The Social Function and Value of Digital Images: Exploring Visual Meaning Today
The Social Function and Value of Digital Images: Exploring Visual Meaning Today

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I will propose four distinct social functions and values which constitute digital images today, understood as icons. Furthermore, I will consider the development of the digital image’s particular way of signifying, taking into account the historical transformations of both social history and media history. In the first place, I will address the relation between these technological developments with the historical transformation of our gaze, understood as a collective and embodied act of interpreting visual meaning. In this sense, the history of images becomes entangled with the history of our bodies in an individual and collective manner. In the second place, making use of Vilém Flusser’s previous distinction, I will classify digital images into two categories – reproductive and productive, according to their way of signifying. I will outline the features which characterize these two types of images and provide specific examples to support this classification. In this sense, both artistic and scientific digital images are taken into account to analyse how they produce and reproduce meaningful content. Finally, I will conclude by laying out four functions and values digital images display today as a consequence of our gaze’s transformation. I believe that to understand how images signify today means to understand the effects of these technological and social changes which lead to the development of the digital image’s new features.

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