Digital Aesthetics

Reading

Towards a Newer Laocoon, Greenberg
Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Flusser
Indexicality and the concept of medium specificity, Doane
Video the Aesthetic of Narcissism, Kraus
Remediation, Bolter and Grusin

Friday, Febuary 1st 2019

Empire by Andy Warhol basically started structuralist film
P. Adams Sitney coins the term, see also Structural Film Antology by Peter Gidal
A lot of structuralist film came out of the London film-makers co-op
Room Film 1973 by Peter Gidal. He's showing the same shot over and over again — back then a hugely laborious thing to do (you'd have to physically make copies of the film). This is film about film, exposing the underlying mechanics of film-making, or film as film.
Ray Gun Virus (1966) by Paul Sharits
Dresden Dynamo (1971) by Rhodes Lis. Note that the sound comes from her drawing directly onto the film (which contains sound information in visual form).
Berlin Horse (1970) by Malcom Le Grice

All of these people are making work about analogue film — digital images work entirely differently:

Quantum Efficiency in a CMSO sensor How a single pixel turns photons into an electrical signal. Source

Bayering Multiple pixels, with RGB-coloured filters are needed to capture colour images. Source

Cameras (especially phones) apply all kinds of digital optimisations to images: Simple things like bringing up the saturation, increasing the contrast, but also more advanced operations like smooting out skin, morphing bodyparts to make them look more "attractive".

When images are shared online, there's additional processes like scaling and compression. Any screen you look at a photograph on is doing its own, interanl optimisations to it.

All of this is to say, digital images have a limited link with reality (certainly not the chemical index that analogue material represents).

Let's make a digital film that explores some of the inherent characteristics of digital images (in the same way the structuralists made films abotu analogue film-making).

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Friday, Febuary 8th

Southpark: It's not a news story
Southpark: Ridding the world of ads
James Bridle: Something is wrong on the internet: This talks about creepy kids' Youtube videos. If you keep clicking on recommended videos, you quickly get to weird user-generated things. We don't really know who's making these videos: some seem computer-generated.
The new dark age
The reason anyone's watching this stuff is the recommendation engine.
You now get Youtube Kids and Netflix Kids.

Let's step away from this stuff for a second.

Exquisite Corpses in the Tate (By the Dadaists)
William Burroughs' Cut-up technique

Predictive text poems

Tap the first one 20 times.

I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand.

Left, Middle, Right

I have to say it but I think it's a good day at the moment is that you have a good time to be the first half and we have to say it but it is not just a good time.

'John Berger', then left

John Berger said that the first half and we have to say it but I think it's a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day

Only middle suggestion:

Tap the first half and we have to say it but I think it's a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand

Only right suggestion:

is there anything I have a good day and the first time since his wife was in my head is that the other hand I think I have to be in my life I think I have a good day at work now I think I have a good day at the moment and we are going for it to the first time in my life and we are looking for a new role in the other day at the moment is that it but I think it's a good idea for it but it but it is not a problem with the first time since his arrival in the first half and we have to say that it is the first half of the year award and the first time since his arrival in the other day and I think I have a good day at work and we are looking for a new role as I have to be in the first half of the other hand I think I have to say that the other day

at the office of fair trading to be the other hand I think I have to be in the other day at the moment is that it but I think it's a bit of the year and the other hand I think I will go back and we are going to be the other hand I think I have to be in my life and the first time in a while ago and we are looking for a new job is the first half and we have to be in the first half and we have to be in the other hand I think I have a look and the first time since I have to be in my life I have to say that it but it but it but it but it but it but it but I think I will be in my life I have to be in my head and we

'A', then only left suggestion

And I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I think I have a good day and the other hand I

Sunspring (2018): a bit contrived.
John Smith (1992): Gargantuan

Ways of subverting machines/systems:

Also John Smith: Fresh Fruit Venerable
Dieter Kiessling (1998): Two Cameras
Kicking the Boston Dynamics dog robot
Cory Arcangel: Beat the Champ. Not unlike people having their Amazon Echo and Google Home talk to each other.

All of these tend to go back to the human creator: Look at was this genius artist made this machine do. Sunspring is (maybe) more of an equal collaboration. Obvious Art made the Sotheby's painting.

Friday, Febuary 22

This week: Time and the digital.

Realtime only becomes a thing when there's an alternative.
Early TV was only live. To show a film, they would point a TV camera at a projection of a film.
Annabel Nicolson (1973): Reel Time. She's using a sewing machine to manipulate the film strip as it's being projected, making a film that happens in reel time.
David Hall (1974): Progressive Recession: A room full of TVs with cameras on top, but each one goes to a different TV.
Nam June Paik (1965): Nixon. This is the thing in the Tate with the two TVs being distorted by electromagnets.
Nicky Hamlyn (2016): Concentricss
Jennifer Ringley: The first reality-TV personality: JenniCam(1996).
The Academic: Bear Claw

Recursive instagram story

Friday, March 1

Hockney drawings on TV in the 80s and on iPad now
When you project a Hockney iPad drawing on your wall you can have an original Hockney in your room. He says that these images are meant to be accessible, but he hasn't got a website where they're all collected. INstead he emails them to select people and we scrape them off Google images.
Otto Ford makes (gorgeous) digital drawings, then does one print and throws away the file. Arguably this is shying away from the problem.
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Otto Ford Source

Cindy Sherman has an Instagram
Facetime with Cindy Sherman, in which she says that her Instagram work are essentially distractions, don't compete with her "serious" work
How do we value labour? Using an app in the same way Sherman and Hockney do doesn't take the same skill that doing a painting or printing a photograph do.
Maybe we can see Cindy Sherman's Instagram as readymade photography?
Rachel MacLean
In contrast: Tango (1980) by Zbigniew Rybczynski (which could now be made in a day, in the 80s this took 6 months).
Maybe the Sherman and Hockney digital images are a kind of pop art, like Warhol Soup Cans?
Shot on iPhone Campaign doesn't show the product, but the process. Sherman doing the same thing (showing what it's like to use phone apps, not screenshots of them)