Abstract: 

This dissertation aims to map an ontology of the contemporary image through various methodologies and research undertaken during the MFA. It puts forward various propositions towards different kinds of images, as limbs of a morphological being, through projects. I propose the ‘Diluted Image’, ‘Prolonged image’ and ‘Delayed based on formal, technical and affective affordances. 

I propose that the nature of this morphological being is an expansive meta-montage, which has innumerable orbits with images accelerating in their various trajectories (contexts), intermingling and colliding, generating and degenerating images. Spiralling from a query of ‘why does the image not stay with me’, the inquiry extends to how we derive meaning through images and various strategies towards slowing it down in the hyperconnected instantaneous world we inhabit. 

The text further details the various approaches taken during practice towards this enquiry- positioning mediums as mechanisms, using pre-digital imaging technologies and techniques to construct apparatuses, constructing meta-narratives, etc. Through artistic practice as the basis of research, the text traces the multitude of affordances of the image in the contemporary, its tangibility, indexicality, experientiality, evidentiality and interconnectivity and its affects- the construction of shared realities, simultaneously being produced and consumed in the era of the networked image, where the participant is reduced to a node.