Moving Images, Mobile Viewers

Book excerpt: Vision and movement seem to have shifted center stage in modes of experience in the last century: as a result of their joint effect, slow contemplative gazes at static images seem to be increasingly displaced by distracted "vernacular" ways of seeing. Looking out of the window of a speeding car, receiving photographs of Earth from outer space, watching the flickering images of the TV screen, scrolling through a text, zooming in on a location in Google Earth, or sending images via mobile phones or webcams - all these are unique visual experiences that were impossible before various inventions in the 20th century originated completely new kinds of movement. The double meaning of "moving images" is meant to signal the specificality of motion to these imagi(ni)ngs and, at the same time, to express the emotional power of those visual images which are able to transcend the constant stream of images in contemporary perception. (Series: Kultur und Technik. Schriftenreihe des Internationalen Zentrums fur Kultur- und Technikforschung der Universitat Stuttgart - Vol. 20)