OBSAH



Vizualizace vědění od osvícenství k postmoderně
Barbara Maria Staffordová

Poznání a vizualizace aneb jak myslet očima a rukama
Bruno Latour

Foucaultovo umění vidět
John Rajchman

Zrození moderního umělce a kritika v Čechách: umění, věda a objevení času
Jaroslav Anděl


Recenze
Radim Hladík: Astigmatický pohled na vizuální sociologii

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VIZUALIZACE VĚDĚNÍ OD OSVÍCENSTVÍ K POSTMODERNĚ


Barbara Maria Staffordová

The Visualization of Knowledge
from the Enlightenment to Postmodernism

Abstract

In her article, Barbara M. Stafford argues for the conception of literacy that would encompass visual skills besides the traditional emphasis on verbal competence. Image itself is important, not merely the information it may convey. Moreover, a more exten¬sive notion of education is necessitated by the process of radical perceptual and conceptual changes that have been occurring since the Enlightenment and are all-pervasive in Postmodernism. The new-found power and ubiquity of images needs to be recog¬nized in order to surpass the limitative, yet enduring Platonic distrust in visual culture. Medical, environmental, physical, legal, and other practices have nonetheless profoundly benefited from the technologies of visualization. Examples from the 18th century visual endeavors such as preserving fragmented cultures, exhibi¬tion of diversity, and the externalization of somatic experience show, how images challenge the restrictions of human compre¬hension. With the advent of visual and electronically generated culture, the time is ripe to edify images from their low status. Visual cognition as the crucial element of knowledge should be reflected in a hybrid art-science, public policy, as well as pedagogy.
Keywords: knowledge; visualization; Enlightenment; education



POZNÁNÍ A VIZUALIZACE
ANEB JAK MYSLET OČIMA A RUKAMA

Bruno Latour
Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands

Abstract

Bruno Latour’s article challenges the preconceived notions with which the scholars have approached the Great Divide between prescientific and scientific cultures. In order to account for the immense effects of science and technology without assuming a single grand cause for them, he suggests to focus on many, small unexpected and practical sets of skills to produce images, and to read and write about them. However, only those changes that intervene favorably in the agonistic situation in science should be considered. Crucial in this respect is the emergence of numerous “immutable mobiles” – easily transported, accumulated, combined, yet lasting objects – which made possible the mobilization of new scientific inscriptions and of new ways of looking at and presenting them. They help to constitute an optically consistent visual culture with such technologies as printing press. Their combination on the surface of paper and subsequent mobilization of allies can usher in bureaucratic mode of domination over the world and people in the scientific field. The effects of science and technology thus become a question of a shift in power relations enabled by the manipulation of inscriptions.
Keywords: science; power; technology; writing; visual


ZROZENÍ MODERNÍHO UMĚLCE A KRITIKA V ČECHÁCH: UMĚNÍ, VĚDA A OBJEVENÍ ČASU
Jaroslav Anděl

Birth of the Modern Artist and Critic in the Czech Lands:
Art, Science, and the Discovery of Time

Abstract

In his article, Jaroslav Anděl traces the changes that took place in both art and science in the Czech Lands in the course of the 19th century. In the works and commentaries of such painters as Karel Purkyně or Soběslav Pinkas, he finds early signals of the emergence of modern art. Even the scientific findings of Karel Purkyně’s father, J. E. Purkyně, a renowned natural scientist of his era, divulge links to modern art-forms, such as cinematography. The exchange between art and science is apparent, for example, in the geological inspiration for Adolf Kosárek’s paintings. What is particular about such works and scientific endeavors is their disruption of the static imagery and emphasis on the flow of time. The rise of urbanism and, consequently, of individualism, brought the passing and linear conception of time to the fore. Anděl claims that this “discovery of time” was a crucial element in constituting both the modern artist and critic.
Keywords: art; science; time; visuality


FOUCAULTOVO UMĚNÍ VIDĚT
John Rajchman
Foucault’s Art of Seeing

Abstract

Art of seeing, John Rajchman argues in his essay, was in the center of Michel Foucault’s critical attention as well as practice. Foucault himself was a visual thinker and writer. More importantly, however, the ways in which historically changing vision determines not only what is seen, but what can be seen, are one of his major concerns. Rupture with self-evidences is then the first step one must take to make the invisible – yet not hidden – power visible. The invisibility of power, seen as the invisible light that makes other things visible, is what makes it tolerable. Knowledge and the practice of knowing themselves are constructed by the technology of the visual, such as the different types of spaces that bring about specific visibility. In Foucault’s histories, the prison or the clinic are such spaces that have visualized criminality, sexuality or madness in particular manner. However, problematization of these things needs to go beyond new ways of looking at them and has to question their entire field of vision. This implies that Foucauldian ethics is less concerned with what we do about things themselves, instead, it rather asks how we see them in the first place and how can they be seen differently. It thus requires not to look within us, on the contrary, we should look out, from outside of ourselves.
Keywords: Foucault; visual; seeing; power; space; ethics