The Omran Daqneesh imagery from the streets of Aleppo to international front pages: Testimony, politics and emotions

This article studies the virality and assigned iconicity of visual icons by examining the roles and interplays between photographers and other media actors contributing to early phases of making and sharing the Omran Daqneesh images from Aleppo, 2016. We draw on theoretical frameworks concerning the mobilization of iconic imagery in today’s digitalized and globalized media landscape as well the interpretive continuum of documentary evidence and emotional appeal typically applied to iconic imagery of children. Empirically, we take our point of departure in interviews with photographers, NGO workers, editors and journalists involved in facilitating, producing and initially disseminating the Omran Daqneesh imagery, to explore how – in contrast to the seemingly straightforward communication offered by visual icons – they are in effect the result of an intricate interplay between these actors, which in different ways and for different reasons contribute to spreading the images and determining their significance and meaning.

Mental Imagery and Iconic Imagery: The Art of the Origins between Neuropsychology and Shamanism

L’art pariétal du Paléolithique supérieur présente, à côté d’un extraordinaire répertoire animalier bien diversifié, un grand nombre de signes qui ne trouvent pas d’équivalents dans la perception de la réalité sensible. Tandis que les images des humains ou des créatures mi-humaines mi-animales sont très rares, ces formes aniconiques, souvent géométrisantes et aisément classifiables, sont globalement plus nombreuses que les animaux. Si saisir l’intentionnalité qui a poussé les premiers artistes à peindre sur les parois représente un défi pour nos compétences interprétatives, les « signes » constituent l’aspect le plus énigmatique de ce défi. Il y a trente ans, en 1988, dans la revue Current Anthropology, a été publié un article de James D. Lewis-Williams et Thomas A. Dowson, « The Signs of All Times. Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Paleolithic Art », ouvrant une nouvelle perspective sur l’origine des signes. En appliquant le modèle neuropsychologique à l’imagerie bidimensionnelle de l’art des grottes, il est possible d’identifier à des signes à valeur universelle, selon les auteurs, les apparitions entoptiques présentes, avec leurs diverses modalités combinatoires, dans l’art rupestre de « tous les temps ». Cette interprétation de l’art des sociétés préhistoriques, qui resitue la naissance des images dans les territoires visionnaires des cultures chamaniques, a soulevé en France des perplexités et des polémiques innombrables, parfois acerbes. Il est prioritaire alors de voir si le modèle neuropsychologique est effectivement en mesure d’offrir un cadre explicatif des données archéologiques des grottes ornées et de ses « constructions symboliques », en mesure d’intégrer tous les indices disponibles dans une construction théorique cohérente.

Automatic from the people: Uber’s iconic interface and the automation of sociality

This article undertakes a content analysis of the Uber mobile interface as depicted in a patent application for a process that integrates and automates social media information to match potential UberPool riders. As depicted in the patent application, the Uber interface is a critical locus for incorporating social media information and rendering this information usable and palpable for users. By aligning the Uber interface with the communicative and symbolic richness of iconic imagery, I argue for the Uber interface as a juncture for critical abstractions between the manifestation of social interactions appearing to users on the Uber interface and Uber’s techno-economic motivations to shape, configure and guide user enactment of sociality. By designing for simplicity, the Uber interface abstracts between the push-button ease of undertaking sociality and the need to reflect on circumstances giving rise to these prescribed forms of sociality. Through this viewpoint, I specify abstractions between simplified forms of sociality presented to users and Uber techno-economic motivations configuring interfacial sociality, implicating algorithmic objectivity, connective friending and programmed sociality as unseen forces configuring and prescribing social interactions for user engagement.

Constructing, confirming, and contesting icons: the Alan Kurdi imagery appropriated by #humanitywashedashore, Ai Weiwei, and Charlie Hebdo

This article argues that appropriations are central to the production and reception of visual icons: appropriations are instrumental in iconization processes as they confirm and consolidate the iconic status by recycling the image in question. Moreover, appropriations are vital to their reception as they help shape and delimit the publics and discourses surrounding visual icons. This article draws on existing research on icons and appropriations to develop a theoretical framework for how appropriations construct, confirm, and contest icons and how personification constitutes the main link between icons and their appropriations. Three sets of appropriations are analyzed of the iconic imagery of Alan Kurdi, the refugee boy drowning in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015. First, the numerous appropriations circulated under the Twitter hashtag #humanitywashedashore. Based on genre analysis of these appropriations, two overall modes are singled out: the appropriations decontextualize or recontextualize the figure of Kurdi. The two next analytical cases test the limits of decontextualization and recontextualization: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei decontextualizes the Kurdi imagery in a controversial reenactment, while a series of cartoons by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo inserted the photo into contested contexts to critique why and how this imagery was turned into an icon.

Assemblage and Icon in Perception and Art

In The Problem of Form (1893), the German sculptor Adolf Hildebrand distinguishes categorically between perception obtained from multiple fixations or vantage points (G.: Bewegungsvorstellungen; we call these ‘assemblages’), and from purely ‘iconic’ imagery (G.: Fernbilder). Only the latter he considers properly ‘artistic’. Hildebrand finds the reason for this ontological distinction in the microgenesis of visual awareness. What to make of this? We analyze the various ‘modes of seeing’ in some detail. The conceptual issues involved are fundamental, and relevant to both vision science and the visual arts.