New Ways of Operating the Real? Some Aesthetic and Ethical Implications of Touching Images

Abstract

Among the many physical and cultural transformations that come from new technologies and the use of their gadgets, there is one that most arouses our attention and perhaps demands a way to analyse beyond the limits of technophilia or technophobia: the question of gestures. It is in this sense that we choose a particular gesture, from which our discussion will take place: the «touch». Unlike any traditional image, the digital image (from mobile phone screens to Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality features) is a surface that can and should be «touched». From the touch, the dynamics and the difference between the distant and the near seem to operate with unparalleled liveliness compared to our other senses. Although we do not discuss here specifically about the human senses and their limits, it is interesting to note that there seems to be, roughly, a transformation in the very configuration by which the senses would participate in this new mode of accessing an image. From this, we intend to be based mainly on works such as Vilém Flusser’s and his philosophy on gestures, as well as the contributions of Giorgio Agamben and Erwin Straus. All this aims to problematize the following questions: how does the possibility of «touch» change our relationship with the image? To what extent does it transform our experience and contribute to the delimitation of our perception of the «real»? And finally, what are the ethical and even political implications that this new gesture would entail?