18.482 imaging

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 482.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 07:47:16 +0000
         From: "Jim Marchand" <marchand_at_uiuc.edu>
         Subject: images problems

I am not sure exactly what you are looking for here, Francois, so
let me just rattle along for a while. There are numerous
authorities who think that we think only in words, not in images.
If one thinks of the intellectual content of an image, whatever
that is, and one thinks of images as digital in nature (we are
using the digital computer), a good book on the optical image is
Leonid Yaroslavsky and Murray Eden, Fundamentals of Digital Optics
(Boston: Birkhaeuser, 1996), which discusses such things as images,
holograms, interferograms, which are in reality analog in nature.
We must, of course, distinguish between the image per se and the
perception of the image, which is why, I suppose, you bring up such
things as gaze. We need to distinguish carefully between imagery
and perception. A good quick orientation is offered here by the
readings in Irvin Rock, ed., The Perceptual World. Readings from
Scientific American (NY: Freeman, 1990). For a general survey of
image theory (somewhat confusing): Claude Cosette, Les images
demaquillees. Approche scientifique de la communication par
l'image, 2d ed. (Quebec: Riguil, 1985). For recent philosophizing
on the screen as communicator: Nathalie Roelens & Yves Jeanneret,
L'imaginaire de l'Ecran. Screen Imaginary (sic!) (Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 2004).
       Just moving along with the bibliography. If you are
interested in visual imagery, one ought to start with R. L.
Gregory, Eye and Brain. The Psychology of Seeing. World University
Library (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1966). It is fearfully out of date, but
it "really hits the high spots. It is exciting to read and full of
fascinating material," etc. etc. You can bring it up to date by
looking through David Marr's Vision. A Computational Investigation
into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information.
13th printing (NY: Freeman, 1996).
       This is a whole science in itself; for an overview: Hua Lee
and Glen Wade, Imaging Technology (NY: IEEE Press, 1985), which
even contains an article on holography by Dennis Gabor himself. For
more practical, less theoretical: Sally Wiener Grotta & Daniel
Grotta, Digital Imaging for Visual Artists (NY: Eindcrest/McGraw-
Hill, 1993).
       Forgive me for waxing bibliographical. For the problem of
communicating in images, be they optical or otherwise, for such
things as virtual reality, etc., one needs to philosophize, and
philosophizing, if we communicate it, requires words. Verbum
verbum non est, sed verbum. Somewhere out there, I have posted both
an edition and a translation of St. Augustine's De dialectica.
Worueber man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen. We
live in a logocentric world, and though we speak occasionally of
`communicating in images,' we don't talk much about images, and
there is always the subliminal and the superliminal (`if a man's
reach not exceed his grasp') to worry about. Are there thoughts
which cannot be expressed? (`would that the tongue could utter the
thoughts that arise in me'). What does one mean when one says
`image'?
       Forgive me, I am beginning to witter.
Received on Mon Jan 10 2005 - 03:07:46 EST