Digital as Social: a Study of Digital Image Exchange Practice – МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ ЖУРНАЛ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ

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Elena VIVICH
National Research University Higher School of Economics
20 b, Myasnitskaya st., Moscow, 101000 Russian Federation
PhD Student, School of Philosophy and Culturology
e-mail: evivich@hse.ru
ORCID: 0000-0003-2681-4216

Digital as Social: a Study of Digital Image Exchange Practice

Abstract: The article presents the intermediate results of the study of digital images from a materialistic position. This study is experimental, and is aimed at finding a theoretical apparatus that would help to describe and analyze modern developments in the field of human-machine interfaces. Neurointerfaces, digital prostheses and augmented reality technologies blur the line between the physical and the technological, which, over time, will require a rethinking of ideas not only about technology, but also about sociality and subjectivity. The article contains a definition of a digital image that differs from classical definitions, a characteristic of the social action of image exchange and an attempt to outline the point of transformation of semantic structures in the transition from technical descriptions to hermeneutics of the image. In this case, we are trying to get away from the idea of a technical object as a "black box" with a screen on which images appear, which is becoming more and more obsolete every year. Instead, we propose a processual model, the synchronic slices of which are interpretations in various languages of description. The interrelation of different languages of description through the semantic connections between them determines how the cultural dimension is separated from the technical one. Based on the approaches of media archaeologists and the theory of a technical object by G. Simondon, as well as information from the field of technical sciences to describe digital technologies within a framework of new materialism, we turn to the classical sociology of Giddens in order to describe the social dimension of the technical. The technical device determines social action, entering the socio-cultural world in such a way that the boundaries between culture and technology become indistinguishable. Through the use of an interdisciplinary approach, the technical device is shown as a part and derivative of the sociocultural world. Finally, to describe human perception of an image, we turn to the theories of visual culture and Gadamer's hermeneutics to determine the possibility of a transition from the model we have constructed to classical studies of visuality.

Key words: digital image, social practices, interdisciplinary research, new materialism, semantics, structure, interpretation, visual culture, human-machine interaction.

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For Citation:

Vivich, E. (2022) Digital as Social: a Study of Digital Image Exchange Practices. International Journal of Cultural Research, 2 (47). 120–133. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2022_2_120

DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2022_2_120