What is an image?

An image is something that’s in your head, something cognitive. You “see” an image visually, mentally.  This sight is provoked by some sensory input.  Maybe one can even feel an image.  Perhaps, for example, the sensation of sound waves hitting one’s skin provokes the thought of those sound waves hitting one’s skin and a mental image of the sound waves hitting one’s skin.  I’m interested in the distinction between image or signal input and image interpretation—the beginning and the end of the sensory process; what is the difference between signal and interpretation and can or should the distinction be made when answering the “what is an image” question?  Should the sound waves I mentioned in the above example be distinguished from the images or thoughts that they provoke? Can sound be considered and image? How inclusive can the term “image” be?              I wonder what a mental image might consist of in the mind of a blind person, or even a blind and deaf person.

I’m curious about whether or not an image, as I have defined it above, can exist on it’s own.  By that I mean, can a mental image exist just as a standalone entity, uninfluenced by any previous experience or structural understanding of the world, as an abstraction?  I suppose this question enters the realm of linguistics and psychology, and probably some other very esoteric fields and subfields the names of which I will most likely never know.

Honestly, this question just raises a million more questions, ones which I’m unqualified to answer at this point. But maybe my lack of qualification is irrelevant.  Maybe image is everything.  Maybe image is cognition and cognition is reliant on sensation. Maybe art is, or can be, on a high level, just the manipulation and direction of “image,” in its broadest sense, and experience.  Maybe the distinction between visual arts and other arts is in the intention of the artist and the medium.  Maybe understanding the commonality between different “art forms” and media can allow us to create art that is especially effective and impactful.

I like some of the things that Emma had to say, mainly about the difference between our scientific or factual—if you want to call it that—understanding of the physics of visual (seen) imagery and how we interpret or process the images that we see. It really depends on what we look at and how we look at it.  In the case of “visual arts,” how we guide the viewer to see or feel or think something specific.  Emma uses the example of individual pixels being points of light on a screen while a collection of them can be interpreted as an image, something describable, possibly conceptual, and that could also be poetic and or abstract.

 Those are my thoughts so far.  Cheerio.