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Microsoft PowerPoint - [digital_image_lecture.ppt]
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1
The Digital Image
Properties and Performance
2
What Is a Digital Image?
3
Phénoménotechnique
4
The Image as Event
5
Questions
The Digital Image:
Properties and Performance
Lecture 7 — Image Ontology in Electronic Media
Dr. H. Wiesner
Department of Philosophy & Media Theory
Universität Konstanz
Wintersemester 1997/98
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Microsoft PowerPoint - [digital_image_lecture.ppt]
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1
The Digital Image
2
What Is a Digital Image?
Wrong question: where
Duplicates ≠ identical
Produced, not shown
3
Phénoménotechnique
4
The Image as Event
5
Questions
What Is a Digital Image?
Asking
where
the image is is the wrong question
Not in the file, not on the disk, not on the screen
Bit-exact duplicates are not visually identical
Same file → different screen → different image
No one has ever seen the file
What we call "the image" is already an interpretation
Obsolescence is built in
The image depends on a stack that decays
To see a digital image twice
is to produce it twice
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Microsoft PowerPoint - [digital_image_lecture.ppt]
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1
The Digital Image
2
What Is a Digital Image?
3
Phénoménotechnique
Bachelard (1934)
Instruments produce phenomena
Applied to digital images
4
The Image as Event
5
Questions
Phénoménotechnique
Gaston Bachelard, Le nouvel esprit scientifique (1934)
"Scientific instruments are in no sense extensions of the senses.
They are, rather, materialised theories."
— Bachelard, 1934
Instruments do not reveal phenomena — they produce them
Applied to digital images:
The screen does not display an image that exists elsewhere
The screen produces the image in the act of rendering
The image does not pre-exist the screen
It comes into being on it, through it, because of it
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1
The Digital Image
2
What Is a Digital Image?
3
Phénoménotechnique
4
The Image as Event
Not object but occurrence
Cannot be preserved
Context-dependency
5
Questions
The Image as Event
Every digital image is an event rather than an object
An occurrence, not a substance
If the image is an occurrence, it cannot be preserved
It can only be re-called, re-rendered, re-performed
Change the browser → change the image
Change the resolution → change the image
Change the year → change the image
"The image as rendered is always already the image
in its moment of technical instantiation."
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Outline
Slides
1
The Digital Image
2
What Is a Digital Image?
3
Phénoménotechnique
4
The Image as Event
5
Questions
For discussion
Questions for Discussion
If every rendering is unique, what does "the same image" mean?
Can a digital image be an original?
Or is every instance always already a copy?
What does it mean to "archive" something that only exists in the act of being displayed?
Is the file the image, or is the rendering the image?
Next week: The Wayback Machine and the ontology of the archive
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