From a distance, things always seem a bit blurry, a bit out of focus, as if they are modulating between differing states; colours loose their subtleties, details give way to the mire of shape and as we try to focus on those distant objects on our horizons we squint so as to remove any externalities which might be a distraction. A constriction of the muscles, a narrowing of the amount of visible light entering the retina which allows our eyes to interpret things more clearly, a filtering technique that allows us to block out the peripheral influences and leave those moments of ambiguity to the side. Like trying to look into the sun knowing that it is physically impossible to do without the mediation of some sort of substrate, without technology intervening so as to expand our capabilities and to temporarily allow us to triumph over nature in some bizarre way.
Read Moredigital
Pushing Pixels
"There’s a funny moment toward the end of the book when Vertesi pays a visit to a researcher named Ross, who was known throughout the Rover community for his image processing skills. Vertesi asks Ross to demonstrate his vaunted decorrelation stretch technique; a little perplexed, he opens the image processing suite on his computer, loads some sample images, and explains: “I just push this button.” The distinctive greens and purples that recalled, for Vertesi, the palette of Andy Warhol were the result of a software macro applying a mathematical formula."
Janet VertesiSeeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of MarsUniversity of Chicago Press - 304 pages. April 2015
Retrieved from: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/pushing-pixels/
"The post-photographic condition" – Joan Fontcuberta
[image] Screen-grab :: https://anti-utopias.com/newswire/post-photographic-condition/ [obsolete]
new link : https://moisdelaphoto.com/en/publications/post-photographic-condition-2015/
The Post-Photographic Condition. Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal
In Featured Events / September 16, 2015
“The Post-Photographic Condition is characterised by the proliferation of images and the prominence of the Internet, smartphones and social networks. The world as we know it is now governed by instantaneity and subject to accelerated digital globalisation. Every facet of our lives, from personal relationships to economics, communications to politics, has been shaken to its core by this manipulation. For the first time, we are producers and consumers of images on an exponential scale. The outcome of this unprecedented excess is the immediate access to images. It remains to be seen to what extent this instant availability and universal voyeurism are both a privilege and an obstacle.”
Joan Fontcuberta
<img src="https://anti-utopias.com/admin/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Joan_Fontcuberta_portrait1-670x447.jpg" title="Portrait © Joan Maria Dias, 2014" alt="The Post-Photographic Condition"/>
In addition to his artistic work, Joan Fontcuberta (b. Barcelona, 1955) has carried out a multidisciplinary activity in the world of photography as a teacher, critic, historian, and exhibitions curator. He has been a visiting professor at different international institutions, such as Harvard University and Le Fresnoy, Centre National des Arts Contemporains. He has also taught on the Communication Faculty of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.