Forms of Representation

Representation is a concern crucial to the sciences and the arts alike. Scientists devote substantial time to devising and exploring representations of all kinds. From photographs and computer-generated images to diagrams, charts, and graphs; from scale models to abstract theories, representations are ubiquitous in, and central to, science. Likewise, after spending much of the twentieth century in proverbial exile as abstraction and Formalist aesthetics reigned supreme, representation has returned with a vengeance to contemporary visual art.

In Body Language, Mark Rowlands argues that the problem of representation–how it is possible for one item to represent another–has been exacerbated by the assimilation of representation to the category of the word. That is, the problem is traditionally understood as one of relating inner to outer–relating an inner representing item to something extrinsic or exterior to it. Rowlands argues that at least some cases of representation need to be understood not in terms of the word but of the deed.