VISUAL TRUST. Reliability, accountability and forgery in scientific, religious and social images

Project Information

VISUALTRUST

Grant agreement ID: 101002897

DOI

10.3030/101002897

EC signature date 7 May 2021

Start date 1 October 2021

End date 30 September 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 605 250,00

EU contribution

€ 1 605 250,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - VISUALTRUST (VISUAL TRUST. Reliability, accountability and forgery in scientific, religious and social images)

Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

AI-generated images have raised the fear of a world governed by false images which would lead Humanity to an absolute confusion between “true” images and “deceptive” ones. Yet the question of the “false” image is an ancient one. Indeed, it is as old as images themselves. The above-mentioned apocalyptic discourse about misleading images needs to be nuanced. Let’s think on our everyday life: we constantly do things with and through images, and so for many different purposes. Our ethical and epistemological stances towards images are also complex. There are images we trust and other we distrust. Sometimes we hesitate. But on what basis we undertake these judgements? And to what actions they lead?
Adopting a comparative and relational approach, this project aims at understanding how individuals from different socio-cultural milieu interact with images in terms of trust and mistrust. To trust an image means to consider it a reliable medium for knowing the world and communicating to others. For instance, if we go to a doctor and she shows us an image of our inner body we will probably trust it (even though we ignore how the image has been made). The believer trusts the images of a sacred being to get in contact with it. Documentary photographers trust the photographic medium as a dispositive to account for the political situation of the world. Yet we mistrust most of the images of actuality that we find on Internet, along with images of advertising or propaganda, to name a few. We also consider “false” some allegedly scientific or even religious images.
This project uses audio-visual research methods to understand what people do with and through images in terms of trust. It brings together Religion, Society, and Science. Its overall objective is twofold: to better understand why people trust some images and not others and to increase our visual literacy, thus contributing to a more critical and informed citizenship.
It will lead to a plurality of outcomes: articles, books, films, and exhibitions, according to the principles of public science. Fieldwork is done in different countries (Spain, Romania, Norway, India, Puerto Rico, Brazil, to name a few). It engages scholars from different research centers.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project VISUAL TRUST is starting its second phase. The research team is composed (3 Postdoctoral researchers, 2 PHD candidates, on top of the PI). All the fieldworks are already in progress and done, and the first results begin to appear.
The website of the project (www.visualtrust.ub.edu) is fully active and reunites most of the advances in research.
The main results achieved so far are:
-Two research articles:
Canals, R. (2022), “Visual trust: Fake images in the Russia-Ukraine war”. Anthropology Today, 38: 4-7. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12767
This article, published in open-access and very prestigious journal, received an award as the most-downloaded article of the first 12 months of publication.
Roger Canals, “Visual Trust”, Anthrovision [Online], 8.1 | 2020, Online since 15 August 2022, connection on 26 April 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/6945; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/anthrovision.6945
4 more articles are under review.
-One book chapter:
Canals, R. (2023). “Images, Healing, and Trust”. In Pierini, E. et al. (eds.) Other Worlds, Other Bodies. Embodied Epistemologies and Ethnographies of Healing. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
-Exhibition at the Museum of Ethnology and World Cultures of Barcelona: Roger Canals, PI of this ERC Project, has been the curator of an exhibition opened in Barcelona between 14-2-2023 and 28-4-2024. The title of the exhibition is: “Do statues also die?”. It is a reflection on the lives of images displayed at ethnographic Museums
-Book: The Image that never Ends. A Journey into Visual Anthropology, from Ethnographic Cinema until Artificial Intelligence (English version on progress). Roger Canals published a book on Visual Anthropology during the second year of the project. The book appeared in Catalan and Spanish. English translation is in course and a major English.
-5 research films and several visual essays (available on the website). Among them, we highlight Verdade e Mentiras (Mihai Andrei Leaha, 2023). The Color of Spirits (Roger Canals, 2023) and How do saints see? (Roger Canals, Alkim Erol, Juan Francisco D. Cuyás).
-2 International Conferences have been organized along to 14 seminars (most of them recorded and available at the website). Public events with major figures like WJT Mitchell has been also celebrated during the first half of the project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The fieldwork carried out thus far allow us to complexify our usual takes on the relation between images, politics, and trust. We have been able to observe the complexity of ways through which people interact with images and assess them. Visual trust is not an all-or-nothing category, but a contextual, multimodal and relational concept which requires a bottom-up and comparative approach. The term “trust” is usually used to talk about individuals having free will. Technology and artifacts are not seen as objects of trust but rather of reliance. We consider that the specificity of images (that is, the fact that they are “objects” usually treated as if they were “persons”) justifies the use of the term “trust” when talking about visual signs. Images seem to have their own wills, purposes, and agendas, as WJT brilliantly pointed out in his essay “What do pictures want”.
We have also noticed that there is a multiplicity of ways of assessing the trustworthiness of an images, and that they do not necessarily relate to the question of “truth”. In Afro-american religions, for instance, images are “trusted” regardless of their accuracy in representational terms. What really counts is what one does with the image. In astronomical images, crafted or modified images can be most trustworthy than images apparently “true” (because they are raw material).
From now one, we envisage the following outcomes: an edited book with contributions of different scholars will be published, together with two special issues in different journals. One more film (minimum) of each research task will be made as well as a final visual essay uniting all research tasks. A minimum of 6 book chapters and 5 articles will be published.
1 international conferences and six international seminars will take place before the end of the project.

Conference at the Centro de Arte La Regenta (Canary Island) (4.5.23) Roger Canals

2. Poster - Els (seminar)

1. Poster - Emiko (seminar)

Events and news (Visual Trust - website)

Website (Visual Trust)

6. Poster - Alice (seminar)

Amanda - Fieldwork - Madrid (Spain). 22-24.7.22

David (seminar)

Department of Anthropology (UB) (15.3.23) Roger Canals

5. Poster - Ferran (seminar)

4. Poster - Quim (seminar)

Anthropology Week – ICA (Catalan Institute of Anthropology) (23.11.22) Amanda Bernal and Roger Canal

7. Poster - Edgar (seminar)

India - Ethnographic Photography Class at Delhi University (7.2.23) Juan Francisco D. Cuyas