Abstract
“Machine vision” is not an invention of the digital age, it dates back to the invention of the photographic and filmic machine of vision where images are recorded automatically, and it is logical to think that, at some point, these machines will no longer need us to function or to look at their images or data. Already in the 1920s, experimental filmmaker Dziga Vertov imagined mechanical kino-eyes not only replacing human eyes but becoming autonomous. In this well-known passage from his Kinok manifestos Vertov lends his voice to such a camera-robot:
Note: An earlier version of this text, entitled “The Future Evolution of the Image” was published in The Evolution of the Image: Political Action and the Digital Self, edited by Marco Bohr and Basia Sliwinska (London: Routledge (March 2018), 131–143. The notion of the image as a sensus communis and the final passage on the Martian image onEarth is a glimpse on the authors’ upcoming book, COMMON IMAGE. Towards a Larger Than Human Communism (forthcoming November 2021).
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Hoelzl, I., Marie, R. (2021). The Martian Image (On Earth). In: Purgar, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Image Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71830-5_14
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