Vilem Flusser
Flusser classifies the different media in three categories:
Traditional images
Texts
Technical images
In brief: we develop technologies to help us understand the world, however each of these technologies contains a property that is contrary to our needs (and that property is activated by our own contrary impulses). Eventually this conflicting force becomes prominent in our experience and use of the technology and a new technology must be invented to help us orient ourselves to the realities of our lived, "concrete" experience.
For Flusser, in the Western World, the relationship between image making and text is the front line of this phenomenon.
a Free relationship with our technologies is the goal.
Each of these mediations are created by people as an explanation of the world in order to facilitate his orientation in this world.
Dialectics: However, instead of representing the world, media present the world as it is perceived by them. In other words, one could state that media prevail upon that which is seen through them: media determine our vision upon the world and not the other way around. This happens when we forget what media are for.
Instead of considering them as useful instruments that help us orientate ourselves in the world we come to see them as representations of the world.
They are ways of bringing order in a world that is chaotic in its essence. Each medium has its own way of organizing and thereby gaining information. Subsequently, this information can be used to orientate oneself in the world.
The traditional image
"Images," according to Flusser, "are mediations between the world and human beings. Human beings 'ex-ist', i.e. the world is not immediately accessible to them - and therefore images are needed to make it comprehensible"
We don't understand the world and traditional images help us orient ourselves to our circumstances.
Time in Traditional Images
When we look at traditional images, Flusser argues, we see that they structure the world into a non-linear formation of things and events. Looking on a painting, a standard example of the classical image, there is no specific order in which we ought to view it. We can let our eyes dwell on the different things that are being represented without following any specific order. The order of our gazes is mediated, on the one hand, by the intention of the painter, but, on the other, is ours to decide.
If the traditional image is the primary medium with which one visualises one's world, the structure of the traditional image (the code it inheres to), as described above, will have a determining influence on the conception of time and space.
More specifically, we might assert that the inhabitant of the universe of traditional images tends to think of time as a non-linear concept, believing in - for example - the eternal recurrence of all things.
**This is most likely to occur when one forgets the code of the traditional image and projects it straight onto the world, believing that the features of the code belong to the world itself rather than being dependent on the medium of traditional images.
"Let us take as an example the oldest of the images known to us (that of a pony in Pêche-Merle). It concerns representation being held in rock faces. The maker of the image stepped away from a pony, looked at it and transmitted what he briefly saw to the memory of the wall. And he did this in such a way that others would recognise what they saw. And he did all these immense complex things so as to be able to use what he saw as an orientation for future actions - like the hunt for ponies." -- from Krise der Linearitat
Text
Text was invented as a response to idolatry by taking the different elements of an image (sometimes called pixels, or calculi by Flusser) and placing them one after another in a linear formation.
The pixels were taken apart and laid out into a horizontal line.
These pixels no longer form an image; rather, they are a text that tries to explain the image the pixels were originally taken from.
"One lifts the separate elements of the image (pixels) from the surface of the image and threads them together. The 'lifting from' can be called a 'counting' [Zahlen], the 'threading together' a 'narrating' [Erzahlen], and the thereby thread-together pixels can be called 'pictograms'."
Texts are not abstractions from reality, as Traditional mages are, but rather abstractions from images.
In order to be able to write and read text one must possess the ability of conceptual thinking - itself a more abstract faculty than imagination - which can be defined as "abstracting lines from surfaces, i.e. decoding them." Conceptualisation is defined as "a specific ability to create texts and to decode them."
Text and Time/Experience
Time is no longer looked upon as the eternal recurrence of all things, but instead it is perceived linearly. Like text, time goes from a beginning towards an end and therefore it is no longer magical but historical.
Another result of the textual universe is that instead of states of affairs (a feature of the traditional image), the inhabitant of the universe of writing sees all the events in the world as (historical) processes following their course. Causality is also a concept invented in the universe of text.
Technical Images
"Texolatry"
Dialectics: When text becomes incomprehensible ("unimaginable") a new medium must be invented in order to explain the texts again.
Technical images are an attempt to explain texts and are themselves an application of texts.
Certain scientific texts on chemistry and optics were converted into practical use, which finally led to the invention of photography.
The photographic image, as all technical images, is therefore not to be seen as a simple abstraction from reality, but rather as an abstraction from scientific texts.
Technical images belong to an even higher degree of abstraction than text, and a higher degree of abstraction than images.
Technical images are an abstraction of the third order:
1st level: Images are abstracted from lived experience
2nd level: Text is abstracted from images that are abstracted from lived experience
3rd level: Technical images are abstracted from texts that are abstracted from images that are abstracted from lived experience.
Experience/effect of Technical images
"Technical images liberate their receivers by magic from the necessity of thinking conceptually, at the same time replacing historical consciousness with a second-order magical consciousness and replacing the ability to think conceptually with a second-order imagination."
Second order = the virtual - i.e., the projection of calculation into a parallel space.
Calculi/Computation
Cameras could be understood as simple computers, calculating the world and providing data via the computational medium of chemistry.
Ironically, computation, the root of technical images, being based on calculus (breaking things into bits that can be sorted - remember Technicity?).
Ironically, in a programmed, "digital", bit filled world, the dichotomy of True/False become meaningless.
We are surrounded by embedded apparati that impart this world view - we increasingly connect to the world through apparati that function as screens, not lenses.
Time in the Universe of Technical Images
The idea of causality, of cause and effect and along with it the classical idea of linear time and history, which were all brought forth by the text, are now all rejected.
"We now live in a post-historical time, where there is no longer any room for the concept of "causality": the key word in the programmatic worldview is 'coincidence'"
In order to re-establish our freedom in the programmed world we must free ourselves from being mere functions of apparatuses. This can be achieved by learning the code of contemporary technical images : "We can only come to master such a life when we have such great control over the rules of play that we can change them."
We must learn the new code and become able to program/play with the modern aparatuses. If we succeed in doing so it may become possible to really play with the overall programme - instead of letting the programme play with us.
"We must make the improbable necessary."
"Art makes the improbable necessary."