Cluster 3: Pictorial Knowledge and Social Meaning [Bildwissen und sozialer Sinn]

Prof. Dr. Cornelia Bohn (University Lucerne), Michael Hagner (ETH Zurich) 

Research Cooperation University of Basel, University of Lucerne, ETH Zürich, NCCR Iconic Criticism (Basel), 1.10.2009-30.0.2013. 

This cluster studies the way in which images are involved in the creation of social meaning and conversely, how social meaning is related to the production of images. Closely connected to this is the question of how the relationship between image and knowledge may be defined. We assume that image practices – including the generation and interpretation of images, as well as the pictorial struc­turing of behaviour and cognition – always have to do with perception as a physiologi­cal operation and at the same time also represent the result of experience, judgement, conventions, rules, and spontaneous intuitions. A series of questions thus arises: how does the genesis and comprehension of images, on the one hand, and a similar perceptual experience of images on the other develop together? How does the meaning and knowledge of an image help to turn an epistemic object into a stable entity? If knowledge of images is generated and estab­lished as a binding knowledge beyond all propositional articulation, the issue then is how this systematic problem is seen in specific historical constellations of cognition, debated and approached or "solved" in different social, media-based, and cultural contexts?