- This event has passed.
OPERATIONAL IMAGES event at Operativity and Digital Capture Symposium with Jussi Parikka
January 11 @ 10:00 am – 3:00 pm PST
Jussi Parikka will join the Operativity and Digital Capture Symposium at the Culver Center of the Arts on Saturday, January 11, for a discussion of his book Operational Images: From the Visual to the Invisual, at 10:00 a.m. PST.
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. See event website for parking information.
Serving as an extensive guide to a key concept in contemporary art, design, and media theory, Operational Images explores the implications of machine vision and the limits of human agency. Parikka considers the extent to which operational images have pervaded today’s visual culture, outlining how data technologies continue to develop and disrupt our understanding of images beyond representation.
“What is the work of the image in an age of algorithmic production? The very idea of an ‘image’ is bound inextricably with how we make and reproduce them, with who and what interprets them, and for what ends. What happens when images pass beyond representation and even human visual senses? What is visual culture when most optical traces are generated by and for machines to interpret and operationalize? Jussi Parikka’s masterful and concise book is a decisive moment in the study of ‘ways of seeing’ that goes beyond the standard anthropocentric tales of art history. Refreshingly, it forces us to see seeing in a whole new light.”—Benjamin Bratton, University of California, San Diego
“This book offers a crucial study of the ‘operational image,’ revealing the complex relations that shape and surface in images that may not appear to be very interesting. Jussi Parikka’s evocative writing and juggling of topics—from artificial intelligence to remote sensing to lidar—is bound to spark thought and action in media studies and beyond.”—Lisa Parks, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Rich yet understated, Jussi Parikka’s Operational Images encourages reflection on the history and politics of technical image-making more broadly.”—Brooklyn Rail
“One of the first full-length accounts of the precarious status of the image in an age of ubiquitous AI and machine learning.”—Film Quarterly
