Visual Arts, Columbia University, New York

This course examines ways of looking and ways of seeing, both personally & professionally as artists and in a larger cultural context. Through field trips to contemporary art and other cultural sites, conversations with visiting critical thinkers and practicioners, readings, discussions, and visual & written responses, we will examine how we look, think, act, create and respond--critically questioning our own artistic practices and ways of looking at the world.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

What is an Image (AA)


An image is a point of stillness. It is arrested visual information. A basic unit of comprehension. An image may be analyzed and organized in the context of other images (a thing next to another thing, and so on). This compilation of data may provide the illusion of a presentation of truth. But any legitimate claim to truth the image may have is swamped by the infinite multitude of unseen truths that it’s own assertions deny. One imagines a film reel—a series of images. One after the other each presents a truth of a unique perspective in a fleeting moment of time. But none of these images, arrested, can come close to the truth of the originary moment, because true experience is not a series of framed stills. Time may be broken down into nanoseconds for our comprehending pleasure, but understanding clocks, even building them, does not change the way we live time.
An image becomes poetry when it manages to look beyond its being looked at. A clock becomes art when placed next to another.  


No comments:

Post a Comment