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[microsound] Re: Post-digital photography



From: peter lasell <p_lasell@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Post-digital photography


Not to be harsh, but to me it looks like overuse and exploitation of Photoshop
filters, which makes it very digital.


However, I'm always interested in artists who use media in non-traditional ways.
Cases in point,
Adam Fuss: http://www.artnet.com/artist/6627/adam-fuss.html
Stan Brakhage: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/brakhage.html
Gerard Richter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Richter
Carl Fudge: http://www.artnet.com/artist/6590/carl-fudge.html


--------

I guess you're referring to the photos I offered examples ? Photoshop wasn't used, neither were filters, but adjustments in contrast, resizing, etc. in other programmes were used. I consider adjusting the visual EQ to emphasise digital artefacts/noise beneath an image's surface to be equivalent to adjusting the audio EQ to expose the background artefacts/noise in an audio file. As far as I am aware, this is a common aesthetic in post-digital music, usually forming ?a critique of the perceived perfection of digital audio in that it exposes the flaws and illusion of 'perfect reproduction'? (Kim Cascone, ?Deleuze and Contemporary Electronic Music?).

However, your remarks confuse me ? surely software such as Photoshop exists to make digital photographs resemble film photographs, and so isn't using the same software to emphasis the differences between film and digital photos, or to create something else entirely, different to the approach of 'digital photography'?

The example photographs are clearly the results of digital technology, but don't they question and only partially adhere to the ideology of 'digital photography'? And isn't this exactly what ?The Aesthetics of Failure? and ?Post-digital Aesthetics and the return to Modernism? by Ian Andrews (the two texts in which I encountered the term 'post-digital') discuss in relation to music?

IF there are Photoshop filters in existence that emphasise the digital aspects of digital photos, does this not reflect a move away from (at least some of) the principles of 'digital photography' towards a post-digital approach, much like the advent of audio software that doesn't imitate analogue equipment? In case you're unsure of what I mean, I'm thinking of software that enables effects such as time-stretching, buffer-freezing, etc., but there are probably better examples out there.

These aren't rhetorical questions: I'm genuinely unsure and interested in your opinion. I won't be offended if you aren't interested in answering and I thank you for already taking the time to respond once before.



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