The production: Images are generated through algorithms—a structured sequence of computational operations designed to learn from data, recognize patterns, and produce adaptive outputs.
The initial act of creation no longer requires deep mental envisioning or embodied making.
The workflow emphasizes iteration and batch processing, as the sheer volume of generated files stands in contrast to attentive, evolving creation.
Selection becomes the central task, relying on the ability to compare and curate images—an activity that remains detached from the act of creation itself (and can be offloaded to machines).

The Tool: AI has the potential to be the greatest tool for understanding our material world—a partner in discovery, a magnifier of cognition. It does not merely process data;
it reveals hidden architectures of reality (e.g., protein folding, ...). It is a structure-revealing machine. Patterns emerge where previously there was only noise.
The same system that deepens understanding can also enable us to bypass it: when used solely as an engine of consumption and control, nature, time, and attention are simply fed into the machine. AI becomes a tool for efficiency, optimization, and convenience, replacing curiosity and embodiment.
The body and mind fade while the illusion of human intelligence expands.
Technology is never just a tool; it is a framework for thought.
Inventions such as language, fire, writing, the clock etc. frame human reality—they sculpt how and what we perceive, think, and act.
Just as language provides the words with which we think, each tool reorganizes thinking and action. The grammar of technology becomes the grammar of our culture.
A spreadsheet trains us to think in cells. A camera teaches us to see in frames.
An algorithm functions as a shortcut from structured thought to automated understanding.
There is no neutral tool.

The perception: The Image in the Digital Age is an exploration of perception under conditions of infinite generation and rapid reproduction. In this landscape, images are created algorithmically and endlessly.
What remains is the pure encounter with the visual, the unfolding of meaning through perception, narrative suggestion, and iconography.
The brain gets into a neuro-aesthetic loop.
The brain thinks it’s doing something, but it’s only reacting.
The digital image becomes a looping field of perception. Viewers are drawn into endless streams of generated visuals, each iteration marginally different yet functionally identical.
As Vilém Flusser posits, technical images create a second-order reality—a world mediated by algorithmic and programmable structures. The viewer encounters not the world itself, but curated, generated representations.
Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulation is evident, as generated images replace the real with signs of the real; emotion, memory, and recognition emerge from patterns rather than lived experience.
Bernhard Stiegler’s critique of attention industrialization resonate: the rapid generation of images fragments cognition, producing stimulation without comprehension.
The prefrontal cortex is underutilized in such fast-switching environments. The body memory is underutilized in just visual stimulation.

Biological aspects:
• Dopaminergic Reward Systems
Every switch in the image—especially in high-intensity footage like sports—triggers dopamine micro-releases.
These momentary hits simulate pleasure or engagement, but without any real accomplishment.
The brain thinks it’s doing something, but it’s only reacting.

• Disembodied Stimulation vs. Embodied Cognition
In activities like reading or physical action cognition is embodied—the body and brain co-create meaning.
In contrast, screen-based visual input creates disembodied cognition. The brain becomes a passive receptor of light and sound patterns.
As Alva Noë argues, consciousness is not just in the brain—it is enacted through movement and bodily interaction.

• The prefrontal cortex, responsible for sustained attention and decision-making, is underutilized in such fast-switching environments.
The viewer becomes a passive receptor of fragmented content, unable to build a coherent model of either scene.

• Mirror neurons, often activated during own and observed motion are tricked into partial simulation.
The brain thinks it’s doing something active— but there is no physical engagement.
This is a false sense of embodiment, like phantom movement.
It’s visual processing without muscular feedback—a disembodied performance loop.

• Working memory is bypassed: the flickering is too fast to encode either video meaningfully.
This leads to illusory cognitive engagement—the sensation of learning or doing without long-term retention or comprehension. As seen in studies of multitasking and digital media use, this leads to cognitive fatigue, not knowledge.


In this context, digital images operate as pure phenomena of perception, untethered from the material, historical, or authorial conditions that traditionally shaped value.
Infinite reproducibility, accelerated creation, and algorithmic variation generate a new ecology of vision—one in which the viewer becomes both interpreter and participant, constructing significance in a space defined by circulation, perception, and iconographic resonance rather than origin.


*Artificial Intelligence