In contemporary captures I would not consider the medium objective overall, however I do think, depending on how it is used, it is one of the most objective mediums we have available. Regardless of the “accuracy” (I would define this as the precision with which a capture recreates what exists in the moment of capture), there is still an element of the objective that cannot be separated from the creating on the capture itself. The choices made in the capturing, and in the interpretations of the data are what make the mediums of capture and the typologies they present “a malleable material.” The accuracy of the technology we have to use in capture has changed and developed over the history of photography. It has provided us with information that exposes us to understandings of our world that can be measured, standardized and observed in ways that we cannot measure or see without these tools. The x-ray and astronomical capturing provides us with insights in the scientific field that are undeniably important, through processes that we understand as being scientifically reliable. However I do not think that scientifically reliable always equates with objectivity, nor predictability.
Author: Lumi
Response to Jacqui: Unpainted Sculpture by Charles Ray
What I find particularly interesting in the choice to observe this sculpture of the car as a form of capture, is that prior to looking at this post, I had not considered sculpture to function similarly to photographs/capturing.
As with the invention of cameras altering our relationships with painting as a means of capturing the world on a 2 dimensional plane, molds and casts function to capture in the same way, however with a resulting object as a sculpture or 3 dimensional form: They reproduce and capture a 3 dimensional ‘picture’ of an object. Now, developing technologies with 3D scanning, photogrammetry, 3D printing, and machine casting techniques allow us to create 3 dimensional capture, in a same way as we would capture images/photographs in 2 dimension.
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Reading 01 – lumi
The question of authorship, especially in the realm of new technology, programming, and art, has become a fairly complicated one, and one that I am still not entirely sure of my stance on. In the context of programming computer generated visuals and images my base stance/understanding has revolved around the idea that: if one writes a program, hacks a technology, or re-contextualizes a preexisting object/tool/etc to create something, then authorship goes to the creator/hacker/re-contextualizer of the program due to the choices (or unintentional findings) made, which forms the “art”.
This topic of authorship is however much further complicated when looked at in the context of new cameras discussed in The Camera, Transformed by the Vidion Machine. In this new world of the removed capture button, and cameras and programs with their own agency, I think that place in which “art” occurs, is transferred to the relationship between the subjects interaction with the lens/capture, rather than in the moment of capture itself.
When the camera holds the agency the subject becomes something between an actor and someone unintentionally walking through a photo being taken. In the context of the actor, there is space for agency in the new interaction that they present in front of the lens, however in the case of the passerby the lack of agency removes them from a context that I might consider to be art: they may appear in the photo, but have no hold over authorship.
Project To Share -The Enclave, 2013
Richard Mosse, The Enclave 2013
This is a film shot using 16mm color infrared film, a technology developed primarily for camouflage detection and used in the military during world war 2. The technology is able capture infrared light which is invisible to the human eye, and shows the chlorophyll reflected off of green plants, painting them in bright pink colors . The artists talks about his choice to look at the “invisible” (to the rest of the world) humanitarian crisis in the Congo, and using a film which “registers the invisible, and makes visible the unseeable”.
I first saw this work presented in the Portland Art Museum years ago, and find myself continually returning to it. I am drawn to not only the beauty in the images, and the way in which simply changing a color in a landscape so dramatically shifts the perception of the world it is portraying, but also to the way that this draws a viewer into the subject matter. I am not entirely sure of my stance on whether this lens and the ‘otherness’ it creates appropriately approaches the subject of the crisis it is observing (especially since it is created by an artist outside of the conflict itself). I think in this case this piece presents example of a photographic technology the produces a beautiful image of visually expanded and unseen elements in the world, as well as attention to potential issue and significance of the relationship between the lens/the image, and the subject it portrays.
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