The Body of Architecture and its Images

The technical reproduction of images has eviscerated something fundamentally corporeal to the appreciation of artwork and of the architecture that contains it. Prior to its reproducibility, the experiencing of artwork required a full body commitment, even when the artwork itself was two dimensional, it was experienced as three dimensional. One would have to engage with the kinesthetic capacity of our body to appreciate the work. By its very irreproducibility artwork demanded of the viewer a commitment to engage with it using all our senses and with motion. This paper aims to be a philosophical inquiry into the character of the architectural space that makes viewing artwork images possible. The shift in viewing modes, in the spectator, and in the space, will be explored by zooming into three moments in history with a punctual glance into the changing conception of images, our bodily relationship to them, and the space that contains them.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.106.52

Volume Editors
Amir Ameri & Rebecca O'Neal Dagg

ISBN
978-1-944214-15-9