Il pensiero rappresentato: il ruolo delle immagini nella scienza e nell'arte. Pensare per immagini e immagini per pensare

Images were and still are an integral part of the spreading of knowledge and have always gone along with human thought with great interdisciplinary tension. Nowadays, in a reality characterized over the last twenty years by an evident hyper-dosage of visuals and where the power of images – sometimes true “icons” – seems to be undeniable, it is necessary to think again about the fundamentals of representation and about the ways of creating visual models in order to spread a “culture of the image”. In this contest where, for example, semiologist and philosophers express their theories on the subject in question, we need to start a “theory of the image”, beginning from the reinterpretation, dropped in contemporary reality, of the researchers of the past century. We should also try to understand what the role of the architect is and will be in such a cultural debate. The great importance that the architect can and must have in this field is rooted in the disciplinary fundamentals of the science of representation. The possibility of applying the studies on representation and, in general, on visual and graphic sciences to the “science and art universes” would provide the theoretical an practical bases to open a dialogue with those who want to deepen and participate actively in the definition of visual models, investigating their experimental aspects. Consequently, in the wide world of the image, the main interest is addressed to the study of the propositive and constructive aspects of the image in all its facets, image which is thought in representation. Therefore we have to investigate the morphological and structural aspects of visual form in order to outline the construction and production processes with a clear project aim. This involves a study in depth of themes belonging to different disciplinary field to individuate and propose not only a key to reading and interpreting images, but also an operating mode, a “way of doing”, built within the discipline of drawing.