Interaction	167
9	Reanimating the World: Waves of Interaction	199
	References	222
	Index	241

描述：數位影像是所有媒體的一部分，包括電視、電影、攝影、動畫、電子遊戲、資料視覺化和互聯網。在數位世界中，觀眾成為導航者，通過各種互動體驗，影像成為可視化空間，通信過程中的智能程度越來越高。在《影像如何思考》一書中，Ron Burnett探討了這個新的生態系統，它改變了人類與他們創造的基於影像的技術之間的關係。這些依賴於影像的技術中融入了如此多的智能，以至於它們似乎在“思考”；將思維歸因於機器重新定義了我們與它們的關係，擴大了我們對身體和思想的理解。Burnett認為，這種新的、緊密相互依賴的關係的發展標誌著我們對人類和機器之間聯繫的理解的轉折點。

在介紹視覺感知的概述之後，Burnett探討了新技術的互動模式，包括電腦遊戲、虛擬現實、數位攝影和電影，並將數位影像置於歷史背景中。他認為虛擬影像佔據了一個“中間空間”，將虛擬和真實結合成一個可視化環境，模糊了主體和客體之間的區別，這是觀眾創造性選擇產生的體驗連續體的一部分，其結果既不能歸因於影像也不能歸因於參與者。

Ron Burnett是溫哥華艾米莉卡爾藝術與設計學院的校長，也是新媒體創新中心的藝術家/設計師。他是《視覺文化：影像、媒體和想像》的作者，也是《電影理論探索》的編輯。

目錄：

插圖清單
致謝
引言
第一章 觀點和影像世界
第二章 影像的思考
第三章 影像的空間
第四章 影像的時間
第五章 影像的敘事
第六章 影像的記憶
第七章 影像的身體
第八章 影像的情感
第九章 影像的道德
第十章 影像的未來
索引