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Anyone talking about pictures by necessity refersto those using pictures. It is therefore essentiallythe competence of using pictures that they mustconsider. Such a competence is not a common abilityeven among higher developed mammals, atleast as far as we know today. This fact raises thequestion yet unanswered whether and to what extentthat ability has to be conceived of as a strictlyanthropological one. In an interdisciplinary approach,the first international conference of theSociety for Interdisciplinary Image Science (GiB)titled Origins of Pictures has taken a closer look atthe role of pictures for the conditio humana.The goals pursued at the conference were first topresent empirical findings of the origins of pictureuses. In particular, research in paleo-anthropology,archeology, cultural anthropology, and developmentalpsychology has been considered. Furthermore,those findings have been related to philosophicalconsiderations concerning the conditionsof the conceptual formation of picture competence.

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KLAUS SACHS-HOMBACH, born in 1957, studied philosophy, psychology and German language and literature at the University of Münster. After his PhD in 1990 at the University of Münster and his habilitation in 2003 at the University of Magdeburg he was appointed professor of philosophy, focussed on cognitive science, at the TU Chemnitz in 2007. Since October 2011, he holds the chair of media studies at the University of Tübingen. JÖRG R. J. SCHIRRA, born in 1960, studied computer science, physics, philosophy, linguistics, and psychology at the University of the Saarland. After an extended research stay in Berkeley, California, he was responsible for establishing of programme of computational visualistics at the department of computer science at the University of Magdeburg where he later gained his secondary doctorate (habilitation). He is currently representative head of the chair for philosophy and cognitive science at the Technical University of Chemnitz and part of a visual studies team working on an online glossary of visual philosophy.

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