Photography

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century – thus somewhat anticipating the process of dissolution described above – photography was invented. Only four aspects of this momentous invention will be singled out here, because they impressively illustrate the practice of "neg-anthropology". –– Flusser, Vilém. Vom Subjekt zum Projekt: Menschwerdung. 1. Aufl Juni 1994. Schriften / Vilém Flusser, 3. Bensheim und Düsseldorf: Bollmann, 1994, p. 18–22

(1) Photography is a Simulation of the processes that lead to the perception of the world of things, a crude simulation because at the time of this invention neurophysiology had even less insight than at present. Silver salt molecules are scattered on a sensitive surface and light rays are emitted to react chemically on them. This creates shapes on this surface that are seen as images of the things that reflected the rays. According to this, photography simulates the processes in the optical nerves and the subsequent processing in the central nervous system, which causes the perception of extended things. Simulating specific functions of our organism is as old as mankind: all tools are such simulations. But simulating functions of the nervous system is something radically new. For until then, the nervous system was understood as a kind of gray zone in which man as object (body) and as subject (mind) blurred together. With photography, the separation "subject/object" (body/mind) is overcome: The mind becomes an object of technical manipulation and therefore simulable. All "mental" functions, from perception to decision-making ("artificial intelligence"), become objectifiable from now on, i.e. transferable from humans to other objects.

Even more decisive, however, is another consequence of this regression of calculating thinking about oneself. At the beginning of photography, the apparatus was still understood as a traditional tool: It presupposed a human subject who manipulated it. Thanks to a progressively perfecting "automation," human intervention in photography was now seen more as a malfunction. Not the photographer, but the programmer (designer) of the apparatus is understood as the actual "producer of the photos"; no longer the perceiving itself, but the projecting of the perceiving is from now on the creative. This applies to all "mental" processes.

(2) The photo is granular (silver salt molecules) and poses the problem of scattering. The finer the grains and the denser the scattering, the more "thing-like", until a degree of scattering is reached, which corresponds to the production of a thing. The photo is only the first step in the direction of a synthetic manufacturing of things from grains, the video, the hologram and the computer-controlled hologram are the further steps taken so far. The making of alternative worlds of things by computation has not yet been fully achieved, but we are on the threshold of it. Therefore, the distinction between image and thing, between fiction and reality, becomes more and more inoperational, especially since the so-called "reality" - in the sense of "perceived world" - exhibits itself as a computation. Instead, a distinction has to be made between "concrete" and "abstract": Projecting is a process, thanks to which from abstractions (points) more and more concrete worlds are projected. The calculating thinking becomes concrete.

(3) Photography is a technique, that is, a practice based on scientific theories - optics, chemistry, mechanics and other disciplines. Since the Renaissance, a distinction has been made between technology and art according to the following criterion: technology is theoretically supported, art empirical practice. Implicit in this distinction is that models of experience (aesthetic models) cannot be theorized, and therefore art must be empirical in its aim. But photography provides images, an output hitherto reserved for art. Therefore, photography destroys the modern distinction between technology and art, it is "post-modern". Since the actual producer of the photos is not the photographer but the programmer of the apparatus, photography shows that the distinction between the three traditional model types (cognition, behavior, experience) is also no longer operational. It shows that models based on theories can become computable, which simultaneously model cognition, behavior and experience. The photo is only the first among other models of this kind. It shows that the calculating thinking, stepping back from itself, can project models from grains, which control the cognition, behavior and experience of the society; that it is able to project a meaning from nothing, to have a meaning-giving effect on nothing.

(4) When photographing, something is "taken" from somewhere to somewhere. It turns out, however, that the "something" depends on the "from-somewhere": What is a something is a question of the point of view that takes it up. The first answer to this question is a constant change of standpoint. The apparatus changes its point of view: it surrounds the something with a spherical field of viewpoints. In this way, photography leaves behind the modern preferred standpoint of the "objective view," and in this sense it is "post-modern. With its practice, for which all points of view are of equal value (indifferent) and only come closer to something thanks to accumulation, photography also leaves all ideologies of the modern era. At present, however, a more radical answer to this question is beginning to emerge. A anything is unnecessary to photograph: Anything can be projected. In synthetic computer images, which are hardly distinguishable from photographs, something arbitrary is projected from calculation, for example from fractal equations, and then placed in images from any number of viewpoints. In such a practice, the projective violence of calculating thinking - the "power of imagination" - stepping back from itself becomes particularly clear. It can design projects out of itself, independent of everything else, and concretize these projects into alternative worlds thanks to ever denser scattering. In this process, calculative thinking itself shows itself as a knotting of a calculative net.

Photography is an anticipatory practice. Only now does it become apparent what is inherent in it: a new, not necessarily "pessimistic" attitude toward the unstoppable decay of the world of things and its subject. The new practice illuminated by photography can be understood as follows: The slow and laborious cultural development of mankind can be seen as a gradual retreat from the living world, as a gradually increasing alienation. With the first step back from the life-world - from the context of things that concern man - we become handlers, and the resulting practice is the production of instruments. With the second step back - this time from the three-dimensionality of the things treated - we become observers, and the ensuing practice is image-making. With the third step back - this time from the two-dimensionality of the imagination - we become writers, and the resulting practice is the generation of texts. With the fourth step back - this time from the one-dimensionality of alphabetical writing - we become calculators, and the resulting practice is modern technology. This fourth step towards total abstraction - towards zero dimensionality - was taken with the Renaissance, and at present it is complete. A further step back into abstraction is not feasible: There cannot be less than nothing. Therefore, we turn around 180 degrees, so to speak, and begin, just as slowly and laboriously, to step back in the direction of the concrete (the life world). Hence the new practice of computation and projection of point elements to lines, surfaces, bodies and bodies approaching us.