Yeux

Michel Serres (born in 1930) has an eclectic and encyclopedic mind. This member of the Académie française loves, above everything else, to shake given ideas out of people’s heads. Following the astounding success of Petite Poucette with over 220,000 copies (his thoughts on the young generations and new technologies), in his last book he attacks images. Based on an unexpected iconography – combining an anamorphosis by Jules Romain, a photo of the monolith from Ayers Rock in Australia or place de la Concorde seen from the perspective of a falcon – the work asks a question which we should ask ourselves more often: what does seing mean? With the collaboration of Dassault Systèmes, the author demonstrates the extraordinary progress of virtual technologies (for example to explore the grotto of Lascaux without going there). In an aside, during the conference comparing the academic "performances" of the blind and the deaf-mute, Michel Serres reached a disquieting conclusion for our hyper-visual world: as attractive as it may be, an image seems to vehiculate less information than sound.

• Yeux, by Michel Serres, éditions du Pommier, 2014, 216 p., €39.