Alberto J. L. Carrillo Canán
Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico
Alberto Carrillo studied philosophy with Ernst Tugendhat and Michael Theunissen and received his Ph.D. in 1994 at the Freie Universität in Berlin. From 1994 to 1997 he taught courses at the philosophical Institute of the FU-Berlin. In 1998, he accepted a post as professor of philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico. His main areas of research are history of science, aesthetics, and philosophy of technology. He is also a member of Sistema Nacional de Investigadores on the highest level (3).
Articles of Alberto J. L. Carrillo Canán
Bazin, Flusser y la Estética de la fotografia / Bazin, Flusser and the Aesthetics of Photography
Both the film theoretician Bazin and the philosopher of photography Flusser follow a well-known tradition according to which aesthetic experience belongs in the realm of the extraordinary. In this way, that which makes a photograph an aesthetic object is its link to the extraordinary. Nevertheless, Flusser deals with photography within the frame of a general theory concerning technical images. Such images have, according to him, a quantitative structure. Consequently, the extraordinary character of photography would vary in a quantitative way. Furthermore, again according to Flusser, there is a reversal of meaning taking place within the realm of technical images: the technical image is existentially meaningful in itself, not because of what it represents. So, in the case of photography the meaning vector does not point to the world but to the image itself: the image is real, not its object. Of course, this idea implies a complete break with Bazin’s ontology of the photographic image. According to Bazin the image and its object share the same nature, the way a fingerprint does. Photographs, furthermore, awaken our admiration for the object, and are mostly used only for that.
McLuhan, Flusser, and the Mediatic Approach to Mind
The following text aims at reconstructing and comparing two paramount theories of the mind as historical product of the increasing predominance of media. Marshall McLuhan and Vilém Flusser both develop a theory of media, setting out, however, from very different points of departure. McLuhan tends to stress media in general, whereas Flusser insists on the importance of the predominant codes of communication. In spite of this, their theories show striking similarities. The deeper coincidence between McLuhan and Flusser lies in conceiving of existence and consciousness as formed or determined by the media. Another salient similarity can be detected in the definition of three great ages of human history, brought about by significant transformations in communication.
Deception and the “Magic” of “Technical Images” According to Flusser
Flusser’s theory of communication addresses the modern images – “technical images” – in the context of a general theory of deception generated by the different communication codes. “Technical images,” as the dominant communication code, imply, according to Flusser, a retrieval of magical forms of consciousness. Such a retrieval seems to be necessary as a result of that what McLuhan would term the overheating of the alphabet technology: lineal codes in their most salient form, namely scientific texts, do not offer any existential meaning, requiring a reversal to magical consciousness fostered by images.