Flusser

Yesterday, after many years, I finally went into the village center of Roubion. Vilém Flusser lived here for many years. I quoted his books often in my seminars and used them as a basis for discussion. Especially his philosophy of photography. Flusser is a wild theorist. He wrote much about images, media, language, technology, signs, history… It seems to me he kept thinking about how thinking works. How do words and images arise in our heads, and how much does this have to do with technology, for example photography or digital media? He speaks of the universe of technical images.

Imagination

Our thinking often moves in images of the imagination… A medium corresponds to them: when we communicate, we use language, text, images, photography, film, sculpture—in short, media, technical and artistic, scientific and fictional. A technique always underlies these media. Writing and drawing, printing, an algorithm, digital representation, and so on. How is this connected? Our thinking, the media, and their technical conditions? How does our thinking change technology (progress), and how does technology change the production of new media? And how do these new media in turn change our thinking?

This whole process is not clear at all, and anyone who says he or she has understood it has, basically, not even seen the problem yet. Flusser is always alive in his thinking; he has a deep historical dimension, a great understanding of technology; he understands the dynamics of media use and the effects on society. His philosophy attempts to grasp the core of human thinking technically, semiotically, and historically. This is an incredible project. It is not modest, nor without contradictions.

For me, Flusser was always an inspiration, but at the same time something was always missing. His thinking is fundamentally materialistic. His philosophy is one of the most exciting in semiotics and media theory. He sometimes speaks of a historical consciousness and a magical one. He always speaks about this very abstractly. He is not a theorist of consciousness. His world is technical. It is important to read him to understand our time. But personally, I am now concerned with other thoughts.

Anyone now in the mood for Flusser can find more here… https://www.flusserstudies.net/