TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

This is in keeping with the idea which appears to underlie contemporary uses of the action camera: the image is the audiovisual document of the filmer’s presence at a given moment. The somatic qualities inscribed in the image force us to see beyond what is shown on screen to think, first and foremost, of the physical conditions on which capturing the image by the filmer depends. The “action camera” is thus also a camera which serves to produce “somatic images,” inasmuch as we interpret each of these expressions in light of the referential shift which makes us think about the body carrying the camera rather than about what is depicted in the image.