Wieslaw Michalak

Biography

Wieslaw Michalak

Conference

" Vilem Flusser's Philosophy of Technical Images "

Perhaps the most controversial implication of the emergence of technical images is decline of the significance of texts and writing in general. This is where most of Flusser's critics concentrate their anger. Since images created with a camera are calculable and computable - that is they are technical - it is unlikely, according to Flusser, that writing will remain a paradigmatic cultural technique.
Text is detached from the image it represents. The technical images are completely different from those that existed before the invention of writing. They represent texts that, in turn, represent images and then things. Pre-narrative images were directly related to things they represented. Flusser argued for a society in which individuals would incorporate the new proactively rather than passively witnessing the transition. Using the code of writing, he reflected on the material conditions of writing and its imminent death that, ironically, writing itself brings about: 'The Enlightenment has run its course, and there is nothing in the new left to explain'.