The Material Image, the eighth Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference at the intersections of art, science and culture, was held at the National Art School, Sydney, from 1–3 November 2024. Convened in hybrid format, the conference brought together artists, theorists, and thinkers to reflect on what images are and what they do in a time when digital media saturates daily life, and materialist thought has regained momentum.

The conference arrived at a moment of transformation in the ways we engage with, produce, and interpret images across multiple domains, with new imaging technologies challenging and revolutionising the way images act upon and within them. The premise was clear: contemporary visualisation technologies have unsettled our assumptions about the nature of images. No longer confined to canvas or celluloid, images now circulate across pigments, fibers, sensors, code, and data streams. Conference participants probed what it means to speak of a ‘material image’ when images appear both tangible and ephemeral, embedded in physical processes yet dispersed across networks.

Materialisms in context

New materialist frameworks, emphasising flux and human/non-human entanglements, have become influential across the humanities and creative practice. Yet the optimism of such approaches is challenged by current conditions: the aftereffects of a global pandemic, accelerating climate crises, rapid incursions of AI, and resurgent geopolitical conflict. These realities force a reassessment of how materialist theories intersect with lived experience.

Against this backdrop, contributors to The Material Image asked how art and technology might together probe materiality and immateriality. Can creative practice reveal new ways of navigating ecological collapse or technological opacity? How might images both participate in and critique the systems that shape contemporary life? A sense of the image as ‘material’ forms here a locus around which we might consider its expanded potential across multiple domains.

A spectrum of approaches

What emerged was a view of the image as multiple and contested—ranging from traces and residues on paper or clay to algorithmic simulations and immersive environments. Papers highlighted human/non-human entanglements, the ecological dimensions of material practice, hybrid intersections of digital and analogue media, and the role of images in carrying myths and misinformation in a post-digital world.

By working across these domains, presenters emphasised that images are not only visual artefacts but also processes that involve touch, storage, circulation, and memory. Practice-led research was foregrounded as a way of generating knowledge, showing how the act of making images itself produces insights that theory alone cannot. The inclusion of artist talks ensured that the voice of the maker was present, lending the proceedings a sense of lived experience, experimentation and reflection.

The conference’s embrace of early-career researchers equally informed the sessions with fresh perspectives and a critical energy. By welcoming voices at the threshold of their practice, the conference cultivated a diverse and inclusive community, with speculative research and emergent practice not only valued but foregrounded.

Curating the publication

This volume offers a curated selection of papers rather than a full proceedings. Our rationale was to capture the range of voices and approaches that best exemplify the conference’s concerns: theoretical reflections, practice-led investigations, established thinkers, and emerging scholars. Each contribution has been peer reviewed and edited to speak both to the event and to a wider audience engaged in art/science/technology discourse. The papers address common themes that arose from the conference itself, grouped around the concerns of the image and material ecologies; data visualisation; technology; and performance and materiality.

Together, these papers trace a trajectory from conceptual to situated practices. They illuminate how images can both reinforce and challenge dominant narratives, and how creative practices of imaging can open new avenues for thinking critically about materiality. This publication chronicles the exploration of this potential, forming a record of scholarly and creative exchange and giving testament to the relevance of the material turn in considering a world increasingly shaped by images.

Continuing the conversation

The Material Image affirms that images remain central to how we understand and inhabit the world. At a time when visual culture is inseparable from questions of ecology, technology, and politics, the image becomes a site of negotiation: between matter and data, visibility and opacity, presence and absence.

The works collected here exemplify that negotiation. They remind us that art is not simply reflective but generative, offering modes of knowing and imagining that are essential for navigating our complex present. As the echoes of the conference reverberate outward, it is hoped that this publication serves as a catalyst for further inquiry, collaboration, and innovation.

This introduction leads to a closing reflection by series founder Paul Thomas, who situates this edition within the broader trajectory of the Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference. His words mark this as both culmination and continuation—part of an ongoing effort to rethink what images are and what they can do at the intersections of art, science, and culture.

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