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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. Added
to this edition are Burnett's latest thoughts on the subject,
in his "Notes on the Paperback Edition."
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.
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