At a Distance
Remote, Augmented, Operational Imagery
research: conference
At a Distance
Remote, Augmented, Operational Imagery
Delving into the transformative power of images captured and transmitted across distances, this conference aims to explore the intertwining and implications of aerial vision, tele-vision, and machine-vision technologies that enable remote and augmented viewing, and to analyse how they affect our perception, interaction with, and understanding of the world.
Since the dawn of the 20th century, advancements in mapping, geolocation, and satellite visualization technologies have exerted a significant impact on the way we construct and think about the environment. The advent of aerial vision has deeply modified our understanding of spatial dynamics and territoriality, by providing an unprecedented view of urban and natural landscapes. Aerial imagery not only supports the planning and development of infrastructure, but also fosters a deeper insight of social interactions and power structures within urban contexts.
Viewing from above is further extended in the various forms of prosthetic augmentation and remote viewing that have progressively naturalized the experience of tele-vision, understood not only as a mass medium, constituting a reservoir of imaginaries and symbolic narratives, but in a broader sense, as the experience of seeing at a distance. In fact, since their first implementations in industrial, surveillance, and military practices, real-time televised images have extended technological agency, creating a constant overlap between seeing and foreseeing, between the real and the virtual, the actual and the potential.
More recently, AI-enabled machine vision, by extracting information through the analysis of vast amounts of data, has familiarized us with a non-human eyeless sight, and has pushed further the range of the perceptible, to include realities that are not inherently visual. These image-processing and image-making technologies, so-called operational images, no longer represent the real world but rather act upon it, exerting a remote control over the environment and also directing human action.
How do these images shape our understanding of distance and (tele)presence?
Can aerial vision be understood as a paramount form of operational imagery?
What are the social and political implications of viewing and acting from afar?
Which imaginaries and epistemic frameworks are con- veyed by television media in terms of privacy, surveillance, and human experience?
What ethical considerations arise from the use of machine vision in public and private spaces?
In what ways do these technologies impact environmental monitoring and management?
How might they influence future urban planning and development strategies?
This conference will tackle these questions, by combining contributions from different research fields (aesthetics, media studies, visual culture, and more) to offer a comprehensive exploration of action at a distance.
September 30, 2024
Registration
Welcome address
Matteo Vegetti (USI, SUPSI)
Spatial revolution and space-time compression
Katrin Albrecht (Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences OST)
Precise recording from a safe distance
Emmanuel Alloa (University of Fribourg)
Astronoetics. Philosophy from outer space
COFFEE BREAK
Discussion
LUNCH BREAK
Tommaso Morawski (Sapienza University of Rome)
Medializing the Cosmic Zoom: assembling a new sense of scale, 1957-2005
Ilaria Ampollini (University of Milan)
Walk-in and pocket globes. A (hi)story between immersivity and the "right distance"
Teresa Castro (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III)
Seeing the Ecological Crisis from a Distance
Stefano Catucci (Sapienza University of Rome)
Moon is the Oldest TV (and Earth the Newest)
COFFEE BREAK
Discussion
Final remarks
Program
September 30, 2024
Registration
Welcome address
Matteo Vegetti (USI, SUPSI)
Spatial revolution and space-time compression
Katrin Albrecht (Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences OST)
Precise recording from a safe distance
Emmanuel Alloa (University of Fribourg)
Astronoetics. Philosophy from outer space
COFFEE BREAK
Discussion
LUNCH BREAK
Tommaso Morawski (Sapienza University of Rome)
Medializing the Cosmic Zoom: assembling a new sense of scale, 1957-2005
Ilaria Ampollini (University of Milan)
Walk-in and pocket globes. A (hi)story between immersivity and the "right distance"
Teresa Castro (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III)
Seeing the Ecological Crisis from a Distance
Stefano Catucci (Sapienza University of Rome)
Moon is the Oldest TV (and Earth the Newest)
COFFEE BREAK
Discussion
Final remarks
Abstract and Bio
Katrin Albrecht
Precise recording from a safe distance
Katrin Albrecht is a Swiss architect, researcher, and professor of architectural history and theory at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences OST. After graduating in architecture at the ETH Zurich, she worked in the studios of Hans Kollhoff and Peter Märkli and completed her PhD at the ETH Zurich with a thesis on the architectural work and professional activity of Angiolo Mazzoni. As a postdoc, she researched handbooks of urban design and the Ticinese architect Flora Ruchat-Roncati within the framework of SNSF projects at ETH Zurich. Since 2017, she has been teaching and researching at the ArchitekturWerkstatt in St Gallen (OST). Her current research concerns the interdisciplinary SNSF project “Aerial Spatial Revolution” and industrial workers' dwellings in Eastern Switzerland. Her publications include the monograph Angiolo Mazzoni (2016), the edited volume Manuale zum Städtebau (2017), and essays on Italian and Swiss architecture and urban planning history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Katrin Albrecht is a Swiss architect, researcher, and professor of architectural history and theory at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences OST. After graduating in architecture at the ETH Zurich, she worked in the studios of Hans Kollhoff and Peter Märkli and completed her PhD at the ETH Zurich with a thesis on the architectural work and professional activity of Angiolo Mazzoni. As a postdoc, she researched handbooks of urban design and the Ticinese architect Flora Ruchat-Roncati within the framework of SNSF projects at ETH Zurich. Since 2017, she has been teaching and researching at the ArchitekturWerkstatt in St Gallen (OST). Her current research concerns the interdisciplinary SNSF project “Aerial Spatial Revolution” and industrial workers' dwellings in Eastern Switzerland. Her publications include the monograph Angiolo Mazzoni (2016), the edited volume Manuale zum Städtebau (2017), and essays on Italian and Swiss architecture and urban planning history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Emmanuel Alloa
Astronoetics. Philosophy from outer space
Hans Blumenberg once suggested that we would need to develop, next to the science of aeronautics, a full-fledged ‘astronoetics,’ that is, an epistemology that could accompany the aerospatial revolution. Sputnik, and the first photographs from the moon had a remarkable effect, even in philosophy. Whether it be Heidegger, Levinas, Günther Anders, Lewis Mumford, or Blumenberg himself, philosophers have proposed divergent interpretations of this 'view from above'. Between an overview effect, which in its own way prolongs the ancient motif, that of the detached and objective vision hoped for by the Stoics, and the effect of relativizing one’s earthly perspective, the orbital condition subverts classical paradigms of knowledge and requires us to develop phenomenologies of perception of a new kind.
Emmanuel Alloa is Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He has taught in Paris, Basel, Berkeley, Belo Horizonte, Torino, and Yale. He is currently president of the German Society of Aesthetics (DGÄ) as well as Co-PI of the SNSF-Sinergia Project Aerial Spatial Revolution. Latest books: The Share of Perspective (Routledge, 2024); Attraverso l’immagine (Meltemi, 2024).
Hans Blumenberg once suggested that we would need to develop, next to the science of aeronautics, a full-fledged ‘astronoetics,’ that is, an epistemology that could accompany the aerospatial revolution. Sputnik, and the first photographs from the moon had a remarkable effect, even in philosophy. Whether it be Heidegger, Levinas, Günther Anders, Lewis Mumford, or Blumenberg himself, philosophers have proposed divergent interpretations of this 'view from above'. Between an overview effect, which in its own way prolongs the ancient motif, that of the detached and objective vision hoped for by the Stoics, and the effect of relativizing one’s earthly perspective, the orbital condition subverts classical paradigms of knowledge and requires us to develop phenomenologies of perception of a new kind.
Emmanuel Alloa is Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He has taught in Paris, Basel, Berkeley, Belo Horizonte, Torino, and Yale. He is currently president of the German Society of Aesthetics (DGÄ) as well as Co-PI of the SNSF-Sinergia Project Aerial Spatial Revolution. Latest books: The Share of Perspective (Routledge, 2024); Attraverso l’immagine (Meltemi, 2024).
Ilaria Ampollini
Walk-in and pocket globes. A (hi)story between immersivity and the "right distance"
In 1957, the Italian writer Italo Calvino, in his masterpiece Il Barone Rampante, noted that "anyone who wants to see the earth properly must keep himself at a necessary distance from it". A year later, the German philosopher Hannah Arendt observed, in Vita Activa, that "any decrease of terrestrial distance can be won only at the price of putting a decisive distance between man and earth, of alienating man from his immediate earthly surroundings". The dates of the two writings coincide, obviously not by chance, with the years when the conquest of Space began. But theoretical reflections on the relationship between humanity and the image of our Planet, as well as practical attempts to picture the globe, precede the conquest of Space by centuries. My contribution aims to go back in time and reconstruct the history of these reflections and attempts, seeking to eviscerate the relationship between ‘distant’ and immersive representations. The historical excursus will consider various types of globes: from giant, walk-in globes to pocket globes, from those for educational purposes to those used to embellish the salons of upper-class families. The dialectic between distance and immersion will allow us to reason about the ways in which, from the point of view of the history of science, our Planet has been depicted and experienced, through which practices and in which contexts. Special attention will be devoted to the publics, specialist and non-specialist, who looked at and used these globes.
Ilaria Ampollini is Assistant Professor in History of Science at the Department of Philosophy "Piero Martinetti" (University of Milan) and a member of the AN-ICON research group. Her research interests focus on the history of science and the history of science popularization, with particular reference to the XVIIth and early XIXth century. Her first monograph (Cronaca di una cometa non annunciata. Astronomia e comunicazione della scienza nel Settecento. Rome: Carocci, 2019), focused on a panic episode that occurred in Paris in 1773, generated by a work by the astronomer J. Lalande about the probability of impact between Earth and comets. After working in the field of sociology of science, in 2017 she got a grant (292K) from the Autonomous Province of Trento for a three-year project on the communication of scientific research. In 2020 she obtained a Labex Hastec post-doc scholarship, thanks to which she conducted a research project at the Institut d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine / Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, devoted to science-themed board and card games printed between Eighteenth and Nineteenth century. Her works deal with the history of science popularization, the visual and material history of science and, more in general with the multiple aspects linked to the public dimension of science and the circulation of knowledge.
In 1957, the Italian writer Italo Calvino, in his masterpiece Il Barone Rampante, noted that "anyone who wants to see the earth properly must keep himself at a necessary distance from it". A year later, the German philosopher Hannah Arendt observed, in Vita Activa, that "any decrease of terrestrial distance can be won only at the price of putting a decisive distance between man and earth, of alienating man from his immediate earthly surroundings". The dates of the two writings coincide, obviously not by chance, with the years when the conquest of Space began. But theoretical reflections on the relationship between humanity and the image of our Planet, as well as practical attempts to picture the globe, precede the conquest of Space by centuries. My contribution aims to go back in time and reconstruct the history of these reflections and attempts, seeking to eviscerate the relationship between ‘distant’ and immersive representations. The historical excursus will consider various types of globes: from giant, walk-in globes to pocket globes, from those for educational purposes to those used to embellish the salons of upper-class families. The dialectic between distance and immersion will allow us to reason about the ways in which, from the point of view of the history of science, our Planet has been depicted and experienced, through which practices and in which contexts. Special attention will be devoted to the publics, specialist and non-specialist, who looked at and used these globes.
Ilaria Ampollini is Assistant Professor in History of Science at the Department of Philosophy "Piero Martinetti" (University of Milan) and a member of the AN-ICON research group. Her research interests focus on the history of science and the history of science popularization, with particular reference to the XVIIth and early XIXth century. Her first monograph (Cronaca di una cometa non annunciata. Astronomia e comunicazione della scienza nel Settecento. Rome: Carocci, 2019), focused on a panic episode that occurred in Paris in 1773, generated by a work by the astronomer J. Lalande about the probability of impact between Earth and comets. After working in the field of sociology of science, in 2017 she got a grant (292K) from the Autonomous Province of Trento for a three-year project on the communication of scientific research. In 2020 she obtained a Labex Hastec post-doc scholarship, thanks to which she conducted a research project at the Institut d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine / Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, devoted to science-themed board and card games printed between Eighteenth and Nineteenth century. Her works deal with the history of science popularization, the visual and material history of science and, more in general with the multiple aspects linked to the public dimension of science and the circulation of knowledge.
Teresa Castro
Environmental problems are scale specific and matters of scale are extremely important when it comes to visualizing them. To mention a well-documented example, seeing the earth from above thanks to a number of iconic photographs taken by astronauts in the late 1960s / early 1970s was an important moment in terms of ecological awareness. Today, a wide array of operational images taken from different perspectives (aerial and spatial) allows us to measure and understand the scale and the complexity of the ecological crisis. Focusing on a number of recent examples, and in particular on drone imagery, my paper will explore some of the ethical issues related to environmental images and their point of view.
Teresa Castro is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and a full researcher at the IRCAV and at the Centre Alexandre-Koyré (EHESS, CNRS, MNHN). She has extensively worked on aerial imagery and the mapping impulse in visual culture, as well as on the environmental histories of photography and film. She published La Pensée cartographique des images. Cinéma et culture visuelle (2011) and recently co-edited the dossier “Histoires écologiques de la photographie” for the photography journal Transbordeur (2024).
Environmental problems are scale specific and matters of scale are extremely important when it comes to visualizing them. To mention a well-documented example, seeing the earth from above thanks to a number of iconic photographs taken by astronauts in the late 1960s / early 1970s was an important moment in terms of ecological awareness. Today, a wide array of operational images taken from different perspectives (aerial and spatial) allows us to measure and understand the scale and the complexity of the ecological crisis. Focusing on a number of recent examples, and in particular on drone imagery, my paper will explore some of the ethical issues related to environmental images and their point of view.
Teresa Castro is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and a full researcher at the IRCAV and at the Centre Alexandre-Koyré (EHESS, CNRS, MNHN). She has extensively worked on aerial imagery and the mapping impulse in visual culture, as well as on the environmental histories of photography and film. She published La Pensée cartographique des images. Cinéma et culture visuelle (2011) and recently co-edited the dossier “Histoires écologiques de la photographie” for the photography journal Transbordeur (2024).
Stefano Catucci
Moon is the Oldest TV (and Earth the Newest)
“Moon is the Oldest TV” is the title of a video installation Nam June Paik first presented in 1965. In the same decade, photographs taken by meteorological satellites also made it possible to see the Earth for the first time from outside. Earth thus became a new TV, taking this word literally as ‘remote viewing’ or ‘view at a distance’. Since we could see our home planet as a celestial body floating in a dark space, our understanding of the environment in which we live has changed. Purpose of this paper is to highlight the historical change that occurred during the first Space Age and the paradoxes of its legacy.
Stefano Catucci, Full Professor of Aesthetics, teaches at Sapienza – University of Rome (Faculty of Architecture). Among his recent books: Imparare dalla Luna (Learning from the Moon, Quodlibet 2019), Introduzione a Foucault (Foucaut: an Introduction, Laterza 2024, first released in 2001) and Sul filo. Esercizi di pensiero materiale (On the Wire. Exercises in Material Thinking, Quodlibet 2024).
“Moon is the Oldest TV” is the title of a video installation Nam June Paik first presented in 1965. In the same decade, photographs taken by meteorological satellites also made it possible to see the Earth for the first time from outside. Earth thus became a new TV, taking this word literally as ‘remote viewing’ or ‘view at a distance’. Since we could see our home planet as a celestial body floating in a dark space, our understanding of the environment in which we live has changed. Purpose of this paper is to highlight the historical change that occurred during the first Space Age and the paradoxes of its legacy.
Stefano Catucci, Full Professor of Aesthetics, teaches at Sapienza – University of Rome (Faculty of Architecture). Among his recent books: Imparare dalla Luna (Learning from the Moon, Quodlibet 2019), Introduzione a Foucault (Foucaut: an Introduction, Laterza 2024, first released in 2001) and Sul filo. Esercizi di pensiero materiale (On the Wire. Exercises in Material Thinking, Quodlibet 2024).
Tommaso Morawski
Medializing the Cosmic Zoom: assembling a new sense of scale, 1957-2005
In 1957, the same year as the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik, the Dutch master Kees Boecke published the book “Cosmic View. The universe in 40 jumps”. Designed as a book for schools, its pedagogical aim was to develop a "new sense of scale". Starting from this case study, and tracing the history of the cosmic zoom from “Powers of Ten” (1977), the short film by Charles and Ray Eames, to the advent of Google Earth (2005), the paper aims to reflect on how the technological transformations of the Cosmic View have contributed to reconfiguring our scalar sensitivity.
Tommaso Morawski is currently a postdoctoral researcher at SUPSI within the SNF project “Aerial Spatial Revolution. The conquest of the air and its impact on cities, architecture and territory from the origins of aviation to the present day”. After obtaining his Ph.D. in Philosophy and History of Philosophy at Sapienza – Università di Roma (2017), he carried out research activities at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History (2018-2020; 2023-2024) and the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (2020-2022). He has published the monograph Mappe della ragione. Kant e la medialità dell’immaginazione cartografica (2024) and co-edited with Matteo Vegetti Earthscapes. Le conseguenze della visione della Terra dallo spazio (2023).
In 1957, the same year as the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik, the Dutch master Kees Boecke published the book “Cosmic View. The universe in 40 jumps”. Designed as a book for schools, its pedagogical aim was to develop a "new sense of scale". Starting from this case study, and tracing the history of the cosmic zoom from “Powers of Ten” (1977), the short film by Charles and Ray Eames, to the advent of Google Earth (2005), the paper aims to reflect on how the technological transformations of the Cosmic View have contributed to reconfiguring our scalar sensitivity.
Tommaso Morawski is currently a postdoctoral researcher at SUPSI within the SNF project “Aerial Spatial Revolution. The conquest of the air and its impact on cities, architecture and territory from the origins of aviation to the present day”. After obtaining his Ph.D. in Philosophy and History of Philosophy at Sapienza – Università di Roma (2017), he carried out research activities at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History (2018-2020; 2023-2024) and the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (2020-2022). He has published the monograph Mappe della ragione. Kant e la medialità dell’immaginazione cartografica (2024) and co-edited with Matteo Vegetti Earthscapes. Le conseguenze della visione della Terra dallo spazio (2023).
Matteo Vegetti
Spatial revolution and space-time compression
The talk will initially discuss Carl Schmitt's concept of “Raumrevolution", which underlies the SNF research project entitled ‘Aerial Spatial Revolution. The conquest of the air and its impact on city, architecture and territory from the origins of aviation to present time. Subsequently, the talk will propose an example taken from American geography in the 1940s that focuses on the transformation of spatial scales and distances linked to the rise of aviation. The strategies and effects of time-space compression of distances by aerial media will be shown and critically discussed through the analysis of different artefacts from the period.
Matteo Vegetti is professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Space at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio and professor at Supsi (DACD) of Theories of Space.
He is also a member of the Master in Geopolitics at the Sapienza University of Rome. For many years he was lecturer of Aesthetics at the Politecnico di Milano and from 2019 to 2022 he was visiting professor at the University of Bergamo. Among his works: La fine della storia (Milan 2000), Hegel e i confini dell'Occidente (Naples 2004), Lessico socio-filosofico della città (Varese 2005), Filosofie della metropoli (Ed., Rome, 2009), L'invenzione del globo (Turin 2017), The Global Spatial Revolution (Milan 2022), Earthscapes. Le conseguenze della visione della Terra dal spazio (Ed., with T. Morawsky, Rome, 2023), Corpo, spazio, architettura. Fenomenologia dell’esperienza spaziale (Ed., with F. Bandi, Brescia 2024).
The talk will initially discuss Carl Schmitt's concept of “Raumrevolution", which underlies the SNF research project entitled ‘Aerial Spatial Revolution. The conquest of the air and its impact on city, architecture and territory from the origins of aviation to present time. Subsequently, the talk will propose an example taken from American geography in the 1940s that focuses on the transformation of spatial scales and distances linked to the rise of aviation. The strategies and effects of time-space compression of distances by aerial media will be shown and critically discussed through the analysis of different artefacts from the period.
Matteo Vegetti is professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Space at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio and professor at Supsi (DACD) of Theories of Space.
He is also a member of the Master in Geopolitics at the Sapienza University of Rome. For many years he was lecturer of Aesthetics at the Politecnico di Milano and from 2019 to 2022 he was visiting professor at the University of Bergamo. Among his works: La fine della storia (Milan 2000), Hegel e i confini dell'Occidente (Naples 2004), Lessico socio-filosofico della città (Varese 2005), Filosofie della metropoli (Ed., Rome, 2009), L'invenzione del globo (Turin 2017), The Global Spatial Revolution (Milan 2022), Earthscapes. Le conseguenze della visione della Terra dal spazio (Ed., with T. Morawsky, Rome, 2023), Corpo, spazio, architettura. Fenomenologia dell’esperienza spaziale (Ed., with F. Bandi, Brescia 2024).
Bibliography
Adey, P. 2010. Aerial Life. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Belisle, B. 2023. Depth Effects: Dimensionality from Camera to Computation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Carroli, L. 2018. "Seeing through the Machine: The Visuality of Google Earth." Surveillance & Society 16(1): 61-77. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v16i1.6800
Castro, T. 2011. La Pensée cartographique des images. Cinéma et culture visuelle. Lyon: Aléas.
Catucci, S. 2013. Imparare dalla Luna. Macerata: Quodlibet.
Cosgrove, D. 2001. Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Dorrian, M., and F. Puosin, eds. 2013. Seeing from Above: The Aerial View in Visual Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Farocki, H. 2004. War at a Distance. Translated by M. Turnbull. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz.
Haran, B., and T. Kaur. 2016. "The Impact of Real- time Aerial Surveillance on Urban Policing." Journal of Urban Technology 23(3): 77-93. https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2016.1208777
Lavasseur, J. 2020. Through Astronaut Eyes: Photography from Early Human Spaceflight. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.
Morawski, T., Vegetti, M., eds. 2023. Earthscapes. Le conseguenze della visione della Terra dallo spazio. Roma: Donzelli.
Parikka, J. 2015. A Geology of Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Parikka, J. 2023. Operational Images: From the Visual to the Invisual. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Parks, L. 2005. Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual. Durham: Duke University Press.
Parks, L. 2018. Rethinking Media Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War on Terror. New York and London: Taylor and Francis.
Roseau, N. 2012. Aerocity: Quand l’Avion Fait la Ville. Marseille: Parenthèses.
Vegetti, M. 2017. L’invenzione del globo. Torino: Einaudi.
Virilio, P. 1994. The Vision Machine. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Zylinska, J. 2023. The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future between the Eye and AI. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
research: conference
At a Distance
Remote, Augmented, Operational Imagery
Delving into the transformative power of images captured and transmitted across distances, this conference aims to explore the intertwining and implications of aerial vision, tele-vision, and machine-vision technologies that enable remote and augmented viewing, and to analyse how they affect our perception, interaction with, and understanding of the world.
Since the dawn of the 20th century, advancements in mapping, geolocation, and satellite visualization technologies have exerted a significant impact on the way we construct and think about the environment. The advent of aerial vision has deeply modified our understanding of spatial dynamics and territoriality, by providing an unprecedented view of urban and natural landscapes. Aerial imagery not only supports the planning and development of infrastructure, but also fosters a deeper insight of social interactions and power structures within urban contexts.
Viewing from above is further extended in the various forms of prosthetic augmentation and remote viewing that have progressively naturalized the experience of tele-vision, understood not only as a mass medium, constituting a reservoir of imaginaries and symbolic narratives, but in a broader sense, as the experience of seeing at a distance. In fact, since their first implementations in industrial, surveillance, and military practices, real-time televised images have extended technological agency, creating a constant overlap between seeing and foreseeing, between the real and the virtual, the actual and the potential.
More recently, AI-enabled machine vision, by extracting information through the analysis of vast amounts of data, has familiarized us with a non-human eyeless sight, and has pushed further the range of the perceptible, to include realities that are not inherently visual. These image-processing and image-making technologies, so-called operational images, no longer represent the real world but rather act upon it, exerting a remote control over the environment and also directing human action.
How do these images shape our understanding of distance and (tele)presence?
Can aerial vision be understood as a paramount form of operational imagery?
What are the social and political implications of viewing and acting from afar?
Which imaginaries and epistemic frameworks are con- veyed by television media in terms of privacy, surveillance, and human experience?
What ethical considerations arise from the use of machine vision in public and private spaces?
In what ways do these technologies impact environmental monitoring and management?
How might they influence future urban planning and development strategies?
This conference will tackle these questions, by combining contributions from different research fields (aesthetics, media studies, visual culture, and more) to offer a comprehensive exploration of action at a distance.
Sala Napoleonica
Università degli Studi di Milano
Via Sant'Antonio, 12, 20122 Milano
organized by