Class Visual Culture

Since the 1980s, the notion of visual culture has been imposed. Superficially, visual culture would be concerned with the objects-products of optical machines, such as photography, video, television, film, graphic and digital images, etc. But this mere enumeration reveals that visual culture is first and foremost a new problem. In fact, following the convergence operated by digital, the way we perceived and analyzed images, separately or in genres, such as photography or cinema, video, etc., changed. It is a process that articulates machines, devices, images and bodies in complex apparatuses that are an essential part of the constitution of experience.  

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1. Introduction: What is visual culture? 1.1. Visual culture as a problem 1.2. The visual culture in debate 2. Image as a problem 2.1. Images and original division of the 'real' 2.2. Walter Benjamin and the technical take off of the images 2.3. Aby Warburg And The Pathos Images 2.4 The Guy Debord Show Society 3. The Age of the Image 3.1. Iconology Crisis 3.2. The epoch of the symbolic and space organization 3.3. The grotesque becoming of images 4. Decentralization and fragmentation of the world image in modernity 4.1. Modern optical regimes (Crary) 4.2. Real perception change and vision control 4.3. From phantasmagoria to virtual reality 5. About contemporary images 5.1. Image Telematics 5.2. The work of art in the age of its mechanical generativity: algorythimic vision and artificial inteligence

This course has been making extensive use of Moodle's capabilities for several years, including: individual assessment in a digital environment, the use of occasional quizzes Collective practical exercises are conducted to reinforce learning. A critical and formative use of generative machine learning tools, such as ChatGPT, is presented and explored with students. A large portion of the syllabus is taylored to the development of skills for the use and mastery of stable diffusion platforms (of generative artificial intelligence) in the domain of images.

MITCHELL, W. JT (2010), «Showing seeing: uma crítica da cultura visual». DAPesquisa. 5(7), 239-258. BENJAMIN, Walter (2006), «A obra de arte na época da sua possibilidade de reprodução técnica», (João BARRENTO, Trans.) A Modernidade (pp. 207-241), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. LATOUR, Bruno (2008), «O que é iconoclash? Ou, há um mundo além das guerras de imagem?», Horizontes Antropológicos, 14(29), 111-150. RIQUELME, Roberto (2007), «Episteme», Estudios visuales(4), 23-34. CRARY, Jonathan (1992), Capítulos 2, 3 de Techniques of the Observer. On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Massachussets, The MIT Press. GUNNING, Tom (2004), «Illusions past and future: The Phantasmagoria and its specters», Refresh!, First International Conference on the Histories of Art, Science and Technology  SOMAINI, Antonio (2023), «Algorithmic Images: Artificial Intelligence and Visual Culture», Grey Room, (93), 74-115. doi: 10.1162/grey_a_00383.