Video Ergo Sum: Video as Symbolic Form

From cinema to TV, from PC to iPhone, from videogames to the displays disseminated across the urban space, today everything is video. It form a whirl of images flowing in a single visual stream, an unstoppable and fluid visual continuum. Therefore, by explicitly hinting at Erwin Panofsky’s essay of 1927, in this text I try to understand if it is possible to develop a discourse on the situation of contemporary visual culture that echoes the one proposed by the German art historian. The following arguments try to prove that it is indeed possible by referring to the relations currently binding art, aesthetics and the new media, and in particular to the series of interdisciplinary studies developed by North-American cultural studies.