How Images Think

by Ron Burnett
2004, Cambridge, MIT Press,
Illus. B/w, 253 pp.
ISBN 0-262-02549-3

Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
pepperell@ntlworld.com

I have learnt to be wary of books containing a dubious explanatory How in their title. Igor Aleksander’s How to Build a Mind and Rusiko Bourtchouladze’s Memories Are Made of This: How Memory Works in Humans and Animals are recent examples[1]. In How Images Think, Ron Burnett makes the case that emerging modes of collaboration between humans and machines — such as remote co-working, peer-to-peer communication, and networked musical composition — mean human intelligence has become a distributed phenomena whereas once it was confined to individual sentient beings. With special reference to the generation and reception of images, he argues the very technology that sustains these new kinds of distributed activity itself gains a kind of intelligent status. Hence, technologies in general, and images in particular, can be regarded as having cognitive attributes, such that: "images turn into intelligent arbiters of the relationships humans have with their mechanical creations and with each other." (p. 221)

Starting the book with a discussion of some of his own photographs, Burnett makes the case that images in general are seen, not as blank records of optical events, but as sites of ambiguity and reinterpretation. Images are a primal constituent of the very act of seeing, and seeing images is always accompanied by the conjuring up of some imaginative counter-image. Pictures of historical events, such as the concentration camps of Auschwitz, endure a kind of cultural processing which ultimately renders them "virtual", insofar as they become material supports for an almost entirely subjective experience. Developing this line of argument through a wide-ranging discussion of consciousness, visualization, and what he refers to as "image-worlds", he reaches the point where images appear to transcend the subject/object distinction between viewer and viewed. Here he grants images the attribute of subjectivity, and in making a doubtful separation between objects and images, states, "… whereas [objects have] an existence independent of the observer, the [image] is inevitably bound to the subjective space of viewing and interaction." (p. 54). This of course implies that our perception of objects is not likewise subjective, thus perpetuating a kind of naïve realism.

Yet, while we might follow Burnett in granting technologies a certain cognitive function it would be far more contentious to make the further claim that such images or devices are ‘self-conscious’ in the sense we normally attribute to each other. In other words, for images to truly think they would have to enjoy some subjective sensibility — some knowledge of their own existence in the world and their relation to other such self-conscious entities. Since Burnett cannot claim this, he is forced continually to row back from his title, pointing out that in fact images do not think, but are merely part of the circulation of cognitive activity…

"… one can begin to talk about How Images Think, not literally of course, but as a function of an engagement that will not succeed without the agreement of all sides to the exchange." (p. 55).

…or that the ‘thinking’ in question is in fact a kind of distributed intelligence…

"The intersections of human creativity, work, and connectivity are spreading intelligence through the use of mediated devices and images…The outcome of these activities is that humans are now communicating in ways that redefine the meaning of subjectivity. It is not so much the case that images per se are thinking as it is the case that intelligence is no longer solely the domain of sentient beings." (p. 221)

The clarity of the distinction between images seen as an embodiment of extended human cognition (which could equally be claimed of all human artifacts) and images as actual thinking things should be central to this book, but is largely lost. While the latter is a fascinating an vital question, the former is not much more than a contemporary recontextualization of Marshall McLuhan’s earlier idea that new technologies act to extend human cognition into the realm of media exchange [2].

Persuasive as the book is in sustaining its actually quite modest thesis, it has some aggravating habits. For one, Burnett is prone to making ambitious statements that are supported only by the citation of a complete work, or sometimes two or more complete works. In the worst cases these citations merely cap off a list of speculations, as though their inclusion conferred an otherwise absent authority. Speaking of one of his own photographs he writes:

"Did I ‘create’ it, or is it just a snapshot? Whose voice is dominant here and how can it be discerned from the photograph? What is legible and what is not (Tyler 1987)?" (p. 31)

Although How Images Think would make a useful undergraduate text for media, technology, and visual culture students (and seems to have been written with that market in mind), this way of applying supporting evidence does not set a good example. Almost as annoying is the inclusion of chunks of sidebar text, which can work well in textbooks and manuals, but utterly fails when seemingly random and excessively long, as they are here (sometimes occupying more space that the body text itself). And despite the glossy reflective jacket, the rather poor internal production quality smacks of print-on-demand on laser copier paper, the images being especially poorly served, a shame given the subject matter of the book.

I do, however, welcome How Images Think as a useful contribution to the emerging debate about art and consciousness. Burnett’s book is part of a growing tendency which treats human culture, technology and experience as being irrevocably continuous, and seeks to integrate the findings of the cognitive sciences, art history, and cultural theory into a richer model of the human condition. Given the ambitious scale of such a project it almost inevitably falls short in its execution, but even in doing this it reaffirms that some progress is being made.

[1] Igor Aleksander’s How to Build a Mind and Rusiko Bourtchouladze’s Memories Are Made of This: How Memory Works in Humans and Animals were reviewed in Leonardo Reviews in September 2001 and October 2003 respectively.

[2] McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill.