The first thing that comes to my mind when I ask myself "what is an
image?" is the anatomy of the eye. The eye is part of our interface
with the universe. The brain stem must filter out information so as to
not overload us. Is this what hallucinations are - too much stimuli? The
photographic image also comes to mind. Photography is supposedly as
real as it gets. "Seeing is believing", yet things are usually not what
they seem. The human eye can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic
spectrum. An image can be anything 2d or 3d, yet it is also can exist
only in our mind (luckily we can imagine the full spectrum of light and
what it might look like). Does this make the image less real? An image
has different meaning for each person because we project our history
onto it. Memories are images, yet we know they aren't entirely accurate
and that the passing of time worsens the situation. I wonder how a
person who was born blind would answer this question "what is an
image?". The etymology of the word "image" is also so interesting. How
does an image differ from imagination, or from self-image - the idea of
ourselves? If I ask you to "imagine love" - what happens in your mind?
Did you experience a feeling or did you see an image? For me it is a
bodily sensation or a state of mind rather than an image, which reminds
me that a meditation teacher used to say that thoughts were actually
forms; he called them "thought forms". If images are in the mind and
thoughts are forms, then I'm beginning to confuse myself.
Here is a link to the great Eames film with images from the full range of human understanding, universe to the atom...http://www.powersof10.
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