On Operational Images
When speaking about operational images, the first definition of the term that comes to mind is the one proposed by Harun Farocki in Eye/Machine (2003), a series of installation works that traces a genealogy of the evolution of such images. Operational images are images produced by and for machines, which in most cases enable them to operate autonomously, without the intervention of a human. Jussi Parikka’s Operational Images: From the Visual to the Invisual (London-Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023) is divided in seven sections: ‘Introduction: Between Light and Data’, ‘One: Operations of Operations’, ‘Two: What is Not and Image?’, ‘Three: The Measurement-Image’, ‘Four: Operational Aesthetic’, ‘Five: The Post-lenticular City’, and ‘Conclusion: A Soft Montage of Operations’. Methodologically speaking, it is important to notice how there is a significant similarity between Farocki’s thorough and detailed way of elaborating a taxonomy of audiovisual images and how Parikka makes a nonlinear yet comprehensive recount of historical and contemporary examples of operational images. When speaking about the lineage of operational images, Parikka includes examples that ‘operationalise’ the concept of the operational image itself, putting it to work as a temporally dynamic notion (pp. 23-24) that can similarly be applied to grids or to high-tech modelling techniques.
As Parikka states, operational images are more than representational devices. They are
instruments built upon instruments, upon infrastructures, upon practices, upon techniques, […] and so on. Operations built on operations that include elements that are material and semiotic, forms of knowing and forms of mattering. (p. IX)
This embodied dimension and potential of operational images stands halfway through their power to mean something and their power to actually operate. Such an operation, of course, cannot be understood as an isolated phenomenon, but it must be grasped in its relational dimension. In this sense, Parikka draws upon the notion of the diagrammatic as developed, mainly, by Deleuze and Jameson. The definition of the latter is particularly succinct and to-the-point for what Parikka conveys: the diagrammatic can be understood as the materialisation of ‘vectors of force as they oppose and crisscross each other, rewriting reality as a graph of power centres, movements and velocities’.[1] In the case of the French philosopher, Parikka takes as a starting point the idea that the diagrammatic ‘cuts across traditional scales of experience, space and meaning’ (p. 16). In both cases, Parikka refers to the diagrammatic as a kind of image that not only represents a reified or static reality but the intertwining, encompassing, and collisions of the dynamic elements that constitute such reality.
Because of their relational – or diagrammatic – dimension, operational images become embedded within a human media landscape, even if being made with little to no human intervention. Parikka, like Farocki, suggests that they generate a field of ‘unconscious visible’ (p. 12), something present and material yet, for the most part, unavailable for a human system of perception. This idea is mainly developed in chapter two: ‘What is Not an Image?’. Quoting Hito Steyerl, another artist of reference when speaking about new readings of Farocki and operational images, this chapter draws upon the statement ‘not seeing anything intelligible is the new normal’ (p. 57). In this sense, Parikka defines invisibility as a ‘situation of (not) seeing’ while invisuality ‘pertains to mathematical functions, data and platforms’, in such a way that data and the (in)visible become inextricably linked. Understood in this context, operational images are linked to the production of platforms as a ‘new political geography of data [that] rearranges planetary visibility according to a different logic than cartographic projection’. These data, in their turn, operate ‘within territories that are composed of intersecting lines, some physical and some virtual’ (p. 69). In this sense, the idea of the platform sovereignty of Benjamin Bratton seems quite relevant, although the author also draws upon Mackenzie and Munster (p. 69). Datasets (Microsoft Common Objects in Context, Open Images, Fashion MNIST, etc., amongst others) can also give a sense of this new means on (in)visuality; so do models. In this last case, Parikka explains how, through machine learning procedures, such models build ‘an invisual environment […] through which actions can take place’ (p. 90). In any case, we are speaking about techniques that turn images into data. Since this data usually fall into the category of the invisual, this compels us to challenge our own assumptions of what an image is.
Interestingly, the operational image, despite its autonomy and its ability to transcend human perception, produces new aesthetic regimes, as Parikka elaborates in chapter four: ‘Operational Aesthetic’ (p. 57). This, of course, poses a paradox:
[i]s there any use for pictorial or representational practices if all that matters is the operational part of the equation? Is there a cinematic or visual practice of invisual culture, or is that oxymoronic? (p. 141)
Be that as it may, in the arts, operational images are mainly presented through ‘images about images’ or self-referential works – like in the case of Farocki. For instance, Parikka describes Armin Linken’s work with technologies of ocean sensing.[2] He also speaks about Steyerl and her video work How Not to Be Seen.[3] Both artists trace significant connections between artistic practices and infrastructural and logistical images, generating a reflexive approach toward matters of environmental and political sustainability that go beyond the ‘military sphere of interest and operations’ that was central to Farocki’s definition of operational images (p. 143). This is significant inasmuch in most definitions of the operational image – in texts by Farocki himself, Georges Didi-Huberman, Volker Pantenburg, or Martin Blumenthal-Barby, amongst others – the main standpoint seems to be the critical reading of how operational images are used in the context of war. While not being oblivious to the dangers of operational images in war contexts (also in colonial campaigns, or as instruments of power), Parikka proposes a new approach to the subject matter, putting more emphasis on
[E]nvironmental sensing and subsequent imaging, corporate practices for urban and nonurban uses from policing to agriculture, gaming and other forms of motion capture and interaction design, and a set of other things that propose a radical detachment from what images in the photographic [and cinematic] context were and are.[4] (p. 90)
Alongside this, Parikka understands operational images as instances that can enhance our own agency in multiple situations. This poses another paradox, as with the case of operational aesthetics. Here we may wonder: how do operational images, in their autonomy, generate a network of relations and actions with other agents? In this case, Parikka draws upon the notion of operative ontologies coined (mainly) by the scholars from the International Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM) research center in Weimar, as well as authors like Thomas Macho or Sybille Krämer (pp. 33-34). For example, Parikka elaborates on Bernhard Siegert’s notion of cultural techniques, according to which ‘symbolic operations become effective as transformers of material reality’ (p. 34). As Parikka states, quoting Siegert again, ‘maps are not just representations but also instruments’ (p. 42). This leads us to chapter five, ‘The Post-lenticular City’ (p. 177), which focuses precisely on the importance of operational images on the representation and the production of space. The same happens with chapter three, ‘The Measurement Image’. From Renaissance diagrams describing the use and function of linear perspective to contemporary engineering and science using AI imaging techniques, we are still and always talking about operational images that are inextricably linked to the way we inhabit and represent a certain physical environment. ‘Lines’ become, thus, ‘mediators that make areas, forms and objects’, which, in their turn, ‘stand out as measured entities’.
When thinking about operational images as cultural techniques, one also has to rethink their relation with human agency. Here lies another significant difference between Parikka and other authors who have reflected upon the operational image. When using operational images in military contexts, the displacement of human sight is considered problematic inasmuch it results in some sort of anaesthetisation in the face of violence. Parikka, however, proposes a different perspective towards the autonomy of operational images. As he says, at the end of the day, operational images are not so far apart from a human perceptual apparatus, since they also reformat human vision. In other words: instead of speaking about a ‘loss’ of human agency, Parikka speaks about a reframing of such agency from the scope of new materialism (Bruno Latour, Karen Barad, et al.), in which human fields of perception and action become embedded with those of the non-human. We may not be capable of seeing what a machine sees, but these new forms of vision and visuality can potentially help us construct a new frame of mind that we are able to understand and modulate. This perspective brings Parikka, yet and again, to a relational approach to the operational image, which helps to ‘conceive identity in terms of open-ended processes of becoming’ and as an ‘interconnected’ assemblage of ‘people, practices and mediating artefacts’ (p. 20).
At this point, it is important to notice how, beyond the redefinition of what operational images are, Parikka introduces a new reading of Farocki’s work as such. Historically, from Elsaesser to Volker Pantenburg (going through Nora Alter or Kaja Silverman), Farocki has mainly been understood from the perspective of media archaeology or, if thinking about his as if documentaries (The Inextinguishable Fire, Serious Games, How to Live in the FRG, et al), from its pedagogic and political character. However, there is another fundamental element in the work of this author: labour. This is particularly noticeable in his last collaboration with Antje Ehmann (2011-2014): Labour in a Single Shot. In this sense, Erika Balsom’s analysis on Bodies at Work (an unfinished project by Farocki) already points towards the importance of human and mechanical labour or rather, we can say, the mapping of ‘the economy of bodily movement’ within Farocki’s work.[5]However, in Parikka’s book, it is possible to find a new reading of this, linking the historical (mis)representation of labour to the concept of the invisual. Since images of work usually occur at the periphery of the cities and our fields of perception, Ehmann and Farocki re-center such work activities until they become part of a cinematic apparatus embedded into platforms that ‘synchronize logistics as bodies, software, routines, data, and production of images […]’. As Parikka continues, ‘[t]his “labor on a single platform” (to misquote Farocki and Ehmann’s project) is one aspect of what is being referred to as the invisual’ (pp. 85-86). At the same time, it shows how the ‘training of bodies, the setting [of] institutional routines’ and the rehearsal of ‘automation in ways that tie machines to labouring human bodies’ produce a new form of operationality.
With the conclusion, ‘A Soft Montage of Operations’, Parikka again takes Farocki’s ethos. Farocki coined this term jointly with Kaja Silverman in Speaking About Godard (2002/2008) when analysing Number Two, by the French filmmaker (1975). In this film, the overlapping of two screens and a non-linear narrative generate a use of montage in which sequences and shots are like juxtaposing syntagms. This is precisely the principle that Farocki applies to his own filmmaking – especially when working with multiple-channel installations, as is the case of Eye/Machine. If we draw upon Parikka’s (and Elizabeth Eastlake’s[6]) idea that technical images are not ‘just pictures, messages or communication’, we must then understand them as dynamic instances, or operations (p. 216) that overlap and juxtapose too. Grids, platforms, datasets, AI models, phtotogrammetric measurement, artistic practices, etc become embedded within a recursive chain of image-making techniques that operate in parallel and simultaneously. As Parikka concludes, ‘we live, work, function and imagine’ amongst operational images (p. 220). It is true, however, that even considering the book’s broad and extensive approach to the operational image, it is still difficult to find in it a final or conclusive definition of what such an image is. Nonetheless, understood from their processual dimension, the operational image and its definition are, by necessity, a constant work in progress.
Alba Giménez-Gil (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya / Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia)
References
Balsom, E. ‘Moving bodies: captured life in the late works of Harun Farocki’, Journal of Visual Culture, Vol. 18, 3, 2019: 358-377.
Jameson, F. ‘Symptoms of Theory or Symptoms for Theory’, Critical Inquiry, 30, n.30, 2004: 403-408.
e-flux, Announcement about Armin Linke: OCEANS – Dialogues between ocean floor and water column at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, 30 June 2017: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/138493/armin-linkeoceans-dialogues-between-ocean-floor-and-water-column/ (accessed on 16 October 2023).
Steyerl, H. ‘How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .mov File, 2013’, Artforum Artist’s projects, 20 April 2015: https://www.artforum.com/video/hito-steyerl-how-not-to-be-seen-a-fucking-didactic-educational-mov-file-2013-165845/ (accessed 16 October 2023).
[1] Jameson 2004. In the case of Jameson, we are speaking about the diagrammatic in the sense of ‘mapping the scales and abstractions of capital in relation to lived worlds of experience’ (p. 165). Parikka’s use of the diagrammatic seems to stand halfway between these two authors and a customary notion of the diagrammatic with regard to its relation to graphs, tables, maps, grips, and specific means of representation and data collection.
[2] See: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/138493/armin-linkeoceans-dialogues-between-ocean-floor-and-water-column/
[3] See: https://www.artforum.com/video/hito-steyerl-how-not-to-be-seen-a-fucking-didactic-educational-mov-file-2013-51651
[4] When referring to the detachment from the photographic and cinematic context, what Parikka conveys is an overcoming of the definition of images as merely representational devices.
[5] Balsom 2019.
[6] Writer and art theorist of the nineteenth century.