Phototopia

PHOTOTOPIA IEUAN EVANS

A written inquiry into the perceptual influences of photographs on our experience of ‘the real’; in a world polluted by an inescapable projection of media.

1 INTRODUCTION 2 THE PERCEPTIVE PLACE 3 VALIDATION & INSURANCE 4 ARCHITECTURE. . . IMAGINED 5 PHOTOTOPIA 6 BIBLIOGRAPHY 7 PICTOGRAPHY

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This inquiry attempts to untangle the perceptive nature of the world, as reflected in the ‘experience of the photograph’. Using it’s timeless rapport as a departure point from the existential ‘experience of the real’. Posing questions as to how photographs are actively influencing our perception. How they are assuring our existence. As well as how they may potentially be assisting in the deterioration of experience.

In the following four chapters, I hope to provide a psychological evaluation of the perceptual influences present in the viewing of photos. An anatomisation of their validity. Indication to their implications in an architectural context and finally a brief synopsis of the autonomous ‘Phototopia’ I have used to encompass the issues raised within this document.

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‘If hysteria was the pathology of the exacerbated staging of the subject - of the theatrical and operational conversion of the body - and if paranoia was the pathology of organisation of the structuring of a rigid and jealous world - then today we have entered into a new form of schizophrenia. . . The schizophrenic is not, as generally claimed, characterised by his loss of touch with reality, but by the absolute proximity to and total instantaneous with things, this overexposure to the transparency of the world. Stripped of a stage. . .’1 Jean Baudrillard Photographs are these days so attainable; they have almost ceased to be a commodity. Certainly, Baudrillard states ‘The solicitation of and voraciousness for images is increasing at an excessive rate.’2.

We are enwreathed by imagery on a daily basis, in publications, advertisements & social networks. ‘Our reality is very nearly hermetically sealed and lined with reproduced images.’3. Our experience of imagery and its depictions, conjure a liminal understanding of what we deem to be contextual; and as practically everything we see has now been pre-discerned by our lust

for inquiry. What I ask, is left to interpret? How we experience ‘place’, now infers our pre-meditated understanding of the photograph, an understanding ‘couched on a bed of assumptions provided by our social context.’4. Our own intuition denies us the rawness of perception, only the unknown can deliver.

The first half of this claim is supported by psychological theorists such as (Bruner (1957)5, Neisser (1967)6 and Gregory (19727 & 1980)8), whom elucidate our perception of the world as ’the end result of a process which also involves making

1. Baudrillard, J. 2012. The ecstasy of communication. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). p.30. / / 2. Ibid. p.35. / / 3. Pallasmaa, J. and Mackeith, P. B. 2005. Encounters. Helsinki, Finland: Rakennustieto Oy. p.

257. / / 4. Hunter, W. C. 2008. A typology of photographic representations for tourism: Depictions of groomed spaces. Tourism Management, 29 (2), p. 356. / / 5. Bruner, J. S. 1957. On perceptual readiness. Psychological review, 64 (2), p. 123. / / 6. Neisser, U. 1967. Cognitive psychology. Appleton-Century-Crofts. / / 7. Bateson, G. 1972. Steps to an ecology of mind. San Francisco: Chandler Pub. Co. / / 8. Gregory, R. L. 1980. Perceptions as hypotheses. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences, 290 (1038), pp. 181--197.

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inferences about what things are like. . . we perceive them indirectly, drawing on our own knowledge and expectations of the world.’9. Particularly, Gregory’s ‘Constructivist Theory’10 which denotes ‘a dynamic searching for the best interpretation of the available data. . . going beyond the immediately given evidence of the senses. . . we make inferences about the information the senses receive.’11. A hypothesis, that considered inversely, suggests we also make inferences on information we expect the senses to receive. The concept of ‘Perpetual Set’ further details this inversion as ‘a perceptual bias or predisposition or readiness to perceive particular features of a stimulus’12. In other words - subconsciously we are preparing ourselves for what we want (or expect) our senses to experience on contact with that which is depicted.

What sensory information then, do we receive from the photograph?

As a stimulus it is certainly, solely visual and largely we agree, ‘All forms of media – have their own characteristics, biases and tendencies, as well as their own limitations.

Matters outside their scope are implicitly and effectively downgraded – by sheer omission.’13. A trait exploited and a power wielded by the photographer. As such we could also delineate that ‘photographs are physical evidence of “the de-

veloper’s intentions, the consumers’ interpretation and the interactions among them” ’14. A concept that promotes a dictation of experience, reliant on the how the photographer feels a place should be best commercialised or condemned.

Highlighting particular features and providing indications as to its acoustic or haptic experience, all of which are homogeneously outsourced by our understanding of the world. In our liminal experience of ‘place’. In our existentially imagined occupancy of it’s spaces.

We procure an experience.

But surely we aren’t so naïve as to take this ‘pre-conceived sensory awareness’ as ‘truth’; besides our desire for knowledge - our infomania - doesn’t allow it. More perspective, more circumstance, more interrogation, we demand to know more about how we will feel in that space, at that moment in time. Always pre-determined by the camera.

This characteristic, single-handedly funds the duplicity of images which in turn ‘is simply an effect of the multidimensional nature of human perception.’15. Graphic Novellist Alan Moore remarks on this lack of contingency in his acclaimed dystopian novel ‘Watchmen’ in which, Dr. Manhattan states ‘We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another’s vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away.’16.

9. Gross, R. D. and Mcilveen, R. 1997. Cognitive psychology. London: Hodder & Stoughton. p 19. / / 10. Gregory, R. L. 1970. The intelligent eye. New York: McGraw-Hill. / / 11. Gross, R. D. and Mcilveen, R. 1997. Cognitive psychology. London: Hodder & Stoughton. p. 19. / / 12. Ibid. p. 22. / / 13. Rattenbury, K. 2002. This is not architecture. London: Routledge. p. 1. / / 14. Hunter, W. C. 2008. A typology of photographic representations for tourism: Depictions of groomed spaces. Tourism Management, 29 (2), p. 357. / / 15. Ibid. p. 356. / / 16. Moore, A., Gibbons, D. and Higgins, J. 2008. Watchmen. New

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This description serves as a poignant reminder to the efficacy of the world we set out to revere but instead captured and sedated.

So how do we, or even more simply ‘can we’ now stop with our incessant reliance on the photograph for forecasting and assuring our lives?

Baudrillard’s ‘stage’ we have so insouciantly replaced, has not I believe been disposed of. Preferring instead to subscribe to a divination that it is waiting to be excavated from all the imagery ‘converted into endless commodities’17 by humans who have been ‘commodified’ ‘.consuming themselves nonchalantly without having the courage or even the possibility of confronting their very real existential reality.’18.

In this age where we are ‘made to live in a fabricated dream world.’19 trapped by the notion that ‘our culture resides in this confusion of desire and its equivalent materialised in the image. . .’20 stopping seems more than unlikely. However, just as it is the photographers quest is to ‘broaden their techniques to include interpretive analyses that capture the multidimensionality of the image’21. It may so be ours to remove ourselves from the temptations that will inexorably preconceive our experience of place.

17. Pallasmaa, J. 2005. The eyes of the skin. Chichester: Wiley-Academy. p. 34. / / 18. Ibid. p. 34. / / 19.

Ibid. p. 34. / / 20. Baudrillard, J. 2012. The ecstasy of communication. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). p.35. / / 21. Hunter, W. C. 2008. A typology of photographic representations for tourism: Depictions of groomed spaces. Tourism Management, 29 (2), p. 356.

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The photograph, is still for all intents and purposes ‘information’. Data utilised to better assist or dictate our understanding of the world, data that in some circumstances we readily accept - without question to be an accurate representation of its subject. Already though, in these first two sentences, we have descended into a lack of certainty by suggesting ‘representation’ can correctly inform that which exists in the real; as outlined by Kester Rattenbury ‘. . . what you’re looking at is a representation and not the thing itself.’22. That being said, it is not to say images cannot bear validity, often they do and ‘among the most explicit and clearcut standards of rightness we have anywhere are those for validity; and validity is of course distinct from truth in that the premisses and occlusions of a valid argument may be false.’23. A confusion emerges then, if we assume that validity ‘may’ or ‘may not’ bear authenticity. What do we believe? In

response to this problem, we generally concur that ‘Validity consists of conformity with rules of inference - rules that codify deductive practice in accepting or rejecting particular inferences.’24. In turn what we are left with is another question, what is truth (information) and what is merely validated by inference (representation)?

Information in its primary sense is simply the ‘collection of facts’.

So are photographs fact? Or has information just renovated itself into a paradise for ‘representation’ to validate itself as such? Nelson Goodman best defines fact, stating ’. . . facts are found not made. . . facts constitute the one and only real world. . . and knowledge consists of believing the facts. . . fiction is fabricated and fact found.’25.

There is no argument that whatever it is depicted in a photograph has been found by the photographer

22. Rattenbury, K. 2002. This is not architecture. London: Routledge. p. xxi. / / 23. Goodman, N. 1978.

Ways of worldmaking. Indianapolis,: Hackett Pub. Co. p. 41. / / 24. Ibid. p. 41. / / 25. Ibid. p. 25.

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who inhabited that space. But his photograph, the images we see in our books and magazines have been irrefutably fabricated through their development. By definition this now suggests that information is indeed undergoing a metamorphosis. . . But why? ‘Susan Sontag has made perceptive remarks on the role of the photographed image in our perception of the world.

She writes, for instance, of a ‘mentality’ which looks at the world as a potential set of photographs, and argues that ‘the reality has come to seem more and more what we are shown by the camera, and that the omnipresence of photographs has an incalculable effect on our ethical sensibility. By furnishing this already crowded world with a duplicate one of images, photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is.’26. My understanding therefore is that we negotiate with the two-dimensionality of the photograph, accepting its reality - without hesitation - as a consolation for our lack of opportunity. It insures us from the reality that we may never truly experience a place in the habitual reality of the world.

The antithesis of which has left us sacrificing the experience itself, using photographs as ‘A way of certifying experience’27, but in doing so, ‘refusing it - by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir.’28. This image then begins

its quest to become ever more illustrious, it ‘“conjures up promises”29 of what will be seen when a particular destination is reached.’30. Promises that are not always kept, but the photograph has none the less reassured us. If we don’t have time to experience these places, at least we can infer from context. ‘We have a mental need to experience that we are rooted in the continuity of time.

We do not only inhabit space, we also dwell in time.’31.

There are no such rules in the heterotopia of the photograph though, particularly in architecture ‘we attempt to halt time in its present tense. . . buildings are designed for a timeless present, and objects are replaced before they have acquired any sense of use and age’32.

The depicted space ‘cognizant. . . of its inferiority to time, answers it with the only property time doesn’t possess: with beauty.’33 a technique we utilise to the utmost. So much so that the ‘omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggests that time consists of interesting events, events worth photographing.’34 and this apparently provides an adequate distraction from the reality. . . it isn’t.

We are so wrapped up in our fear of time, that it’s auspices - the liminal moments that constitute the in-between - that stitch these moments of experience together are now inherently overlooked. Insurance from time it appears is now readily available, at the cost of experience.

26. Pallasmaa, J. 2005. The eyes of the skin. Chichester: Wiley-Academy. p. 30. / / 27. Sontag, S. 1977.

On photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 177. / / 28. Ibid. p. 177. / / 29. Urry, J. 2002.

The tourist gaze. London: Sage Publications. p. 86. / / 30. Hunter, W. C. 2008. A typology of photographic representations for tourism: Depictions of groomed spaces. Tourism Management, 29 (2), p.

356. / / 31. Pallasmaa, J. and Mackeith, P. B. 2005. Encounters. Helsinki, Finland: Rakennustieto Oy. p.

309. / / 32. Ibid. p. 309. / / 33. Ibid. p. 308. / / 34. Sontag, S. 1977. On photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 178.

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The documentation of architecture and its experience is largely contained within photographic images.

Often these depictions resonate a lonely sense of perfection, ‘photographs display structures devoid of human traces . . . in a pristine state unattained by their everyday use.

The camera brings perceptual order to what is frequently a chaotic environment.’35. We see the building as envisioned by the architect, ‘yet before it has entered its normal life cycle in the social and physical fabric of the city.’36. Regardless, we fail to identify the falsities connected with such representation, we succumb instead to the ‘poetic temptation to see the world in our absence, free of any human.’37 and the ‘freezing of this metaphysical condition on the film’38 prevails.

This concession of humanity, imagines buildings. They’re ‘decontextualised from their physical adjacencies and severed from the societal

circumstances that determined their own production’39. The architecture takes on a utopian grandness in the photograph or ‘Phototopia’ (as I have titled the phenomenon).

Pierluigi Serraino acknowledges this heterotopic bias and states that ‘such juxtaposition is routine. . . Yet the impact on the reader in the value judgement of various architectural propositions should not be neglected.’40. One could argue that if you dispense with such material, that in the design process the value of habitation is not so overlooked, rather it is essential. Still, does it not conform to an objectivity of the real? Habitation pre-determined by the architect is still after all, enforcing itself upon us.

If we consider the photographic image of architecture then, as a separate reality, a heterotopia ‘detached from social and contextual considerations’41. In which ‘buildings attempt to conquer the foreground

35. Rattenbury, K. 2002. This is not architecture. London: Routledge. p. 129. / / 36. Ibid. p. 129. / / 37.

Baudrillard, J. and Willaume, A., 2009. Why hasn’t everything already disappeared?. 1st ed. London: Seagull Books. p. 52. / / 38. Rattenbury, K. 2002. This is not architecture. London: Routledge. p. 129. / / 39. Ibid. p. 129. / / 40. Ibid. p. 129. / / 41. Pallasmaa, J. and Mackeith, P. B. 2005. Encounters. Helsinki, Finland: Rakennustieto Oy. p. 333.

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. . . instead of creating a supportive background for human activities and perceptions.’42. Our understanding of architecture becomes simultaneously warped and focussed by the overwhelming presence of built space. Furthermore, this virtual reality is highly replicable, as a result ‘photographs of reality and the ‘yet to be’ become now indistinguishable.’43. Technological advancements mean we can replicate the ‘photographic’ to produce designs that may as well exist in the real, or at least without question in the psuedo-reality of the photograph. ‘Generations of students and tutors, critics and journalists have been talking about the drawings on the wall in front of them as if they were talking about architecture. . . Now the discussion addresses photographs, and the critics will be unclear whether they are built or unbuilt.’44. It is a virtual reality that panders ever closer to the ‘reality’ and attempts to distance itself from the phoney connotations that supplement the ‘virtual’.

So what does this virtual reality offer us? Personally I would propose that the designs we thrust into the ‘reality’ of the depicted, designs that do not conform to the rules and regulations of the real, that do not and may not ever exist, are those that best assist our understanding of the world. Stretching the limits of our imagination and opening new av-

enues for exploration. Even Albert Einstein concedes ‘imagination is more important than knowledge.

Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.’45 and put simply, everything that now exists must have been at some point imagined.

Consequently, maybe the photograph is now undergoing a shift in priority, instead of providing a documentation of architecture that exists, its duty may be to elaborate on its potential. Just as ‘projects of different scales and types are presented to the reader in publications and reconfigured in a new visual relationship.’46 . The approach we choose to adopt in our experience of architecture can also reconfigure itself as controversial tool for the extrapolation of information and value judgement. What I mean by this is that rather than concerning ourselves with a direct representation of traits deemed to be worthy of prominence. Instead, we might provide an indication of how to best begin the process the understanding architecture on a personal level. Allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions, initiate their own understanding and ultimately grasp the rawness of perception that is today so elusive.

In conclusion, I will suggest that as a visual syntax, the photograph has certainly better equipped our understanding of architecture and it’s

42. Pallasmaa, J. and Mackeith, P. B. 2005. Encounters. Helsinki, Finland: Rakennustieto Oy. p. 333. / / 43. Rattenbury, K. 2002. This is not architecture. London: Routledge. p. 123. / / 44. Ibid. p. 123. / / 45. Einstein, A. 1929. The Saturday Evening Post, What Life Means to Einstein. Indianapolis, Indiana: Evening Post Society. p. 117. / / 46. Rattenbury, K. 2002. This is not architecture. London: Routledge. p.

129.

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substance. It is also without doubt that ‘the technology of the photograph has made a significant contribution to the transformation of the world’s consciousness of itself’47, but it will serve us well to remember that ‘authentic architectural experiences derive from real or ideated bodily confrontations rather than from visually observed entities’48.

47. Hunter, W. C. 2008. A typology of photographic representations for tourism: Depictions of groomed spaces. Tourism Management, 29 (2), p. 357. / / 48. Pallasmaa, J. and Mackeith, P. B. 2005.

Encounters. Helsinki, Finland: Rakennustieto Oy. p. 326.

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Finally in terms of the diagnosis of ‘phototopia’. Since the conception of the photograph, we have been relentlessly building a surreal library of images that will be forever used to describe our history. In the past tense, our documentation of the world will always reflect our interpretation of events and when you consider the inextricable nature of these past entities alongside our existence in the present. It seems that photographs comprise one part of a cyclical process that entails our understanding of places, space and things; our desire to experience them, and finally the projection of our own experience upon arrival. One that will inevitably then go on to inform another’s preconceptions of the world. This is ‘Phototopia’.

Therefore, with regard to the influences prevalent in photography.

The conjectural nature of that which we perceive in the photograph

should not (with an open mind) have to influence us, or be seen to draw conclusions that will ridicule the purity of information. The photograph cannot (and as such), does not need to try and assume the role of an eidetic representation, but provide an overture that harmoniously interacts with our own analysis of its contents. Under this occultation, we can begin to appreciate the photo as an individual description of place and not a definite representation of its physical counterpart.

There will always be those whom rely wholly on photographic evidence in their understanding of the world. But I hope that those who pioneer our future will be less susceptible to its prescriptive charms and for the sake of a label, you could call this prescription ‘phototopian discourse’. It is a funny thing to try and attribute such an iniquity to the innovation of something as won-

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derful as the photograph. The photograph as tool for representation is still a beautiful thing, it’s disillusioning of the world is just one negative sioning of the world is just one negative connotation that I and many other have so maliciously detailed.

The magic of preserving a timelessness in space, a power now seemingly afforded to everyone should not - despite it’s experiential pitfalls - be discredited or undermined.

‘Phototopia’ is a world we have the luxury of entering at our own discretion. How we choose to utilise it, whether we allow it to consume us or not, is a choice that is completely at the mercy of the individual.

- Allport, G. W. 1955. Becoming. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

- Bateson, G. 1972. Steps to an ecology of mind. San Francisco: Chandler Pub. Co. - Baudrillard, J. 2012. The ecstasy of communication. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).

- Baudrillard, J. and Willaume, A., 2009. Why hasn’t everything already disappeared?. 1st ed. London: Seagull Books.

- Bruner, J. S. 1957. On perceptual readiness. Psychological review, 64 (2), p. 123.

- Debord, G., 1983. Society of the spectacle. 1st ed. Detroit: Black & Red. - Einstein, A. 1929. The Saturday Evening Post, What Life Means to Einstein.

Indianapolis, Indiana: Evening Post Society.

- Goodman, N. 1978. Ways of worldmaking. Indianapolis,: Hackett Pub. Co. - Gregory, R. L. 1970. The intelligent eye. New York: McGraw-Hill.

- Gregory, R. L. 1980. Perceptions as hypotheses. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences, 290 (1038), pp. 181-197.

- Gross, R. D. and Mcilveen, R. 1997. Cognitive psychology. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

- Hunter, W. C. 2008. A typology of photographic representations for tourism: Depictions of groomed spaces. Tourism Management, 29 (2), pp. 354-365.

- Moore, A., Gibbons, D. and Higgins, J. 2008. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics.

- Neisser, U. 1967. Cognitive psychology. Appleton-Century-Crofts.

- Pallasmaa, J. 2005. The eyes of the skin. Chichester: Wiley-Academy.

- Pallasmaa, J. and Mackeith, P. B. 2005. Encounters. Helsinki, Finland: Rakennustieto Oy. - Rattenbury, K. 2002. This is not architecture. London: Routledge.

- Sontag, S. 1977. On photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

- Urry, J. 2002. The tourist gaze. London: Sage Publications.

Selected from my own personal library; the photographs in this essay attempt to initiate a deviation from the immediateness of the spaces or subjects they depict. Whilst I have chosen them with consideration to the accompanying text, the ambiguity of their subject is something that I have often unconsciously strived to achieve and represents my personal relationship with photograph as a means of capturing my experiences in life.

1. The Entrance to Prague Castle. 2013.

2. The Descent from Prague Castle. 2013.

3. Plymouth Guild Hall. 2012.

4. Plymouth Guild Hall. 2012.

5. Rue de Meaux. 2012.

6. Rue de Meow. 2012.

7. The Empty Plymouth University. 2014.

8. The Unbuilt Plymouth University. 2014.

9. The Serendipity of Plymouth University. 2011.

10. Conceptual Model Attempting to Dechipher Heterotopia. 2014 11. Conceptual Model Attempting to Dechipher Heterotopia. 2014

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