The essay focuses on the processes of intermedia in visual media. The author's analysis of the merging of still, moving and computed images reveals that, in intermedia, images tend to-ward a spatial, rather than temporal, organizing prin-ciple. This shift becomes evident in particular in the moving images in such elec-tronic films as Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books. The limits of intermedia in the electronic medium are unfolded in the concept of the coherent im-age by Zbigniew Rybczynski. Another concept of com-pression and convergence is demonstrated by Clea T.

The mental processes that al-low an artist to transform visual images-e.g. those of his model-into a picture on the canvas are not easily studied. The authors re-port work measuring the eye and hand movements of a single artist, chosen for his detailed and realis-tic portraits produced from life. His eye fixations when painting or drawing were of twice the duration of those when he was not painting and also quite different from those of novice artists. His eye-hand co-ordination pattern also showed dif-ferences from that of novices, be-ing more temporally consistent.

Functional Magnetic Reso-nance Imaging (fMRI) scans of a skilled portrait artist and of a non-artist were made as each drew a series of faces. There was a dis-cernible increase in blood flow in the right-posterior parietal region of the brain for both the artist and non-artist during the task, a site normally associated with facial per-ception and processing. However, the level of activation appeared lower in the expert than in the nov-ice, suggesting that a skilled artist may process facial information more efficiently.

The author investigates the militarization of immersive cultural consciousness, as initiated by the aerial bombardment of civilians at Guernica and during World War II. Parallel to this trend he observes an ambient-immersive impetus in post-war art, which he traces in the example of the Espace group, and in the currently developing technology of virtual reality.