Self-Negating Images: Towards An-Iconology

Abstract

Recent developments in image-making techniques have resulted in a drastic blurring of the threshold between the world of the image and the real world. Immersive and interactive virtual environments have enabled the production of pictures that elicit in the perceiver a strong feeling of being incorporated in a new and autonomous world. In doing so, they negate themselves as “images-of-something”, as icons: they are veritable “an-icons”. This kind of picture undermines the mainstream representationalist paradigm of Western image theories: “presentification” rather than representation is at stake here. My paper will address this challenging iconoscape, arguing for the necessity of a specific methodological approach—namely, an-iconology.

Keywords

• an-iconology
• image theory
• media archaeology
• presence
• representation
• immersivity
• interactivity
• avatar
• embodiment
• immediacy