Some comments on How Images Think

Professor Pramod Nayar of the Department of English, University of Hyderabad comments on "How Images Think." This is a small selection of a longer review that appeared in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

How Images Think is an exercise both in philosophical meditation and critical theorizing about media, images, affects, and cognition. Burnett combines the insights of neuroscience with theories of cognition and the computer sciences. He argues that contemporary metaphors - biological or mechanical - about either cognition, images, or computer intelligence severely limit our understanding of the image. He suggests in his introduction that image refers to the complex set of interactions that constitute everyday life in image-worlds (p. xviii). For Burnett the fact that increasing amounts of intelligence are being programmed into technologies and devices that use images as their main form of interaction and communication - computers, for instance - suggests that images are interfaces, structuring interaction, people, and the environment they share.

New technologies are not simply extensions of human abilities and needs - they literally enlarge cultural and social preconceptions of the relationship between body and mind.

The flow of information today is part of a continuum, with exceptional events standing as punctuation marks. This flow connects a variety of sources, some of which are continuous - available 24 hours - or live and radically alters issues of memory and history. Television and the Internet, notes Burnett, are not simply a simulated world - they are the world, and the distinctions between natural and non-natural have disappeared. Increasingly, we immerse ourselves in the image, as if we are there. We rarely become conscious of the fact that we are watching images of events - for all perceptive, cognitive, and interpretive purposes, the image is the event for us.

The proximity and distance of viewer from/with the viewed has altered so significantly that the screen is us. However, this is not to suggest that we are simply passive consumers of images. As Burnett points out, painstakingly, issues of creativity are involved in the process of visualization - viewers generate what they see in the images. This involves the historical moment of viewing - such as viewing images of the WTC bombings - and the act of re-imagining. As Burnett puts it, the questions about what is pictured and what is real have to do with vantage points [of the viewer] and not necessarily what is in the image (p. 26).

Television (NCIS)

In the previous two posts, I began to draw a map of all the connections among a variety of television shows which concentrate on terrorism. The connections are not only at the level of plot line, but among actors who move from show to show.

The following MISSION STATEMENT appears on the CBS web site:

"The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS)--the Department of the Navy's (DoN's) primary law enforcement arm--is in the midst of a transformation. No longer is the traditional reactive law enforcement model adequate given the complex and increasingly blurred terrorist, intelligence, and criminal threats to our Navy and Marine Corps. To counter the evolving threats, NCIS has implemented a new, proactive strategic plan, which emphasizes preventing terrorism."

The mission statement blurs the connections between TV drama and reality, an in-between or middle space within which the "war on terrorism" becomes an overarching metaphor for how TV relates to and depicts everyday life. These connections are all foregrounded by what I described in the previous post as some fatal flaw that is always discovered about the terrorists, a flaw which leads to the situation being resolved, even if (as in "24") some people die.

The question is, what is the purpose of this retooling of television drama and storytelling? What does this suggest about the intersections of popular culture and real life?

Television (The Grid)

"The Grid" is a British/American co-production with Turner Network Television, Fox and BBC. One of the stars is Dylan McDermott who was a lawyer on the David Kelley show, "The Practice." The Grid is about a counterterrorism cell in much the same way as The Unit is about a counterterrorism cell in much the same way as another show "Sleeper Cell" is about counterterrorism — and across all of these shows, the same plot lines are used. To varying degrees they are all based on the original formula developed by "24" which combines various levels of incompetence with seemingly inpenetrable terrorists groups who seem to be invincible until a fatal flaw is found.

More soon......

Television (The Unit)

Many of the new shows on television this season deal with terrorism, heroism and the hidden dangers of post 9/11 America and the effects of 9/11 on the world. None quite matches "The Unit" which uses all the elements of every spy show ever broadcast on primetime. These range from a secret unit that no one can know about to levels of heroism and competence that exceed the norm of any human being — a combination of Superman, James Bond and the apparent science and precision of CSI. Best of all, the army community in which the unit lives with their wives might as well be the set of "Desperate Housewives."

Does this add up? Yes, but only because David Mamet's scripts are so theatrical and characters talk to each other with a purity of expression that sometimes borders on the poetic. All of this is brought together by the main male character in The Unit played by Dennis Haysbert who played President David Palmer in "24".

If all of this seems like it is connecting, wait until I finish the map.

More soon..........

The Age of Six Feet Under (2)

In today's New York Times, Joan Didion describes her shock and grief at the sudden death of her husband John Gregory Dunne. It is a very moving article about pain, loss and the ways in which the death of a loved one bring memories and feelings to the surface that are often buried and sometimes inaccessible until the shock of death rears its head. In an age (zeitgeist) which as a friend of mine recently said, pathologizes everything that is related to the body, health and death, Didion's piece brings personal confession, the confessional into the foreground. As she explores the confusion, the sheer magnitude of death and the finality of everything that surrounds it, Didion tries to bring the craft of writing forcefully into play while also recognizing that nothing she says will fully explain the complexities of what she is going through. At one point, she mentions a strong urge to make a film, to create images as a way of explaining what is happening to her.

Most of the plots of Six Feet Under centred on confessions of guilt, pain, incomprehension and of course, death. The personal became public — emotions otherwise hidden away in the private worlds that we all inhabit were brought to the surface. This confessional mode is audience-centric. Confessions reveal that which is normally hidden. But confessions are only possible if someone is listening. Didion's piece is as much for us as it is for her husband. We are the transitional listeners who allow her to regain some control over the loss. In a fictional TV show the dead can be brought to life and can listen and react to their loved ones. It is that fiction which is at the heart of all confessions, because they are ultimately for the living, for the living who still have memories.