First Draft (in Progress) Touching the surface: Concretising the image through an expansion of traditional aesthetics by Rosa Marouane

The field of aesthetics has relied on the visual as crutch for its speculation since the creation of its most fundamental texts. Whether it be through Immanuel Kant’s focus on human critique and its own influence on beauty, or Deleuze’s later texts covering the expanded Movement-image and Time-image, the experience of imagery has been reserved to those capable of sight, and more importantly, those able to testify of this act. Beginning with Jakob Von Uexküll’s ‘Umwelten’, the sensory experience of our environment becomes one formed through the combined input of multiple sensory organs and the processes used to interpret the stimuli these organs encounter. Though the focus of Von Uexküll’s Umwelten remains the visual aspect of this information package: the visual functions as dominant sense whilst the other senses are merely secondary in experiencing space; this interpretation of sensory imaging does begin to differ from what we consider to be traditional Aesthetics, in that it allows for the possibility of imagery existing in the worlds of organisms that either lack or possess higher optical processing capabilities than that of humans, thus opening the speculation on imagery to a wider field of organisms and their individual experience of the visual. Up to the 20th century however, imagery and the aesthetic studies surrounding it focus on an intangible entity, eithered layered on top of or derived from concrete form. The field of aesthetics is overdue a reconfiguration of its approach, and a new wave of aesthetics should be focussed on defying the restrictive visual realm. One proposal to an expansion of this area of research would be to incorporate an affective aspect into image production and dissemination, Affect in this case referring to Brian Massumi’s definition of the phenomenon wherein “to affect is to be affected” and the matter of affect is one of response that is neither physical nor emotional, but rather a mediation between aspects of the two, joining the virtual to the real in one fell swoop even if only temporarily. This applies to the image in the sense that it cannot be fully accessed, its surface tension never breached until either it becomes capable of affect, we become capable of affecting it, or in true Massumi-ian fashion, we develop a mutually affective relationship with imagery. Writers such as Hito Steyerl, who through her essay “In Defense of the Poor image” describes an affective relationship between the audience and image initiated by the propagation inherent to internet culture, and Tavi Meraud, who’s speculation on the surface as providing mediation between the intangible and tangible, introduces us to the touch allowing for a mediated form of seeing through an alternative sensory organ. Through these glimpses into an affective alternative to Aesthetics, we can begin to formulate further knowing that it can exist in a form that goes beyond the traditional non-affective, spectator-image binary; perhaps this can go even further to initiate a dissolution of the optical barrier to entry that imagery has until now maintained. Should the objective of Aesthetics be to further expand its own boundaries to account for an inclusion of sensory imaging into the aesthetic canon? Can imagery be perceived as a concrete, and consequently tactile phenomenon? Could this shifted interpretation of imagery bring us into contact with a concretised universally available image?

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The field of aesthetics has relied on the visual as crutch for its speculation since the creation of its most fundamental texts. Whether it be through Immanuel Kant’s focus on human critique and its own influence on beauty, or Deleuze’s later texts covering the expanded Movement-image and Time-image, the experience of imagery has been reserved to those capable of sight, and more importantly, those able to testify of this act. Beginning with Jakob Von Uexküll’s ‘Umwelten’, the sensory experience of our environment becomes one formed through the combined input of multiple sensory organs and the processes used to interpret the stimuli these organs encounter. Though the focus of Von Uexküll’s Umwelten remains the visual aspect of this information package: the visual functions as dominant sense whilst the other senses are merely secondary in experiencing space; this interpretation of sensory imaging does begin to differ from what we consider to be traditional Aesthetics, in that it allows for the possibility of imagery existing in the worlds of organisms that either lack or possess higher optical processing capabilities than that of humans, thus opening the speculation on imagery to a wider field of organisms and their individual experience of the visual. Up to the 20th century however, imagery and the aesthetic studies surrounding it focus on an intangible entity, eithered layered on top of or derived from concrete form. The field of aesthetics is overdue a reconfiguration of its approach, and a new wave of aesthetics should be focussed on defying the restrictive visual realm. One proposal to an expansion of this area of research would be to incorporate an affective aspect into image production and dissemination, Affect in this case referring to Brian Massumi’s definition of the phenomenon wherein “to affect is to be affected” and the matter of affect is one of response that is neither physical nor emotional, but rather a mediation between aspects of the two, joining the virtual to the real in one fell swoop even if only temporarily. This applies to the image in the sense that it cannot be fully accessed, its surface tension never breached until either it becomes capable of affect, we become capable of affecting it, or in true Massumi-ian fashion, we develop a mutually affective relationship with imagery. Writers such as Hito Steyerl, who through her essay “In Defense of the Poor image” describes an affective relationship between the audience and image initiated by the propagation inherent to internet culture, and Tavi Meraud, who’s speculation on the surface as providing mediation between the intangible and tangible, introduces us to the touch allowing for a mediated form of seeing through an alternative sensory organ. Through these glimpses into an affective alternative to Aesthetics, we can begin to formulate further knowing that it can exist in a form that goes beyond the traditional non-affective, spectator-image binary; perhaps this can go even further to initiate a dissolution of the optical barrier to entry that imagery has until now maintained. Should the objective of Aesthetics be to further expand its own boundaries to account for an inclusion of sensory imaging into the aesthetic canon? Can imagery be perceived as a concrete, and consequently tactile phenomenon? Could this shifted interpretation of imagery bring us into contact with a concretised universally available image?
Rosa Marouane - First Draft (in Progress) Touching the surface: Concretising the image through an expansion of traditional aesthetics - 2020
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The Image suggesting Tactility

The touch is a cornerstone of the individual’s interaction with what they see, when we observe a surface, if there is no recognisable image then its texture is the next quality in line we notice, and often when this texture is alien to us we have the urge to touch it, to feel it, to bring it in line with an index more legible to our sensory grasp on reality. What may be of interest to our pursuit is that occasion upon which a spectator would look upon a surface and find it to have a particularly tactile quality, that is to say, by simply looking at an image of this surface the feeling of it against one’s skin is brought immediately to mind.

In popular culture these images can infest social media via online clickbait articles hoping to either entrance or disgust you with a compilation of images thrown at you in quick succession, each of these images shown in an attempt to evoke a physical response in the viewer. These compilations, although not explicitly advertised as such, function for the most part via a simple formula of evoking sensory experiences through memory of them. A static image alone is primarily a visual experience, the surface of which prevents it from coming into conversation with any senses other than in most cases. The exception to this rule exists when the image references a sensory experience that the viewer has already undergone, relying on the memory of this experience and the senses affected by it rather than the image’s own sensory properties in order to function in an affective manner.

These images display a connection with affect that is inherent to the image's ability to reference concrete phenomena. Images made from, or imitating elements of a real form can tap into the database of past experience of our encounters with forms that ressemble the one presented within the image.

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