{"id":400418,"date":"2002-09-15T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-09-15T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/?p=400418"},"modified":"2022-06-13T22:25:45","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T21:25:45","slug":"beszelgetes-peternak-miklossal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/kepi-fordulat\/beszelgetes-peternak-miklossal","title":{"rendered":"Conversation with Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pictorial Turn<\/a><\/div>\r\n\t\t
On the margins of a lecture series<\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/td>\r\n\t<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody><\/table>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n
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 <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

J\u00f3zsef M\u00e9lyi: Does the pictorial turn exist?<\/b> <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k<\/b>: Without question, the various types of pictures \u2013 first and foremost, technical \u2013\r\nhave greatly proliferated since previous eras. Earlier, the average man could not meet with such a quantity of\r\npictures over the course of his entire life. The history of the image, or art history, concerns just this:\r\nthat is, how the appearance of images became necessary within various societies, and how they became an\r\nindispensable tool for recognition. Of course, this immediately raised another question: namely, what in fact\r\ndo we refer to as an image? In the course of our collaboration with vision researchers for a year and a half\r\nnow, it has become obvious that they presumably understand something different by the notion of image than do\r\nartists, art historians or theoreticians. For them, the image is complete illusion \u2013 how the brain constructs\r\nwhat is seen. In other words, they in fact do not make a distinction between the sight (what is seen) and the\r\npicture, while those who deal with art clearly separate them from each other. For me, the (visual) image is\r\nthat which we select, separate, delimit from the world of direct vision, a sort of border-concept,\r\nconstruction. Thus, we attribute some kind of meaning to it simply by the fact that a distinction arises\r\nbetween the direct sight-experience and that which we name picture.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

J.M.: For you, then, the pictorial turn refers first to the change in quantity, or rather its\r\nmanageability. Might one say that the turn proceeds from the correlation between the increase in image-\r\nconsumption and the decrease in image-reflection?<\/b><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

M.P.<\/b>: I think it is a bit more complicated than that. The decisive novelty appears with the\r\ntechnical image, primarily with photography. It is unequivocal that in the case of the photo, pictures were\r\nproduced that did not exist earlier, as Fox Talbot said, nature draws itself \u2013 to the extent that we create\r\nthe appropriate physical and chemical conditions. If we successfully execute the scientific experiment, we\r\nwill certainly obtain the result. Thus, in this case, the creative eye, brain, hand have no direct impact on\r\nthe making of the image, as was previously the case. It becomes comprehensible, suddenly graspable and simple\r\nthat the image is a kind of draft, a thing of a conceptual nature. All the additional types of technical\r\nimages from after the first third of the 19th<\/sup> century were born from this model.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

J.M.: Do you consider the history of technical images continuous up to the present?<\/b><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

M.P.<\/b>: In the case of the computer image, there is a split. Here, we are very close to that which in\r\nthe case of earlier image types was unattainable: that we can describe an image exactly. By description, here\r\nI mean that the precise 0-1 sequence can be given, on the basis of which exactly the same image can be\r\ndisplayed, printed, etc. On the monitor, certain cases of visual potentialities appear; this is an interface\r\nthat is visually organised. It aids us in getting an insight into a mass of data that is otherwise\r\ninaccessible through direct experience.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

J.M.: Let us return to the question of what the turn is composed of.<\/b><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

M.P.<\/b>: Perhaps I can put it more simply if I employ the aid of an analogy. We can imagine a\r\nprehistoric condition in which human consciousness began to perceive and process individual groups of sounds\r\nas separated from the homogeneously sounding world. Thus, speech was established as the endpoint of a long\r\nprocess deriving from this. There is also a visual field \u2013 light \u2013 that we sense. We are aware, at least since\r\nNewton, that "pure" white light can truly be reduced to its components; this wave domain that is\r\nperceptible as vision divides into different colours according to what each material absorbs and reflects. The\r\nprocessing of this visual field \u2013 vision \u2013 directly relates to imagery. The phase of today”s image production\r\nis, as it were, "pre-speech", but on the scale of the above example, a condition of post-\r\ndifferentiation of easily identifiable sound groups. When we meet day in day out with images on billboards, on\r\ntelevision, in films, on the computer, on the Internet, that is already a quasi speech-like application of the\r\nimages, while the artistic expression refers rather to musical representation. If we survey the history of the\r\nimage, the phases of increasing consciousness are clearly discernible. Since the discovery of perspective, we\r\nproduce pictures differently, we view pictures differently, and this extends so far that we see the external\r\nworld differently too. The phenomenon of the camera obscura, for instance, was known for a long time before\r\nanyone spoke about the image in connection with the sight revealed through the apparatus. When the presumed\r\nillusion of the sight and of the image began to slide into one another through the perspectival image, it\r\nbecame something of interest for a century, and it began to been regarded as something potentially related to\r\nthe image. We know, as a part of our consciousness, that images can also come into being in a natural way.\r\nThere are three fundamental forms of image-like phenomena: the projected silhouette, the print and the mirror.\r\nSuch phenomena as the camera obscura or the mirage join these. These could have generated the direct\r\nexperience of vision, the comprehension of the environment.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

J.M.: This is an archaeological viewpoint. How does this connect to the pictorial turn?<\/b><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

M.P.<\/b>: The roots of the technical image are found here. An examination of these roots is thus\r\nnecessary so that we can become acquainted with the images through them \u2013 and through the images the world \u2013\r\nthat of why the images have proliferated, why we employ them and for what we can use them. Photography is\r\nlikewise print-like, arising through an application in conjunction with the laws of nature. It has much more\r\nin common with the silhouette, the print or the mirror than, for instance, painting or sculpture. Those who\r\nhave seen such images for the first time have immediately recognised this. The history of the image thus takes\r\nas its starting point the natural phenomena of these three basic types; therefore, it appears that the image\r\nis not exclusively a construction brought into being by man. We must recognise this so that we are better able\r\nto deal with the new technical image types and their propagation. The other proceeds of this truly\r\narchaeological thinking is that it can assist in revealing just how vision and human thinking could have\r\nevolved.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

J.M.: What is the relationship between the history of the image and art history?<\/b><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

M.P.<\/b>: Strangely enough, art history is an earlier discourse, while the history of the image is a\r\nmore recent proposal. In any case, occupation with images belonged almost exclusively to the jurisdiction of\r\nartists for quite some time. Prior to the appearance of technical images, images originating from an artistic\r\ncontext were in the overwhelming majority, and those that were not were incidental. Now this has reversed. The\r\nfirst decisive turn here was also the appearance of perspective; from this point on, the image becomes\r\nincreasingly interesting for science as well, and for the first time a precise method arises for photography\r\nto be employed within this sphere. By today, the situation that has developed is such that science is\r\ncompelled to manifest itself practically exclusively with images. In parallel, it has proved, however, that\r\nthere is not yet the required experience and knowledge of the employment of the image, and thus this must be\r\nobtained from various sources, and recourse must be taken from the experiences of the most accessible artistic\r\ndiscourse.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

J.M.: Nevertheless, it is as if the gesture of the realisation of the image were increasingly\r\ndisappearing from the public sphere. If you watch on TV, let”s say the anti-globalisation demonstrations, you\r\ncan barely find a visual composition \u2013 it seems to be only textual signs that crop up. Earlier, even just 100\r\nyears ago, even in the first half of the 20th<\/sup> century, there surely would have been in such a\r\nmovement a visual element that summarised the thinking of the demonstrators, since there were so many artists\r\nwho would even have taken the risk of punishment for producing images against the state, the church, against\r\npower, authority. Today there is no more real example of this.<\/b><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

M.P.<\/b>: The visual milieu that surrounds us is so very powerful and overgrown that you cannot drown it\r\nout. That is to say, you can only withdraw further: hand-drawn, textual, a bit out of proportion, in a\r\nminimized direction. This is then entirely different from what they are fighting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

J.M.: At the same time, September 11th<\/sup> concerned exactly the power of the image…<\/b><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

M.P.<\/b>: This is an incredible phenomenon that demands prolonged analysis, that characterises the\r\nrelation between reality and the image. B\u00e9la Hamvas spoke about the revealing and recurring hierarchy,\r\nsymptomatic of the man-image relation. There is a sentence in the book he wrote together with Katalin Kem\u00e9ny,\r\nentitled The Revolution in Art<\/i>, that says: Until now, the image has stood before man, and now man\r\nstands before the image. Thus, the hierarchy has turned; the image takes on a higher level of power. It quasi\r\ndetermines the world and reality better than does man. This is in parallel with Orwell”s Big Brother. It is a\r\nfact that this reversed nature has been discerned in the widest variety of ways according to the various\r\nbranches of science. From the end of the forties until the seventies-eighties, there were countless such\r\nrefined observations. The investigations of sociologist Katalin S. Nagy, according to which the TV is placed\r\nin the sacred corner, are also among these types of observations; they merely entered the discourse in a\r\ndifferent way and from another viewpoint. The image quasi oppresses and dramatizes reality; it inverts and\r\ntransforms life. It foists a choreography onto it which could not necessarily be called healthy. It slipped\r\nout of our hands \u2013 becoming a greater power. At the conclusion of his lecture in Budapest in 1990 on the\r\nRomanian Revolution, Vil\u00e9m Flusser stated a very important sentence: that we are still not in possession of\r\nthe philosophy of the image in power. Therefore, we are not able to handle this situation, though it is clear\r\nthat we must somehow find the way. The eleven or so years that have passed since then, and especially\r\nSeptember 11th<\/sup>, demonstrate clearly just how much of a burning question this is. We must handle\r\nthat mass of images that permeates the empty time of our lives, that type of image-dependency by which it is\r\nnot the world that we observe, but our lives inhaled through our window opening onto the world, the\r\ntelevision. This is an extremely important subset of exactly the same topic. Sitting in front of the TV, a\r\npermanent present-tense is generated, in which we have no history, and we do not live our lives. We can make\r\nan estimate of how large a portion of our liveable lives is rendered the victim of this phenomenon. I have a\r\nfavourite quotation from Dostoyevsky”s volume entitled White Nights<\/i>, in which the protagonist strolls\r\nwith a lady and asks her, How is it possible that you have no history? How have you lived until now, if there\r\nis no history? The possibility of individual destiny is lost. Of course, this is operated by a kind of social\r\nrationality because the potentialities of destiny must be fastened down, not to allow that such a mass of\r\ndisturbing stories emerge that might so much as eliminate social security. So long as man sits before the TV,\r\nhe will not make a revolution, he will not steal, he will not murder, he will not misbehave. From another\r\npoint of view, however, one must recognise that there is a correlation between Orwell”s Big Brother, the\r\ntransformation of the image-man relationship, the television set that is placed in the sacred corner, the\r\nRomanian televised revolution, the image in power, the experience of the big show of September 11th\r\n<\/sup>, and between the phenomena, so that a particular image-meditational condition is established. People\r\nhave never watched such a quantity of images, and they have never understood so little. I have an assailable\r\nbut popular example of a dear acquaintance of mine telling me: I saw you on TV. Well, and what did I do?, I\r\nask. He doesn”t remember. The message does not get across. Not even when very close friends tune in and pay\r\nclose attention. There is no message \u2013 just the constitution of that permanent present state, the meditation\r\nbefore the image, though the image has been completely evacuated and does not send any message at all.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

J.M.: Thank you for the discussion.<\/b><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pictorial Turn On the margins of a lecture series   J\u00f3zsef M\u00e9lyi: Does the pictorial turn exist? Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k: Without question, the various types of pictures \u2013 first and foremost, technical \u2013 have greatly proliferated since previous eras. Earlier, the average man could not meet with such a quantity of pictures over the course of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":630411,"parent":400225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tema"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400418"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2023769,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400418\/revisions\/2023769"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}