Apparatus is a tool that changes the meaning of the world in opposition to the mechanical tools that change the world itself.
The functionary: the photographer, or the operator of the camera, who is constrained by its rules. He makes it work, within the limits of what it is possible to do with it. The program, that is, what the was buit to do. This is the simplest way to summarize the concept behind the term. The “technical image”: an image produced mechanically, and not directly by human hand (like painting). Vilém Flusser analyzed the emergence of photography as emblematic of a new age of civilization. This new age is determined by the use of cameras, that is to say, programmed functional devices producing technical images, thus putting an end to the predominance of linear writing. This new culture would result from a more direct vision of reality in the form of images (photographs, films, videos) resulting from the operation of devices. However, such technical images, far from being spontaneous, result from numerical calculations that make visualization devices exist and function, black boxes, as Flusser calls them. The programs of these devices would determine individual behavior and creative possibilities. Automated and combinatorial information processing would thus have become the underlying law of the new visuality.
