The research project seeks to provide a fundamental contribution to a cultural history – through a history of images and ideas practiced in an interdisciplinary and international setting. Through its own quite specific expertise with images Art History has the opportunity to establish the autonomy of the image, which it can then offer as an independent and constitutive aspect to an interdisciplinary cultural scholarship. At the same time one of the research project’s special qualities consists in engaging with the specific character of images without positing an image-language opposition. Instead, it seeks to explore language’s complementary arc of development and work with it. If, as has been said, Art History in general is predestined to be an open partner in expansive, interdisciplinary research, the Bilderfahrzeuge research project in particular relies on a fertile field of dialogue in order to pursue its comprehensive cultural approach. It will provide appropriate mechanisms to discuss the transfer of image concepts and forms, by means of the concept of ‘Bilderfahrzeuge’ – the vehicles of images. In terms of media science, the ‘vehicle’ itself, its particular and specific historical forms, provide a point of interest. At the same time, ‘images’ are regarded as the main focus of the research. It takes material images as a theme as well as linguistic images, but also considers access to images, or treatment and use of them, in literature, the humanities, and science.
Partners
