Flusser

Yesterday, after many years, I finally went to the village center of Roubion. Vilém Flusser lived here for many years. I quoted his books a lot in my seminars and used them as a basis for discussion. Especially his philosophy of photography. Flusser is a wild theorist. He wrote a lot about images, media, language, technology, signs, history... It seems to me that he was always thinking about how thinking works. How words and images are created in our heads and how much this has to do with technology, e.g. photography or digital media. He talks about the universe of technical images.

Imagination

Our thinking often moves in images of imagination… A medium corresponds to these: When we communicate, we use language, text, images, photography, film, sculpture, in short, media, technically and artistically, scientifically and fictionally. All of these media are based on a technology. Writing and drawing, printing, an algorithm, digital representation, etc. How are these related? Our thinking, media, and their technical conditions? How does our thinking change technology (progress), and how does technology change the production of new media? And how, in turn, do these new media change our thinking?

This whole process is not at all clear, and anyone who says he or she has understood it has basically not even seen the problem. 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 social effects. His philosophy attempts to grasp the core of human thought technically, semiotically and historically. This is an incredible project. It is not modest, nor is it without contradictions.

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

If you are now in the mood for Flusser, you can find more here... https://www.flusserstudies.net/