Preface to [ Connected Images: New Paradigms for Aesthetic Experience]

The present issue of Paradigmi revolves around the notion of image. Not primarily, however, of image as a relation ‘between’ heterogeneous or homogeneous elements but as an ‘assembled event’ that determines a new condition in current aesthetic experience, i.e. the experience of “connected images”. Connected images can have a variety of intentional and non-intentional relations with each other characterized by association, mediation or correspondence, but also conflict, interference and contradiction. This becomes a significant factor in performing processes, generating a multifaceted ‘exchange’. What comes into view straight away are processes of individuation and dynamics of connection through image-trajectories and re-presentation – in art, science or in the public space –, and the ways connected images increasingly support an environment coexistent with technology. In order to gain access to the full significance and scope of connected images on the one side and of connections within the image on the other, the articles collected in the issue explore from different standpoints and points of departure how images are modified when they become connected.