LTPo vaizdinio posūkio išsiplėtė pasaulinis Tinklas, įsiviešpatavo skaitmeninės technologijos ir prasidėjo medijų antropocenas. Monografijos autoriai aptaria vaizdinės kultūros raidą išryškindami svarbiausius dabarties būvio pjūvius, susijusius su medijų antropoceno iššūkiais. Pasitelkus tarpdalykinę prieigą analizuojamos vaizdų ir įvaizdžių veikmės sociokultūriniame gyvenime problemos, apimančios sąmonės individuaciją, matymo-žiūrėjimo, tapatybės ir kūrybos rakursus. Išskiriami kritiniai slenksčiai, kurie reikalauja giliau apmąstyti, kas ir kaip mus kuria, formuoja ir eksploatuoja. Pirmoje dalyje atskleidžiama, kaip postmodernusis kapitalizmas savo valion pajungia naująsias medijų technologijas ir vaizdą paverčia ideologinio valdymo įrankiu. Antroje dalyje aptariamas į postvaizdinę kultūrą orientuotas algoritminis posūkis bei klimato krizės skatinamas ontologinio posūkio pažadas. Trečioje – analizuojamos kompiuterinio matymo ir dirbtinio intelekto iškeltos dilemos apie žmogiškąjį ir mašinų kūrybiškumą. Ketvirtoje dalyje nusakoma grėsmingų matomumo galių ir estetizmo tendencijų plėtra. Penktoje diskutuojama apie meno lauko sąlytį su socialinių tinklų dinamika. Monografijoje daroma išvada, kad hipervaizdinę kultūrą vainikuoja nežmogiškasis matymas, išreiškiantis žmonijos, tapusios geologinio pobūdžio galia, būties krizę. Kritinė vaizdinės būties analizė skatina ieškoti atsakymų į klausimą – kaip keistis? Knyga gali sudominti humanitarinių ir socialinių mokslų, kultūros ir meno srities atstovus, taip pat visus besidominčius kolektyviniais vaizdiniais. [Anotacija knygoje]
ENThe monograph offers a comprehensive overview of the various aspects of contemporary visual culture, reflecting on the systemic changes dictated by global capitalism and technological advancement. The authors refer to the methodological principles of cultural theorist Mieke Bal, endorsing the view that the object of visual studies should not be imprisoned within a specific paradigm. In this respect, the co-authors engage in a multidisciplinary research, providing insights into a complex functioning of images across social and cultural spheres; and capture significant aspects in the development of the Anthropocene in visual media that is changing the entire environment of human existence. The book aims to reveal the transformations of visual culture and to present the distinct lines of the current situation. The co-authors claim that after the visual turn and the expansion of the global network, computational technology moves us into the digital Anthropocene. The challenges of the Anthropocene are related to the global development of western modernity and ideology that enforce constant need to modernize, mediate and innovate. The study of those challenges highlights several extreme modalities in contemporary visual culture and visual studies. Firstly, contemporary visual culture reaches its apogee in nonhuman vision that expresses the crisis of humanity. The inhuman horizon of vision follows the algorithmic turn, while expanding digital infrastructures, computer systems and artificial intelligence. Visual life unfolds in those invisible electronic structures, in which the image assists in the implementation of communication and data transactions rather than performs representative or aesthetic functions.Capitalist cosmotechnics acquires hegemonic power that electronically observes humanity, takes control of attention and governs conscious and subconscious sight. Moreover, the automated engineering claims to have entered a creative field. The efforts have been made to humanize computer vision and AI. However, a Promethean concept of human technologies increases the influence of entropy on humanity. The development encourages critical rethinking of the relationship between human and machine visions, asking what would lead to antientropic processes. The horizon of inhuman sight occurs in the theoretical framework of the Anthropocene discourse too. While we are overwhelmed by the burden of responsibility for the fate of our planet, the efforts are being made to promote ecological awareness and naturalistic cosmologies. Non-human beings have also become a priority. Nonhuman centered approaches stimulate seeing the world as a symbiotic network of human-environmental interactions. This leads to the promise of the ontological turn and the rediscovery of the worlds’ unity, including the images created by other living organisms in the horizon of vision and treating the image itself as natural and supernatural force. Hereby, scientific and artistic studies focus on sensual “being-here-with-others” and those belief systems that would restore the unity of the sensible by shaking off ideological doctrines and programmed visions. In this path, the inhuman mode envisages a plural openness with the potential for the coexistence of man and other beings in a common visual ecosystem.Thus, the processes driven by the visual turn branch out - the ethics of technology and the ethics of life are incorporating images into the new ways of viewing and perceiving. However, it is important that human self-perception would not be absolutely faded. Consequently, technological or other ways of human “liberation” are fundamentally problematic. The conditions for individualization, memory, and time perception have been gradually shifting towards the in-human regimes and the crisis of Anthropos. In a sense, the structure of human consciousness has become the product of the producers visuality, and individuals had to present themselves by becoming images. As a result, ceaseless visualization, stylization, aestheticisation, “artistification” process takes place, due to which the Heideggerian Dasein transforms into “design”. Herewith, artistic activities themselves become problematic, they move out of the zone of aesthetics, turning to activism and other practices, including criticism and the realm of research. [From the publication]