Re-appropriating Image/Xiang

By re-appropriating Chinese writing—an image-based tradition—as a cosmotechnical practice, this paper re-envisions the relationship between media, technics, and representation, beyond the rationalistic and technocratic mindset that dominates modern technology. Responding to Heidegger’s critique of form-based Western philosophy, I engage with the poetic notion of xiang (image, 象) to explore Yuk Hui’s speculative concept of cosmotechnics and support a search for an alternative understanding of technology. I argue that contemporary digital media operates through a limited notion of the image, reducing it to data processing of the known, the sensible, and the calculable, whereas traditional Chinese thought on the image opens towards the unknown through an interplay of presence-absence. As a means of testing this argument, the design research project documented in part here – engaging with LiDAR scanning, 3D printing, and clay modelling – explores Hui’s thinking by speculating on a possible practice of cosmotechnics. Through material practices of tracing, moulding, and sketching, it reconnects digital and physical gestures, challenging the disembodied nature of contemporary media. The paper suggests that writing and technics are deeply intertwined with cosmic and bodily realities. By situating digital technology within a broader aesthetic and philosophical framework, it seeks to disrupt the logic of mono-technologism and open new pathways for technological futures informed by cosmotechnical plurality. Read the full article online at: https://drawingon.org/Issue-04-03-Re-appropriating-Image-Xiang