Wars of images
A.A. 2025/2026
Obiettivi formativi
The course will focus on the role of images as historical forces able to articulate and orient the field in which our vision of the world takes shape, so as to single out their impact on the epistemic, political and social sphere. By combining the methodologies and conceptual frameworks of media theory, aesthetics, and visual culture, the course will address the philosophical and biopolitical implications of the contemporary mediascape and in particular of AI-enabled technologies. Presenting key debates and methodological approaches as well as through the in-depth analysis of selected case studies, the course will provide students with a set of tools for examining the role of images and media technologies in shaping cultural hegemony, reframing subjective and intersubjective identities, and influencing public opinion on social and political issues, taking into account the complex set of discursive and bodily practices that underpin our relationship to images in the era of algorithmic media. Students will achieve the capacity to critically read contemporary phenomena as part of a broader history of images and media technologies and to identify the conflicts that, at different epochs, images and media have entailed.
Risultati apprendimento attesi
By the end of the course, students will be able to master and discuss some of the fundamental notions of aesthetics, visual culture, and media theory and to put them into practice for the critical analysis of media and visual and audio-visual documents, in order to identify emerging issues and social and political implications. Having developed the ability to understand the dynamics of power, conflict, and resistance that images and media bear, they will be able to recognise and examine the multi-layered manifestations of social agency expressed in both contemporary mediality and historical processes. By leveraging the set of competences acquired, they will be able to independently assess the complex impact of visual media, especially driven by AI technologies, on global complex dynamics and develop original interpretations.
Periodo: Primo semestre
Modalità di valutazione: Esame
Giudizio di valutazione: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Corso singolo
Questo insegnamento non può essere seguito come corso singolo. Puoi trovare gli insegnamenti disponibili consultando il catalogo corsi singoli.
Programma e organizzazione didattica
Edizione unica
Responsabile
Periodo
Primo semestre
Programma
Prophetic Media. Visualising the Future, Envisioning History
Devoting a special focus to the transformative impact of the ongoing algorithmic revolution, the course will examines how visual media and image-making techniques influence our ability to visualise, predict, and pre-empt reality, particularly in the context of global relations and conflicts.
Media theorist Friedrich Kittler argued that technologies are not merely neutral tools; rather, they define the material foundations and structural limits of human thought, shaping our perception of the world and determining our epistemic frameworks. By selecting, filtering and archiving data, media and technologies set the boundaries of what is visible, thinkable, speakable, and recordable in any given era, and therefore what can be transmitted to the future.
"What remains of people is what media can store and communicate": civilizations do not leave behind what they experienced, but rather what their technical supports were capable of recording and preserving. Within this framework of mutual dependence between technologies and regimes of vision and discourse, algorithmic media bring about a fundamental shift: by replacing archives with datasets and operating through probabilistic models, they not only shape how we are able to record the present and remember the past, but also perform a predictive role, constantly anticipating the time to come. The course will explore the emergence of this tendency by situating it within a broader framework of media as predictive technologies.
Devoting a special focus to the transformative impact of the ongoing algorithmic revolution, the course will examines how visual media and image-making techniques influence our ability to visualise, predict, and pre-empt reality, particularly in the context of global relations and conflicts.
Media theorist Friedrich Kittler argued that technologies are not merely neutral tools; rather, they define the material foundations and structural limits of human thought, shaping our perception of the world and determining our epistemic frameworks. By selecting, filtering and archiving data, media and technologies set the boundaries of what is visible, thinkable, speakable, and recordable in any given era, and therefore what can be transmitted to the future.
"What remains of people is what media can store and communicate": civilizations do not leave behind what they experienced, but rather what their technical supports were capable of recording and preserving. Within this framework of mutual dependence between technologies and regimes of vision and discourse, algorithmic media bring about a fundamental shift: by replacing archives with datasets and operating through probabilistic models, they not only shape how we are able to record the present and remember the past, but also perform a predictive role, constantly anticipating the time to come. The course will explore the emergence of this tendency by situating it within a broader framework of media as predictive technologies.
Prerequisiti
None
Metodi didattici
The course aims to introduce, through lectures, case study presentations, and Q&A sessions, the theoretical framework and key tools of media theory, aesthetics and visual culture for critical analysis. Students will be constantly encouraged to actively contribute and participate in the examination of materials and documents through collective discussion and cooperative interaction tools. The final part of the course will be devoted to practising the critical analysis of media phenomena as well as visual and audio-visual content, through individual and group work in which students will be able to put their acquired skills to the test.
Materiale di riferimento
Attending students (9 CFU):
F. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Stanford University Press, 1999 (passim).
R. Grusin, Premediation: Affect and Mediality after 9/11, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 (to be read in full).
H. Farocki, Phantom Images. Public 29, 2004: 13-22.
T. Paglen, Operational Images. E-Flux 59 (2014).
R. Uliasz, Seeing like an algorithm: Operative images and emergent subjects. AI & Society, 36(4), 2021, 1233-1241.
K. Crawford, V. Joler, Anatomy of an AI system. The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources. (2018) https://anatomyof.ai/
K. Crawford, T. Paglen, Excavating AI. The politics of images in machine learning training sets. September 19 (2019). https://excavating.ai
K. Crawford, V. Joler, Calculating Empires. A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500 (2023) https://calculatingempires.net/
L. Munn, Automation is a Myth. In Materializing Digital Futures: Touch, Movement, Sound and Vision, edited by Toija Cinque and Jordan Beth Vincent. Bloomsbury, 2022.
R. Meyer, Operative Portraits. Or How Our Faces Became Big Data. In Reconfiguring the Portrait, edited by Abe Geil and Tomáš Jirsa, 21-42. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023.
M. Jablonowski, Beyond drone vision: the embodied telepresence of first-person-view drone flight, The Senses and Society, 15:3, 2020, 344-358.
A. Somaini, Algorithmic Images: Artificial Intelligence and Visual Culture. Grey Room 93, 2023: 74-115.
A. Somaini, On the Photographic Status of Images Produced by Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). Philosophy of Photography 13, no. 1, 2022: 153-164.
One book of your choice from the following (to be read in full):
W.J.T. Mitchell, Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
T. Stubblefield, 9/11 and the Visual Culture of Disaster. Indiana University Press, 2015.
A. Bousquet, The Eye of War. Military Perception from the Telescope to the Drone, University Of Minnesota Press, 2018.
Non-attending students (9 CFU) must, in addition to all of the above, choose one book from the following (to be read in full):
N. Mirzoeff, How to See the World. An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and More, Penguin, London, 2017.
F. Zucconi, Displacing Caravaggio: Art, Media, and Humanitarian Visual Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
F. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Stanford University Press, 1999 (passim).
R. Grusin, Premediation: Affect and Mediality after 9/11, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 (to be read in full).
H. Farocki, Phantom Images. Public 29, 2004: 13-22.
T. Paglen, Operational Images. E-Flux 59 (2014).
R. Uliasz, Seeing like an algorithm: Operative images and emergent subjects. AI & Society, 36(4), 2021, 1233-1241.
K. Crawford, V. Joler, Anatomy of an AI system. The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources. (2018) https://anatomyof.ai/
K. Crawford, T. Paglen, Excavating AI. The politics of images in machine learning training sets. September 19 (2019). https://excavating.ai
K. Crawford, V. Joler, Calculating Empires. A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500 (2023) https://calculatingempires.net/
L. Munn, Automation is a Myth. In Materializing Digital Futures: Touch, Movement, Sound and Vision, edited by Toija Cinque and Jordan Beth Vincent. Bloomsbury, 2022.
R. Meyer, Operative Portraits. Or How Our Faces Became Big Data. In Reconfiguring the Portrait, edited by Abe Geil and Tomáš Jirsa, 21-42. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023.
M. Jablonowski, Beyond drone vision: the embodied telepresence of first-person-view drone flight, The Senses and Society, 15:3, 2020, 344-358.
A. Somaini, Algorithmic Images: Artificial Intelligence and Visual Culture. Grey Room 93, 2023: 74-115.
A. Somaini, On the Photographic Status of Images Produced by Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). Philosophy of Photography 13, no. 1, 2022: 153-164.
One book of your choice from the following (to be read in full):
W.J.T. Mitchell, Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
T. Stubblefield, 9/11 and the Visual Culture of Disaster. Indiana University Press, 2015.
A. Bousquet, The Eye of War. Military Perception from the Telescope to the Drone, University Of Minnesota Press, 2018.
Non-attending students (9 CFU) must, in addition to all of the above, choose one book from the following (to be read in full):
N. Mirzoeff, How to See the World. An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and More, Penguin, London, 2017.
F. Zucconi, Displacing Caravaggio: Art, Media, and Humanitarian Visual Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Modalità di verifica dell’apprendimento e criteri di valutazione
For attending students, the overall assessment of the theoretical and applied skills acquired will be based on: a final oral examination focusing on the bibliography and learning materials provided (50%), on the preparation of individual and collective work (30%), and on the active participation during classes (20%). Self-assessment tools will be provided to attending students during the course. For non-attending students, the knowledge and competences developed will be assessed by a final oral examination.
For both attending and non attending students, the final oral exam consists of 20-minute oral discussion, designed to assess the students' understanding of the main concepts introduced during the course, their ability to explain with clarity and to link the different topics and issues addressed, their capacity to analyse case studies with appropriate theoretical tools and critical awareness.
For both attending and non attending students, the final oral exam consists of 20-minute oral discussion, designed to assess the students' understanding of the main concepts introduced during the course, their ability to explain with clarity and to link the different topics and issues addressed, their capacity to analyse case studies with appropriate theoretical tools and critical awareness.
Moduli o unità didattiche
Part A and B
M-FIL/04 - ESTETICA - CFU: 6
Didattica on line: 40 ore
Docente:
Dalmasso Anna Caterina
Part C
M-FIL/04 - ESTETICA - CFU: 3
Didattica on line: 20 ore
Docente:
Dalmasso Anna Caterina
Docente/i
Ricevimento:
giovedì 16.000-18.00
Si prega di contattare la docente per concordare un appuntamento in presenza (campus di via Festa del Perdono) o su Microsoft Teams