Chapter 1:
The theory of constructivism and the architecture of perception
The theory of constructivism and the architecture of perception
It may come as a surprise that in the external world, there is no light or colour, only electromagnetic waves; there is no sound or music, only periodic changes in air pressure. In the external world, there is no heat or cold, only moving particles with more or less average kinetic energy, and there is certainly no pain.
Heinz von Foerster, Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition (2003).[1]
The entire "visible" universe is created only within us, at the intersection of biology and technology. Today, we are accustomed to the ubiquity and immediate availability of images. With our phones, we record the events around us every day without the slightest effort. The fluidity of video recordings, neural networks built into hardware (Neural Processing Unit or Tensor Processing Unit), which recognise images and enhance colour, quality, and stability, makes it easy for us to capture the passing of time. This endless stream of visual stimuli seems completely natural to us today.
As Władysław Strzemiński wrote, each era produces its own image of the world. Our contemporary world does this almost entirely through automated technology. Today's image is no longer just a flat reflection of the world. It has become a dense structure – a relational digital stack[2] in which layers of reality, data, and information constantly intersect and create overlapping hybrids. However, we forget that the image's multi-layered nature and its ability to tame reality had very physical origins. For centuries, we relied solely on our own cognitive apparatus, which reinforced our deep conviction that natural movement is a continuous, uniform, and gentle phenomenon. Henri Bergson's philosophy only reinforced this belief by emphasising the uninterrupted continuity of human "duration" (durée).[3] The truth about our perception, however, is quite different – our own visual apparatus, our retina, simply deceives us. It is the brain and the eye that artificially connect, blur, and soften what is in reality only a series of violent jumps, shocks, falls, and breaks. This means that we ourselves, unconsciously, synthesise this jagged world, constructing a rounded, seemingly continuous scene around us. At the end of the 19th century, the French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey decided to examine – and ultimately shatter irretrievably – this very foundation of our view of the world. He understood that the forces of life are hidden in deep shadow, and that the only way to understand them objectively is to bring them to light by translating them into visible, mechanical signs.
Heinz von Foerster, Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition (2003).[1]
The entire "visible" universe is created only within us, at the intersection of biology and technology. Today, we are accustomed to the ubiquity and immediate availability of images. With our phones, we record the events around us every day without the slightest effort. The fluidity of video recordings, neural networks built into hardware (Neural Processing Unit or Tensor Processing Unit), which recognise images and enhance colour, quality, and stability, makes it easy for us to capture the passing of time. This endless stream of visual stimuli seems completely natural to us today.
As Władysław Strzemiński wrote, each era produces its own image of the world. Our contemporary world does this almost entirely through automated technology. Today's image is no longer just a flat reflection of the world. It has become a dense structure – a relational digital stack[2] in which layers of reality, data, and information constantly intersect and create overlapping hybrids. However, we forget that the image's multi-layered nature and its ability to tame reality had very physical origins. For centuries, we relied solely on our own cognitive apparatus, which reinforced our deep conviction that natural movement is a continuous, uniform, and gentle phenomenon. Henri Bergson's philosophy only reinforced this belief by emphasising the uninterrupted continuity of human "duration" (durée).[3] The truth about our perception, however, is quite different – our own visual apparatus, our retina, simply deceives us. It is the brain and the eye that artificially connect, blur, and soften what is in reality only a series of violent jumps, shocks, falls, and breaks. This means that we ourselves, unconsciously, synthesise this jagged world, constructing a rounded, seemingly continuous scene around us. At the end of the 19th century, the French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey decided to examine – and ultimately shatter irretrievably – this very foundation of our view of the world. He understood that the forces of life are hidden in deep shadow, and that the only way to understand them objectively is to bring them to light by translating them into visible, mechanical signs.
Fig 1: The Shadow Dance (EXEBD 70136)
Chapter 2:
The magic of the image and the mechanical dispersion of the body
The magic of the image and the mechanical dispersion of the body
Before rigorous science took over visual technologies for good, the image lived primarily in the realm of spectacle and street mystery. The magic of the shared experience during early optical screenings lay in the fact that the image was not just a static object for individual consumption, but a full-fledged, living event in which technology and human emotions intertwined in a single room. A magic lantern show required a master of ceremonies – an operator who often styled himself as a wizard, wore a pointed magician's hat, and wielded a wand or pointer with which he explained the luminous visions projected onto a makeshift screen made of a curtain[4] . The lantern itself was a technical device, but its power did not lie solely in its mechanism. It depended on the operator's voice, the darkness of the room, and the audience's reaction. The image was not autonomous. It required presence. The projected figures – ghosts, landscapes, moving shadows – were not just representations. They were part of a directed experience. The operator adjusted the light, distance and rhythm. He spoke, narrated and directed the audience's attention. It was the performance that gave the image its power, not automatism.
The community of bodies and emotions in the darkness, captured in the engravings in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum [5], was enhanced by the equipment's sensual materiality.
The community of bodies and emotions in the darkness, captured in the engravings in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum [5], was enhanced by the equipment's sensual materiality.
The shows used impressive devices such as British lanterns from the "Optimus" series, made of mahogany wood and brass[6] . They emitted powerful light thanks to gas burners (e.g. lime light, oxy-hydrogen limelight) or kerosene lamps[7] . The sound of hissing gas, the smell of kerosene and complex mechanisms, such as crank-operated "chromatropes" (mechanical slides creating kaleidoscopic patterns) or comic slides with moving elements, were an integral part of the show[8] .
The community of bodies and emotions in the darkness, captured in the engravings in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum [5], was enhanced by the equipment's sensual materiality.
The community of bodies and emotions in the darkness, captured in the engravings in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum [5], was enhanced by the equipment's sensual materiality.
Fig 2: Optimus Lantern (EXEBD 69003)
Before the technology reached the salons, the magic of the image was born on the street. Travelling showmen carried heavy optical boxes on their backs, and passers-by from all walks of life immediately gathered around their installations, advertised as "Les Vues d'optique"[9] or "Oh Rare Shoe"[10] .
Fig 3: Les Vues D'Optique (EXEBD 70355)
Étienne-Jules Marey's breakthrough ended this era of naive wonder. The inventor began with what was hidden deepest – the heartbeat and muscle contractions of frogs- and built instruments such as the sphygmograph and myograph. He then turned to external movements, using an innovative chronophotographic rifle[11] with a single-lens system, which he used to "shoot" birds[12]. These experiments created the first phenomenon of "overlapping layers of reality." Marey deconstructed moving objects into precise phases, recording them on a single film as rhythmic layers. In chronophotographs showing a man in a black suit with white stripes, the body disappeared and only the grid of trajectories remained. This revealed the truth: the world is in fact a collection of dismantled phases[13] . However, the act of breaking down brought new power to humanity. Since technology allowed these phases to be separated, we gained the potential to put them back together. From the breaking down and layering[14] of fractions of a second, a cinematographic illusion was born, allowing reality to be reconstructed on its own terms[15] .
Fig 4: Oh Rare Shoe (EXEBD 70059)
The fascination with this decomposition of matter immediately permeated avant-garde art. The Futurists and Marcel Duchamp used these images to create a reality of the imagination. Duchamp, parodying precise mechanics in "Nude Descending a Staircase" or the sculpture "Rotating Glass"[16] , made a significant change in the process of perceiving both the image and the very definition of a work of art. Marcel Duchamp's work marked a radical change in the paradigm of the artist's activity in the history of culture. By introducing objects such as a bottle dryer or the famous urinal (as ready-made objects) into the gallery space, Duchamp brought into the field of art objects that had previously been completely outside its scope. This "Duchampian moment" consisted in opening up a completely new territory – he proved that art can be the very act of choosing and assigning meaning, and not necessarily the physical work of a craftsman's hands.
It was this approach that allowed artists to freely appropriate cold, scientific technologies. In the hands of surrealists such as Max Ernst, Marey's soulless, positivist recording instruments became the stuff of collages (such as The Blind Swimmer), where old measuring machines suddenly appear as bizarre artefacts from another universe[17] . Science provided the key to the mechanics of movement by analysing it with ruthless precision, but it was artists who undermined the authority of this scientific positivism, building a new mechanical magic and a reality of the imagination from its remains[18].
This process of dematerialisation and expansion of the boundaries of art was predicted by theorist Jerzy Ludwiński. He later referred to the separation of a work of art from the material object that identifies it, and the moment in the development of art history when the object functions in the world only in conceptual form, as art entering a "liquid state". Ludwiński noted that art had reached its own zero point[19] – it ceased to be a static, closed object (such as a traditional painting or sculpture) and became a process, a mental structure and an action. We have entered the era of "post-artistic art", in which creativity has transcended its previous boundaries, becoming inextricably intertwined with other areas of life: science, technology, economics and politics.
Today, in the era of artificial intelligence, we are experiencing another powerful "Duchampian moment". However, while at the beginning of the 20th century the paradigm of the art object itself changed (opening the field to ready-made objects), we are now experiencing a radical change in the paradigm of the tool. Algorithms and AI systems open up a new field that was not previously considered, because they are no longer just a passive equivalent of a brush or chisel. The tools we use today are gaining their own autonomy and have agency, which directly influences the final result of the work.
Contemporary creative practice resonates with Duchamp's legacy, because once again, the image is not created by a physical gesture, but by an act of intellectual choice – by the architecture of the system, language, sequence of words (prompts) and rules entered into the machine. Technology redefines everything here. In this new system, by entering into collaboration with artificial intelligence, the artist ceases to be solely the autonomous creator of the entire work. Instead, they become a curator, a designer of rules and a co-creator who navigates the maze of possibilities generated by the machine.
It was this approach that allowed artists to freely appropriate cold, scientific technologies. In the hands of surrealists such as Max Ernst, Marey's soulless, positivist recording instruments became the stuff of collages (such as The Blind Swimmer), where old measuring machines suddenly appear as bizarre artefacts from another universe[17] . Science provided the key to the mechanics of movement by analysing it with ruthless precision, but it was artists who undermined the authority of this scientific positivism, building a new mechanical magic and a reality of the imagination from its remains[18].
This process of dematerialisation and expansion of the boundaries of art was predicted by theorist Jerzy Ludwiński. He later referred to the separation of a work of art from the material object that identifies it, and the moment in the development of art history when the object functions in the world only in conceptual form, as art entering a "liquid state". Ludwiński noted that art had reached its own zero point[19] – it ceased to be a static, closed object (such as a traditional painting or sculpture) and became a process, a mental structure and an action. We have entered the era of "post-artistic art", in which creativity has transcended its previous boundaries, becoming inextricably intertwined with other areas of life: science, technology, economics and politics.
Today, in the era of artificial intelligence, we are experiencing another powerful "Duchampian moment". However, while at the beginning of the 20th century the paradigm of the art object itself changed (opening the field to ready-made objects), we are now experiencing a radical change in the paradigm of the tool. Algorithms and AI systems open up a new field that was not previously considered, because they are no longer just a passive equivalent of a brush or chisel. The tools we use today are gaining their own autonomy and have agency, which directly influences the final result of the work.
Contemporary creative practice resonates with Duchamp's legacy, because once again, the image is not created by a physical gesture, but by an act of intellectual choice – by the architecture of the system, language, sequence of words (prompts) and rules entered into the machine. Technology redefines everything here. In this new system, by entering into collaboration with artificial intelligence, the artist ceases to be solely the autonomous creator of the entire work. Instead, they become a curator, a designer of rules and a co-creator who navigates the maze of possibilities generated by the machine.
Chapter 3:
Technique – Image derived from data and the archaeology of traces
Technique – Image derived from data and the archaeology of traces
The evolution of the image has brought us to a point where the image ultimately breaks away from the direct testimony of the eye. This moment in the evolution of the image, embodied in my film Image Beyond the Eye by the character of a blind astrophysicist, represents the final break with the mimetic paradigm. For centuries, the image was supposed to be a 'window' through which we look at the world, a promise of direct access to reality. However, at the dawn of modernity, the image breaks away from the testimony of the eye, becoming not so much a reflection as a complex translation. The allegory of a blind researcher studying the stars makes us realise a fundamental truth: no one has ever touched a star. We do not learn about celestial bodies through physical contact, proximity or the touch of the retina, which, in the case of such enormous distances, becomes a helpless tool. The images of galaxies that shape our imagination of the universe are in fact an act of radical translation – a process of transforming invisible radiation into colour and translating mathematical signals into a visible form.
In this new balance of power, sight loses its privileged position as the guarantor of truth. Since astronomical images are visualisations of data rather than ‘views’ in the traditional sense, the blind researcher paradoxically becomes the most reliable observer. For her, space is not a collection of aesthetic patches of light, but a dense mathematical structure, gravity and energy that can be felt under her fingers or heard in the sonification of data[20] . Her hands moving across the shell of the space capsule are a touch that bypasses the illusory surface of visibility. This encounter reminds us that the contemporary image – whether generated by AI or derived from powerful Big Data sets – works in exactly the same way: it "sees" correlations in numbers, and the visual façade it presents to us is merely a polite gesture towards our flawed senses, a prosthesis for the eye that cannot comprehend abstraction.
At this point, the image ultimately ceases to be ‘natural’. It becomes a mediator, a layer that interprets reality, which remains forever unattainable to the human body. Breaking contact with the physical matter of a star in favour of its digital trace means that we have transferred our trust from biology to an algorithm. A blind astrophysicist does not need visual "comfort" in the form of colourful nebulae; she operates directly on the structure. Her presence in the sterile interior of the space station is a manifestation of the new Metis – wisdom that knows that in an age where the act of seeing has migrated to the interior of machines, true cognition takes place in a space beyond the visual.
In this new balance of power, sight loses its privileged position as the guarantor of truth. Since astronomical images are visualisations of data rather than ‘views’ in the traditional sense, the blind researcher paradoxically becomes the most reliable observer. For her, space is not a collection of aesthetic patches of light, but a dense mathematical structure, gravity and energy that can be felt under her fingers or heard in the sonification of data[20] . Her hands moving across the shell of the space capsule are a touch that bypasses the illusory surface of visibility. This encounter reminds us that the contemporary image – whether generated by AI or derived from powerful Big Data sets – works in exactly the same way: it "sees" correlations in numbers, and the visual façade it presents to us is merely a polite gesture towards our flawed senses, a prosthesis for the eye that cannot comprehend abstraction.
At this point, the image ultimately ceases to be ‘natural’. It becomes a mediator, a layer that interprets reality, which remains forever unattainable to the human body. Breaking contact with the physical matter of a star in favour of its digital trace means that we have transferred our trust from biology to an algorithm. A blind astrophysicist does not need visual "comfort" in the form of colourful nebulae; she operates directly on the structure. Her presence in the sterile interior of the space station is a manifestation of the new Metis – wisdom that knows that in an age where the act of seeing has migrated to the interior of machines, true cognition takes place in a space beyond the visual.
Fig 5: An antique astronomical chart published in London in the 19th century, combining elements of astronomy and astrology. (EXEBD)
Chapter 4:
Metis – Between gesture and surveillance system
Metis – Between gesture and surveillance system
In the age of algorithms and artificial intelligence, Metis – the goddess of clever intelligence – is undergoing a spectacular migration. She no longer resides solely in the muscles of a craftsman or the confident hand movements of a lighthouse operator. Metis has moved to the centre of the system. This paradigm shift forces us to ask a fundamental question: what do we consider to be the body today? If Metis, traditionally associated with embodied experience, now operates within neural networks and dense data structures, it means that the body of the technological system itself has become her new field of action. This is not a biological body, but a body composed of energy, silicon, rare minerals and the mathematical logic of statistical correlations. This transfer of Metis into abstraction is a two-way process, affecting both the machine and the human intellect. AI systems, although devoid of consciousness, exhibit a kind of "digital Metis" – a cleverness in finding analogies in code that the human eye cannot see. For humans, on the other hand, Metis today becomes the wisdom of navigating "unmapped territory," the ability to intuitively understand systems that are too complex to be captured in simple definitions. In this new arrangement, cognition ceases to be based on visual dominance and begins to resemble groping with one's hand in the dark.
An astrophysicist does not need sight to understand the structure of the universe, just as we no longer need to "see" an image to process it. Her touch is a metaphor for our relationship with technology today. Just as she touches the capsule, we touch the interfaces behind which galaxies of data are hidden. Metis now inhabits this discernment, which moves within abstraction, in the discipline of judgement and patience with which we interpret distant traces.
However, Metis's transfer into the system carries a tragic burden. The same cleverness that allows the blind researcher to "see" the stars becomes a tool of surveillance and control in the hands of autonomous systems. The modernist pursuit of analytical precision, initiated by the deconstruction of Marey's movement, has become the foundation of systems that inspire fear. Metis, stripped of her bodily empathy, has been harnessed to mechanisms of pure efficiency. The desire to "see everything" has transformed into the technology of ubiquitous surveillance. Dystopian dangers are fuelled by the same mathematical logic that allows us to "derive an image from data", creating autonomous weapons that decide on life and death without the involvement of human conscience. Work optimisation has become a tool of digital exploitation, where every hand movement is measured and subjected to the rigour of an algorithm. Metis, who once lived in the gesture of bringing a flame close to a lens, has been dispersed in the structures of code that looks but does not see; that analyses but does not feel.
Recent turmoil at the top of Silicon Valley – including the high-profile conflict over the philosophy of AI development between the creators of OpenAI (who favour aggressive commercialisation and the power of generative models) and researchers from Anthropic (who emphasise safety, ethics and so-called alignment, i.e. the convergence of AI with human values) – are in fact a battle over how these systems will classify and format our reality[[21]. Nowhere is this cold, algorithmic calculation more frightening than in the vague use of AI in military systems. Companies such as Palantir have integrated artificial intelligence models into military tools (e.g. in target tracking systems), where algorithms decide on life and death based on the analysis of huge sets of satellite, communication and behavioural data[[22]]. In this context, Harun Farocki's concept of "operational images" is realised in its purest, most lethal form. Farocki noted that machines began to create images not to represent the world to viewers, but to actively operate in it without the involvement of the human eye. In systems such as Palantir, the image is no longer a map of the territory; it becomes a target in which ethics is reduced to the mathematical probability of error.
In this new arrangement, Metis has not perished, but has "changed orbit". Her cleverness today lies in her ability to tame the invisible. In the world of AI Transformers, wisdom manifests itself in the discipline of judgement – in the ability to ask the machine the right questions and to see hidden analogies in powerful data structures. The allegorical scene of touching the camera makes us realise that the image ultimately disappears as an objective "window to the world". It becomes merely an artificial interface, a facade superimposed on raw mathematical reality. Today, the image serves as a prosthesis for the sense of sight, which cannot comprehend the immensity of database abstraction. The blind researcher does not need this prosthesis, reminding us that true cognition goes beyond the retina. Today, understanding the universe takes place in a non-visual space. Perhaps only by closing our eyes and trusting the abstract logic of data can we perceive the true structure of reality.
An astrophysicist does not need sight to understand the structure of the universe, just as we no longer need to "see" an image to process it. Her touch is a metaphor for our relationship with technology today. Just as she touches the capsule, we touch the interfaces behind which galaxies of data are hidden. Metis now inhabits this discernment, which moves within abstraction, in the discipline of judgement and patience with which we interpret distant traces.
However, Metis's transfer into the system carries a tragic burden. The same cleverness that allows the blind researcher to "see" the stars becomes a tool of surveillance and control in the hands of autonomous systems. The modernist pursuit of analytical precision, initiated by the deconstruction of Marey's movement, has become the foundation of systems that inspire fear. Metis, stripped of her bodily empathy, has been harnessed to mechanisms of pure efficiency. The desire to "see everything" has transformed into the technology of ubiquitous surveillance. Dystopian dangers are fuelled by the same mathematical logic that allows us to "derive an image from data", creating autonomous weapons that decide on life and death without the involvement of human conscience. Work optimisation has become a tool of digital exploitation, where every hand movement is measured and subjected to the rigour of an algorithm. Metis, who once lived in the gesture of bringing a flame close to a lens, has been dispersed in the structures of code that looks but does not see; that analyses but does not feel.
Recent turmoil at the top of Silicon Valley – including the high-profile conflict over the philosophy of AI development between the creators of OpenAI (who favour aggressive commercialisation and the power of generative models) and researchers from Anthropic (who emphasise safety, ethics and so-called alignment, i.e. the convergence of AI with human values) – are in fact a battle over how these systems will classify and format our reality[[21]. Nowhere is this cold, algorithmic calculation more frightening than in the vague use of AI in military systems. Companies such as Palantir have integrated artificial intelligence models into military tools (e.g. in target tracking systems), where algorithms decide on life and death based on the analysis of huge sets of satellite, communication and behavioural data[[22]]. In this context, Harun Farocki's concept of "operational images" is realised in its purest, most lethal form. Farocki noted that machines began to create images not to represent the world to viewers, but to actively operate in it without the involvement of the human eye. In systems such as Palantir, the image is no longer a map of the territory; it becomes a target in which ethics is reduced to the mathematical probability of error.
In this new arrangement, Metis has not perished, but has "changed orbit". Her cleverness today lies in her ability to tame the invisible. In the world of AI Transformers, wisdom manifests itself in the discipline of judgement – in the ability to ask the machine the right questions and to see hidden analogies in powerful data structures. The allegorical scene of touching the camera makes us realise that the image ultimately disappears as an objective "window to the world". It becomes merely an artificial interface, a facade superimposed on raw mathematical reality. Today, the image serves as a prosthesis for the sense of sight, which cannot comprehend the immensity of database abstraction. The blind researcher does not need this prosthesis, reminding us that true cognition goes beyond the retina. Today, understanding the universe takes place in a non-visual space. Perhaps only by closing our eyes and trusting the abstract logic of data can we perceive the true structure of reality.
Fig 6: An antique astronomical chart. (EXEBD)
Chapter 5:
Paradigm Shift and the Metabolic Burden of the Image
Paradigm Shift and the Metabolic Burden of the Image
We are reaching a point where the existing definitions of image, technology and man himself are undergoing irreversible erosion. We are on the threshold of a fundamental paradigm shift: the image has ceased to be a representation of the world and has become its active component, an autonomous process of flow that no longer waits for our gaze. Unresolved issues – all those tensions between spirit and matter, between the magic of the operator and the cold algorithm – do not disappear. They circulate, gain power in the shadow of our screens and return to us with great force, forcing us to constantly redefine the processes that shape the image.
The paradigm shift lies in understanding that the body no longer ends at the skin's surface. It is shaped by processes that transcend a single gesture – by the infrastructure of energy, mathematical logic and streams of information in which we are immersed. The figure of the blind astrophysicist touching the ISS capsule becomes the ultimate proof here: cognition is possible without sight, but not without presence. Metis has not disappeared, but has radically changed its orbit. It has transformed from the wisdom of touch into the wisdom of structure. Its field of action is no longer just the resistance of physical matter, but a dense network of relationships, codes and AI abstractions, through which we must navigate with a completely new kind of attention. This is no longer the knowledge of fingers in clay, but the knowledge of discernment within systems which, although incorporeal, have real power over our reality.
To understand this new state of affairs, we need to pay attention to the ‘metabolism’ of technology. Kate Crawford’s concept defines metabolic images as systems that constantly ‘feed’ on data, energy and human attention[[23]]. This makes us realise that artificial intelligence and data clouds have a material weight. Contemporary technology is based on "extractive logic", in which data is treated as a raw material, a "new oil", subject to extraction and commodification. Metabolic images function as a mechanism of data colonisation, consuming our everyday lives. The contemporary digital image is not an innocent record of light; it is a voracious system that needs carbon infrastructure to power servers and a biopolitical supply of human life converted into hard data.
Victorian lanterns and their painted slides are not just a curiosity. From the perspective of media archaeology, they act as a mirror that destroys the myth of the immateriality of today's media. Contemporary industry hides the physical infrastructure from us, using metaphors such as "the cloud" or "the stream". Meanwhile, image production – then and now – requires energy consumption and heavy equipment. Only the scale has changed: the Victorian lantern stood in the living room, while the contemporary one stretches across the ocean floor in the form of fibre optic cables[24] .
Today, perception goes beyond the eye. We learn about the world in two ways: one leads from language and abstraction to form, the other from pure perception and light patterns to structure. The person who studies the stars finds themselves between these orders. The challenge is not to return nostalgically to the original closeness, but to learn to recognise the traces of Metis in the inhuman landscape of data. Unresolved things do not disappear. They circulate – back and forth, from closeness to system, from gesture to algorithm. Metis changes its orbit, and we must learn to recognise it anew: in the discipline of judgement, in the dexterity of navigating code, and in the courage to touch the unattainable. The image beyond the eye is not emptiness; it is a new form of presence that we are only beginning to understand.
Marcin Nowicki, 2026
The paradigm shift lies in understanding that the body no longer ends at the skin's surface. It is shaped by processes that transcend a single gesture – by the infrastructure of energy, mathematical logic and streams of information in which we are immersed. The figure of the blind astrophysicist touching the ISS capsule becomes the ultimate proof here: cognition is possible without sight, but not without presence. Metis has not disappeared, but has radically changed its orbit. It has transformed from the wisdom of touch into the wisdom of structure. Its field of action is no longer just the resistance of physical matter, but a dense network of relationships, codes and AI abstractions, through which we must navigate with a completely new kind of attention. This is no longer the knowledge of fingers in clay, but the knowledge of discernment within systems which, although incorporeal, have real power over our reality.
To understand this new state of affairs, we need to pay attention to the ‘metabolism’ of technology. Kate Crawford’s concept defines metabolic images as systems that constantly ‘feed’ on data, energy and human attention[[23]]. This makes us realise that artificial intelligence and data clouds have a material weight. Contemporary technology is based on "extractive logic", in which data is treated as a raw material, a "new oil", subject to extraction and commodification. Metabolic images function as a mechanism of data colonisation, consuming our everyday lives. The contemporary digital image is not an innocent record of light; it is a voracious system that needs carbon infrastructure to power servers and a biopolitical supply of human life converted into hard data.
Victorian lanterns and their painted slides are not just a curiosity. From the perspective of media archaeology, they act as a mirror that destroys the myth of the immateriality of today's media. Contemporary industry hides the physical infrastructure from us, using metaphors such as "the cloud" or "the stream". Meanwhile, image production – then and now – requires energy consumption and heavy equipment. Only the scale has changed: the Victorian lantern stood in the living room, while the contemporary one stretches across the ocean floor in the form of fibre optic cables[24] .
Today, perception goes beyond the eye. We learn about the world in two ways: one leads from language and abstraction to form, the other from pure perception and light patterns to structure. The person who studies the stars finds themselves between these orders. The challenge is not to return nostalgically to the original closeness, but to learn to recognise the traces of Metis in the inhuman landscape of data. Unresolved things do not disappear. They circulate – back and forth, from closeness to system, from gesture to algorithm. Metis changes its orbit, and we must learn to recognise it anew: in the discipline of judgement, in the dexterity of navigating code, and in the courage to touch the unattainable. The image beyond the eye is not emptiness; it is a new form of presence that we are only beginning to understand.
Marcin Nowicki, 2026
Fig 7: Image by noviki
References:
[1] Heinz von Foerster, Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition (New York: Springer, 2003).
[2]Reference to the concept of technological layers (known as "The Stack"). See the theoretical framework in the project notes; Benjamin H. Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015).
[3] François Dagognet, Etienne-Jules Marey: A Passion for the Trace (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 11–12.
[4] Magasin des Demoiselles, engraving "Lanterne magique!!!" (showing an operator styled as a magician presenting projected images to the audience).
[5] H. K. Browne, engraving "The Shadow Dance" (showing an audience crowded together in the dark watching moving shadows).
[6] Perken, Son, & Rayment, The Magic Lantern: Its Construction and Use (London), p. 119, illustration showing the "Optimus Bi-Unial Lantern" made of mahogany and brass.
[7] Perken, Son, & Rayment, The Magic Lantern: Its Construction and Use (London), p. 118, illustration of the "Optimus Oxy-Hydrogen Triple Lantern".
[8] Perken, Son, & Rayment, The Magic Lantern: Its Construction and Use (London), p. 127, section "Rackwork & Mechanical Slides", illustration showing chromatropes ("Chromatropes").
[9] Illustration Les Vues d'optique (showing a street showman and spectators gathered around a portable optical box).
[10] Illustration Oh Rare Shoe / Rare chose a voir (showing a traveller carrying a heavy optical box on his back).
[11] François Dagognet, Etienne-Jules Marey: A Passion for the Trace (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 11, 176. See also: Marta Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)
[12] Dagognet, Etienne-Jules Marey, 11. The chronophotographic rifle is also discussed at length as a method of capturing the flight of birds in M. Braun, pp. 31–34, among others.
[13] Dagognet, Etienne-Jules Marey, 12. Dagognet describes it this way: "The scientist could capture diverse phases of motion, dismantle them...".
[14] Braun, Picturing Time. The author explicitly defines this process: "decomposed motion into precise phases and recorded them in rhythmic, overlapping laminations on a single photographic plate".
[15] Dagognet and Hall et al. (in Critical Visualisation, 125) link this breaking down and reassembling with the birth of the "cinematic illusion" (a term coined by H. Bergson).
[16] Braun, Picturing Time, 264 (reference to Act Descending Stairs) and 314 (reference to the sculpture Rotating Glass and kinetic discs as a mockery of mechanics).
[17] Braun, Picturing Time, 314–316. See especially p. 316, where Ernst's instruments are described as objects that appear to have been left behind from a "different universe".
[18] Ibid., 316. According to Braun, these artists ultimately “brought the authority of nineteenth-century positivism to an end”.
[19] Jerzy Ludwiński, Wielki Błękit: Teksty z lat 1960–2000, ed. Jarosław Kozłowski (Poznań: Wydawnictwo ASP w Poznaniu / mhk, 2003), 184–187.
[20] Hall and Dávila, Critical Visualisation, 200. Lev Manovich calls data visualisation an "anti-sublime" phenomenon because it attempts to frame and make accessible to our imperfect human senses the infinite vastness and immensity that our cognitive apparatus is naturally incapable of comprehending.
[21] Charted Governance Institiute UK and Ireland ‘From OpenAI to Anthropic- Who’s Leading on AI Governance’ 18 June 2025, https://www.cgi.org.uk/resources/blogs/2025/from-openai-to-anthropic-whos-leading-on-ai-governance/
[22]Gvaryahu, Avner ‘These aren’t AI Firms, They’re Defence Contractors’. The Guardian 15 March 2026 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/mar/15/ai-defense-warfare-companies
[23]Crawford, Kate ‘Can an Algorithm be Agonistic? Ten Scenes from Life in Calculated Publics’ Science, Technology, & Human Values 2016, Vol. 41(1) 77-92
[24] This conclusion stems from a comparison of historical textbooks, such as Perken, Son, & Rayment, The Magic Lantern: Its Construction and Use (London), with media theory (including Orit Halpern's analysis of the physical structure of fibre optic cables in Critical Visualisation, p. 161). This comparison exposes the material dimension of optical machines and the contemporary network, deconstructing the myth of the "immaterial cloud".
[1] Heinz von Foerster, Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition (New York: Springer, 2003).
[2]Reference to the concept of technological layers (known as "The Stack"). See the theoretical framework in the project notes; Benjamin H. Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015).
[3] François Dagognet, Etienne-Jules Marey: A Passion for the Trace (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 11–12.
[4] Magasin des Demoiselles, engraving "Lanterne magique!!!" (showing an operator styled as a magician presenting projected images to the audience).
[5] H. K. Browne, engraving "The Shadow Dance" (showing an audience crowded together in the dark watching moving shadows).
[6] Perken, Son, & Rayment, The Magic Lantern: Its Construction and Use (London), p. 119, illustration showing the "Optimus Bi-Unial Lantern" made of mahogany and brass.
[7] Perken, Son, & Rayment, The Magic Lantern: Its Construction and Use (London), p. 118, illustration of the "Optimus Oxy-Hydrogen Triple Lantern".
[8] Perken, Son, & Rayment, The Magic Lantern: Its Construction and Use (London), p. 127, section "Rackwork & Mechanical Slides", illustration showing chromatropes ("Chromatropes").
[9] Illustration Les Vues d'optique (showing a street showman and spectators gathered around a portable optical box).
[10] Illustration Oh Rare Shoe / Rare chose a voir (showing a traveller carrying a heavy optical box on his back).
[11] François Dagognet, Etienne-Jules Marey: A Passion for the Trace (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 11, 176. See also: Marta Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)
[12] Dagognet, Etienne-Jules Marey, 11. The chronophotographic rifle is also discussed at length as a method of capturing the flight of birds in M. Braun, pp. 31–34, among others.
[13] Dagognet, Etienne-Jules Marey, 12. Dagognet describes it this way: "The scientist could capture diverse phases of motion, dismantle them...".
[14] Braun, Picturing Time. The author explicitly defines this process: "decomposed motion into precise phases and recorded them in rhythmic, overlapping laminations on a single photographic plate".
[15] Dagognet and Hall et al. (in Critical Visualisation, 125) link this breaking down and reassembling with the birth of the "cinematic illusion" (a term coined by H. Bergson).
[16] Braun, Picturing Time, 264 (reference to Act Descending Stairs) and 314 (reference to the sculpture Rotating Glass and kinetic discs as a mockery of mechanics).
[17] Braun, Picturing Time, 314–316. See especially p. 316, where Ernst's instruments are described as objects that appear to have been left behind from a "different universe".
[18] Ibid., 316. According to Braun, these artists ultimately “brought the authority of nineteenth-century positivism to an end”.
[19] Jerzy Ludwiński, Wielki Błękit: Teksty z lat 1960–2000, ed. Jarosław Kozłowski (Poznań: Wydawnictwo ASP w Poznaniu / mhk, 2003), 184–187.
[20] Hall and Dávila, Critical Visualisation, 200. Lev Manovich calls data visualisation an "anti-sublime" phenomenon because it attempts to frame and make accessible to our imperfect human senses the infinite vastness and immensity that our cognitive apparatus is naturally incapable of comprehending.
[21] Charted Governance Institiute UK and Ireland ‘From OpenAI to Anthropic- Who’s Leading on AI Governance’ 18 June 2025, https://www.cgi.org.uk/resources/blogs/2025/from-openai-to-anthropic-whos-leading-on-ai-governance/
[22]Gvaryahu, Avner ‘These aren’t AI Firms, They’re Defence Contractors’. The Guardian 15 March 2026 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/mar/15/ai-defense-warfare-companies
[23]Crawford, Kate ‘Can an Algorithm be Agonistic? Ten Scenes from Life in Calculated Publics’ Science, Technology, & Human Values 2016, Vol. 41(1) 77-92
[24] This conclusion stems from a comparison of historical textbooks, such as Perken, Son, & Rayment, The Magic Lantern: Its Construction and Use (London), with media theory (including Orit Halpern's analysis of the physical structure of fibre optic cables in Critical Visualisation, p. 161). This comparison exposes the material dimension of optical machines and the contemporary network, deconstructing the myth of the "immaterial cloud".
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