Image theory

This article focuses on Generative Artiûcial Intelligence (GenAI) in the area of text-to-image translation. I address the question of stereotyped visual styles using the theory of enunciative praxis formulated in continental semiotics (and, more speciûcally, in so-called Paris School Semiotics). I relate this theory with the concept of enregisterment in linguistic anthropology in order to describe the way in which visual forms undergo a process of sedimentation and typiûcation and then are transposed to feed into other forms. The ûrst section of the article presents the way in which a painting (as a stratiûed form of other forms), as well as a corpus of interrelated paintings, may be studied through the methodology of enunciative praxis and enregisterment; the second section develops the study of databases and algorithms as tools for a renewed approach to semiotic theory of enunciation and visual language.

This chapter addresses the question of the circulation of images within social domains, such as art, science, politics and advertising, in order to investigate the various “image economies” correlated with these social domains. I will mostly focus on the artistic social domain which is the most complex and diversified one with respect to dominating values. In this regard, I will take into account the theory of French semiotician Jean-François Bordron, who explains the notion of economy as a cosmology of sorts in which all the objects it includes are regulated by values that it makes understandable and relatable. Resorting to this concept of economy is necessary to explain the different systems of value underlying images, especially when considering images in the process of their social circulation from one domain to another. The questions I address while referring to this notion of economy are
the following: How many kinds of economy can an image pertain to? Under
which economy do artistic images circulate? What about scientific images?
How, and under which status does an image circulate as a specimen belonging
to a group of rare objects, or as a specimen of a serially reproduced series of
images that are dispersed throughout the world and seemingly devoid of value?
How does a fake circulate?

U Nosferatuu, grof Orlok personificira Jungovu sjenu. To je koncept koji se odnosi na nesvjesni dio ličnosti sa kojim se svjesni ego ne identificira. Ova projekcija često rezultira atributima poput skrivenih želja i negativnosti koje društvo obično smatra nepoželjnim. Orlokov groteskni izgled i grabežljiva priroda simboliziraju mračne aspekte čovječanstva koje pojedinci radije potiskuju.

One of the most artistically and theoretically representative projects of the Croatian visual artist Sandro Đukić is the one he created between 1999 and 2006, addressing, in a way, the metapictorial character of his entire oeuvre: Reality of Image, Image of Reality. The work is a very complex system for testing out the ontological nature of pictorial representation and an analysis of the possibilities and scope of visual thinking, cognition, and archiving; moreover, if we approach the whole project like an exploration of the technological conditions of visualization, then a kind of archaeology of media communication in general will be spread out before us. Reality of Image came into being at the borderline of two technological eras, the analogue and the digital, and it seems to me that it has to be evaluated precisely through the prism of the ever-clearer outlines of the technosphere when one form of pictorial representation is transformed into another with the help of mechanisms that W.J.T. Mitchell called the pictorial turn (1994, 11-34; 2005, 77, 343). Let us recall that there was no unique moment in history when a turn to the image took place once and for all, when non-pictorial was replaced with pictorial communication; rather, this is a recurring phenomenon that transpires in all epochs and throughout the contemporary humanities, characterized by an enhanced interest in the image by either approval or denigration. This interest can be prompted by a fear of images and their prohibition or, as we are currently witnessing, by the unprecedented proliferation of visual communication. A special value of the project that the Croatian artist realized lies in its pointing at the dawn of the digital era, at the moment of unrest in which the contemporary turn to the picture took place: no longer in the domain of what the image means or represents (as in the era of the iconoclastic prohibition in the 8th century or the "rediscovered" affirmation of pictorial representations after the Council of Trent in the mid-16th century), and certainly not in the domain of the proverbial mechanical reproducibility to which Walter Benjamin referred in his landmark essay of 1936. In Đukić's Reality of Image, we are confronting a new, paradoxical kind of pictorial turn-the obsolescence of images through their proliferation and digital generativity with the ensuing aesthetics of post-pictorial art. What is characteristic of the production of images in the digital era is the totally new concept of pictorial modality, i.e., a lastingly unstable form of pictorial appearing. Briefly said, for the determination of the ontological status of images in the time of their digital generativity, the manner in which they appear to the observer or the way in which they become visible to the observer is more important than their aesthetic, stylistic, or semiotic components (for an exhaustive explanation of this concept, see Purgar 2019, 121-164). Within the traditional hermeneutic complex, the problem raised by art history enables us to articulate fairly well what pictures in general may be, what they mean and what their

How do we want to exist? Continuing to cunningly appropriate reality like Prometheus once did? Or might not his brother Atlas, here described as able to mediate a multitude of relations by accepting himself as entangled, be a more attractive role model? And in what kind of reality do we live? Even though at first, these characteristics might appear as contradictory, we consider the present as characterized by being transforming and pictorial. Atlas managed to respond to the changes he confronted, and over the course of millenia, he turned from figure to book, from mystic to colonialist tool, in order to be re-embodied today, inter alia in the Atlas of Databodies, which we are editing. We instrumentalize this paper in order to discuss the establishments, enticings, and possible continuations of the atlas, as a method that in its pictoriality corresponds extraordinarily well to Flusser’s “new magic”, and in its functioning as a catch-basin for human-centred gathering methods owns de-colonizing powers. As a leitmotif for atlas endeavours, we suggest to never-be, but become-with. By implication, this methodology of the atlas made us propose a reformulation of “creator’s universe” into “mediator’s convertings”.

During the last forty years, a parallel yet separate reüection has unfolded across the Atlantic. While European semioticians have developed the concept of enunciation to tackle the relationship between the linguistic system and its concrete instantiations, North American linguistic anthropologists have explored discursive processes and their sedimentation as texts through the lens of entextualization. A key and partially overlooked aspect within both intellectual traditions concerns the materiality of the actual production, through gestural acts of inscription, of text-artifacts. In this paper, I focus on the enunciative-cumartistic practice of a renowned sculptor, Arnaldo Pomodoro (1926-2025), to explore the process of turning discourse (and gestures) into text(-artifact)s. I draw on the artist9s archive, on the critical literature about his work and combine these ûndings with direct observations and interviews conducted in the sculptor9s atelier to describe Pomodoro9s intermedial practice of negative inscription into a variety of substrates (e.g., cuttlebone, clay) and its positive transduction by casting molten metals into gypsum plaster or ûberglass molds. I argue that analyzing non-verbal forms of enunciation and entextualization may shed light onto our professional semiotic ideologies, furthering our understanding of crucial aspects of textuality and enunciation, such as the tension between structure and event, durable and ephemeral, and ûgurative and plastic.

Jamás fue el Surrealismo un capricho estético, ni una colección esnobista de imágenes "oníricas" para el deleite burgués; y hasta el presente es, en la mirada revolucionaria y vigente de André Breton, un movimiento para revolucionar hasta las fibras más hondas de la conciencia humana, empujarla más allá de los límites de la racionalidad domesticada y confrontar de manera directa las ataduras ideológicas hegemónicas que sometían (y someten) nuestra imaginación al yugo de la utilidad burguesa. Se trata de dinamitar, desde dentro, la colonización de los sueños, devolverle a la mente su potencia revolucionaria, y a la sensibilidad su condición de arma en la lucha contra la esclavitud de lo cotidiano. El Surrealismo, visto así, es la irrupción de un "primero" y un "segundo piso" de revolución de las conciencias, un movimiento ascendente, dialéctico, que no se agota en el gesto provocador, sino que exige un desarrollo en profundidad, una escalada hacia formas nuevas de libertad. Hoy el Surrealismo puede concebirse como la sacudida inaugural, la irrupción de un manifiesto (1924) que, en palabras de Breton, no buscaba embellecer el mundo sino transfigurarlo radicalmente desde la raíz de la experiencia humana, el inconsciente, el sueño, la escritura automática, el azar, lo que la censura de la razón mantenía oculto. Breton comprendió que el sistema capitalista no sólo explotaba el trabajo material, sino que también expropiaba la vida interior, colonizaba la imaginación con las cadenas de la moral hipócrita y de la utilidad instrumental. Ese primer piso fue el piso de la rebeldía visceral contra la falsa cordura, abrir el cuarto cerrado del inconsciente, desatar la escritura de sus cadenas lógicas, producir un cortocircuito entre vigilia y sueño, entre deseo y expresión. Era el momento de la demolición de la cárcel mental, la negación radical de las normas que el positivismo y la moral burguesa habían establecido como garantes del "orden". Pero la revolución de las conciencias no puede quedarse en el gesto inaugural, por sublime que resultase. El Surrealismo, de no haber trascendido habría quedado reducido a un catálogo de rarezas, a un ornamento exótico para coleccionistas refinados, como tantas veces intentó la cultura dominante. Breton, sin embargo, comprendió que el Surrealismo debía mantener un vínculo indestructible con la historia y con la lucha de clases. De ahí su encuentro con el marxismo, sus afinidades con Trotsky, su confrontación con la burocracia estalinista y su insistencia en que la verdadera revolución del espíritu sólo podía consolidarse en el horizonte de la revolución social permanente. Surrealismo no es sólo liberar las imágenes del inconsciente, es un proyecto colectivo de emancipación humana. Allí radica la verdadera profundidad de la revolución surrealista, no bastaba con abrir la puerta de los sueños, hay que integrar esa energía a la praxis revolucionaria. Su dialéctica expresa un tránsito humano esencial. En el plano del descubrimiento, de

In recent years, drawing (and designing) is increasingly done using artificial intelligence applications to the extent that the (theoretical-practical) academic discipline of Drawing can be reformulated in terms of "Artificial Drawing" [AD], remaining faithful to its ancient aesthetologic and scientific mission: "to depict the sensible form of things". The qualitative morphological mission of drawing, in the era of computational aesthetics, encounters a development of possible morphological measurements well beyond the possibilities of human perception and computation. To qualitatively measure the morphometric dimensions of AD, this contribution addresses primarily the principles of scientific morphography and morphometry of the 19th century in its connections with today' s computational aesthetics, in order to compare them with the possibilities open to AD. It then proposes to map the "black box" of image description algorithms in terms of levels of semiotic analysis of images of Greimassian tradition to measure how today' s systems of "artificial perception" implement a total syncretism of the semiotic dimensions of the "figural" decomposed into the category of the "figurative" (abstract vs. iconic) and its neutral term: the "figurable" or "indiscernible" (non-iconic vs. non-figurative). On these semiotic maps, it will be possible to measure the processes of descriptive AD (which starts from the figurative) and generative AD (which moves from the figurable) and which lead to generally measurable outcomes in the dimensions of "asemic writings". Based on the arguments presented, we can conclusively answer the initial question. The morphometric dimensions of the artificial design are indeed measurable to a degree that allows us to provide an appropriate semiotic representation.

O artigo investiga a montagem cinematográfica como um campo de experimentação estética e epistemológica, analisando suas relações com tempo, presença e controle no processo criativo. Partindo de referências filosóficas (como Walter Benjamin, Georges Didi-Huberman e Gilles Deleuze) e de práticas artísticas contemporâneas, o autor argumenta que a montagem não se reduz a uma técnica narrativa linear, mas constitui um dispositivo de pensamento, capaz de reorganizar relações temporais e produzir novas formas de percepção.

Stramilano (SuperMilan), Impressioni di vita n.1 (Impressions of life no. 1): Ritmi di stazione e (Rhythms of a Railway Station) and Rivista Luce (Luce Magazine) n. 2: Music – La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie) are three short movies composed by Corrado D’Errico between 1929 and 1934. A multifaceted author, D’Errico (1902–1941) is deeply connected to the aesthetic theories of Futurism and simultaneously is measured with the coeval experimental and international film production.

In the analysis of the relationship between aesthetics and contemporary art, this book investigates hermeneutics, phenomenology and semiotics when it comes to the notion of the image and its new status concerning avant-garde art, which went in the direction of the analysis of posthumanism/transhumanism. Showing that we must begin to think of the aesthetic construction of the worlds, rather than representing the idea in its eternity, it explains that contemporary art from avant-garde procedures of shock, provocation and experiment enters the area of the metatheory of visualization of the event. From the caves, temples, and cathedrals to the museums of contemporary art and, finally, to the event of creation and enjoyment in a digital simulation, a circle of the historical development of art is closed. The problem is no longer about “what” art is, but “how” we should determine the difference between the aesthetic object and artificial life.

W. J. T. Mitchell, a longtime American professor at the University of Chicago, came to the forefront of public attention with his book Picture Theory in 1994 in which he presented his insights into the field of visual culture to the general academic public, such as in the famous essays “Pictorial Turn” and “Metapictures” as well as several others on the relationship between literature and visual arts. The early 1990s were a time when the search for a new, more comprehensive theory of the image and visuality had already seriously shaken the position of art history as a former “master discipline” in the field of art and images in general.

Political psychologists have identified patterns in the use of cognitive categorization for the structuring of the political worldview of foreign policy decision makers. This dissertation uses a mixed methods approach to investigate the political worldview of the Islamic State of Iraq since 2003 and to validate the use of Image Theory for a non-state actor for the purpose of explaining their strategic targeting. Discourse analysis is used to examine almost 3,000 messages from the group for clues to other group images. Social Identity Theory is presented as an intervening variable to explore how sectarian language is used to reinforce and sustain images of other groups, as well as identify threats to the group's own base support. Hypotheses based on both theories were tested and evidence found to support the impact of social competition and the necessity of group survival on the process of image creation and maintenance over a ten-year period. The dissertation expands on the findings and discusses ways that social competition and demographic changes are impacting societies in the Middle East and South Asia, as well as around the world. The conclusion presents practical policy advice for communities facing these challenges in order to prevent the spiral effects seen in the Iraq case study.

This study explores how contemporary text-to-image models interpret and generate Classical and Baroque styles under Wölfflin's framework-two categories that are atemporal and transversal across media. Our goal is to see whether generative AI can replicate the nuanced stylistic cues that art historians attribute to them. We prompted two popular models (DALL•E and Midjourney) using explicit style labels (e.g., "baroque" and "classical") as well as more implicit cues (e.g., "dynamic", "static", or reworked Wölfflin descriptors). We then collected expert ratings and conducted broader qualitative reviews to assess how each output aligned with Wölfflin's characteristics. Our findings suggest that the term "baroque" usually evokes features recognizable in typically historical Baroque artworks, while "classical" often yields less distinct results, particularly when a specified genre (portrait, still life) imposes a centered, closed-form composition. Removing explicit style labels may produce highly abstract images, revealing that Wölfflin's descriptors alone may be insufficient to convey Classical or Baroque styles efficiently. Interestingly, the term "dynamic" gives rather chaotic images, yet this chaos is somehow ordered, centered, and has an almost Classical feel. Altogether, these observations highlight the complexity of bridging canonical stylistic frameworks and contemporary AI training biases, underscoring the need to update or refine Wölfflin's atemporal categories to accommodate how generative models-and modern visual culture-reinterpret Classical and Baroque.

This article analyzes the semiotic functioning of Midjourney and DALL•E, two generative AI models capable of producing images out of natural language prompts. The theoretical assumption of this article is that the images produced by these AIs are the results of a particular intersemiotic translation, realized through the collaboration of human and computational operators. Our research will show the specificity of the intersemiotic translation realized by AIs vis-à-vis more classical kinds of translation (e.g., from a novel to a movie) and will also analyze the different kinds of "visual reasoning" characterizing Midjourney and DALL•E. Our article has two goals: first, to study how these models perform intersemiotic translations; namely, what choices they make in order to translate the generality of the symbolic (and indexical) signs of verbal languages into the specificity of the visual composition. Second, we intend to verify the degree of control that one can have over the visual composition. Following this, we present the results of the tests carried out on Midjourney and DALL•E pertaining to two semiotic macro-criteria: plastic categories (eidetic, chromatic, and topological) and visual enunciation (gaze relations, visual translation of verbalized actions, temporality, and aspectuality). These criteria were developed by Paris School semiotics in order to analyze artistic images. Here, they will be used as principles of composition and parameters for controlling the results. At the end, we demonstrate that through this experimentation with elementary parameters of visual composition, semiotics can provide an epistemological and analytical framework for understanding and assessing the intersemiotic translations realized through generative AIs. Reciprocally, these tests on AIs aid our understanding of the two semiotic macro-criteria used, notably leading to a multiplication of enunciative instances in image production. Databases, algorithms, prompts, and aleatoric elements act as discursive agents.

Este artículo aborda un aspecto específico de la enunciación en semiótica que ha sido descuidado también por las otras ciencias de la imagen: la temporalidad simulada en la pintura y la fotografía. En efecto, la pintura y otras imágenes llamadas tradicionalmente “arte del espacio” no han sido estudiadas desde el punto de vista de su dinámica temporal interna. Más precisamente, este texto se centra en la literatura que permite estudiar el efecto de movimiento producido en el seno del plano de la expresión de las pinturas y de las fotografías, a fin de acercarse a un análisis de la temporalidad en la imagen; esta última puede ser declinada hacia el pasado, el presente, el futuro, así como la acción representada desarrollarse según un ritmo específico cada vez (duratividad, puntualidad, incoatividad, terminatividad).

This paper explores the relation between images and databases in a twofold way. The first part examines image databases as sources for image computational analysis, while the second part studies image databases as sources for image generation (notably through the generative artificial intelligence model Midjourney). Image analysis and image generation will be analyzed through the concept of enunciative praxis. Traditionally, enunciative praxis concerns cultural transformations over the long term (the relation between sedimentation and innovation); in our case it will be used notably to study the generation of new images through old, traditional ones.

Shakespeare'in Shylock'undan Charles Dickens'ın Fagin'ine; edebiyattan sanata, tarihten siyasete Yahudi halkı, yüzyıllarca ötekileştirilme ve dışlanma altında, negatif stereotipler ile tanımlanan bir kimlik üzerinden varlığını sürdürmüştür. 20. yüzyılda Holokost ile zirveye ulaşan bu travmatik tarih, modern İsrail Devleti'nin ulusal kimliğinin çekirdeğini meydana getirmiştir. Holokost, yalnızca toplumsal hafızada değil, aynı zamanda ulusal ve uluslararası politikalarda bir meşruiyet zemini, birçok ülkede ve kurumda ahlâki, tarihsel ve politik referans noktası hâline gelmiştir. Bu referansa politik felsefede de bir hayli başvurulmuştur; Adorno'dan Habermas'a, Arendt'ten Levinas'a uzanan düşünce dünyasında, çoğu teorisyenin çalışmalarında "Holokost benzeri trajedilerin bir daha yaşanmaması" gayesi vardır. Buna karşın, söz konusu tarihsel travmanın etkileri, İsrail'in "politik psikolojisinde" çelişkili bir durum oluşturmuştur: Soykırım kurbanı olmuş bir toplumundan teşkil olan devlet, neden kendi politikalarında baskıcı ve şiddet unsurları barındırma, hatta kavramları yumuşatmaktan vazgeçerek soracak olursak; neden soykırım yapma noktasına gelir? Bu yazıda, İsrail'in Holokost'tan devraldığı psikolojik mirasın ulusal politikaları nasıl şekillendirdiği ele alınacak, bilhassa korku, travma ve tehdit algısının politikleşmesine yönelik paradoksal çıkmaz tartışılacaktır.

M. Sessa, ad vocem "Medium Specificity", in «International Lexicon of Aesthetics», May, 2025.

Abstract:

It. Specificità mediale; Fr. Spécificité des médias; Germ. Medienspezifität; Span. Especificidad Medial. Medium specificity can be defined as a concept, belonging originally to the theory of art and image and later to the theory of media, which indicates that every form of expression has peculiarities that are not only its own, but also inherent to it. In its most radical formulations, such specificities are even connoted as ‘essential’ or ‘ontological’. Any aesthetic theorization approaching medium specificity postulates that inescapable features in the creation and reception of each expressive typology are implied and compelling. It regards the medium as of primary importance for the qualities of expression. The notion was developed during ‘High Modernism’, in parallel with the revolution of the Avant-gardes, and was vindicated in the second modernist phase of the mid-20th century. Nevertheless, it has roots in reflections developed in the Enlightenment era.

Este trabajo parte de la pregunta por «lo histórico» del Ethos barroco tal como Bolívar Echeverría lo formuló. La dialéctica entre «el Barroco» y «lo barroco» es retomada con la intención de sacar «lo histórico» del marco estructuralista y semiótico que, durante décadas, ha dominado la cuestión. Para ello nos concentramos en la relación que Georges Didi-Huberman plantea entre anacronismo como clave de toda enunciación historiográfica y lo imaginario como tercero en liza entre lo real y lo simbólico, entre el uso y la acumulación. Nuestra propuesta consiste así en reconducir el problema barroco hacia aquel de las imágenes que ya estaba latente en sus principales teóricos, desde Walter Benjamin a José Lezama Lima, desde Severo Sarduy a Gilles Deleuze.

In this interview, scholar–curator Bryan Norton discusses new forms of planetary-scale image-making with artist–researcher Asia Bazydrieva (Geocinema) and media theorist Jussi Parikka. While collaborating with Bazdyrieva during the production of Geocinema’s ‘Making of Earths’, a documentary exploring the Digital Belt and Road Initiative in China, Parikka wrote a new book, Operational Images: From the Visual to the Invisual (2023). In this study, Parikka suggests that the forms of image-making explored in ‘Making of Earths’ press against the very borders of the visible, possessing a long history with drastic political and social consequences. Drawing on the history of satellite imagery, drone footage and climate models, both Parikka’s and Bazydrieva’s work present fecund modes of artistic and scholarly engagement with the contemporary creation and dissemination of what Harun Farocki called ‘operational images’ in his audiovisual work from the early 2000s. In this conversation, Bazdyrieva, Norton and Parikka discuss the ever- increasing ubiquity of these types of images in order to highlight their role in planetary-scale computation systems, the production of scientific knowledge and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

This volume presents one of the first systematic inquiries into Italian experimental and avant-garde cinema in the English language, thanks to contributions which deepen the history of experimental audio-visual works in Italy. Frameworks of film production, distribution, and circulation, as well as theoretical discourses and emblematic case studies, are investigated by this edited collection, which tries to provide a broad overview of the complex phenomena that occurred in a century of cinema beyond its industry, its market, and its conventions. The aim of this book is not to offer a comprehensive compendium, but to explore new paths in researching Italian experimental moving image, its history, and new theoretical insights into authors and their works. The volume is structured in thematic sections. Each of them includes different contributions according to two different types: plenary essays, which offer in-depth analyses on historical and theoretical features, and monographic essays, which focus on single authors, collectives, or works.

W.J.T. Mitchell—one of the founders of visual studies—has been at the forefront of many disciplines such as iconology, art history and media studies. His concept of the pictorial turn is known worldwide for having set new philosophical paradigms in dealing with our vernacular visual world. This book will help both students and seasoned scholars to understand key terms in visual studies—pictorial turn, metapictures, literary iconology, image/text, biopictures or living pictures, among many others—while systematically presenting the work of Thomas Mitchell as one of the discipline’s founders and most prominent figures. As a special feature, the book includes three comprehensive, authoritative and theoretically relevant interviews with Mitchell that focus on different stages of development of visual studies and critical iconology.

Marcello Sessa, "Arte ed estetica nel modernismo americano. Greenberg, Rosenberg, Steinberg", Carocci, Roma 2025.



Il volume è una ricognizione comparativa intorno al modernismo artistico nel suo momento apicale, raggiunto nel contesto americano a metà del Novecento. Prende in considerazione i suoi tre principali attori, i critici d'arte Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg e Leo Steinberg, soppesandone anche il portato teorico. La ricerca è sorretta dall'idea che il dettato dei tre, conformemente all'arte loro contemporanea, sia intrinsecamente estetico; di qui l'esigenza di confrontare queste vere e proprie ontologie dell'immagine modernista, nelle loro affinità e divergenze. La terna di autori concepisce l'opera d'arte in uno spettro di problemi e soluzioni che si scoprirà più ampio di quanto comunemente si crede, e che comprende in sé, ai margini dell'astrazione radicale, gli estremi dell'oggettuale e del concettuale passando per il performativo. Il libro rappresenta, in ultimo, anche una genealogia delle maggiori inclinazioni artistiche tutt'oggi ancora vive.

Su richiesta del re Giacomo I, nel 1620 Inigo Jones rilevò i resti del complesso megalitico di Stonehenge
e ne propose una ricostruzione pubblicata nel 1655, dopo la sua morte, dal suo assistente John
Webb. L’ipotesi di Jones era che i megaliti fossero stati eretti dai romani nel periodo di dominazione
dell’isola britannica, secondo un impianto rigidamente geometrico analogo a quelli descritti da Vitruvio
e illustrati dai grandi architetti italiani del Rinascimento. Benché errata, questa idea si basa sulla
appassionata conoscenza che Jones aveva dell’architettura italiana, specialmente di Palladio, che avrà
influito direttamente nella formulazione di questa bizzarra ipotesi.
In modo analogo, alla fine del Cinquecento, Keplero formulò una fantasiosa spiegazione per la configurazione
del sistema solare che si basava su una struttura geometrica intimamente legata alle
caratteristiche formali dei cinque solidi platonici che egli, da studioso di Euclide, conosceva profondamente.
Nella nota che segue si prende in considerazione l’influenza che le conoscenze apprese hanno sulla
formulazione di ipotesi complesse, spesso conducendo ad errori vistosi e madornali. Nonostante
questo, le analisi geometriche svolte da autori del passato, benché fallimentari, possono permetterci
di comprendere a fondo il loro modo di ragionare e fornirci preziose informazioni sui loro riferimenti
concettuali e metodologici, rendendo disponibili conoscenze altrimenti inaccessibili.

In his Imagination poetique (Aneau 1552a, 9), the erudite French humanist
Barthélemy Aneau published a clever personal device (Figure 1), whose point
sprang from a witty pun on the names of his parents. The device consisted of a ring (“anneau” in French, represented as an ouroboros) and a rose with the motto “Pardurable, peu durable.”1 In an accompanying sonnet, Aneau advises his reader that not having been born into the nobility, he had had no alternative but to construct arms for himself in order to have any device whatsoever. My contention in this article is that Aneau’s device is deliberately transgressive and subversive, socially and semiotically. As will become apparent, it is also a highly sophisticated metaphorical, polymorphic, and polysemous construction that neatly recapitulates, encapsulates, and anticipates some key developments in early modern theories of intermediality, and specifically those that concerned the function of text and image in those related bimedial genres, the device and the emblem. In concretizing the metaphorical fusion of body and soul on several
levels (as lexical and visual, corporeal and spiritual, parental and filial, material and immaterial), Aneau’s personal device, in fact, gradually transforms itself into a generalized “emblem of the device.”

A technique for the accurate computation of the electromagnetic fields radiated by a charged particle moving within a parallel-plate waveguide is presented. Based on a transformation of the time-varying current density of the particle into a time-harmonic current density, this technique allows the evaluation of the radiated electromagnetic fields both in the frequency and time domains, as well as in the near-and far-field regions. For this purpose, several accelerated versions of the parallel-plate Green's function in the frequency domain have been considered. The theory has been successfully applied to the multipactor discharge occurring within a two metal-plates region. The proposed formulation has been tested with a particle-in-cell code based on the finitedifference time-domain method, obtaining good agreement.

The exaltation of a scopic and gnostic drive: the fiction of knowledge is this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more.-Michel de Certeau Some twenty years ago I found myself denied access to one of the great works of Quattrocento sculpture. Donatello's four bas-relief panels in the Cathedral of San Antonio in Padova are to be found on each side of the High Altar. One of them is, or is reported to be, on the east side. That on the west side is clearly visible to the congregation, as to the tourist; those on the north and south sides of the altar are visible from a somewhat acute angle; but that on the east side is visible only from the ambulatory behind the high altar, and that space was inaccessible. I asked permission of a clergyman to be allowed to pass beyond the railings, and I was refused. Later that day, in the Pinacoteca at Padova, I was admiring a Trecento Crucifix, and was somewhat distracted by an old, dark-scarfed lady who approached close to the Crucifix, and closer still; then, as the guard respectfully turned his attention to the window, she made the sign of the cross and kissed, audibly, the fragile Trecento pigment that she took for the feet of her Lord.

We live in an era where technology enhances every aspect of our lives,
making work and living easier. Modern architecture has significantly
evolved due to technological advancements, especially tools like BIM
(Building Information Modeling). Today, innovations such as photogrammetry are revolutionizing fields like conservation, restoration,
and the adaptation of existing buildings. This research focuses on
photogrammetry, a method that allows for the digital preservation of
architectural heritage, protecting it from decay and ensuring its future
preservation. Photogrammetry offers a more efficient and time-saving
alternative to traditional methods of documenting architectural heritage,
which often require complex software like 3D Max, Maya, or Blender.
These tools demand extensive training and time to model structures. In
contrast, photogrammetry simplifies and speeds up the process, offering
a more accessible solution. Additionally, photogrammetry promotes
sustainability by facilitating the readaptation of existing buildings rather
than constructing new ones, aligning with the Sustainable Development
Goals. The best way to promote sustainability is by repurposing and
revitalizing the built environment rather than expanding it. This paper
explores photogrammetry’s potential on a larger scale, examining its
historical development, contemporary case studies, and scholarly reviews.
It aims to offer new insights into the integration of photogrammetry
in everyday architecture, emphasizing its importance in preserving and
enhancing the built environment for future generations.

Este artigo investiga as particularidades fotograficas de Decasia (2001), obra multimidia de Bill Morrison, com o proposito de abordar sua potencia no cotejo com o Atlas Mnemosyne de Aby Warburg. Em ambos, a imagem –constituida de tempo e memoria– reitera-se para alem de sua existencia fisica ou de seu conteudo informativo. Desta forma, colocaremos em questao aspectos eminentemente materiais da imagem cinematografica para discutirmos a dinâmica da coexistencia indissoluvel entre materialidade e imaterialidade na construcao do corpo filmico. Palavras-chave : fotografia cinematografica, materialidade da imagem, teoria da imagem, Aby Warburg, Bill Morrison. Abstract : This article looks into the photographic particularities of Decasia (2001), a multimedia work by Bill Morrison, in order to bring out its potentials in a parallel with the Mnemosyne Atlas of Aby Warburg. Their images –composed of time and memory –reiterate themselves beyond its physical existence or its information conten...

ARCHITECTURE OF THE BARRICADE
Arsenale Institute, Venice

A research exhibition curated by Bastiaan D. van der Velden
and Wolfgang Scheppe, based on a concept developed
in collaboration with Sara Codutti, exploring the
iconography of the barricade as an architectural entity.

May 7th – November 23, 2025

Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation
Castello, 1430/A
Riva dei Sette Martiri
30122 Venezia

“Belgian artist Johan Muyle found his voice 40 years ago with "La Modification" (1984), an aptly named assemblage sculpture that borrows its title from Michel Butor's celebrated 1957 novel. Consisting of a recliner attached to ropes and nooses, with a crate suspended between bicycle wheels placed behind, the entire ensemble evokes an instrument of torture or execution. This grim assisted readymade may echo Dadaist or Surrealist practice (and the spirit of Kienholz at his best), but Muyle's intent runs deeper than provocation. His frequently motorized assemblages and cryptic performances create enigmatic and often unsettling allegories that burrow down into the state of the world and the contradictions of human nature. The range of themes, ideas, forms, and sensations that he has explored through his collection, assembly, and modification of objects is astounding. And yet, no matter how dark the subject, he adheres to his humanist faith and never loses his questioning spirit or his interest in people-their beliefs, rituals, images, and stories producing work that simultaneously mirrors and transforms the real world”.

Estos tres capítulos se corresponden con los capítulos "Intermediality and cognitive semiotics: foundations for a methodological proposal", "Between words and paintings: iconotext and ekphrasis in Spanish Modernity" y "Between text and image: A brief perspective on adaptation", pertenecientes al libro de Asun López-Varela Azcárate y Luis Martínez-Falero Intermedial Agencies. The Crucial Role of the Arts in Shaping Media Dynamics, que será publicado por la editorial inglesa Routledge en septiembre de 2025. Las referencias bibliográficas se corresponden con la redacción en inglés.

The practice of making found footage films and compilation documentaries from archival material has been widespread in Europe and the USA for some time, but research into these cinematic practices in Japan often leads to a deafening silence and a dead end. This essay constitutes a preliminary exploration into the development, or absence thereof, of this captivating field in Japan, whilst concurrently highlighting two works produced in the archipelago that can be categorised as archival film practices. The term 'archival film practices' is employed here as an umbrella term denoting a constellation formed by found footage documentaries, compilation documentaries, recycle cinema and collage films. The present essay is also intended to stimulate new studies and research on the subject.
This is an unpublished paper.

İsrail toplumunun oluşumu, iç dinamikleri ve kimliği, kuruluşundan bu yana devam eden bölgesel çatışmalarla, özellikle de Arap-İsrail ve İsrail-Filistin çatışmalarıyla ayrılmaz bir şekilde bağlantılıdır ve bu çatışmalar tarafından derinden şekillendirilmiştir.1 Bu ilişki tek yönlü değildir; İsrail'in toplumsal yapısı, kültürel değerleri ve ideolojik akımları da ülkenin askeri duruşunu, stratejilerini ve çatışmalara katılımını etkilemektedir. Bu etkileşimler karmaşık, çok katmanlıdır ve İsrail'in hem iç politikasını hem de dış ilişkilerini anlamak için kritik öneme sahiptir. Bölgesel istikrar, İsrail politikaları ve gelecekteki çatışma yörüngelerinin analizi için bu dinamiklerin anlaşılması hayati önem taşımaktadır.4 İsrail'in sürekli bir çatışma ortamında var olması, toplumun militarizasyonundan siyasi söylemlerine, kültürel ifadelerinden kimlik tanımlamalarına kadar her alanda derin izler bırakmıştır.