Organizer: Bent Fausing, INSS, in collaboration with the Department. For Visual Design and the PhD School, KADK, and the Center for Advanced Studies, AAU.

Images multiply rapidly in these years as apps, tablets, social media, selfies, GPS, drones, visualizations in science, not least, medicine, etc. What an image is very dynamic and very moving at this time. The conference will focus these changes – and try to see if there is still something that can be assembled to a characteristic of What is an Image?

The tradition is in all likelihood related to the these positions and to the images know. There has always been an ambivalence to images, even in the form of prohibition of images and iconoclasm. is it that so dangerous at the images? And are they still dangerous even though we upload billions of images to Instagram and Facebook every day? Or we simply snap them quickly to a Snap-chat? Luther was not against images as such, he was just against them that us at the heart. But we are still part of a culture with an ambivalent relation to images, even the pictures we speak and write. Our language is developed from primarily visual sightseeing, and we form constantly metaphors and symbols with our language.

Furthermore images work both on the internal, mental level and on the external, social level. The one the internal (in memories, dreams, fantasies and as psychosomatic signs) influence and intervene in the other working on the external level. The mix is part of the image as such, but also a growing factor in modern images in bringing the internal rooms into the public rooms, and vice versa. But the modern devices also bring the ‘instruments’ closer to the body and the mental rhythms.

Images can provide both an overview and insight, but also the opposite. This ambivalence has become an even bigger part of the nature of the image, What is an Image? Today we kill for an image, seen from afar on a screen and captured by a drone. The time also asks: Should it be big data or single data leads our observations and analyzes? What will the images us and what we will use the pictures? Now as before.

At the conference, we have three prominent keynote speakers: Professor James Elkins, University of Chicago, Professor Lev Manovich, CUNY, New York and Professor Joanna Zylinska, Goldsmiths / University of London. In addition a number of other lecturers and presenters of high professional caliber.

There will later be notified about registration and how to do it and how much it costs. The conference will be held in English.

Questions can be directed to Bent Fausing, fausing@hum.ku.dk

“Images are the currency of our soul” (Antonio R. Damasio)