Seminar – Image Comparison

The seminar Image comparison and its medium – from slide projection to algorithms was dedicated to current digital methods and web services in which image comparison appears as a (conscious) methodology and questions its epistemological potential. It addressed the levels of similarity as an epistemological engine of knowledge and questioned the epistemic expressiveness of collection and analysis methods such as computer vision or machine learning, which, in contrast to a contextually text-based or philological determination of images, rely primarily on their formal compositional properties.

In contrast to the topicality of digital image methods and services, a large part of the seminar dealt with the origin of image comparison as a method that strongly influenced the emergence of art history as an academic discipline towards the end of the 19th century.

As part of the seminar, students created a glossary on central topics of (digital) image comparison.