The Picture's Image

Medicine and the natural sciences have recently witnessed the emergence of a new version of the iconoclastic controversy. Not only has talk of an image-based medicine or of the imaging of the natural sciences provoked fierce dispute in these fields, but the humanities and social sciences too are increasingly engaging with the function of images in the production and organisation of knowledge. This topic has thus become a paradigmatic field of research for the investigation of very different types of question about the image.

The conference, The Picture's Image. Scientific Visualisation as a Composite examines the role of images in the formation of knowledge. The question has become all the more urgent as with the use of computer calculations, simulation and technically complex methods of data acquisition, knowledge is produced and organized through images that cannot be acquired by the unaided naked eye. Alongside these technical aspects, however, the pictorial-cultural conditions of scientific visualisation also require historical and systematic examination, for media techniques and pictorial practices together form a kind of composite. Within the research process, this composite can be seen as a nodal point at which several elements interact. These include instruments, preparation techniques, social agreement processes, strategies of print reproduction and so on.

The panel includes Olaf Breidbach, Manfred Faßler, Hans Ulrich Reck, Gunnar Schmidt and others.

Concept and co-ordination: Markus Buschhaus, Stefan Ditzen, Inge Hinterwaldner.

The conference has received financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [DFG] and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.