In
Imitation , Optics and Photography : Some Gross Hypotheses, Martin Kemp proposes
the following :
The dominant goal of progressive
western art from 1300 to
ca. 1880 was the imitation of nature.
and
From 1839 onwards the dominant goal of western art was increasingly and successively assumed by photography , film, television , computer graphics and certain kinds of popular , public art. 2
1839
was a red-letter year for photography . The French Academy of Sciences announced the daguerrotype process , Louis Daguerre received a patent for his camera, William Henry Fox Talbot announced the calotype , and
Michael Faraday published Experimental Researches in Electricity ,
Volume 1. 3
Pre-digital photography allowed countless manipulations of the photographic object :
the tangibility of the photograph ,
its printed nature, the physical properties of it being impressed
on a certain material of a certain weight and thickness and of certain dimensions that adhere to
Euclidean geometry ; these characteristics defined much of how photographs
were distributed and displayed . Photographic formats are rectilinear ; barring the early ovoid shapes that
the Daguerrotypists favoured4, photographic imagery has long remained rectangular and square . The manner in which they were handled were informed by
these linearities . An image
was composed and, with the exception of the instamatics and
Polaroid cameras8, developed independently . Any postprocessing
was an after-effect ; perhaps an afterthought
as well . Steps taken to modify the developed tangible image in practical and artistic
ways were ex post.
Going digital brought in new modalities that transformed the characteristics outlined above7.
Photographs inherited the new properties afforded to digital media, including networkability , density , compressibility , interactivity , malleability , and,
allegedly , impartiality7. These new modalities offer us new ways to think
about photography . Take for instance
the proliferation of LCD screens
( or "media surfaces" if
you will ). These LCD screens are seen to supersede the viewfinder ( if present) in some cases for a number of reasons : greater compatibility with the image taken viewed later
within the LCD and/ orthe
" stickiness " of the user interface that causes the photographer to stay consistent while composing the image.
In
April 2010 I acquired a
Canon G11 camera. This was the first
of the G-series to feature
a flipscreen or " vari-angle " LCD display4. This allows a host of new experiments . See [5] and [10].
Modern digital cameras
ship with a most interesting feature: real time
videofiltering. This is simply
seen by cycling
through the modes available .
The G11 has the following photographic modes:
Aperture
going counterclockwise.4
Each
of these modes produces a specific
video filter in real-time . What
is even more interesting is the manner
in which we have adapted to real timevideo filtering. What was once an
artistic afterthought or a postprocessed product is now a standard practice , a tool to select the optimal image. The
modes are rarely used in themselves to see
live effects take place within the LCD; instead , the effects are used to gauge how
far the final image will depart from
what is intended .
The
LCD screen also allows near-immediate and on-demand display and scrutiny of
previously shot photographs .
It thus behaves
as a combined instamatic , magnifier and developer in one . In some of my previous works
I have explored these properties . See [5], [8], [10],
[11], [12], and [13].
Here is a portrait of my friend Claude
Heiland-Allen shot on the
G11:
Notice the abstract white-on-black
graphic on the lower right . This is an
integral part of the portrait :
this isn't an error or
a screenshot, but a print of an
LCD screen; this is intentional .
What
is it ? I have shown this portrait to
people and asked them the same
question . It is clearly not a part of the scene shot; it is ex-post. The
replies I have received range from
"digital artefacts " and " earrings " to " trick photography " and
" printing errors ".
What it is, of course , is the graphic that shows up while viewing
the image and zooming in. The blurred
white smaller rectangle shows the portion
of the larger white rectangle ,
or the entire photograph , currently being viewed .
Once explained , this abstract, Mondrian-like imagery overlayed on an
otherwie comprehensible
image is immediately understood
by the vast majority of viewers . The graphic signage is understood with ease and intuition ,
which is to be credited to
Canon.
I like to think of the questions raised in the viewers mind when explained
the nature of this abstraction .
The graphic informs you of an instant, of a certain pose assumed ; the photograph has been zoomed into to
present this composition . What
else lies in the blankness
of the large rectangle ? How has the graphic
changed the way you view the image?
In
making and writing about this photograph
I wish to propose a hypothesis of my own , perhaps complementary
to those of Kemp:
Some
art remains so ; others turn into tools . Sometimes this is cyclic
Aditya Mandayam 2011.01.04 Venice , Italy and Białystok , Poland
References
1.
Mandayam , Aditya . cixa : Ephemerides : Portrait
of Claude Heiland-Allen .
2011.01.03. ( accessed 2011.01.03).
2.
Lefèvre , Wolfgang ( ed .) Inside the Camera Obscura
– Optics and Art under the Spell of the Projected Image.
2007. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science .
3.
Faraday , Michael. Experimental Researches in Electricity , Volume 1. 1839. University
of London .
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14986/14986-8.txt(accessed 2011.01.03).
4.
http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/digital_cameras/powershot_g11( accessed 2011.01.04).
5.
Mandayam , Aditya . Bar-Bar Bar-Bar . http://cixa.org/works/bar.php ( accessed 2011.01.04).
6.
http://daguerre.org/resource/biblio/biblio.html ( accessed 2011.01.04).
7.
Flew and Humphreys (2005) "Games: Technology ,
Industry , Culture" in Terry
Flew , New Media: an Introduction ( second edition ), Oxford University Press : South Melbourne .
8.
Mandayam , Aditya . cixa : Ephemerides : Autoportrait of a Tampon-Chimp . 2010.01.02. NetBehaviour .
http://www.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour/20110102/018915.html( accessed
2010.01.02).
9.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimping
10.
Mandayam , Aditya . regalo . http://cixa.org/works/regalo.php ( accessed 2011.01.04).
11.
Mandayam , Aditya . Laptopogram . http://cixa.org/works/laptopogram.php ( accessed 2010.12.30).
12.
Mandayam , Aditya . The Tangible Ephemerides of the Ha-Ha Preterite . 2010.11.23. Photo-Levallois .
http://www.photo-levallois.org/edition-2010/accueil.html (accessed 2010.12.30).
13.
Mandayam , Aditya . cixa : Ephemerides : Memory & the Mechanical Eye . 2010.29.12. NetBehaviour . http://www.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour/20101229/018850.html( accessed 2010.12.29).