Techniques of Ideation/Photographic Difference

The project is based on the hypothesis that there is an inner relationship between media technologies, thinking, and action. The project develops a theoretical approach that conceives of the media as "techniques of ideation", that is, as different ways of "thinking" and relating to the world. Understanding the media technologies as techniques of ideation requires that we replace the representational frame of explanation that has held sway since the time of René Descartes. In other words, mediation will no t be explained in terms of representation, reproduction, coincidence, or matching. Rather, the approach is informed by a certain kind of phenomenology. More precisely, the approach is informed by thinkers such as Ernst Cassirer, and more recently, Don Ihd e. What these thinkers have in common is that the "technological" aspects of the mediation process is not understood as foreign to human nature. Thus, both thinkers contribute to undermine the longstanding gap between the "two cultures" of C. P. Snow, nam ely, the gap between the Natural Sciences and the Humanities. The project especially focuses on one particular "technique of ideation", namely photography.