The nature of images keeps changing, and so does the society; since its communication mechanisms and the media enabling such communication keep changing, too. The images that surround our everyday lives no longer need frames, are not made of physical material and do not carry the traces of the presence of their author. They circulate in virtual reality, entering it and leaving it again to become even more complex communication tools and social actors that are actively shaped not only by their author but also by their consumers in various roles – those of disseminators, commentators, paraphrasing authors, or those who use them for profit.
How do we perceive the images of the present whose significant part takes place in the virtual environment? What are those images, how do they speak to us and how do they enable us to speak through them?
KATEŘINA SVATOŇOVÁ, film theorist (Charles University in Prague)
MARIE MEIXNEROVÁ, audiovisual theorist, curator (Festival of Film Animation Olomouc, Palacký University)
ZUZANA HUSÁROVÁ, media philosopher (Comenius University in Bratislava)
