Potential Image

The Potential image is a concept borrowed from OuLiPo’s conception of Potential Literature¹. Simply put, if potential literature is a term to focus on the latent potential inherent in literature, then potential image is a term to focus on the latent potential inherent in images. Following OuLiPo’s orientation, this latent potential emerges—or will emerge—through constraints and procedures leading to the peculiar or the exceptional.

As stated in the Lipo: First Manifesto, OuLiPo intends to work systematically and scientifically, if necessary, through recourse to machines that process information. We still live in an era where the myth of genius has not been completely shattered (contrary to Le Lionnais’s optimistic outlook), but fortunately, the “help of information-processing machines” is becoming increasingly diverse and sophisticated. (Indeed, the development of artificial intelligence has reached levels that seem almost magical.) Consequently, Oulipian work retains intriguing potential. Potential images are precisely those uncertain images born not from the realm of genius or inspiration, but from the principles of combination and permutation, sets and probability, algorithms.