After Images: Reinventing Visual Culture Studies

Edited by Dr. Anna Olszewska, aolsz@agh.edu.pl, Faculty of Humanities, AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow

An alliance of artificial intelligence and networked media is reinventing visual culture. The debate about this reconfiguration is already in full swing. It heralds the emergence of new forms of images (Paglen 2014, Rothöhler 2021; Parikka 2023 Mackenzie Munster 2019; Broeckmann 2020), collects the evidence of algorithmic operation (Wasielewski 2023 Offert, Bell 2020), ponders the questions of artificial creativity (Zylinska 2020; Broeckmann 2019). The fascinating discussion points to a renewal of visual studies (WHY PICTURES? 2019-, Azar, Cox, Impett, 2021). But is visual culture relevant today in the same sense it was in the time of W.J.T. Mitchell? Is it still a dangerous supplement to politics and language? The humanities have their needs. The intrusion of Gaia has mobilised a quest for earthbound aesthetics (Stengers 2017; Latour, Weibel 2020). Posthuman feminist critique has shifted the momentum towards performative expressions, matter and the worlds of fantasy literature (Haraway 2016, Bennett 2020, Tsing 2017). With the proposed theme issue, we welcome debate on the reinvention of visual culture studies.

We invite you to shift the focus from algorithmic visuality to visual cultures that resonate with the massification of AI systems. In this sense, we encourage an exchange that reclaims the original scope of media studies, which included reflection on human interventions in land, water and atmosphere (Starosielski 2019). We call for a reappraisal of human geographies on the concept of the subliminal (Thrift 2004) and the aesthetics of atmospheres (Böhme, Thibaud 2016), in order to asses the effects the notorious campaign of claudalist empires that absolutize the value of internal model-oriented AI technologies. Could it be that the humanities of late modernity, captivated by a flight through printed pages and flickering screens, have forgotten how powerful arguments they have at their disposal? Our aim is to collect arguments that counter hegemonic narratives of AI, and to recall not only the necessity but also the inevitability of embodied and situated visual cultures.

We would like this issue to take the form of a debate. We are interested in reasoned opinions and methodological proposals that argue for or against the relevance of taking new routes in visual studies.

The following is a brief description of the issues that we would like to discuss:

• Why archives? Contributions that gather arguments for a revival in studies of the artistic canon, archives and museums.
• Why games? Contributions presenting arguments for or against the expansion of games and VR/AR studies in academic curricula.
• Why elemental media? Contributions that argue for or critique the move of air/water or earth studies to the centre of visual media studies.
• A kin to the environment? Works exploring the extent to which visual studies can become relevant to ecocritical debates.
• New vocabularies? Contributions discussing both emerging and diminishing vocabularies of the visual; papers proposing a constellation of concepts and microtheories that reveal the residue of visual phaenomena today.
• A dangerous supplement? Contributions discussing the disruptive potential of visual cultures, exploring synergies or even frictions between visual activities and the work of algorithms and LLMs.

Keywords: visual culture studies, AI, algorithmic society, debates in humanities

We are waiting for articles until June 5. Please send them in two ways:

• to the editorial office: przeglad.kulturoznawczy@uj.edu.pl
• through the system via the link: https://ojs.ejournals.eu/Przeglad-Kulturoznawczy/about/submissions

References:

Bennett, J. (2020). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press.

Böhme, G. (2016) Thibaud J.-P. [ed.]The aesthetics of atmospheres. Routledge.

Broeckmann, A. (2019). The machine as artist as myth. In Arts (Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 25). MDPI.

Broeckmann, A. (2020). Optical Calculus. In conference Images Beyond Control, FAMU, Prague (Vol. 6).

Bunz, M., Jager, E., Milne, A., & Zylinska, J. (2022). Creative AI Futures: Theory and practice

Offert F., Bell P. (2020). “Perceptual bias and technical metapictures: critical machine vision as a humanities challenge”, AI & Society

Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. In Staying with the Trouble. Duke University Press.

Latour, B., & Weibel, P. (Eds.). (2020). Critical zones: The science and politics of landing on earth. MIT Press

Mackenzie, A., Munster, A. (2019). Platform seeing: image ensembles and their invisualities. Theory Cult Soc 26(5): 3–22

Paglen, T. (2014). “Operational Images.” e-flux Journal #59 (November 2014). https://www.e-flux.com/journal/59/61130/operational-images/. Accessed January 8, 2019

Parikka, J. (2023). Operational Images: From the Visual to the Invisual. U of Minnesota Press.

Rothöhler, S. (2021). Calm Images: The Invisible visual culture of digital image distribution. Media Studies| Volume 76, 73.

Stengers I., “Autonomy and the Intrusion of Gaia,” South Atlantic Quarterly 116, no. 2 (2017): 381–400

Thrift, N. (2004). Intensities of feeling: Towards a spatial politics of affect. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 86(1), 57-78.

Tsing, A. L. (2017): »The Buck, the Bull, and the Dream of the Stag: Some Unexpected Weeds of the Anthropocene«, in: Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 42/1, 3 –21

WHY PICTURES? (2019-). Czym jest współczesny status i obieg obrazów? Widok. Fundacja Kultury Wizualnej / VN Lab, 2019- ; https://vnlab.org/wyszukiwanie/?kat=info [acessed 12.03.2025]

Zylinska, J. (2020). AI art: machine visions and warped dreams (p. 181). Open Humanities Press.