Seeing is Believing: the Politics of the Visual,

Seeing is Believing is a personal and analytical account investigatingthe politics of visual communication. Several thousand times a daywe assimilate visual imagery at speed, a process accelerated in thedigital world.The book explores the complex and reciprocal dynamic betweenworld and image in this most visually mediated society. Everyoneknows images can be false or deceptive, but we all live and work inconstant denial of this idea and its implications. In a world saturatedwith media we act as though we are immune to their effects.Seeing is Believing is an invitation to an intimate voyage that ispermeable to the worlds upheavals. It is from the tension betweenthese two poles autobiographical fiction and documentary report that poetry is generated (Jean-Luc Godard). This book explores thepotential for contemporary forms of artistic practice to create newspaces for active participation in culture and society.There are six sectionsHistory Politics; Art Culture; Film Television; Products Possessions; The Quotidian The Strange;Verisimilitude Delusioninvestigating clusters of images to exploredifferentiated themes of pictorial operation including photography,graffiti, painting, film and television. The sections are formed offragments, disposable typologies, which offer a provisional andspeculative incision into the image flow.Rod Stoneman is the Director of the Huston School of Film amp;Digital Media at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He wasChief Executive of Bord Scannán na hÉireann (Irish Film Board)until September 2003 and previously a Deputy CommissioningEditor at Channel 4. He has made a number of documentaries ,and has written extensively on film and television.