Reading the Figural, or, Philosophy After the New Media

By D. N. Rodowick

In studying the Figural, or, Philosophy after the hot Media D. N. Rodowick applies the idea that of “the figural” to a number of philosophical and aesthetic matters. encouraged by means of the classy philosophy of Jean-François Lyotard, the figural defines a semiotic regime the place the excellence among linguistic and plastic illustration breaks down. This competition, which has been the philosophical beginning of aesthetics because the eighteenth century, has been explicitly challenged by way of the hot digital, televisual, and electronic media. Rodowick—one of the main movie theorists writing today—contemplates this problem, describing and critiquing the recent regime of symptoms and new methods of pondering that such media have inaugurated.

To absolutely understand the emergence of the figural calls for a genealogical critique of the classy, Rodowick claims. looking allies during this attempt to deconstruct the competition of notice and picture and to create new ideas for comprehending the figural, he trips via more than a few philosophical writings: Thierry Kuntzel and Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier on movie thought; Jacques Derrida at the deconstruction of the cultured; Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin at the ancient picture as a utopian strength in images and movie; and Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault at the emergence of the figural as either a semiotic regime and a brand new stratagem of strength coincident with the looks of electronic phenomena and of societies of control.

Scholars of philosophy, movie conception, cultural feedback, new media, and artwork heritage should be drawn to the unique and complex insights present in this e-book.

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For instance, the illustration of constant circulation in either film and video is simply ensured through a linear serialization of frames the place the time and order of presentation are fixed, rendering belief as an job rationalized in keeping with the restrictions of mechanical and digital copy. Even on , the place sorts of fragmentation and discontinuous flow are the norm instead of the exception, the ineluctable temporal flow of the televisual continuum, measured and reproduced through the continuity of the sound tune, guarantees a centralized regulate that orders time and minimizes interactivity. The strength of this acknowledgment can't be neglected, in particular whilst the ruptural capability of figural discourse and different ‘‘hieroglyphic’’ kinds is overemphasized via avatars of ‘‘postmodernism. ’’ without doubt, the movement and dissemination of indicators (above throughout cinematic, televisual, and now electronic media) has develop into the province of the figural. however the in all likelihood disruptive strength of the figural is limited by means of a minimum of 3 determinations. First could be the code of stream itself, with its overdetermined explanation of belief and hassle of person interactivity. moment often is the aid of the ‘‘hieroglyphic’’ photograph within the type of a commodity. for instance, the speeded up ‘‘Eisensteinian’’ montage of the extra unbelievable bank card ads is reworked by way of the ideology it provides in thirty seconds: that during the present country of capitalism, one invests not in issues yet within the strength of limitless trade. The explosion of indicators is the following the worldwide flow of overseas capital itself. 3rd could be the expanding serialization of the viewers, that's, their structure throughout the institutional sorts of broadcasting as an more and more atomized collective. during this recognize, it isn't superb that Magritte’s paintings has been so largely plundered through ads. yet then, it's not relatively a query of robbery. either emerge from a discontinuous chain of occasions that mark the transition to the figural period. The disappearance of designation is the main robust end result of the hot electronic applied sciences. yet what sorts of energy, and what photograph of collective lifestyles, does this occasion augur for the figural period? The sizeable number of expressive types and capacities produced via electronic 6343 Rodowick / examining THE FIGURAL / sheet ninety of 296 Tseng 2001. 6. 26 11:55 seventy two studying the Figural applied sciences is derived from an elemental mathematic expression—the bit—and the technological expression of strength within the figural period is the power to control completely the association of quanta of data. illustration not exists within the experience of exact differences among media. Any signal will be kept digitally and reconstituted in one other shape; hence indexicality isn't any longer the degree of the ‘‘truth’’ of the picture. The figural énoncé is digital; it doesn't unavoidably derive from any earlier lifestyles. cut up from inside of through the noncoincidence of figuration, affirmation, and designation, indicators proliferate in an never-ending temporal movement.

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