Fellow project: "The act of viewing pictures. Reception aesthetics and its temporality"
In a particular manner, pictures and images (in a broader sense) are involved in different layers of time: the represented time, the aging and deterioration of the image carrier, processes of perception as well as the memories and expectations of the viewer. Thus, the perception of pictures cannot be understood as the simultaneous view of a given visual entity, rather it takes places within the framework of its own temporality when the eye of the beholder follows predetermined traces or establishes new ways of exploring the depiction. Each act of perceiving pictures implies processes by which different elements of the given depiction are related to each other.
Reception aesthetics (Rezeptionsästhetik) is of crucial importance in order to better understand the temporal experiences in front of pictures. By their formal and figurative qualities pictures make certain processes of perception possible or impose restrictions. However, the extent and means by which pictures influence the complex temporality of their perception are hardly investigated. The project will develop a conceptual and analytical framework for a new reception aesthetics of the picture which focuses on the temporality of the act of viewing. The project aims at a new answer to the question as to why the active power of pictures is not restricted to deceptive illusionism or to the rhetoric of evidence.