Intermediate Images
Keynote talk given at the conference of ISIS (International Society for Intermedial Studies) “Rethinking Intermediality in the Digital Age” organized by the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, between the 24th and 26th of October 2013. (The photos of Joachim Paech illustrating the article were taken by Ágnes Pethő.) Starting from a definition of the word ‘picture’ as a real-world object that shows other objects on its surface as a representation of its image, I propose that the intermediality of pictures of all kinds is only possible through their images, after they have been separated from their material basis or foundation (for example, a painting in its physical reality can never be directly connected with a movie). In all technical reproductions of images, such as printing processes, an image is taken from a negative matrix in order to realize multiple prints of the same representation. The most effective model of this procedure is photography: photographic images can easily be connected with their media forms to produce other, more complex forms, such as magazines, printed books, or films. Intermediate images in the form of matrices – sometimes transparent (e.g. in the light beam of a film projection), sometimes opaque – are required to transform one pictorial media form into another. Finally, for the digital matrix-image, there is no longer any difference between the matrix and the image: the matrix has become its own image, which can be linked to all other media forms.
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