RETHINKING THE ICONIC IN THE AGE OF SCREEN TECHNOLOGIES. A BYZANTINE HIEROTOPIC PERSPECTIVE ON SEEING IMAGES AS PRESENCE
RETHINKING THE ICONIC IN THE AGE OF SCREEN TECHNOLOGIES. A BYZANTINE HIEROTOPIC PERSPECTIVE ON SEEING IMAGES AS PRESENCE

Summary/Abstract: This article offers a Byzantine iconographic understanding of creativity to reveal how today’s screen technologies may activate an iconic vision—a feeling of (divine) invisibility as present in the physical space. In using the Byzantine theology of the icon in conjunction with Marion’s phenomenology of images, it outlines a symbolic and realistic mode of seeing that expose the ongoing metaphysical issues of representation. These views on images underline how the illusory aspect of televisual images and their appearance of real-presence can mark the end of metaphysics of presence, and consequently the impossibility of having an iconic experience. In this regard, a parallel is made between Lidov’s hierotopic description of the Hodegetria icon and Verhoeff’s performative inquiry into mobile touch screens to define a iconic (symbolic-realistic) vision that reconsiders the evocative/creative aspect of televisual images.

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