Aesthetic Features in Digital Imaging: Collage and Morph

Taking as a starting point the shift in the arts that is caused by new technologies, this essay questions how we may consider the aesthetics of digital arts. A variety of metaphors, such as hypermedia, hybridisation, even digital "wave" or "revolution," are common in the media debate to characterize the realm of the digital that has evolved from computer techniques into an encompassing cultural phenomenon. This variety of terms is a reflection of the current discourse that tries to comprehend and communicate the challenge of digital technologies that has transformed the production processes of audio-visual media, and has expanded the methods of distribution and the access to different media in domestic and public spheres. This discourse becomes particularly controversial when digital imagery that results from the reworking and merging of different media images --for example when photographic, cinematic, and electronic elements are brought together on the basis of the digitally encoded image--are equally described as intermedia, hypermedia, hybridisation, or multimedia. This recent debate demonstrates the difficulties in coming to terms with new technologies and with the ways in which different media interrelate. Briefly, what happens is that new forms of "mixed image" emerge, causing a shift in the nature of the image itself.

I argue here that there is no coherent discourse on the interrelation of analogue and digital media images, nor has the impact of cinematic aspects on the form and shape of digital imagery been clearly worked out. Much of the debate about "new" technologies focuses predominantly on aspects of discontinuity (such as issues surrounding the complex and complicated dimensions of digital access, storage, and manipulation), and on concerns about continuity (as older analogue features are incorporated and expanded into the digital, demanding a redefinition and reworking of forms and traditions). Amazingly, there seems to be little interest in a comparative analysis of analogue and digital features in moving and non-moving images that also considers an historical analysis. Moreover, the debate on digitality in cinema mainly discusses editing systems and special effects, with an emphasis on technical instruments and tools, with less attention paid to aesthetic strategies and how these shape the image. The aesthetic dimension of digital imagery or the specific "quality" of imagery in the digital is little discussed, even where the debate explicitly focusses on visualization.

For example, William Mitchell's argument that the digital image "blurs the customary distinctions between painting and photography and between mechanical and handmade pictures" ¹ is often cited and generally accepted. The identification of "the essential characteristic of digital information," namely that it "can be manipulated easily" simply because it is "a matter of substituting new digits of old," ² depends upon this crucial technical distinction. However, this argument does not help to explain how basic technical characteristics effect aesthetic implications in recent media art. To conclude, most of the discourse on film and media auspiciously regards novelty in digital cinema as limited to the introduction of digital techniques to analogue media, whereas an analysis of the interrelationships between analogue and digital imagery is rarely considered.

In opposition to this current discourse, as exemplified in Mitchell's view on the digital, I suggest a discussion that focuses on a comparative analysis of the historical development, coexistence, and differentiation of visual media. I would rather raise questions such as: on what level and in what forms could the specific elements of analogue and digital eventually interrelate, and how do digital aesthetics fundamentally differ or not from analogue aesthetics? I seek to gain insight into the similarities and differences between analogue and digital forms of the image, and to discuss images in which different media elements are interrelated and combined into a new form of image. Tellingly, these "mixed forms" of the image may show us which elements of the analogue will be continued or not continued in the ongoing development of digital arts.

This reworking and transformation of elements from previous technologies constitutes novelty in the...