Geography Institute of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires on December 6th and 7th, organized by Dr. Carla Lois and Dr. Marina Rieznik (projet ANR BDL)
Marina Rieznik (Conicet, UBA& UNQ, Argentine, membre du projet ANR BDL) nous adresse la présentation du Worshop qu’elle organise avec Carla Lois à l’Universidad de Buenos Aires : “The place of images in the production, circulation, and teaching of scientific knowledge is being revisited from various disciplines-history of art, geography and architecture such as biology, neurosciences,geography and meteorology, among many others. On the one hand, there is arevalidation of the image as a device for thinking. On the other hand, there isa revalidation for the “illustration” genre that until recentlyseemed limited to decorating text without fulfilling any specific cognitivefunction.
The Grupo de Historia y Epistemología de las Cartografías e Imágenes Técnicas [Group of History and Epistemology of the Cartographies and TechnicalImages] (https://ghecitffyluba.wixsite.com/misitio) gathers an interdisciplinary group of researchers that, in this workshop, intends to debate the nature and the functioning mechanisms of scientific illustrations as “images”. From the complexity of the senses involved in the concept of image, issues arise that cross diverse practices, both scientific and artistic: for example, Francastel defends the existence of a “plastic language” that expresses a specific form of thought irreducible to others, manifested in an activity both intellectual andmanual, and a production of objects in which the perceived, the real and the imaginary intersect. More recently, Bredekamp has stated that “the image[…] is an active means of thinking”. On the other, it is unavoidable to investigate the link between the image and visuality (with the potential to generate modes of visualization), both in its generation and in the different ways of expression that enable its first circulation and its subsequent diffusion.
It is assumed as a starting point that, in general, the images of science – or scientific images – are considered the technical images par excellence: sometimes this conception is based on the premise that many of them they are generated by apparatuses (being the paradigmatic case the photography). However, from our perspective, one of the elements that defines the technical nature of images is specific a way of thinking that articulates different languages and degrees of abstraction. Artists and scholar from differentdisciplines will discuss these topics by analizing specific study-cases”.
