The Democratisation of Form - WordPress.com · 2019-05-10 · Sarah-Jane Field 512666 Digital Image & Culture Assignment 3 – Updated March 2019 1 The Democratisation of Form Sarah-Jane

Sarah-Jane Field 512666

Digital Image & Culture 512666

Digital Image & Culture Assignment 3 – Updated March 2019

www.sjfdiculture.wordpress.com 1

The Democratisation of Form

Sarah-Jane Field Digital Image & Culture Assignment 3

Illustration 1 McFadden’s Cold War, @coldwar_steve, shared on Twitter, 26th February 2019. Reproduced with the artist’s permission.





“….there is to be a new order. The old system is overturned. The old centuries are done. Just as Jesus told the people of Israel that God’s desires had changed, the time of the Gospels is over and there must be a new doctrine.”

Allie’s voice to herself in The Power, Naomi Alderman, 2016 “Within a Newtonian worldview, the famed Cartier-Bresson photograph of a man jumping a puddle leaves the reader confident he will land on the other side; in a subatomic quantum universe it remains a matter of probabilities.”

Fred Ritchin, A Quantum Leap from After Photography, 2009





Digital Image & Culture Assignment 3 Contents

1. Introduction 4 2. A new paradigm 6 3. Malleability of form, ideas, and facts 9 4. Conclusion 14 5. Bibliography 16 6. Appendix 18 7. Reflection 20

Images

1. @coldwar_steve, image published on Twitter 26th February 2019 1 Reproduced with the artist Christopher Spencer’s permission. (Downloaded from Twitter)

2. A still from Charlotte Prodger’s, Bridgit, 2018 4 Photograph: Charlotte Prodger/Tate/PA (Downloaded from The Guardian)

3. A still from Rachel Maclean’s, Make Me Up, 2018 7 Photograph: Rachel Maclean (Downloaded from MakeMeUpFilm.com)

Essay word count minus quotations, footnotes and captions – approx. 2750





Introduction In 2018 the Turner prize was awarded to Charlotte Prodger whose work included a film shot entirely on her digital phone. The project was accompanied by a newsprint handout containing a significant amount of text. Competing artists also interrogated aspects of digitization.

Illustration 2. A still from Charlotte Prodger’s film Bridgit, her work in this year’s Turner prize. Photograph: Charlotte Prodger/Tate/PA (Downloaded from The Guardian, 2018)

In February 2019 Behrouz Boochani won the prestigious Victorian prize for literature in Australia for his documentation of life Manus Island. He used his phone to write a book, one text at a time, and also make the film. He said, “I could keep my identity and keep my humanity […] This system is designed to take our identity, designed to reduce us to numbers […] I can say I survived through my artworks, through my journalism work.” (Davidson, 2018) Christopher Spencer is a public-sector worker for Birmingham Council. While travelling to his job on the bus, using just his phone, he makes satirical montages featuring world leaders and celebrities. The work is disseminated via social media and he has recently published a book. Journalist and author Jon Savage writes, “Spencer’s images speak of psychological pressure that is both individual […] and collective… Spencer is the contemporary equivalent of Hogarth or Gillray” (2019, pg9).

**





Despite the aforementioned success stories, an attitude towards digital photography, and exemplified by Tacita Dean’s comments, persists. Digital, she says, “… does not have the means to create poetry; it neither breathes nor wobbles, but tidies up our society, correcting it, and then leaves no trace” (Eakin, 2011). Throughout the multi-faceted world of photography there are individuals and groups who promote analogue and condemn digital processes, and echo Dean’s notion that film being replaced by digital means an “irredeemable loss for art” (ibid). Even when not overtly anti-digital, photographers champion older technology. “Like a lot of professionals, Laura Pannack isn’t crazy about modern cameras. Granted, the London-based photographer keeps an iPhone in her pocket for the occasional snapshot, but really she likes nothing more than to take out her well-worn Hasselblad and hear the satisfying pah-clunk of a mechanical shutter.” (Cartwright, 2015) Digitisation has led to many more people having access to photography. But in 2018 Wim Wenders wrote it off altogether, claiming photography was dead and the iPhone was responsible (Hagan, 2018). Despite this, we are bombarded with images and there are more of them than ever before, thanks to our phones. This essay aims to discover some of what lies beneath the hyperbole, and between polarised statements; and to interrogate a necessarily limited selection of related issues surrounding the structural nature of today’s widely accessed representations.





2. A new paradigm

PHOTO GRAPHY

CHANGES EVERY THING

- appears on the cover of the 2018 Brighton Photo Fringe Festival guide. A photograph of someone pointing to her eye is positioned beneath the headline, emphasising the idea that imagery and sight dominate discourse1. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) stated society was dominated by sight. He suggested this came about following the invention of writing which we looked at in order to decipher its meaning2 (2017). Guy Debord (1931-1994) declared imagery was the medium, which “concentrates all gazing and all consciousness” (1977, loc441). McLuhan also argued modern technology was ushering in a new era, which may be aural rather than visual (2017). When we consider how we interact with media online today, sound plays an important part. Its presence is taken for granted in moving image and is nearly always integral to narrative and can be highly evocative. Anthropomorphosised in name, and referenced in Rachel McLean’s Make Me Up (2018), devices such as Alexa and Siri listen to us and respond. Even when we don’t personally hear the information, audio data can inform visual representation, as in the case of sonograms. Our devices watch and hear us, modes of movement are tracked and recorded through vibrations, as are heart rates, sleep patterns, and other data which is neither heard nor seen in the literal sense but nevertheless recorded and stored. We believe technology looks at us with its eyes – there are plenty of references to mechanical watching in art and popular culture, and there are certainly many cameras watching us. But perhaps these references require thinking about in broader terms.

1 Note, in the example, text, image and even negative space are all used to convey the message 2 Compare our visual system to knot tying which is how the Incas stored narrative and which required tactile reading.





Illustration 3. ‘The apparatus’3 attempts to capture the character Siri's personal data but Siri causes a glitch in the programme. From Rachel Maclean’s Make Me Up (2018)

For now, virtual reality games (wherever used, i.e. therapeutic settings, as opposed to people’s front rooms/bedrooms) require users to have a headset through which they see things taking place, giving their bodies/minds4 the impression of events really happening. (It might be argued they are ‘really happening’). However, sound is usually crucial and in time, developers will find ways to trigger further sense reactions such as smell and touch. Modern cinemas have clunky but developing techniques for activating senses other than sight and hearing, with moving chairs, wind machines, and other tactile triggers. Some predict that ‘full immersion Virtual Reality’ won’t remain in the realm of science fiction for long, although more pragmatic voices suggest this is just wishful thinking. Even if full immersion technology were possible now, the ethical conundrums related to testing are fraught. Such technology might require plugins to our nervous system. (Prinke, 2017) Amazon’s recently released Russian Doll (2019) features a gaming-coder who keeps dying and coming back to life, like Pac Man or Sonic. It’s difficult to imagine finding willing participants to test such events; but questions surrounding our ever-increasing ability to make more and more realistic representations, or simulations of reality are evidently being explored.

3 “Apparatus – a plaything or game that simulates thought [trans. An overarching term for a non-human agency, eg. The camera, the computer and the ‘apparatus’ of the State or of the market]; organization of system that enables something to function” (Flusser. V, 1983; Kindle 83%) 4 The next section looks at the collapse of Cartesian separation between concepts, as well as between objects, which affects how we think of mind/body duality; and explores how our use of computers may have contributed to this way of thinking, along with the costs and benefits of doing so.





Lori Wike in an essay titled, Photographs and Signatures: Absence, Presence, and Temporality in Barthes and Derrida (2000), explains Roland Barthes insisted photography was somehow different, more impactful than other forms of media, and that its meaning is situated in absence. She also suggests that while it may seem Barthes and Derrida (whose topic leaned towards text) argued in opposition, they were both talking about the same thing, regardless of the form – which is how humans record information by any and many means; and in the process, attempt to deny the limitations of time and space, and ultimately death.5 We might argue that the entire history of exteriorisation, from ancient mark-making to futuristic gaming, regardless of form, is predicated on the need to create new and other worlds, which can be referenced or integrated in some way with the one we understand as ‘real’. Regardless of which form we choose to use or champion, or what equipment we favour, all relate to a fundamental human and evolutionary-determined ‘othering of self’. For several centuries sight may have motivated this process. Today, however, we could be described as transitioning from a paradigm historically dominated by sight towards a differently evolved system, which at the very least encompasses the other senses.

5 Derrida also warned us writing “was limited in time and space, and limits itself even as it is in the process of imposing its law upon the only cultural areas that so far escaped it” (2016, pg11) – which he does with his typical refusal to oversimplify; his awareness of these limitations might remind us that we shouldn’t be tempted to assume images alone will usurp writing beyond our own time simply because people are overwhelmed by the novelty of their abundance today.





3. Malleability of form, ideas, and facts In this new paradigm, text, image and sound each emerge out of the same coding system. We cannot interrogate one without the other, not without considering the wider context of digitisation. Friedrich Kittler (1942-2011) describes the lack of differentiation between forms at the beginning of his book, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, (1999) “Sound and image, voice and text have become mere effects on the surface, or, to put it better, the interface for the consumer […] In computers everything becomes number: imageless, soundless, and wordless quantity.” (pg102) Katherine Hayles, in How We Became Post Human – Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics refers to “image[s] drawn in a medium as fluid and changeable as water.” (1999, p26) She adds, “The computer restores and heightens the sense of the word as an image” adding to the negation of difference (ibid). Derrida and Barthes argue over the significance of absence and presence, text and image, (Wike, 1977), but Hayles tells us that these binary positions have lately become immaterial. She suggests that code and technologies of virtual reality “foreground pattern and randomness and make presence and absence seem irrelevant” (loc698). 0s and 1s represent pattern (recognisable form) and randomness (unrecognisable form but still a form of sorts); further diminishing differences between media, which once seemed so important. The new language-material behind our screens, code, appears more malleable then previous materials. Interacting with it may, in part, be contributing to expectations of what is possible beyond our screens. This threatens an old world order Hayles suggests, as we begin to internalise relatively newfound behaviours. “I instantiate within my body the habitual patterns of movement that make pattern and randomness more real, more relevant, more powerful than absence and presence” (loc 698). Signifiers flicker continuously and seem packed with probability. Changes to our expectations seem even more real with touchscreen technology. How many of us have been frustrated by an old-fashioned book’s refusal to respond to a thumb and finger spread as we try to zoom in on a small image, for instance? Does critical theorist Ariella Azoulay harnesses current social expectations, and our increasing acceptance of a less fixed reality, when she probes conventional narratives? In her book, Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism, due out this year, she interrogates photographic history and deconstructs its supposed beginnings and requests it should be “studied in the context of the history of images and devices that generate images”. (2018) She asks us to abandon Cartesian separation between objects, and history, as well as linear time, embedded within imperialist framing. In a post, one of five released in September 2018, titled Unlearning the Origins of





Photography, she begins, “Imagine that the origins of photography go back to 1492”, as opposed to 1839 which is the accepted, historical date. In personal email correspondence, she urges us to: “…relate to photography as a technology that partake[s] in the naturalization of other imperial technologies and rights. These technologies emerged in 1492, with Columbus expeditions to the Americas, known as a “discovery” of “The New World”, that facilitated the still ongoing extraction of people and objects from different places, and with the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain, and Atlantic slavery that was put in motion” (2018) In her blog posts, she asks readers to query the validity of the words ‘invented’, ‘New World’ and ‘Discover’. She requests they reposition themselves to consider history differently: “To take this excursion to 1492 as the origin of photography—exploring this with and through photography—requires one to abandon the imperial linear temporality and the way it separates tenses: past, present, and future. One has to engage with the imperial world from a non-imperial perspective and be committed to the idea of revoking rather than ignoring or denying imperial rights manufactured and distributed as part of the destruction of diverse worlds”(ibid). Azoulay suggests we think about photography in the context of everything else we know it’s linked to, in other words, within its networked reality, holistically. Just as the coding symbols behind our screen are nothing, meaningless, outside of context, so too are objects and facts. Here, (as in the quantum theory that has had such an impact on technology), context not only changes meaning. It fundamentally informs it. Her request requires a sophisticated shift. What has prompted society (or individuals within it) to begin dismantling and deconstructing history and social constructs in this way? And does this shift allow deeply embedded structural features to become visible, making issues such as patriarchy or imperialism impossible to ignore? Azoulay’s work expresses society’s fledgling willingness (within limited quarters) to unravel fixed histories and social structures, as we re-evaluate and re-configure with a more flexible understanding. They are tapping into the notion of boundaries around form, objects, facts, time and the various senses becoming less fixed; and according to Hayles, this may be due to the way we use malleable language material; the code we interact with daily. Azoulay’s posts also highlight how photography continues to be inherently linked to imperialism and perhaps capitalism too, which may like photography be understood to have its roots in 1492, and the sense of an Hegelian right to ‘take’ (photographs of) the Other which the West has been engaged in with alacrity since that date (ibid). If the statement “Photography Changes Everything” does in fact carry some truth – it might





not be quite as was meant, nor how the authors would prefer it to be marketed. Whatever the case, Azoulay tells us photography cannot be understood or interrogated in isolation. It may be an emergent property alongside other physical and metaphysical tools which all function as props (or weapons) within an Imperialist reality. Despite recent structural shifts, possibly evident within a younger generation’s mindset, away from traditional boundaries, the habit to elevate one object over another lingers. What if this urge to elevate and value one form or medium over others mirrors the urge to elevate certain groups of people over others? That urge, as ‘natural’ as it may seem, should be morally uncomfortable at the very least. There are conundrums which spring from Azoulay’s thesis; the whole exercise of reframing history and reality is challenging, until we accept that very often history and reality are framed within ideological myths. As we begin to dissolve boundaries around concepts traditionally accepted as ‘truths’, there is a knock-on effect. By rubbing out deeply embedded linguistic lines, we could be left with a completely fluid world, just like the coding which Hayles describes as “changeable as water”(ibid). Perhaps one of the most infamous expressions redolent of today’s paradigm and malleability around meaning was Kelly-Anne Conway’s phrase referring to statements made by the current US president, when she said “alternative facts” (2017). Although she apologised, but nevertheless chose a perfect phrase to sum up the way we relate to information in the 21st century. We can, if we sit in one camp, see that her alternative facts were falsehoods, or else plain old lies. However, one can imagine people sitting in another camp looking at Azoulay’s proposition and thinking much the same. Facts and figures can always be framed to suit an argument. Whatever the answer, no longer thinking in terms of a familiar, linear historical discourse will be immensely challenging for most of us. But it does chime with Marshall McLuhan’s ideas, which suggest the introduction of the phonetic alphabet led to a linear construction of narrative and therefore of reality (2017), which he tells us is being abandoned. It also chimes with systems theory, which suggests the current chaos we see in the world might be a transitional stage as we migrate from a dead system towards a newly formed one; and it echoes ideas in quantum mechanics and reconfigured notions about time, space, relationships, energy and power. All these connected theories might suggest that the old linear world order is dying, as all systems eventually do. And a new world-order, which is networked, non-linear and more flexible, is replacing it. (Capra et al, 2019) (Rovelli, 2016) (Heimans et al, 2017) And that reality should be viewed within the related parameters; in other words, reliant on context which is always evolving.





If digital technology has indeed disrupted a linear mental construction of the world and instigated a grid like and flexible model, we may be more able or ready to consider Azoulay’s suggestion, and act upon it. This might allow us potentially to move beyond Hegelian hierarchies. Such a concept may directly challenge fetishisation of Other, which could seem perilous to some as it can be interpreted as devaluing the violence people have suffered. But Western, or white, or Imperial subjectivity has been based on imaginary boundaries imposed on the world through language. And if Western subjectivity has traditionally recognised itself only as a presence in relation to non-Western absence, then pattern and randomness threatens that paradigm (a positive step in this author’s mind). Had society not spent the previous two or three decades internalising pattern and randomness and a grid-like networked way of interacting with information, Azoulay’s efforts to encourage us to see differently might have been significantly more difficult than, I suspect, it already will be for many. However, fewer people might also now be questioning the veracity of the Holocaust or the shape of the planet. As journalist Paul Mason says; we are “networked people, financially exploited but with the whole of human intelligence one thumb-swipe away,” and therefore “new agents of change in history” (2015). Tragically, the whole of human horror is also one thumb-swipe away, which seems to be a severe problem for humanity.6 One might also argue that the fetishisation of Other is a direct result of the extreme binarism which emerges from a language predicated on 0s and 1s, i.e. on or off/yes or no. Structurally, some might argue, it seems that nowadays you are right or wrong, black or white, clever or stupid, evil or heavenly. However there are corners of the Internet where polarisation might not be the default outcome. “By examining Wikipedia’s Talk pages, where editors discuss their thoughts about an article, the team found that the intense disagreement that happens between ideologically polarised editors often led to a more focused debate, with editors on both sides admitting the process had improved the final article” (Swain, 2019, pg10). Regardless, we might view today’s relatively simplistic coding (in relation to where it will eventually go) as an early example of what is to come, which should grow more refined as technology develops and our ability to emulate the coding of nature grows ever more complex. The structure supporting simulations of collective consciousness, i.e. social media, driven by code, are clunky in comparison to ‘nature’. In the meantime, new social rules are needed for discourse to stay pertinent rather than dissolving into verbal violence, or forcing users to retreat into echo chambers (ibid). In addition, if our entire and aged social system is

6 The idea of systemic feedback loops might be crucial to comprehending how the internalisation of

seemingly external language systems impact our understanding of the world which in turn lead us to invent further technology that deepens the process for good or bad. There is no space in this essay to expand on this.





transforming then we are very likely, for now, living through a period of inevitable chaos. Inevitable, because, according to systems theory, the death of one system and birth of another is always separated by a period of chaos. Somewhere between those two positions, one might argue, that despite all the shifts underpinning society, the old order is proving remarkably recalcitrant. In The Power, a novel which makes use of an alienation effect by switching around gendered descriptions of violence and victimhood, and quoted at the top of the essay, the protagonist Allie tells her inner voice “The world is trying to go back to its former shape. Everything we have done is not enough”. (2016, pg294)





4. Conclusion Max R.C. Schleser writes in The Evolution of the Image “…smartphone filmmaking can be seen as an intervention to repressive and elitist discourses… smartphone filmmakers demonstrate an emerging form of agency that critically interrogates representation and brings images from the periphery to the centre.” (2018, loc3579) It seems fitting, and poetic, that a digital device, one which captures its information and then renders it in the language of 0s and 1s, should be used to explore gender fluidity in Prodger’s Bridgit. Behrouz Boochani used his relatively inexpensive digital technology along with its numbered coding language to defy the Australian state’s intention to dehumanise him by rendering him a number. He used text as well as image, both of which would have been transformed into 0s and 1s, and gave each form as much value as the other. Christopher Spencer writes, “I am flattered to even be mentioned in the same breath as artists such as Breughel, Bosch, Gillray and Hogarth… it is a fertile time for the type of satirical work I do. The thing I enjoy most from all of this is the feedback I get from my followers.” (2019, pg143) As the Western world evolves, perhaps inevitably due to humanity’s everyday use of networked technology, away from a linear Cartesian mindset towards a non-linear view of reality, it becomes more and more disingenuous to overvalue photography in favour of text or visa versa, regardless of where it originates from; or to dismiss digital photography in favour of analogue, but allow your work to be disseminated on the Internet; or shoot film but enhance it in Photoshop; or to insist on analogue but purchase your equipment on the web. Doing so but all the while maintaining digital formats are an irredeemable loss for art reveals a lack of awareness about how a photograph is not a discrete object but part of a set of relations in which digital and therefore current culture cannot help but play a valuable part. Photography, it seems, does not change everything, certainly not by itself. The world is, however, changing. Our expectations of what is possible, perhaps due to our use of computers, have changed dramatically. Whether we are aware of it or not, our perception of reality is influenced by the way the language behind our screens makes seemingly fixed objects transformable and that is “instantiated into our bodies” (Hayles, 1999) and way of being. The world remains violent and unjust, despite photography’s presence – we just get to ogle the violence more than ever before, but what we see is often accompanied by sound and text too – and transported by code which makes everything number.





Incidentally, if you think Azoulay’s request to recalibrate your understanding of history was a complex ask, it might interest you to know that quantum scientists, in a controlled experiment using a quantum computer, have recently reversed the arrow of time, or in their terms “experimentally demonstrate[d] a backward time dynamic for an electron scattered on a two-level impurity (Lesovik, 2019)). Rest assured, we will never again “have the reassuring continuity of a Newtonian universe” (Ritchin, 2009, pg177).





Bibliography Alderman, N. (2016) The Power.London: Penguin Azoulay, A. (2018) Unlearning Decisive Moments of Photography, Blog, FotoMuseum.ch At: https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/series/155238_unlearning_decisive_moments_of_photography(Accessed 11/11/2018) Azoulay, A (2019) Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism New York: Verso Azoulay, A. (2018) Clarification about date (Email) Capra. F and Luisi. PL, 2014 The Systems View of Life; A Unifying Vision, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press Cartright, J. (2015) Future Cameras will make living photographs a reality New Scientist Magazine Available at: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630150-400-future-cameras-will-make-living-photographs-reality/ (Accessed 19/03/2019) Davidson, H (2018) Behrouz Boochani, Manus Island and the book written one text at a time At:https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/aug/02/behrouz-boochani-manus-island-and-the-book-written-one-text-at-a-time(Accessed 23/11/2018) Debord G (1977) Society of the Spectacle Trans. Black & Red, (Kindle Edition) London: Bread and Circuses Publishing Derrida, J. (2016) Of Grammatology Translated by GC S Pivak 40th Anniversary Edition Maryland, John Hopkins University Press Eakin, E. (2011) Celluloid Hero, Tacita Dean’s exhilarating homage to film, The New Yorker. At: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/31/celluloid-hero(Accessed 11/11/2018) Hagan, S. (2018) Wim Wenders on his Polaroids – and why photography is now over Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/oct/12/wim-wenders-interview-polaroids-instant-stories-photographers-gallery (Accessed 13/03/2018) Hayles, K. (1999). How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. KINDLE Edition Chicago, Ill, University of Chicago Press. Heimans. J and Timms. H, 2017 New Power London Macmillan Flusser, V. (2000) Towards a Philosophy of PhotographyTrans. Mathews A. (Kindle Edition) London: Reacktion Books Field. SJ, (2018) Charlotte Prodger’s Bridgit Available At: https://sjfdiculture.wordpress.com/2018/12/06/artist-charlotte-prodgers-bridgit/ (Accessed 5/3/2019) Kittler, FA (1999) Gramophone, Film, TypewriterTrans. Winthorpe Young G and Wutz Stanford: M Stanford Press, Mason, P. (2016) Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (Kindle Edition) Penguin: London





Mywebcowtube, (2017) Marshall McLuhan 1978 Full Debate On Nature And Media at Cambridge UniversityAt:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9fKhsZuKO4 (Accessed 11/11/2018) NBC News (2017) Kellyanne Conway: Press Secretary Sean Spicer Gave 'Alternative Facts' Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSrEEDQgFc8 (Accessed 15/03/2019) Prinke, M. (2017) How Close Are we to Creating Full Immersion VR worlds? Forbes.com Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/05/25/how-close-are-we-to-creating-full-immersion-vr-worlds/#56d61d69ba8b (Accessed 04/05/2019) Ritchin, F 2009. After Photography, China, Norton Rovelli C. (2016) Reality is Not What is Seems, Trans. Carnell S and Segre E. London: Random House Savage, J (2019) Introduction to The Festival of Brexit, London, Thames & Hudson, pg9 Shlesher, M.R. (2018) Smart [Phone] Filmakers >>> Smart [Political Actions] in The Evolution of the Image, Ed. Bohr, M & Sliwinska, B (Kindle Edition) London: Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies Spencer, C. (2019) The Festival Of Brexit, London Thames & Hudson, pg143 Swain, F. (2019) Working with the Enemy Pays Off, New Scientist Magazine, No. 3220, 9 March 2019, pg.10 Wike, L. (2000) Photographs and Signatures: Absence, Presence, and Temporality in Barthes and Derrida At:https://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/issue3/IVC_iss3_Wike.pdf(Accessed 22/11/2018)





Appendix

1. Email correspondence from Ariella Azoulay, 11/11/2018

Hi Sarah-Jane, Thank you for your email and interest in my essay. Rather than assuming that photography is a technology whose goal is reducible to that of producing images and hence, has to be studied in the context of the history of images and devices that generate images, I propose to relate to photography as a technology that partake in the naturalization of other imperial technologies and rights. These technologies emerged in 1492, with Columbus expeditions to the Americas, known as a “discovery” of “The New World”, that facilitated the still ongoing extraction of people and objects from different places, and with the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain, and Atlantic slavery that was put in motion. I hope this helps, best ariella

2. Is social media is tearing society apart, a quote from my research blog (or is it the fact human beings are historically violent and more so when their habitat is under threat?): I recently read an article titled, “Social Media is tearing society apart in The Times about, “Jaron Lanier [who] is the Silicon Valley guru who coined the phrase “virtual reality”. He is one of the pioneers of VR and one of its greatest evangelists. He is also its prophet of doom. “Never has a medium [social media] been so potent for beauty and so vulnerable to creepiness,” he writes in his new book.” (Whitworth, 2017) He goes on to suggest that unchecked, social media has the potential to entirely destroy the civil project we humans have been at for millenia. “You can change people’s character, you can make them more irritable, you can make them xenophobic. In fact the negative is easier to invoke than the positive. And so this tends to naturally attract actors who benefit from seeking that result, either to destabilise a nation that is perceived as a foe or to try to corral people into a peer group, political or business or whatever. This technique tears society apart.” (Whitworth, 2017)” (Field, 2017)

3. From an earlier draft regarding the insecurity of photography which may inform its apparent inflated but fragile ego (as viewed by some):

“For 180-years, people have been asking the question: is photography art? At an early meeting of the Photographic Society of London, established in 1853, one of the members complained that the new technique was "too literal to compete with works of art" because it was unable to "elevate the imagination". This conception of





photography as a mechanical recording medium never fully died away. Even by the 1960s and 70s, art photography – the idea that photographs could capture more than just surface appearances – was, in the words of the photographer Jeff Wall, a "photo ghetto" of niche galleries, aficionados and publications. But over the past few decades the question has been heard with ever decreasing frequency. When Andreas Gursky's photograph of a grey river Rhine under an equally colourless sky sold for a world record price of £2.7 million last year, the debate was effectively over. As if to give its own patrician signal of approval, the National Gallery is now holding its first major exhibition of photography, Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present.” (2011) Michael Elkins, author of What Photography Is (2011) “rails against Barthes” (loc 76) as he describes his answer. He also tells us that photography’s status as a fine art is a critical concern, the first in his list of three salient interests, which drive photography theory and writing. And no wonder photography feels insecure, Sontag, heavily read and quoted by photography students insists: “Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.” (1909, p 21)

But she describes how photography itself is not art at all…

“But the very question of whether photography is or is not an art is essentially a misleading one. Although photography generates works that can be called art --it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure-- photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made. Out of language, one can make scientific discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac's Paris. Out of photography, one can make passport pictures, weather photographs, pornographic pictures, X-rays, wedding pictures, and Atget's Paris. Photography is not an art like, say, painting and poetry. Although the activities of some photographers conform to the traditional notion of a fine art, the activity of exceptionally talented individuals producing discrete objects that have value in themselves, form the beginning photography has also lent itself to that notion of art which says that art is obsolete. The power of photography --and its centrality in present aesthetic concerns-- is that it confirms both ideas of art. But the way in which photography renders art obsolete is, in the long run, stronger.” (page no?)

It may that the Conceptualists such as May Kelly (b1941), Micheal Baldwin (b1963) and Barry Flannagan (1941-2009) understood this better than those who refer to themselves as photographers. Douglas Crimp also identified a group of artists whose conceptual subversions of photography and in particular advertising, ushered photography into the museum.





Reflection Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills Materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills N/A Quality of Outcome Content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, with discernment. Conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas. I have rewritten this essay several times, developed from the previous versions I submitted, and as I did noticed I had still tried to cram too much in following its earliest iteration. There seemed to be two main topics in the previously submitted version and not enough detail about either. During my rewrites, I stripped away one topic, the commodity fetishisation of analogue (related in part, I think, to long-standing insecurity of photography as an art form which I attempted to cram into the very first version too - as well as nostalgic attachment, all of which seem relevant). And focused on the way digital processes are changing the way we see, make work, look at and understand the world. It is a grand statement to say photography changes everything and one that seems a little delusional to me. I have replaced the example of Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004), which felt a shame, but I wanted to add Christopher Spencer’s work which is a better example of shifting power dynamics. Once I was happy with the shape I had to delete all my repetitive and irrelevant phrases too which knocked out the excess 1000 words!!! I hope this latest version is clearer – I’m grateful to peers who have helped me to make it more so by pointing out contradictions and flaws. It continues to seem to me that the commodity fetishisation of analogue is an expression of loss; loss for time passing, for a different way of living and being. But younger generations will in the future find their own sense of nostalgia in the processes of today – they might look back and lament the passing of first generation digital with whatever replaces it. I just find it so odd that artists, some of who seem to promote themselves as more knowing and educated than the masses, can’t see this. Film is expensive, out of reach for many, ecologically dangerous with all the chemicals required, and digital absolutely does not prevent anyone from making immensely creative work. I do owrry that Dean’s comment was made several years ago although I can’t see where she’s changed her mind, and in fact makes continues to work which laments the loss of film and harks back to its presence as an important aspect of her own past. This doesn’t bother me one bit (I use digital to dig up inner-visions of my childhood love of B movie science fiction and film too) but the dismissal of processes, which can be use by anyone, everywhere with cheap technology, really does.





Demonstration of Creativity Imagination, experimentation, invention, Development of a personal voice. I’m not sure this is relevant but in terms of personal voice, the work continues with themes I have been looking at since UVC. Context Reflection, research (evidenced in learning logs). Critical thinking (evidenced in critical review). See original reflection post as not much as changed in light of this re-edit. All of my blog posts relate to the related developing interest as well as the subject matter in the course folder.

The Democratisation of Form - WordPress.com · 2019-05-10 · Sarah-Jane Field 512666 Digital Image & Culture Assignment 3 – Updated March 2019 1 The Democratisation of Form Sarah-Jane

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