Digital Images of Art: Selected Excerpts
Digital images introduce high levels of variability in all of their manifestations. For William Mitchell (1992), photographs have well known “representational commitments” whereas digital images lack standards in their production and use:
These [digital] processes are less subject to institutional policing of uniformity, offer more opportunities for human intervention, and are far more complex and varied in their range of possible representational commitments. …They can also disturb and disorient by blurring comfortable boundaries and by encouraging transgression of rules on which we have come to rely. (p. 222)The problematic differences between digital images and photographic images are numerous as Mitchell points out. The purposeful creation of images of works of art to disseminate information about the original works is disturbed by the possibilities of unintended alterations or tampering. Photography has its own history of spurious alterations or deletions, but these adjustments took time and some skill. Digital images introduce more variability in their production and potentially in the actions of the end user. The speed and relatively low level of craftsmanship it takes to make significant changes to images in image editing software results means that digital images are rarely fixed objects.
Timothy Binkley would rather us consider the more utopian vision of the digital environment, which means abandoning some of our attachment to the stability of previous media. Digital images have different affordances than those of previous reproductive media. While a photographic slide is readable without any mediating device, digital images may remain in electronic form, a “transaesthetic epiphany” (Binkley, 1997, §2 ¶5), their image known only through a process of conversion from discrete numerical units to a more familiar visual image displayed by a computer. For Binkley, the tranaesthethic epiphany is a transformation of the original work, not its reproduction. The analog work of art is a point of origin for a series of numerical units disassociated from any other analog representational medium. From a digital utopian standpoint, this transformation of the analog world to one of electrified abstractions is remarkably beneficial; abstraction enables the theoretically endless number of images from the same set of code to be displayed simultaneously for as long as the mediating device may read the abstraction. The abstraction, for the digital utopian, represents a higher state, an existence perfect and unlimited by any particular physicality.
The interactive-ness of digital reproductions often times relies upon the simulation of physical, real world acts. Interactivity might include manipulation of the image with the use of a mouse that mimic a viewer’s real life actions of moving either closer to a work of art to observe detail and texture, or stepping back in order to take in the whole effect of composition, color, and scale. In the digital environment, the range and direction of motion are predetermined; we can move only in ways the programming allows. Within the virtual museum, the user’s viewpoint mimics that of the camera moving through an architectural space, works of art positioned on the surrounding walls. The images of the works come into view as we pivot the fixed rectangular frame that constitutes our available scope of sight. The conventions of the simulated viewpoint and movement in the virtual museum is so like that of digital gaming programs that the work of art becomes a visual target, one half expects to be able to open fire upon it.
Occasionally in these digital environments we are allowed to simulate movement in directions unavailable to us in the presence of the original work of art. The desire to document the “unseen” extends far back into the history of photography and the fascination of capturing new sights unavailable to the human eye. Within the digital environment, animation and filmmaking conventions inform images not previously seen—or made with the intention. With Stanford’s Digital Michelangelo Project, for example, we virtually “fly around” the head of David. If we visited the work in person, the top of David’s head, being as it is twenty vertical feet away from the viewer standing on the floor, is entirely unavailable for viewing (Salisbury, 1999, ¶ 7).
The availability of previously unseen aspects of a work of art, such as the top of David’s head, or the simulated movement through a museum marks a shift of attention away from the idealized relationship between the work and viewer—marked by the viewer’s appreciation of the work’s authenticity as a ritualized object—to the work of art as one element of a larger experience. The larger experience in which the work of art is an element rather than the focus encourages new understandings of art through manipulation or play. Luis Arata (2003) came to the same conclusion in “Interactivity”:
What the rise of new digital media has done is to widen the focus of interest beyond the object created, to the participation in a process of playing out a multitude of interactions. …An interactive approach favors the use of multiple points of view that can coexist even if they appear mutually exclusive; it celebrates the creative value of play; it is a catalyst for emergence; and it tends to be ultimately pragmatic. (p. 218)The digitally mediated environment is designed with a heightened availability of choice for the individual user. Other media tend to be more restrictive by necessity of their production—a photographic print or a book is not easily modified for each viewer or reader. However, it is worth remembering that any range of choices available to the user in the digital environment are prescribed and programmed by the program’s author.
The ability to link images across the Web also represents a continual fluctuation of authoritative context. Digital images of art are within the overall pattern of the user’s movement through networked space as opposed to the single authoritative space exemplified by an art history textbook. A user is likely to make many choices in how she gathers images and associated information about works of art, moving through digital spaces suggested by hyperlinks:
Choices, possibilities and interconnections challenge our definitions of authorship and authority. Hypertext allows for the designation of a word or image to act as a launch pad to another space, image or annotation. A depth and richness can be achieved through connections and directions that may be explored through association. It is worthwhile to think of texture as multiple levels of experience in this new spatial environment where the traditional idea of surface texture is lost. (Hall, 1999, p. 275)
The paths traveled to and from an image necessarily inform our understanding of the work of art. If I link to an image described as my favorite painting, a user who follows that path also follows the thought “this is Kim’s favorite painting.” Other contexts are suppressed at that moment.
In a posting titled “Single, Song, Mix, Welcome to the Curatorial Era,” Abstract Dynamics Weblog author William Blaze writes:
For a year or two in the late 90's DJ's made serious claims to being musicians. And there are a few "turntablists" worthy of that name. But increasingly DJs are looking more like curators and becoming all that more important in the process. The curator essentially engages in an act of filtration as well as an act of recombination. While the recombination must be done well, it’s the filtration that is truly valuable in an age of rapidly increasing information. (2005, January 8, post)The Curatorial Era is a logical next step from the so-called Information Age. The ubiquity of information (in the form of images, text, and sound) forces us to make more choices, to filter out some information and retain other information. But curatorial practice does not simply involve selecting information; the curator also classifies, interprets and displays information within her own created contexts. The curator might echo traditional, institutional practices in her exhibition, carefully labeling images and building an overall conceptual framework for the collection. Or she could collage a new whole out of parts and pieces, combining works with little to no explanation or identification, like the DJ who exhibits her artistry through the recombination of music tracks. And, like the DJ’s audience, we may become fascinated not just about the material in the collection (those images we are familiar with and those we are not) but the curator’s interpretations, associations, and juxtapositions, and the overall context of display. Centered in the experience—for both the creator and user—are the curator’s identity, motivations, and creation of meaning.
Malraux argued that photography culturally equalized its subject; digital media tends to heighten the power of individual collection and display, lessening the distinctions between individual and institutional authority. Digital media have engaged individual participation in the selection, interpretation, and publishing of images on a broader scale than other mass media. Self-publishing on the World Wide Web is a widespread practice today, at least among those who spend time in the digital environment. And the self-publishing Web designer is able to create pages that are similar in quality of design and display to those of culturally influential institutions. Unlike print publishing that requires a large monetary investment to appear professionally made, digital media design is more a reflection of individual skill. The result of the dispersed and individualized publishing and display environment is a vast space of images and text that empowers non-institutionalized authorship.
Digital curators are likely to appropriate the language and display practices of the art institution as well as its images. The “gallery” and “museum” are ubiquitous in the World Wide Web, but art historical hierarchies and high-culture distinctions associated with these words are likely to be turned inside out. One manner in which this happens is the display of non-art objects as aesthetic objects, works of art that we passed over in our preference for institutionally sanctioned works. Digital image collections as galleries or museums demonstrate an imaginative range of possibility: everything from images of works of art to found grocery lists may comprise a digital gallery or museum.
At Stoveburner.com, artist Raymon Elozua describes the moment he noticed the aesthetic qualities of gas stove burners while salvaging scrap metal:
In one particular building I came across in the basement an old "laundry" stove, a 3-burner cast iron stove top more like a large hot plate. Taking it out to my truck I noticed the burner (stovetop #024). It was unusual and seemed iconic when separated from its function. I saved it and in that moment this collection began. (2002, Statement, ¶2)Elozua displays the burners in a manner that is consistent with the conventions of reproduced images of works of art and archeological relics. The burners are entirely separated from their context of use; they instead stand upright like crosses and alien icons in pure white space. Patinas of rust add rich color and visual dimension to each burner.
The consistency and quality of Elozua’s digital images lend the Web pages an overall aesthetic similar to that of an official museum catalog. The distinction between art objects—represented in images within a culturally authoritative context such as the museum Web site—and unsanctioned art—represented in images within an individual context arguing for new aesthetic value—becomes more and more difficult to make. William Mitchell described this collapse of distinction as one Duchamp, the creator of Fountain, would have appreciated:
It is a condition that Marcel Duchamp surely would have relished: digital images are the ultimate readymades—manufactured objects of little intrinsic value that are given meaning through appropriation and contextualization rather than inherent meaning from the expressive craft with which they are fashioned. (1992, p. 85)Thus, in the digital environment we see an expansion of the negotiations and struggles around the question “what is art?” For those who wish to enter into this dialog, the digital medium allows a voice potentially as powerful as that of the art institution.