SIMAGE : If aesthetic can be perceived as a mediation of the senses, images, when broadcast in the media, are more akin to mass teasing disguised as foreplay with a promise of full gratification. Images are naturally charged with the seductive attributes of allure, charisma, charm, beauty, looks, appeal, sensuality, pleasure, and magnetism. With image we enter relationships that can range from the ambiguous and troubling to the hypnotic, ecstatic and blinding.

Tim Reid : Young kids are taking Viagra, ecstasy. They even want instant sex.

Aldous Huxley : It must be something voluntary, something self induced—like getting drunk, or talking yourself into believing some piece of foolishness because it happens to be in the Scriptures. And then look at their idea of what’s normal. Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to society. It’s unimaginable! No question about what you do with your orgasms. No question about the quality of your feelings and thoughts and perceptions. And then what about the society you’re supposed to be adjusted to? Is it a madsociety or a sane one? And even if it’s pretty sane, is it right that anybody should be completely adjusted to it?

Woody Allen : In my next life I want to live backwards. Start out dead and finish off as an orgasm.

SIMAGE : If image has a sex, it is feminine. If the Original Sin ever was, it was not to have eaten a forbidden fruit, but to have looked at the first image. Image usually depicts a thing beyond our reach, and in this sense it is the ultimate tease. Depiction is to reality as desire is to orgasm. Image is fundamentally sensual in a way that words could never be. Image is the surface of reality in the same way that skin is to the body. Both reveal so much of what they conceal that we cannot fathom what is missing in the picture.