Departing from the “scientific image”, the three sessions of this semester will focus on the function of the image and its transformation as a resource in visualization, translation, control, manipulation and commodification. These functions, linked variably through history with knowledge production, expanded into fields as diverse as landscape painting, brain visualization, documentary film, and forensic television.

Starting in the first session with a focus on the scientific image’s multiple functions (data visualization, diagrammatization, on-screen  manipulation), the second and third sessions will look firstly at a genealogy of the conceptualization of the functions of the image across the fields mentioned above, while the final session will explore the crossmedial concretizations of these conceptualized functions including between film, television, photography, satellite imaging, etc.