Sensible Atoms: A Techno-aesthetic Approach to Representation

Sacha Loeve (1)

1 CETCOPRA - Centre d'étude des techniques, des connaissances et des pratiques

This essay argues that nano-images would be best understood with an aesthetical approach rather than with an epistemological critique. For this aim, I propose a 'techno-aesthetical' approach: an enquiry into the way instruments and machines transform the logic of the sensible itself and not just the way by which it represents something else. Unlike critical epistemology, which remains self-evidently grounded on a representationalist philoso-phy, the approach developed here presents the advantage of providing a clear-cut distinction between image-as-representation and other modes of existence of images, such as the one of 'imaginaction' that I draw from a comparison between far-field and near-field microscopies. Once this regime of imaginaction is distinguished from representation, I focus on nano-technological percepts and argue that they follow a transmodal logic. I then draw the implic-ations of this enquiry in terms of a new sensible condition that changes the way we think of non-living objects. Finally, I conclude that if techno-aesthetics dares to posit and articulate sensibility beyond the privileged sphere of subject/object relationships, it simultaneously engages us to consider the political character of our responsibilities towards the design of nano-engineered sensorial spaces.

Mots clés: Techno-aesthetics; Whitehead; Aesthetics; Baumgarten; Bergson; Deleuze; Nanotechnology; Near-field microscopy; Philosophy of scientific instruments

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Philosophie

Sacha Loeve. Sensible Atoms: A Techno-aesthetic Approach to Representation. NanoEthics, 2011, 5 (2), pp. 203-222. ⟨10.1007/s11569-011-0124-0⟩. ⟨halshs-00714487v2⟩