A Return of the Image
Joanna Zylinka
3/10/2025
OVER Journal
#5
2
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Article
An essay on the ontology of the image today
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Written by a theorist-practitioner, the essay features several images by the author. Rather than serving as illustrations of any specific points made in the text, they offer an alternative mode of thinking with and through the image today. For more information on the projects, see: joannazylinska.net and IG @joanna.zylinska
In our contemporary media landscape, images are everywhere, from the mobile devices in our hands to the large screens in our urban spaces. Far from being mere illustrations of ideas or texts, images are asserting themselves as central mediators of perception and communication today. We could go so far as to suggest that, after centuries of dominance by writing and print, the image is returning as a primary mode of our engagement with the world. With this, we are entering a new cognitive ecology in which images are becoming fundamental to how knowledge is produced and shared...Read the full article in the printed issue. Get OVER Journal 5
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About
Joanna Zylinka
Joanna Zylinska is a writer, artist, curator, and Professor of Media Philosophy + Critical Digital Practice at King’s College London. She is an author of a number of books, including The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future Between the Eye and AI (MIT Press, 2023), AI Art: Machine Visions and Warped Dreams (Open Humanities Press, 2020), and Nonhuman Photography (MIT Press, 2017). Her art practice involves experimenting with different kinds of image-based media. She is currently researching perception and cognition as boundary zones between human and machine intelligence, while trying to map out scenarios for alternative futures.
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