In this course, students will examine contemporary philosophical, historical, aesthetic and epistemological topics by addressing the evolution of discourse from the Enlightenment into the 20th century. A comprehensive selection of theorists and critics who address visual semiotics and the taxonomy of imagery and ideas will be introduced. Active discussion and participation will be a core requirement.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
READING
The Shadow of the Object: Photography and Realism by Sara Kember
Photogenics by Geoffrey Batchen
Sara Kember is an author whose work includes photography, new media, and feminism in relation to science and technology. She is a professor in the UK.
In The Shadow of the Object, Photography and Realism, Sarah Kember introduces the reality that in the act of representation, the real is always already lost. The photograph is an image idea, not the actual, literal object/thing itself. There is an inherent instability in the topic of photographic realism. Digital images seem inherently iconoclastic - unrealistic and irreverent. New techniques and technologies of image-making transform photography from a modernist to a post-modernist practice. Positivism is seen as photography's originary and formative way of thinking. With the advent of digital photography, the viewer is unable to distinguish what is being depicted and what is being projected, leading to psychological and emotional anxiety; a feeling of dislocation. Aesthetic moments are non-verbal; they constitute "the unthought known." This is defined as the true self which is known but has not yet been thought. The transformation which the subject seeks, the unthought known to thought, occurs when the shadow of the object falls on the subjet. The example of this being Barthes seeing his mother as a child in a photograph, reminding him of his own inevitable death. He knows his death will come, but it is unthought until certain moments, one being the coming across a photo of his mother as a child. Digital images apparently pose a threat to our investments in photography.
Geoffrey Batchen is author and professor who teaches the history of photography at the University of New Mexico.
The essay Photogenics by Batchen addresses the cycle of photography, and says that it doesn't reach a point of no return but rather a point of nothing but returns. It is established that photography has a forward motion by means of endless return. An example is in the chronological order of the history of photography in the UNM Art Museum, a cyanotype in the beginning from 1865, then another cyanotype towards the end in 1977. Bill Gates's new enterprise Corbis Corporation seeks to capture the entire human experience throughout history. Since the means of this objective is by electronic reproduction and accessibility, certain issues immediately come up as a result. This implies that electronic reproduction is the only kind of reproduction that's going to matter, but more alarmingly is the only aspect of an image worth owning. Another issue up for debate is censorship. Who gets to say what can and can't be seen? Which images will excluded and so on? What does that mean as far as what gets to be considered part of the history of human beings? The archive is divided into "digestible themes," which turns out to be created based on the needs of commercial publishing demands. Commercial demands are defining how the history of humans will be organized. Gates believes mass exposure to electronic reproduction will encourage more people to go out to museums and galleries. Since neither a negative nor any print can represent in its entirety the entity, there is no fixed point of origin. Anna Atkins is compared to Corbis by saying for her, photography is a processing of data, since she made many different prints of her "Hymenophyllum Wilsoni," with not much attention to the original. This brings up the relationship between object and representation, which is more important? "In the electronic universe, point of origin no longer matters."
Sara Kember is an author whose work includes photography, new media, and feminism in relation to science and technology. She is a professor in the
ReplyDeleteUK.
In The Shadow of the Object, Photography and Realism, Sarah Kember introduces the reality that in the act of representation, the real is always already lost. The photograph is an image idea, not the actual, literal object/thing itself. There is an inherent instability in the topic of photographic realism. Digital images seem inherently iconoclastic - unrealistic and irreverent. New techniques and technologies of image-making transform photography from a modernist to a post-modernist practice. Positivism is seen as photography's originary and formative way of thinking. With the advent of digital photography, the viewer is unable to distinguish what is being depicted and what is being projected, leading to psychological and emotional anxiety; a feeling of dislocation. Aesthetic moments are non-verbal; they constitute "the unthought known." This is defined as the true self which is known but has not yet been thought. The transformation which the subject seeks, the unthought known to thought, occurs when the shadow of the object falls on the subjet. The example of this being Barthes seeing his mother as a child in a photograph, reminding him of his own inevitable death. He knows his death will come, but it is unthought until certain moments, one being the coming across a photo of his mother as a child. Digital images apparently pose a threat to our investments in photography.
Geoffrey Batchen is author and professor who teaches the history of photography at the University of New Mexico.
The essay Photogenics by Batchen addresses the cycle of photography, and says that it doesn't reach a point of no return but rather a point of nothing but returns. It is established that photography has a forward motion by means of endless return. An example is in the chronological order of the history of photography in the UNM Art Museum, a cyanotype in the beginning from 1865, then another cyanotype towards the end in 1977. Bill Gates's new enterprise Corbis Corporation seeks to capture the entire human experience throughout history. Since the means of this objective is by electronic reproduction and accessibility, certain issues immediately come up as a result. This implies that electronic reproduction is the only kind of reproduction that's going to matter, but more alarmingly is the only aspect of an image worth owning. Another issue up for debate is censorship. Who gets to say what can and can't be seen? Which images will excluded and so on? What does that mean as far as what gets to be considered part of the history of human beings? The archive is divided into "digestible themes," which turns out to be created based on the needs of commercial publishing demands. Commercial demands are defining how the history of humans will be organized. Gates believes mass exposure to electronic reproduction will encourage more people to go out to museums and galleries. Since neither a negative nor any print can represent in its entirety the entity, there is no fixed point of origin. Anna Atkins is compared to Corbis by saying for her, photography is a processing of data, since she made many different prints of her "Hymenophyllum Wilsoni," with not much attention to the original. This brings up the relationship between object and representation, which is more important? "In the electronic universe, point of origin no longer matters."