Digital Image—Digital Photography

Digital Image-Digital Photography Susan Kirchman A h e SIGGRAPH 1990 Art Show Committee decided to sponsor an exhibition of works that concentrate on the interaction of photographic imagery and computer technology [11.This exhibition came about because of one interesting aspect of computer-mediated artworks that has been developing over the last severalyears. As the curator of this exhibition, I chose to put together a group of works that investigate not only the technical combination of these media but also the conceptual basis for choosing such tools of investigation, collaboration and production. The integration of the traditional photographic image with computer technology seems, at first, to be antithetical. The veracity of the photographic image is undermined immediately and completely by our awareness of the computer ’s capability to fictionalize seamlessly even the most official documentary photographic data. In some cases the computer is utilized to call this very issue into question, as in the work of Esther Parada. Her piece Define/DeJj theFrame (Fig. 1) consists of a fold-around portfolio which opens to reveal an accordion-pleated poster. In a statement integrated into the piece, Parada writes: ‘The intent of Define/ Deb lhe Frame is to encourage an expansion of the viewer’s perspective beyond the parameters of attention established by the U.S. government, and reported-whether in meticulous detail or skimpy sound byte-by the media” [2]. She refers to her work as the ongoing process of challenging received information. Enlarged pixels obliterate color photographs of a Salvadoran mother with silhouettes of soldiers, many soldiers. Parada absconds with the media images and pointsout the fiction in some, drawing our attention towhat they tell us. ..and to what they don’t. In the work of some of the other artists in this exhibition, photographic material is used because it is simply the most direct reference to the social,cultural or political framework that the artist wishes to invokeascontextfor his or her ideas. Artists such as Paul Berger utilize the photographic image for its contextual references. ‘To appropriate coded mes sages from the information environment, to recombine them with overlaid significations suggeststhat this culture is laden with tremendously potential raw material. Paul Berger has, since the late 1970s,explored this type of information, refunctioning data and recontextualizing its effects” [3]. In the lushly colored large inkjet prints by Berger (Fig. 2), the television weatherperson proclaims his/her forecasts for our futures, and perhaps the future of humankind. B y appropriating that familiar and generic personality, Berger has fused into the work a reference that we all know, one to which we pay attention. In some worksexhibited in the art show,it is insignificant who made the original photograph that is portrayed in the work; in others it may be conceptually important that the artist did not make the original photograph. It is the postmodern version of photographic material that most of these artists integrate into their statements. MANUAL (the colFig . 1. EstherParada,oefne/Zh& dheFmm ( d e t a i l ) ,MacintoshIl computerusingD i g i t a lDarkroom and Q u a r kXprew software, plusa 35mm slidemanipulatedon a CanonColor Laser Copier 500,1990. Fig. 2. Paul Berger, Wd2A.4 from the CARDSseries, ink-jet print produced usingIBMPCwith Targa 16, andTIPSandN O software, 24 x 30 i n ,1989. Susan Kirchman (educator. artist), Visualization Laboratory.Texas A & M University, College Station.TX 778433137. U.S.A. 01990ISAST PergamonPressplc.PrintedinJapan. 0024494w90 S3.00+0.00 LEONARD0Digital ImaeLligihl C i - SupplGmnhl Issue, pp. 31-32,1990 31 Fig. 3 . MANUAL (EdHill and Suzanne Bloom), PerfectWorld,Ektacolor triptych produced usingIBM PCwith Targa 16 andTIPS software, 96 x 30 i n ,1990. laborative team of Suzanne Bloom and Ed Hill) appropriates images from the public domain, usually advertising. “The image appropriations are more embezzlements than simple thefts. They seize not just images but systems of belief, and subject them to doubt: traditions of art, their use by advertising , the codes of television . . . these currencies are assailed in these works” [4]. Working collaboratively for about 16years, MANUAI. finds that the computer allows for interactivity between the artists and the machine during the evolution of the idea/image (Fig. 3). This exhibition attempts to go...