The Anthropology of New Visuality as a Reflection on ‘Digital’ Visual Culture

Abstract

The Anthropology of New Visuality is a project formulated by Arturo Escobar concerning visual aspects of the Anthropology of Cyberculture. The issues addressed include new forms of visuality in the contexts of digital technologies of seeing. The main thesis is based on the conviction that Escobar’s project finds new research areas in Visual Culture Studies and is discussed based on the research of theoreticians identifying themselves with this field. The research context is divided into three theoretical aspects: virtual cultures, surveillance cultures, and interface cultures. Consequently, virtual cultures include the issue of new visualities, which are the effect of functioning of various types of virtual realities. Furthermore, surveillance cultures are a current reflection, which refers to Michel Foucault’s theories directly to web-cameras monitoring private, public, and satellite space. Then, within the notion of interface cultures questions of online identity, telepresence, and artificial life, obtained by means of the Internet, are discussed.