The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. - book reviews

After lazily believing for 150 years that there is nearly objective verity in photography, our society is now entering a digital age in which photography's hegemony as reliable witness is ending. Photographs will by and by be as easily simulated as "taken." however we never quite got around to discussing adequately what photography was all about or determining what it actually meant for us. Was it at any time a reliable witness? In which ways was its mechanical approximation (or artistic subversion) of human seeing helpful? There is still insufficient public appreciation of the complexity of the photograph, of its ambiguity, efficacy and subjectivity. The greatest in quantity mechanistic and universal of the media, photography is weighted with the myth that "it not at any time lies," and its verisimilitude is widely relied on But at the same time, the medium is oftentimes attacked (by American visual artists, among others) for its unmitigated mendacity. Without discussion of like issues, we--the alleged beneficiaries of the information age--are as unprepared for the digital revolution as previous generations were for the horseless carriage.

Into this confused situation tend hitherwards a logical, clearly written, amply illustrated volume The Reconfigured Eye: Visual verity in the Post-Photographic Era. its author, William J Mitchell, dean of the academy of Architecture and Planning at MIT, attempts to prepare us for the nearest paradigm shift by focusing upon the subject of human seeing. His process is to compare the ways in which things seen have been realistically depicted by means of painting and photography with the depictions produc through their successor/competitor, digital imaging. The Reconfigured organ of sight which is itself configured as a sophisticated textbook contains chapters titled "Electronic Tools," "Digital Brush Strokes" "Virtual Cameras," "Synthetic Shading" and "Computer Collage." These provide technical and esthetic explications of processe that the pair simulate and amplify photography. For the greatest in quantity part, Mitchell discusses tactics that bring out a realistic image while modifying more [i]or[/i] less of the givens of the photographic process

There are sum of two units major strategies that imitate and expand on the "photographic"--one is to digitally combine extant imagery, primarily photographs, to create fresh images (generally with the aid of a "paint" program that, among other things, allows the user to become a seamless retoucher), and the next to the first is to generate new photo-realistic imagery mathematically. In the first case, individual or more photographs are scanned, digitally encod and at handed on a screen; then, using appropriate software, it is possible to make changes in those images by means of altering anywhere from one to several million pixels (the picture uncompounded bodys which are the building block ups of the image). Retouching devices that simulate conventional tools--e.g., an eraser or a brush--are available, as well as devices that permit the use of newer techniques, like as copying a color from single section of an image onto another area. It is possible to "paint" the background, or any other part of the image, as if individual were painting a simulated surface. (Mitchell mentions this last technique as a separate strategy.)

In the next to the first major approach, which begins with algorithms rather than a photograph, the computer is given a station of instructions about the size and direct the eye of an object, or a plant of objects, and can then generate an image which is "lit" by dint of a simulated light source. Thus the image will appear to be seen from a specific point of view--that is, through a "virtual camera" (and by the agency of a "virtual observer"). This technique is obviously actual useful for filmmakers, who can, for example, simulate a spaceship, let fly it up into orbit and rap it up--all without incurring the take away from of physically building and destroying the vehicle. The more natural-looking parts of a representation are the most difficult to simulate--a human face, a landscape--while Coke cans and spaceships are the simplest, reflecting a certain number of of the biases of contemporary mathematics.

Mitchell's might is his systematic, logical analysis of the factors that divide previous and time to come media. For instance, he provides an illuminating discussion of the differences between the analog photograph and the digital image by the agency of comparing the characteristics of grain versus those of pixel. As he does through every part of much of his book, Mitchell liberally cites major figures in the history of photography to make his point. upon the issue of grain, he cites the great modernist photographer Edward Weston, who lay the foundation of that two characteristics constituted the trademark of the photograph: "First there is the amazing precision of definition, especially in the recording of fine detail; and next to the first there is the unbroken succession of infinitely subtle gradations from black to white." the one and the other according to Weston, "pertain to the mechanics of the proces and cannot be duplicated by means of any work of the human hand."

As Mitchell notes a critical difference between the photograph and the digital image meet the eyes at the spatial building-block stage; images are encod digitally through dividing the picture plane into a uniform "Cartesian grid of cells" or pixels. The intensity or color of each pixel is specificed "by means of an integer number drawn from more [i]or[/i] less limited range. The resulting two-dimensional array of integers (the raster grid) can be stored in computer memory, transmitted electronically, and interpreted by dint of various devices to produce displays and printed images." In digital images, "fine details and even curves are approximated to the grid, and continuous tonal gradients are separated up into discrete steps."