The Future Of The Image Part 2

Welcome

of the image

Deborah Jackson: Lecturer in Visual and Cultural Studies

Discuss images in terms of the operations they perform which is relevant to various media; photography, film, graphic design and art.

Discuss the appropriation and reuse of images (and other information) via the internet.

Interested in the idea that image data is endlessly variable and usable and that this goes far beyond an aesthetic expression.

Networking

We are in an era of remixability, of editing and re-editing, of open-source democratisation

All of this of course raises interesting questions relating to, amongst other things, authorship.

The world wide web has been widely credited as the facilitator of our increased networking;

Here we can look at some of the benefits and caveats associated with this virtual interaction:

On one hand it offers the benefits of equality with knowledge information transfer and sharing (provided you are privileged enough to have access to a computer and the internet).

And on the other side it reinforce privilege, it corrodes specialisms, expertise and professionalism, and there is an uncertainty of interactions.

Charles Leadbeater explores the ways in which mass collaboration is dramatically reshaping our approach to work, play, and communication.

Society is no longer based on mass consumption but on mass participation. New forms of collaboration-such as Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube-are paving the way for an age in which people want to be players, rather than mere spectators, in the production process. We-Think explains how the rise of mass collaboration will affect us and the world in which we live.

We think therefore we are. The future is us.

Mass collaboration and Swarm Theory: describes the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial.

How do the simple actions of individuals add up to the complex behavior of a group?

This is what democracy looks like!

The line between creation and consumption has blurred since the emergence of Internet applications…though user appropriation of file-sharing technologies. So debates about the real or authentic quality of images has shifted since the emergence of new media towards discussions about how users interact with digital material

Exploring "net culture" -- with its emphasis on the free sharing of information and with a status system based on the intelligent use of skill, rather than wealth, age, or social connections we can see that it has become mainstream culture.

“Exploring the ‘image’ in our neoliberal network society (society of the post-spectacle, of the simulacrum, of the proliferation of electronic media and their saturation of the real), the distribution of percepts, affects, and concepts.”

Virtual Citizenship and New Technologies SymposiumWayne State University, Detroit

Marshall McLuhan is best known for coining the term "Global Village” which is a vision that applies to today's worldwide, integrated electronic network

McLuhan emphasized the way in which media molds our psyches to interact with the environment and with each other.

It is important to note that for McLuhan "media" did not merely include printed matter or electronic media or even artwork, but also tools and artifacts. ("We shape our tools and they in turn shape us.")

According to McLuhan's theory, technologies alter the manner in which we habitually process information.

McLuhan claimed that new media produce new “ratios of the senses.”

McLuhan prophesied that printed books would become obsolete, killed off by television and by other electronic information technology.

In The Gutenberg Galaxy McLuhan had stated, "Print is the technology of individualism."

In War and Peace in the Global Village, he predicted that the newly emerging electronic network would recreate "the world in the image of a global village", in which people understood instantly the impact of their actions and shared knowledge about possible solutions.

Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message.”

McLuchan’s mandate is relevant to the contemporary changing mediascape

If a traditional 20th century model of cultural communication described movement of information in one direction from a source to a receiver, now the reception point is just a temporary station on the information’s path.

French Cultural Theorist and Urbanist Paul Virilio who is known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power.

In Speed and Politics(1986), Virilio further elaborates on the influence of acceleration, mobility, and technologies of motion on modern culture. Subtitled "Essay on Dromology," Virilio proposes what he calls a "dromomatics" which interrogates the role of speed in history and its important functions in urban and social life, warfare, the economy, transportation and communication, and other aspects of everyday life.

The dramatic increase in the quantity of information has been greatly speeded up by Internet

As the amount of information keeps growing - these paths are also all connected to each other and they go in all directions; up, down, sideways. A shift from centralisation to decentralisation.

However, such ‘incestuous’ information and image appropriation and usage is not a new phenomena in itself. Most cultures have developed by borrowing and reworking forms, images and information from other cultures; prominent examples being…

•Ancient Rome ‘borrowing’ from Ancient Greece

•Renaissance remixed antiquity

19th century European architecture remixed many historical periods including the Renaissance

•Contemporary artists, graphic and fashion designers remix together numerous historical and local cultural forms

Rather it is that the Internet greatly increases the ease of locating and reusing material from other periods, artists, designers etc.

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

Creative Commons offers a special set of Sampling Licenses which "let artists and authors invite other people to use a part of their work and make it new."

Here are some of these new paths which facilitate movement of information between people, These paths stimulate people to draw information from all kinds of sources into their own space, remix and make it available to others, as well as to collaborate or at least play on a common information platform.

Consumers have long had access to the ‘tools of media production’. Yet not until recently has the line began to blur between amateur and professional, consumer and producer due to the emergence of multiple and interlinked paths which encourage media objects to easily travel between web sites, recording and display devices, hard drives, and people

Now the role of the pro-am prosumer is prevalent.

Cinema in the information age is interested not in the digital computer per se, but rather in the new structures of production and consumption enabled by computing.

What kind of cinema is appropriate for the age of Google, blogging and youtube?

The logic of the digital image as paradoxical, on one hand it radically breaks with older modes of visual representation while at the same time reinforcing these modes.

There are many commonalities in the aesthetics of the image in their properties and qualities.

By looking at cinema or film it is perhaps easier to see how the ‘digital (r)evolution’ in many ways actually solidifies or reinforces particular aspects of contemporary visual culture opposed to destroying them.

CGI: deception objection?

In William Mitchell's recent book "The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-photographic Era” he:

• explores the meaning of images at a time when pictures can be so easily manipulated and changed

• has a philosophical discussion of truth and ethics

• analyzes the ethical and legal implications of digital imaging technology, the aesthetic potential of the computer medium, the loss of the supposed veracity of the photographic image, and the future of photography as we know it

In other words he is concerned with the physical difference between photographic and digital technology which leads to the difference in the logical status of film-based and digital images and also to the difference in their cultural perception.

The logic of the digital photograph is one of historical continuity and discontinuity. The digital image tears apart the net of semiotic codes, modes of display, and patterns of spectatorship in modern visual culture -- and, at the same time, weaves this net even stronger. The digital image annihilates photography while solidifying, glorifying and immortalizing the photographic. In short, this logic is that of photography after photography.

Lev ManovichTHE PARADOXES OF DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY(Photography After Photography. Exhibition catalog. Germany, 1995.)

digital (r)evolution

THE END