2017
The poor image and the accident
ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Art) Workshop by Angelo Stitz and Giorgia Scavo, 2022
EINA Centre Universitari de Disseny, Barcelona
The poor image and the accident
ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Art) Workshop by Angelo Stitz and Giorgia Scavo, 2022
EINA Centre Universitari de Disseny, Barcelona
A large part of all we see and learn every day, in the era of digital technologies, is composed of an un-patterned complex of digital images that penetrate our lives. These burst into our computers, tablets and mobile phone screens, in a seemingly structured but unconstrained form. The proliferation of digital technologies has catalysed a major cultural transition, with the way we perceive reality and the world around us being radically implicated and altered as a consequence. This transformation is happening through visual content and the way we use images to share and gather information today.
Over the past few years, artist and writer Hito Steyerl has investigated the role and the politics of the image in the twenty-first century. In her 2012 essay ‘In Defense of the Poor Image’, Steyerl analyses the functions and value of the digital image of poor resolution. This type is ubiquitous, infinitely reproducible or editable and incredibly easy to propagate. These qualities contrast with a widely diffused nostalgic view of the past, when ‘things’ were not so ephemeral or intangible.1 It is how hard to believe that we were, in fact, once promised perfect facsimiles. We were led to believe that digital images would be of such high-resolution that we could penetrate deeply into them and see everything. Yet today, so many of the images we consume are in a state of pixelation, low- resolution, blurriness, nosiness (Chapter Two).
According to Artist Olivier Laric, ‘poor images’ can exist in infinite versions while losing their original meaning or value and becoming something else.2 Maybe we do live in an era of iconoclasm, not because we destroy our images, but because they do not have the meaning that we might have given them and enjoy a life of their own. We live in an age where we do not even know where images come from, and we might not even question this reality. In fact, the poor image goes through a process re-mediation. The image is not only reproduced, but it also goes on a journey through different media. This movement begs many questions, among them: Is re-mediation about remembering or forgetting? (Chapters Three and Four). What is the opposite of the poor image? How have artists and other image-makers reacted to the issue of image reproducibility?
An image may be an illusory representation of reality but this does not preclude it from conveying something that is very meaningful. When an image is recorded, altered and reproduced using different tools, and when it travels through media, it sometimes mutates slightly and has the potential to generate new elements or mutate its appearance by accident. Furthermore, when the image is processed through a computer, by editing, re-scaling, merging it with other files, the technological limits of the machine can expose the actual essence of the image, as in the case of glitches. Can glitchy images give us a greater sense of authenticity when it comes to what we are looking at on our screens? (Chapter Five and Six).
In addition to its properties of propagation, the poor image has an aesthetic of its own. In the last decade, a current called ‘post-internet art’ has seen artists exploring the crossover between reality and the Internet by generating, or recycling, digital aesthetics and ‘web-like’ artefacts. Many of these describe the sentiment of instability and groundlessness resulting from the infiltration of digital technologies into almost every aspect of our lives, as in social media or geo-localization tools (Chapter Seven).
A near infinite collection of images is available online, and drones and satellites can potentially record everything we do in public spaces. What is unrecorded? What is unknown? Is what is unknown also necessarily unrecorded? Moreover, if the poor image is a degraded image with the capacity to move fast and be plural and diverse, and maybe even speak for and with many other images, the opposite could be the image that is not easily spread, the one protected by copyright or not disclosed to the public for some other reason. In a very recent publication, Erika Balsom discusses how artists, filmmakers, distributors and theorists have reacted to issues of authorship and copyright by exploring possibilities of content reproduction through new networks of distribution and circulation and new digital aesthetics. Many of these practitioners find in the copy both a utopian promise, a dangerous inauthenticity - or both. (Chapter Eight).
There is a glut of files published online. In addition, algorithms are generated so users only see the kind of information that will most likely be of interest to them. This particular type of appeal fosters advertising and capitalism, and it also affects politics. Paul Virilio argues in Strategy of Deception that the truth of the fact is actually censured by the overflow of information; while Eyal Weizmann states in ‘The Image Complex’ that, ‘We can no longer rely on what is captured in single images, but rather on what we call “image complexes”: a time-space relation between dozens, sometimes hundreds of images and videos that were generated around incidents from multiple perspectives including ground, air and outer space’5 (Chapter Nine).
We seem to be looking for patterns in the randomness of things on the Web to feel grounded and closer to what is real while drowning in the emptiness - or fullness - of an intangible parallel world. Through this, we are supposed to learn and interact. How have artists reacted to issues of randomness and asymmetrical perspectives on the Web? (Chapter Ten).
Finally, what will be the challenges of image-makers in the future? Perhaps generating or curating complexes of poor images? Would working with vanishing images, and curating complexes of images instead of making ‘originals’ affect our ability to create and to be purely subjective in the era of post-truth?
In this paper I aim to discuss theories related to digital images today. I am concerning, in particular, with their significance as objects or subjects and copies or originals - their properties of reproducibility and circulation - and the socio-political implications of this movement. The second section will examine hypothetical ways to hijack the infinite cycle of representation and reproducibility of the image through art practices. Here I explore the materiality of the digital, self-reflective qualities of media, the unexpected accident in technology and issues of copyright and data overflow.
1 Hito Steyerl, “The Wretched of the Screen”.
2 Oliver Laric, “Oliverlaric.com”, 2017.
3 Erika Balsom, “After Uniqueness·.
4 Paul Virilio, “Strategy of Deception”.
5 Eyal Weizmann, “Before and After Images: Eyal Weizman’s The Image Complex”.
Over the past few years, artist and writer Hito Steyerl has investigated the role and the politics of the image in the twenty-first century. In her 2012 essay ‘In Defense of the Poor Image’, Steyerl analyses the functions and value of the digital image of poor resolution. This type is ubiquitous, infinitely reproducible or editable and incredibly easy to propagate. These qualities contrast with a widely diffused nostalgic view of the past, when ‘things’ were not so ephemeral or intangible.1 It is how hard to believe that we were, in fact, once promised perfect facsimiles. We were led to believe that digital images would be of such high-resolution that we could penetrate deeply into them and see everything. Yet today, so many of the images we consume are in a state of pixelation, low- resolution, blurriness, nosiness (Chapter Two).
According to Artist Olivier Laric, ‘poor images’ can exist in infinite versions while losing their original meaning or value and becoming something else.2 Maybe we do live in an era of iconoclasm, not because we destroy our images, but because they do not have the meaning that we might have given them and enjoy a life of their own. We live in an age where we do not even know where images come from, and we might not even question this reality. In fact, the poor image goes through a process re-mediation. The image is not only reproduced, but it also goes on a journey through different media. This movement begs many questions, among them: Is re-mediation about remembering or forgetting? (Chapters Three and Four). What is the opposite of the poor image? How have artists and other image-makers reacted to the issue of image reproducibility?
An image may be an illusory representation of reality but this does not preclude it from conveying something that is very meaningful. When an image is recorded, altered and reproduced using different tools, and when it travels through media, it sometimes mutates slightly and has the potential to generate new elements or mutate its appearance by accident. Furthermore, when the image is processed through a computer, by editing, re-scaling, merging it with other files, the technological limits of the machine can expose the actual essence of the image, as in the case of glitches. Can glitchy images give us a greater sense of authenticity when it comes to what we are looking at on our screens? (Chapter Five and Six).
In addition to its properties of propagation, the poor image has an aesthetic of its own. In the last decade, a current called ‘post-internet art’ has seen artists exploring the crossover between reality and the Internet by generating, or recycling, digital aesthetics and ‘web-like’ artefacts. Many of these describe the sentiment of instability and groundlessness resulting from the infiltration of digital technologies into almost every aspect of our lives, as in social media or geo-localization tools (Chapter Seven).
A near infinite collection of images is available online, and drones and satellites can potentially record everything we do in public spaces. What is unrecorded? What is unknown? Is what is unknown also necessarily unrecorded? Moreover, if the poor image is a degraded image with the capacity to move fast and be plural and diverse, and maybe even speak for and with many other images, the opposite could be the image that is not easily spread, the one protected by copyright or not disclosed to the public for some other reason. In a very recent publication, Erika Balsom discusses how artists, filmmakers, distributors and theorists have reacted to issues of authorship and copyright by exploring possibilities of content reproduction through new networks of distribution and circulation and new digital aesthetics. Many of these practitioners find in the copy both a utopian promise, a dangerous inauthenticity - or both. (Chapter Eight).
There is a glut of files published online. In addition, algorithms are generated so users only see the kind of information that will most likely be of interest to them. This particular type of appeal fosters advertising and capitalism, and it also affects politics. Paul Virilio argues in Strategy of Deception that the truth of the fact is actually censured by the overflow of information; while Eyal Weizmann states in ‘The Image Complex’ that, ‘We can no longer rely on what is captured in single images, but rather on what we call “image complexes”: a time-space relation between dozens, sometimes hundreds of images and videos that were generated around incidents from multiple perspectives including ground, air and outer space’5 (Chapter Nine).
We seem to be looking for patterns in the randomness of things on the Web to feel grounded and closer to what is real while drowning in the emptiness - or fullness - of an intangible parallel world. Through this, we are supposed to learn and interact. How have artists reacted to issues of randomness and asymmetrical perspectives on the Web? (Chapter Ten).
Finally, what will be the challenges of image-makers in the future? Perhaps generating or curating complexes of poor images? Would working with vanishing images, and curating complexes of images instead of making ‘originals’ affect our ability to create and to be purely subjective in the era of post-truth?
In this paper I aim to discuss theories related to digital images today. I am concerning, in particular, with their significance as objects or subjects and copies or originals - their properties of reproducibility and circulation - and the socio-political implications of this movement. The second section will examine hypothetical ways to hijack the infinite cycle of representation and reproducibility of the image through art practices. Here I explore the materiality of the digital, self-reflective qualities of media, the unexpected accident in technology and issues of copyright and data overflow.
1 Hito Steyerl, “The Wretched of the Screen”.
2 Oliver Laric, “Oliverlaric.com”, 2017.
3 Erika Balsom, “After Uniqueness·.
4 Paul Virilio, “Strategy of Deception”.
5 Eyal Weizmann, “Before and After Images: Eyal Weizman’s The Image Complex”.