ABSTRACT
When one considers the semantics of the current debate on images and the iconic turn, it may seem anachronistic to refer to the imagination. This book wants to turn this anachronism into a provocation. The imagination is absent from current discourse on images and imagery and this is not a matter of semantics but is the result of specific interpretations of and attitudes towards images. These interpretations do not form a homogenous group, but are guided by different intentions and objectives. Most are informed by scientific ideals and share a common aversion to the imagination. This, it seems to us, is the result of a certain understanding of the concept of the image and of contempt for the imagination. We briefly address both of these aspects and then suggest how the imagination’s relationship to the image might be reconsidered, including technologically advanced constructions that have little in common with traditional images and which, in spite of their playing with the very possibility of representation, retain a remnant of the images’ claim to representation. We wish to argue that computer-generated digital constructions must be included within the concept of the image and that these, as all images, need the productive imagination.
