Lecture 6 The Digital Photograph_from Construction to Velocity

7/29/2019 Lecture 6 The Digital Photograph_from Construction to Velocity

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THE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH:FROM CONSTRUCTION TO VELOCITY


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Two areas for today

What is a digital photograph?

What is new media?


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Two issues:

1. A tipping point more images seen on-screen than as prints. (An

anxiety: what is the proper production-reception-location of aphotograph: a disciplinary concern)

2. A notion of public space: where are photographs seen?


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Two questions to assume, then.

What is the material / immaterial status of the digital

photograph?

What are new medias key characteristics in relation to

photographs?


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Key definitions of new media

ContextCharacterisitcs


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Context:

- a shift from modern to postmodern culture and economies

(from the 1960s onwards)

- a tendency towardsglobalisation a shrinking of global space and adissolution of national boundaries (from state to corporation)

- a move from industrial societies to post-industrial societies, from the

factory toPost-Fordism, from assembly line to immaterial labour (defined

by communication technology and connectivity)


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Characteristics:

New media as opposed to old

A term to use rather than:

digital media / electronic media [too specific]

interactive media [too ill-defined]

computer-mediated communication / CMC [limitation to a particularmachine or practice]

Can cover: internet, virtual environments, computer assisted

representation, video games, chat-rooms, image-boards, mobile phone

apps

New media = a convergence of modes, disciplines, genres, media into

the computer.


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Key words:

Digitality

InteractivityHypertextuality

Dispersal

Virtuality


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Other keywords:

Flux / Flow / FlexibilityNetwork / Connectivity

Convergence


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DIGITALITY


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Key definitions of a digital photograph


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A rehearsal: Stephen BullsPhotography

To begin: digital photography a result of 1960s

experiments by NASA (how to send visual informationacross space)

To reflect: the first photography-academic writings

around digital photography begin in the 1990s


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A movement of positions:

1. Photography (as we know it) is dead!

Fred Ritchin / W.J.T. Mitchell (1990-1993)

2. Digital photography extends analogue photography

Photography is always a cut-up of reality / we must address how

photography is always implicated in framing the world, in the

production of a world (as much as a reproduction)

Lev Manovich / Geoffrey Batchen (1995 - )


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3. The material consequences of the digital

Manovich: the digital is the advent of the society of the screen

Elizabeth Edwards & Janice Hart:

Did we always think about photographs as pictures are they 2D or 3D

The return of the camera obscura the screen as the site of pictures in motion never

fixed, with a body in intimate relation...


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Screen viewing:

a return to the camera obscura?


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Digital photography:

What relation to the viewing body?

Print: the body moves (leans towards, handles, uses a

magnifying loop)

Screen: the image moves (the mouse and keyboard orchestrate

the shifting of the image)

Today? Does the screen get passed around (personal devices,iPods etc.)


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Steve EdwardsPhotography: A Very Short Introduction

1. Rather than light registered by chemicals it is light (input data)

transformed into code, numbers, digits. (Retains an indexical link to the

referent, but is more open to manipulation)

2. It retains no source analogue media has a physical carrier (a

negative) digital is stored data. This has consequences for storage and

circulation

3. Spaces of appearance; from print to screen, projector, world-wide-

web (access can arrive in non-linear forms)


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Steve EdwardsPhotography: A Very Short Introduction (cont.)

Two positions:

Pros:

Digital photography allows more access to users and audiences, allows a

resurgence of serious photographic publication in alternative modes

digital photography probably provides the best opportunity for the

circulation of serious photographic work since the demise of the picture

magazines

Cons:

The digital moves towards attention deficit disorder, a new form of

integrated spectacle


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Steve EdwardsPhotography: A Very Short Introduction (cont.)

Photographic truth being eroded by the digital?

(via Brecht) A picture of a factory tells us nothing, something must beconstructed

The digital in its constructive nature might allow us to see moreclearly


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Early digital photography

A question of the construction of the image


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Early digital photography

Images of O. J. Simpson from June 1994 a case of digital enhancement


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Brian Walski

2003

a case of undeclared montage


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Nancy Burson

1982


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Nancy Burson

1982


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Nancy Burson

1983-5


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The analogue: media having an analogous relation to the thing

The digital: media having a numerical relation to the thing (digits)

Digitality is a question of mathematics, not physics or chemistry

digital signifies the assignment of numerical values to phenomena

Martin Lister et al. New Media: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, 2003


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Digital as a question of manipulation:

To edit the analogue a physical outputting is necessary, then a

change is made to that

Digital media is only ever fixed when outputted into a fixed form(a print) otherwise it is always in potential flux

Fixity (analogue) Flux (digital)


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Aziz + Cucher

Chris

1994


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Aziz + Cucher

Interior no.2

1999


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Aziz + Cucher

Interior Study no.2

1999-2000


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Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

The Forest, Andy

1995


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Me Kissing Vinoodh (passionately)

1999


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God

2003


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Lady Gaga

2011


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Nick Knight

for W magazine

2012


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Nick Knight

Devon

1997


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Andreas Gursky

Chicago, Board of Trade II

1999


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INTERACTIVITY


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Another interactive scenario:

As digital media is in permanent state of flux is is available to

intervention by users

Hence Youtube mashups, track-jacking, the re-working of

images / texts / sounds.


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Interactivity and user-generated content


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Examples of a convergence culture:

Our culture reflects the pull and tug of these two media systems: one

broadcast and commercial, the other narrowcast and grassroots

Broadcasting provides the common culture, and the Web offers more

localised channels for responding to that culture

Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, 2006


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HYPERTEXTUALITY


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A new media basic

The hyperlink.

Hyper above / beyond / outside

An old media form: footnotes, appendix, glossary

New media: Allows new forms of connectivity and foregrounds

pathways of association


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ADD BLINDSPOT


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VIRTUALITY


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Lecture 6 The Digital Photograph_from Construction to Velocity

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