Articoli taggati con ‘Imaginary’
The experience of the image in digital media. Reflections on today’s cognitive forms.
A red icon on a blue coloured background. Notification: Tom has shared a picture on your timeline. A ringtone and vibration, the phone’s screen lights up, a message appears: Richard has sent you a picture. The quantity of images that people each second of every day take and spread digitally is an unmeasurable phenomenon. Due to its extraordinary contribution, it is like counting the grains of sand in a desert. Together with the certainly interesting numerical-quantitative data, reflection on the growing meaning of these social activities of taking and sharing images (for the individual as well as the community), is needed. This introduction first of all provides a snapshot of today. A huge number of reports from the most important research institutes tell us about the growing number of uploaded as well as shared images on social networks. (Nielsen, Ericson Consumer Lab, etc.). The reports suggest, more or less intentionally, “how” the analysed data appears in the social contexts by telling us the “quantum” of a given percentage. The “how”, that is the communicative nature of the contemporary digital image, raises many doubts and provides the focus for much research today. The productive growth of images helped by the devices’ dematerialization – a topic worthy of a separate publication – doesn’t just appear as mere quantitative data. It also indicates the cultural, communicative and social growth of activities and processes more and more relevant today. Product together with action.
