Visualizing Punishment in Byzantium: Disseminating Memories of Quelled Revolts before the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The paper aims to examine post-truth, considering its theoretical aspects and following the communication grounds for its appearance. The paper suggests that the Post-truth Era is a result of algorithmically managed social interactions and the automation of communication. The Internet of Things, the ubiquitous media presence and the algorithmic power transform „The Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (Walter Benjamin) into „a Posttruth Era”. In the digital world of the 21st century – a world completely fragmented into data and market segments, the media technologies not only reproduce and re-create reality, but also take the next step and create an entirely new reality. Based on the critical survey of various articles and theoretical approaches the paper identifies the problematic areas that could engender a future discussion, and draw attention to post-truth as a problem and its relevance to the modern world.

Download Full-text

Conclusion

The Origins of Monsters ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691159041.003.0008 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

David Wengrow

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Fourth Century ◽

Emergent Properties ◽

Institutional Dynamics ◽

Mechanical Reproduction ◽

Elite Culture ◽

Specific Distribution ◽

History Of ◽

Definition Of ◽

Visual Record

This book concludes with a discussion of the emergent properties of cognition. It first considers an essay published in 1942 by Rudolph Wittkower entitled “Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters,” which documented the transmission of a particular style of ethnographic description (and depiction) from its earliest known sources in hand-copied manuscripts of the fourth century BC to the age of the printing press. The monsters in question fall mostly under this book's definition of “composites.” The book proceeds by examining how the counterfactual properties of composite figures were offset against two distinct forms of intuitive knowledge, one universal and the other historically contingent. It suggests that the specific distribution of composite figures in the visual record must be situated within the institutional dynamics of elite culture, and within particular strategies of governance that first took root during the Bronze Age, including the dissemination of officially sanctioned images through mechanical reproduction.

Download Full-text