黃冠華

Guan-Hua Huang

Flusser、技術圖像、技術想像、程式化、裝置

apparatus, Flusser, programming, technical image, techno-imagination

Vilém Flusser在媒介發展史中所宣稱的零維技術圖像世界，已經隨著當代數位媒介技術的高度發展而浮現。本文聚焦於此一媒介技術的新階段，試圖從Flusser的攝影哲學與媒介理論探索技術圖像與技術想像之關係，進而凸顯兩者如何影響著數位趨勢下新的攝影實踐以及影像思考。相對於代表再現觀點的傳統影像，Flusser的技術圖像及其相關的裝置與程式化等概念開啟了運算的影像思考，並將影像視為裝置程式化投射的結果。

同時，技術想像的概念則是人類為了回應新形式的影像媒介之自動化技術條件下，必須開展出的新想像能力。在人類社會愈來愈仰賴裝置程式化與自動化的數位技術時代，本文除了在理論上揭示Flusser技術圖像思考的重要性，更透過不同影像範例的分析來印證新的技術想像既是一種對抗裝置的批判性能力，更能夠以創意的姿態而製作出資訊學上預期不到的計算影像。終究，在無可避免的人機關係裡，技術圖像與技術想像之概念指向了新的人類視域之可能性。

Contemporary digital technology has brought forth Flusser’s universe of technical images, designating the zero-dimensional level in his ladder of abstraction through media history. For Flusser, this alternative world of images emerging from digital apparatuses consists of nothing but abstract dot elements or pixels. Thus, the new status of images becomes a movement from the abstract to the concrete, as seen in the simulation process of whirling points into images in the film “Simone.” When Flusser developed his idea of technical images forty years ago, he did not foresee the extent to which image production would evolve. However, his visionary thinking on digital computation has almost been realized in today’s social media practices.

This paper mainly explores Flusser’s critical thinking on the ontological and epistemological status of technical images and their impact on shaping the production and consumption of signification in this world of digital apparition. The relationship between technical images and techno-imagination is further examined to understand how both concepts change our photographic practices and perception of the world. Lastly, we analyze several photographic and simulated images to demonstrate that Flusser’s theory is helpful for present-day discussions about digital and algorithmic cultures. Of particular importance is his suggestion to respond critically and creatively in this new stage of media development.

In contrast to traditional images, which are valued by social and cultural contexts in our reality, the concept of technical images denotes images produced by apparatuses designated to create information, thus opening a radically new view of the gesture of image-making that is different from purely representational interpretation. Although traditional and technical images are not entirely disconnected, the emergence of the latter indicates a post-historical phase in which humans’ relationship to reality is increasingly conditioned by embedded codification of apparatuses, such as photography, film, video, TV, and computers. In this sense, Flusser had no interest in analyzing the aesthetic style or meaning of any particular photographic image, rather but highlighted the computational aspect that regards surface-like images as programmed projections. In Flusser’s theoretical deployment, technical images, along with their relevant concepts of apparatus and programming, constitute the totalitarianism of apparatus, in which its automatic operation is invisible and imperceptible to us. Our habitual engagement with photographs - absorbing, sharing, and liking - may be more easily manipulated or controlled by the programs of cameras, machines, and algorithms of social media and Internet advertising, which serve content they expect viewers to like. Because there is no access to the programming of image production and circulation, the flood of images enabled by the massification of black boxes in Facebook, Instagram, or Google results in the entire apparatus culture and all its totalitarian tendencies that Flusser warned us about.

Through the interoperability of apparatuses, our societies are becoming increasingly automated. One of Flusser’s theoretical projects is devoted to rethinking freedom in the age of programming, and his approach to the notion of freedom was indebted to information theory and thermodynamics. Instead of focusing on the traditional senses of free will and self-determination or the form of pre-determined options that consumers may choose freely in the market, Flusser’s expression of freedom is, in the sense of informatics, to produce new information, both unexpected and improbable information, in a highly computerized society. To invent new information, the faculty of techno-imagination, as a new form of imagination, becomes essential for humans to respond to new technological circumstances. While society at large is indulging in unlimited picture production and consumption, most technical images are consumed uncritically - that is, without using techno-imagination. For Flusser, properly understanding technical images requires techno-imagination, which is both a reading of pictures and an act of creative pictorial invention, bringing out unexpected situations from among a given field of possibilities. This perspective implies a criticism of the representational aspect of technical images, focusing on how techno-imagination calls for scientific texts that make calculated and digital images possible through zero-dimensional numerical operations. Therefore, the new techno-imagination leads to a radical reorientation and redefinition of our way of dealing with pictures and perceiving the world.

How can humans develop the ability to invent true technical images and create unexpected and improbable information? According to Flusser, techno-imagination is still underdeveloped, which explains the relative poverty of such images. Therefore, for an in-depth analysis of true technical images, this paper draws on several examples to reflect on the theoretical significance of techno-imagination, including Müller-Pohle’s “Transformance” and the fractal image of the Mandelbrot set mentioned in Flusser’s oeuvre, as well as recent works by Taiwanese photographer Peng Yihang’s “Dark Light” and the first image of a black hole by the Event Horizon Telescope, EHT. First, in the experimental photography of Müller-Pohle and Peng Yihang, both photographs violate the representational nature of normal photographs. In fact, they are unsharp, blurry, and unrecognizable images. In their specific ways of making, both works reveal the intention of photographers playing against photographic apparatus or programming, so that their unexpected works contribute a critical vision to the normal ones that surround us. Echoing Flusser’s point of view, they do not represent the world, but instead project the raw materials from which photographs are made.

Second, beyond the critical gesture of playing against, there can be the creative one of playing with apparatuses. For instance, the image of the Mandelbrot set on a computer screen is generated by calculations of a fractal equation in abstract patterns of self-similarity that are irrelevant to any concrete and tangible reality. This new and creative visualization serves to bridge the gap between human and conceptual thinking, allowing humans to imagine difficult scientific concepts to advance scientific research. An unexpected technical image consolidates a new form of existence and imagination. That is why Flusser contends that by playing with the apparatus, a new horizon for creativity is opening up.

The first-ever picture of a black hole recently also confirms the creative space for human-apparatus collaboration. This imaging project involves the interoperation of data collection, model building, and algorithmic simulation to transform invisible abstract data into a concretized image. The result even solves a long-standing debate over the measurement of a black hole’s mass.

To conclude, in the society of the proliferation of apparatuses, this paper argues that Flusser’s photographic theory is essential for understanding our increasingly automated media milieu. It also explicates how techno-imagination designates both a critical ability to play against apparatuses and a creative potential to project unexpected and informative calculated images.