Sophia Chefalo
Students
The collaborative essay by Vinzenz Aubry (SMACT ’25) and Sophia Chefalo (SMACT ’26), After Technical Images: Towards a Theory of Post-Technical Imaging, has been published in the peer-reviewed Flusser Studies Journal: “Flusser Studies 40 – November 2025 / Special Twentieth Anniversary Issue.”
Aubry and Chefalo’s text comments on what Vilém Flusser called “Technical Images.” These images are created and mediated with technology (e.g., photographs), as opposed to “Traditional Images” (drawings, paintings, etc). Flusser developed a comprehensive media theory of the development and relationship among traditional images, text, and technical images. In the essay, they discuss a possible limitation of his system and propose a different lens for images, namely, categorizing them by human body relations. Aubry and Chefalo see this as necessary, since the development of current “AI” image-generation technologies may exceed the categories. They are building on his theory and extending it towards non-single-body relations, such as networked photography (e.g, black hole photography) and non-material photography (e.g., AI image generation).
While Flusser’s concept of technical images remains foundational for understanding modern image-making, its limitations become evident when applied to emerging visual culture, which operates beyond immediate human sensory capabilities and constraints of previous apparatus. This essay proposes the concept of corporeal imaging as an alternative system that classifies imaging as relational to the body. This taxonomy enables the incorporation of contemporary imaging practices such as networked astronomical observations and generative AI systems that supersede traditional single-body relations. These developments necessitate new theoretical approaches for understanding image making beyond technical imaging.
About the Journal:
Flusser Studies is an international e-journal for academic research dedicated to the thought of Vilém Flusser (1920-1991). In addition to publishing articles about Flusser’s work, the journal seeks to promote scholarship on different aspects of specifically interdisciplinary and multilingual approaches Flusser himself developed in the course of his career as a writer and philosopher. These approaches range from Communication Theory to Translation Studies, Cultural Anthropology to the New Media.
Flusser wrote his texts in different languages, translating himself over and over again, moving from English, to Portuguese, German, French and back again. Similarly he worked by juxtaposing and contaminating different discourses: philosophy, anthropology, communication theory, art and design, zoology to mention only a few.
Among his most original contributions in this context are his philosophical fictions – above all Vampyroteuthis infernalis – scientific fables on the borderline of literature, science and philosophy.
Flusser Studies is published twice a year. Publication languages include English, German, French, Portuguese, Czech, Spanish and Italian. Some issues will be dedicated to a specific area of research.
ISSN 1661-5719
Flusser Studies is a peer-reviewed open access journal.
