28 April 2023
The Genealogy of Images. From Focillon and Warburg to Computer Vision and Contemporary Semiotics

Maria Giulia Dondero

2 July 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Images from an Exhibition. Inhabiting the world with the stereoscope

Giovanni Fiorentino

12 June 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Faraway, So Close! Bridging distances between Anthropological Philosophy and Media Anthropology

Martino Quadrato

12 June 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
The Automatic Body: a mediarcheological approach

Alice Peli

21 May 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Difficult Heritage: disputed figures in contemporary memorial museums

Giulia Bertolazzi

21 May 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
“Antimonumenta”: artistic practice in feminist Mexico

Francesca Romana Gregori

9 May 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Death and Virtual Mourning. The “Return of the Dead” in Digital Afterlife

Maria Serafini

7 May 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Vierundzwanzig Beine! Carts, chariots, carriages and other (image-)media in Warburg’s Mnemosyne

Katia Mazzucco

16 April 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Education meets Virtual Reality. Reasoning on learning outcomes, inclusion and didactic scenarios

Ilaria Terrenghi

4 April 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Rape or “rape”? Virtual violence and the somatechnical body

Pietro Conte

26 March 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Chiromorphisms. The technical genesis of modern disability

Alessandro Costella

15 February 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
The Obscene Device. Archaeology of Immersive Pornographies

Roberto Malaspina

1 February 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Techniques of Enchantment. Magic and Contemporary Technology

Sofia Pirandello

25 January 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Alternative Worlds – VR without Headsets

Margherita Fontana

11 January 2024
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
A world of imprints. The epistemology of visual evidence in digital and virtual media-ecologies

Rosa Cinelli

21 December 2023
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
FEMINIST HORROR THEORY – Filmic Forms and Female Identity: Rewriting in the Key of Gender

Rossana Galimi

5 December 2023
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
From Photography to Virtual Reality and back again. A conversation with Francesco Jodice

Francesco Jodice

20 November 2023
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Immersed in science

Ilaria Ampollini

9 November 2023
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
The burning gaze. An aesthetics of shame in the age of the virtual

Federica Cavaletti

2 November 2023
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Forms of the intermediary: spatiality and durations between technology and aesthetics

Neda Zanetti

12 October 2023
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Virtualizing Spaces: Immersive and Emersive Images from Home to City.

Fabrizia Bandi

research: Seminar

2022/23 Multisensoriality
104

The Genealogy of Images. From Focillon and Warburg to Computer Vision and Contemporary Semiotics

Maria Giulia Dondero

In this talk I will focus on my current research project (“Towards a Genealogy of Visual Forms: Semiotic and Computer-Assisted Approaches to Large Image Collections”, F.R.S.-FNRS, 2022-2025) on the relation between contemporary approaches in Image Processing and the genealogy of visual forms in art history as conceived of by Aby Warburg (Atlas Mnemosyne, 2012 [1924-1929]) and by Henri Focillon (The Life of Forms in Art, 1992 [1934]).

Firstly, I will briefly recall three ongoing research projects, specifically the Media Visualization project of the Cultural Analytics Lab led by Lev Manovich on visual similarities, the Replica project launched by B. Seguin at the EPFL’s Digital Humanities Lab in Switzerland on migration of motifs, and a recent project held by Leonard Impett on the modelization of gestures in paintings. I’ll try to explain why these projects are unsatisfactory with respect to my project of tracing an innovative genealogy of visual forms. Secondly, I will evaluate how the future of the digital analysis of images may benefit from the ideas underlying the ambitious projects of Warburg and Focillon and from the visual semiotics developed by the structuralist and post-structuralist French School.

Thirdly, I will present my conception of forms and forces in images, with the objective of making continuous bodily gestures analyzable in large collections of paintings and photographs. These propositions are based on a method of image segmentation that finds its roots not only in the French School of Semiotics, especially in the tensive semiotics developed by Jacques Fontanille and Claude Zilberberg (Fontanille and Zilberberg 1998), but also in the philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s work on pictorial diagrams (Deleuze 2003), and in the mathematician René Thom’s idea of conflicting forces in painting (Thom 1983). The theoretical basis of this approach is the structuralism and post-structuralism developed in France since the 1960’s and which investigates how meaning is generated by differences and, most recently, by graduated modulations (see “tensive” semiotics, a development of structuralism in the 90’s and 2000’s.)

research: seminar

The Genealogy of Images. From Focillon and Warburg to Computer Vision and Contemporary Semiotics

Maria Giulia Dondero

In this talk I will focus on my current research project (“Towards a Genealogy of Visual Forms: Semiotic and Computer-Assisted Approaches to Large Image Collections”, F.R.S.-FNRS, 2022-2025) on the relation between contemporary approaches in Image Processing and the genealogy of visual forms in art history as conceived of by Aby Warburg (Atlas Mnemosyne, 2012 [1924-1929]) and by Henri Focillon (The Life of Forms in Art, 1992 [1934]).

Firstly, I will briefly recall three ongoing research projects, specifically the Media Visualization project of the Cultural Analytics Lab led by Lev Manovich on visual similarities, the Replica project launched by B. Seguin at the EPFL’s Digital Humanities Lab in Switzerland on migration of motifs, and a recent project held by Leonard Impett on the modelization of gestures in paintings. I’ll try to explain why these projects are unsatisfactory with respect to my project of tracing an innovative genealogy of visual forms. Secondly, I will evaluate how the future of the digital analysis of images may benefit from the ideas underlying the ambitious projects of Warburg and Focillon and from the visual semiotics developed by the structuralist and post-structuralist French School.

Thirdly, I will present my conception of forms and forces in images, with the objective of making continuous bodily gestures analyzable in large collections of paintings and photographs. These propositions are based on a method of image segmentation that finds its roots not only in the French School of Semiotics, especially in the tensive semiotics developed by Jacques Fontanille and Claude Zilberberg (Fontanille and Zilberberg 1998), but also in the philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s work on pictorial diagrams (Deleuze 2003), and in the mathematician René Thom’s idea of conflicting forces in painting (Thom 1983). The theoretical basis of this approach is the structuralism and post-structuralism developed in France since the 1960’s and which investigates how meaning is generated by differences and, most recently, by graduated modulations (see “tensive” semiotics, a development of structuralism in the 90’s and 2000’s.)

28 April 2023
16:30
18:30

Aula 435

Via Festa del Perdono, Milano

The Genealogy of Images. From Focillon and Warburg to Computer Vision and Contemporary Semiotics
Maria Giulia Dondero
Aula 435
Via Festa del Perdono, Milano
20230428
16:30
18:30