Description
This class explores current developments in designing and implementing projects for the web. The student will work to cultivate an individual process that involves critical reflection, developing a personal voice and facility in using the networked digital tools, concepts and systems of contemporary media culture. How are interactive processes, networked producers and audiences, and the tools of Web 2.0 affecting the way media is produced, received and valued? How are digital and telecommunications media reshaping our concept and experience of space, our relationship to others?
Readings and Blogs
Two students each week will be responsible for blogging a response to the reading on FMA Web Art & Design. If it is your week to blog, you are expected to prepare a thoughtful, thorough response to the readings and post it on the blog Monday night by midnight. Your blog response should strive to connect to the esthetic, critical, and/or cultural issues being discussed in class. In addition, your blog response should make all appropriate connections, including connecting the reading to artworks/websites viewed in class, theories or technical issues that are being introduced, etc. You can upload images and links to the blog, being careful to respect copyright issues and to credit your sources.
→All other students in the class will then be expected to comment on the posted blog response each week.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think that in 10 years, photographs won't mean as much as they did in the past. With photoshop, you can manipulate any picture on the internet and turn it into something completely different that what the photo was. Most people look at pictures exclusively on the internet now of days. I can't remember the last time I saw someone pull out a photo album and look through it. With Facebook and Myspace, people take pictures for any reason now. I remember when people took pictures for special reasons. Now people take pictures just to have something new to post on their profile. You can't look at a photo now without being skeptical. I feel that the computer has lowered the value of the photograph in this generation.
ReplyDeleteRobert Bell
In the reading, Mitchell identifies the differences between the photographic and the digital image. Photographic images are analog, recording a continuous and infinite array of information from light by means of a chemical reaction. The finite amount of information digital images record, however, is dictated by the number of gridded pixels supported by the sensors making them and the memory storing them. They are described as "discreet" because each of the pixels is a step which, when the picture is viewed as a whole, blends with its neighboring pixels to create the illusion of continuous information. Mitchell argues that the continuous nature of information in the photograph makes it more difficult both to alter or reproduce. Digital imagery, on the other hand, seems custom made for alteration and reproduction, since modifying the pixels is as easy as changing an integer, and copying the image as easy as copying all of the integers for all of the pixels.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this feature of digital imagery does make it the most convenient platform for post-modern collaboration, especially over the web. I look at manipulated digital images every day, countless times a day.
But while I was reading "3 Snapshots," I thought about two different instances of consequences of the manipulation that Mitchell described. First, celebrity gossip blogs. Perez Hilton has a wide variety of examples of digital imagage manipulation. Everyday he'll take images of celebrities and simply write some caddy phrase (http://perezhilton.com/2009-01-24-emaciated-lohan) or draw a symbol (http://perezhilton.com/2009-01-24-molly-ringwalds-having-twinsies) directly onto them with what seems to be MS Paint. Or relatively frequently, one of these blogs will publish nude photos of some celebrity, which will envelop message boards in a whirlwind of speculation over whether or not the images are real and how or why they were faked. Even though the two examples seem really different in detail, when it comes down to it, they're both just alterations of pixels carried out to achieve two different levels of discreetness.
A more serious example is the story that broke over the summer about Iran releasing photos of a test-launch of nuclear missiles. (http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/photography-as-a-weapon/?scp=10&sq=Iran%20Missle%20Photos&st=cse). It was eventually revealed by bloggers that the images contained evidence of Photoshop doctoring. I remember reading a few articles that concluded that all images on the web must be viewed with a degree of skepticism since manipulation of them has become so easy. Again, the pixels are changed to achieve a different image, only this time, the image is placed on the front of every major newspaper.
I think these examples show not just the ease of doctoring and reproduction that Mitchell describes, but also a variety of applications and consequences of them.
Both of you have brought many important aspects of the photograph vs. digital photography to light, just as the article "Three Snapshots" by William Mitchell.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that the likeihood of coming across an actual photograph nowadays is much less frequent, but a digital photograph is no substitution for an analog photograph. While digital photography is certainly easier and more convienent, it is no comparision to taking a picture on film; where the shot has to be perfect the first time and then there is the suspense of waiting for the photograph do be developed.
Digital photography, and sometimes the ability to manipulate digital photographs, is certainly a wonderful invention that I am incredibly thankful for, but I do truly hope that the art of photography on film is certainly around for a lot longer.
Rob has made some good points about how digital photography has overtaken analog because of how versatile it is to people. Not only can we look at the pictures we took instantly but we can manipulate them using computer software and post them on the internet for the entire world to view. But I believe that sometime in the near future, analog photography will make a comeback. Many artists look to the past for inspiration and I believe many of them will experiment more with what they can make out of actual film. The look of an analog photo, whether it be from a small disposable camera or a medium format camera is a very hard thing to duplicate. Natural light is captured through the iris to display an image only nature can make, not a computer. People can try to replicate analog photos through programs on their computers, but as said in the article, the differences are profound.
ReplyDeleteErin Fitzgerald
ReplyDeleteI thought the article posed some interesting questions about the authenticity of knowledge. Even though it is easier to manipulate images nowadays, using digital means, artists like Manray have been altering photographs since the 1920's. Photography, like film, is non-objective, no matter if it is analog or digital. In my daily life I rarely question the authenticity of a photograph and usually assume it has been altered in some capacity, whether simply by the point of view or position of the photographer or in a post-production setting.
I don't know about you guys, but I took a photography class and analog photography hasn't went anywhere, it's just that personally I don't surround myself with people who are into analog photography and the analog photography world because Video Imaging Technology (My major in CCC) is under Computer Graphics and so everthing was about the computer minus that one class where we used a single lens reflex 35mm class, black and white film, a dark room, etc. As technology grows it builds on previous concepts and practices and each division/variation has its followers. The article mentioned how a digital representation of analog photographic art looks like a perfect replica but up close you can see the imperfections (i.e. pixels, anti-aliasing, etc) and then said how copies of a painting or photograph loses its quality with each copy but something made digitally there is no difference in the original or the copy and to me it's just saying that there are two worlds and the analog has it's pros and cons and the digital has its pros and cons but they're both part of our culture and aren't going anywhere, and soon the next phase in photography will arise and lead its band of follwers into the future but the past practices will still hold their value. Try straying away from Myspace and Facebook and look at some Art sites to see original photography.
ReplyDeleteHey, Im Nao.
ReplyDeleteI work on the both digital and analog films.
I like it both. I agree the ideas of Mitchell that analog photo is not equal to the digital photo. I really like textures of B/W photo on the paper. For me is more actual. I think Digital photo on the paper or display has weak textures comparing analog photo.
The easiness of digital photography changing the value of photo.
One things I can not forget about the things "good photograph".
In last year, I show photography magazine to my friends, He said "I can find more good pictures from Facebook."
I wanna disagree this idea but Im sure there are some good photos in the facebook.
However Still Im not sure the value of "good photograph" in this case.
Biographical?
Funny?
Historical?
Jornalistic?
Impact?
Beautiful?
Sorry, My brains get mess up..
Crazy thinks...
ReplyDeleteI like digital processes better. Analog has a nice quality of texture. I would agree with mitchell in that analog photography has its perks, at least in terms of originality of the original copy. But digital is good for exactly the reason why someone my like analog photography. Digital copies as previously mentioned in class, are clones. And Crazy likes clones.
My experience with analog photography was marked by trial and error, mostly with dealing with and adjusting the analog light meter. This is always problematic. Though I will note that the analog process did give me a quote on quote higher amount of control, I will mention that utilizing that control required a greater understanding of photography in general. And a greater amount of time. I feel that in this discussion of a "good image" there are levels of subjectivity, and a lot of the argument is in my opinion, purely in the mind of the parties in disagreement. Ultimately digital is better I feel because the digital processes make the medium more like clay and less like a one time imprint, which cannot be manipulated.
I've grown rather accustomed to being able to manipulate photos.