the
Ima gine d Percept
Vivienne L a 2014
5
Pre face
7 13
Repre senta tion
The Unstable Image
21
Duration and Delay
29
Across Dimensions
45 Epi-
logue
47 49
Notes
Bibliography
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Appendix
Im a g e
Role + represent + in f o r m
Access + in s t a n t + vast
P r o du c t i on + ceaseless + e ditable
P r o c e s sing through + associations + experience
Preface How c an the user ’s rela tionship with ima g er y and te chnolog y to da y a c t as a new mo de of designing and c onfig uring buil t sp a c e? With the rise of digital media over the last decade, our access to imagery has radically expanded. Produced and deployed for occasions of informing, educating, entertaining and creative expression, this influx of visuals has impacted the nature in which we engage with and perceive imagery.
Richard Kearney describes this phenomenon as ‘image addiction’1. We now live in an era in which the human mind readily accepts this seemingly unending surge of visual stimuli, where accessing images has become as simplified as a Google search, or a scroll down a news feed or blog archive. These modes of access have become ingrained as a part of our daily regimens.
With a constantly expanding volume of imagery and a world of image retrieval growing faster and wider, digitization has brought forward an age of image saturation. As a form of information it is inherently trusted and accepted by the human psyche, somewhat paradoxical in a period of technological advancement where visual information is so easily edited and manipulated.
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The ubiquitous nature of the image today has had dramatic implications on the pace and manner in which we consume visual information. The digitization of still and moving image has created a new behaviour of consuming, and these digital platforms for viewing have now become fundamental sources of information and inspiration.
Although the progression of image technology stands on an unprecedented scale, there exists within it opportunities for failure - mistakes, glitches or manipulation, which, in effect, may conflict with its purpose in informing or representing. With such a deep rooted reliance on technology, the potential of unstable imagery introduces a number of complexities in which our unconscious minds draw from our own personal realities, in an attempt to interpret and make sense of images that present to us evocations of illusion and immateriality. In an attempt to understand this dissonant relationship between the human consciousness, reality, and its representation within the image, there also lies an opportunity to recognise the scope of its influence on our mental and physical world, both of which now may be conditioned by the image industry. This research project aims to investigate such reflections.
“We live in an unending rainfall of images. The most powerful media transform the world into images and multiply it by means of the phantasmagoric play of mirrors.” 2 - Italo Calvino
Ro l e
Access
+ t o in f o r m, + to represent in t h e a b s e n c e o f physical + p r o v i d in g :
C on t e n t to the
U s er
RE L I A N C E
c r e a t in g dis t a n c e between
+ in s t a n t a n e o u s + in f l u x o f i m a g e r y on mul tiple platforms: social m e d i a , b l o g s, s e a r c h e n g in e s, etc.
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Representation The conventional understanding of the image in contemporary culture has been compromised, and visual content today exists as a pliable entity that is perpetually retrieved and transmitted to anyone, anywhere. Although electronic manipulation is exercised frequently and in an exploitative manner, the reception of imagery is rarely met with hesitation. If we understand image as a tool of representation, we can begin to explore the user’s relationship with image further. If provided with an image of an object, we will inherently accept this image as a source of information in the absence of the pictured object.
The image is providing us with information about the object, but as we develop a trust and reliance with it, a complexified relationship emerges as we set aside the represented object. Images today function as proxies for our physical surroundings and can consequently alienate its viewers from object and material. A distance is formed between the user and the image content, whilst bringing forth gaps of information for the other senses.
F ig 1 . 1 ( app endix ) In May 2014, SWG3 Gallery hosted the Screen Play exhibition, presenting documentations of artworks (information that is usually found online) rather than the real works themselves, instead investing their interest in the complications that arise when viewing a representation of something. The exhibition ran in conjunction with their online gallery, itsourplayground.com, which uses ‘curation as a medium’. It similarly exhibits documentations of works, using the web page as an immaterial space referencing the ease of use affiliated with the internet.
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We no longer require the physical object - it is dismissed as we draw conclusions and make assumptions from its representation through image. Any non-ocular sensations that could be had if we made physical contact with the object are now trumped by image.
Represe nta tion
In an effort to further investigate the role of the image today and the reliance that comes with it, this project formed a basis in understanding the correlation between human perception, image and object. By introducing degrees of instability within objects that we easily understand and are familiar with, this series of objects was produced to question and test the way we think about and process image. above: lemon coated in pigmented resin right: lime coated in pigmented silicon
Chapter 01
Represe nta tion
This complicated reality contained within the image brings forth our unconscious knowledge of our physical world. It is from personal associations, knowledge and experience of our surroundings that causes this delay but in turn helps us interpret and make sense of the instability within images.
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Rather than allowing the visual information its usual treatment of a quick scan and scroll, the noticeable instability within the familiar object forces the viewer to pause, introducing a delay in the processing of information, meanwhile rejecting the instantaneous culture of consumption.
“...what we see is brought within our reach - though not necessarily within arm’s reach.” 3 - John Berger
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Represe nta tion
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With this forced addressing of images, we are able to see a contrast forming between truly understanding the content and quickly consuming it. The represented object is understood through experience within the physical world; but is unmatched in understanding the object if we were to hold it in our own hands. Information is replacing knowledge. Following the notion of reliance on imagery, there has been a developing disconnect when viewing images today.
Chapter 01
Represe nta tion
In his Ways of Seeing , John Berger writes,
If it is human nature to address images with emotional associations rather than rational and logical thinking, how may this affect our perception of not just objects, but spaces as well? What is the intent of unstable images like this when they are produced? How much can we really rely on images if they are so easily manipulated?
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“We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.� 4
P r o du c t i o n
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Im a g ing Te c hnolo g y
Im a g e In s t a b ili t y
images become susceptible to: + manipulation + g litches + distor tion
raises issues on + cre dibilit y + representation
c re a t in g c o n f li c t a n d dis s o n a n c e b e t w e e n : + content + image + user
P r o c e s s ing
prompts
IM A GIN AT I V E S PAT I A L I S AT I ON
2
The Unstable Image The role of the image has complexified alongside the progression of image manipulating technologies. There has been a ceaseless development of tools and techniques available to image makers. Adjustments of colour, scale and even resolution are made possible with imaging software, and there exists no limitations to the degree of manipulation that can be deployed onto the image content.
The expansion of image based technology has now set in motion new channels of surveilling, recording, dissecting and depicting reality through humanity’s image factory, of which virtually any user can contribute and churn out content boundlessly for public circulation. When a scene is described as ‘picture perfect’, it is comparing the experience of a real world setting to a depiction of it. Although it has presented to us complications in regards to notions of credibility and representation, digital manipulation is now received as a providential augmentation in the craft of image making, allowing the refinement of content and fabrication of the creator’s ideal.
However, the mutation of representational imagery is not always purposeful and controlled. The trasmutative nature in the development of technology means that there are possibilities and instances in which glitches and accidental distortions can occur. It is with these distortions and glitches seen in imagery that present to us seemingly incomprehensible or nonrepresentational content. These ‘mistakes’ cause the dismissal of images as abstractions of the real world - but such a label calls for the human perception to draw together a collection of associations and interrelated cognitions to form a conscious comprehension of ‘glitchy’ information, processing an imagined projection that can be applied to reality as an embodied singularity. Viewing these unstable images creates a conflicted understanding of physical reality, forcing viewer consciousness to conceptualise a mental echoing of scenes with projected illusions of materiality and spatiality.
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In today’s realm of information, there is a growing trend of editing visual content. This presents to viewers the issue of representation in a visually dominated culture whereby perceiving is synonymous with regarding truth.
The screens on our devices act as frontiers between our physical reality and the digital realm. On the electronic domain, there exists a neverending archive of malleable visual data, of which the properties and materialities are beyond our sensory perception.
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T he Unstable Ima g e
This project saw the heavy distortion of the moving image, and an escalation in scale from object to space. Under a time displacement gradient map (see fig. 1), the film takes us through the space of an underground carpark gridded with load bearing poles. Each turn of the camera in an effort to navigate around the poles produces a swift blur of the space, as if the ever changing and moving image is attempting to catch up with itself.
DELAY & DURATION
The result is comparable to an alternate reality, a living and breathing space that is responding to the influence of movement and time.
F ig 1 . 2 ( app endix ) In JPEGs, photographer Thomas Ruff addresses the contemporary condition of the electronic image, blowing up digital photographs into large scale prints beyond an appropriate resolution, and replacing photographic grain with pixels as the modern signifier of authenticity.
Chapter 02
T he Unstable Ima g e
Luminance
0%
-1.00
50%
0.00
100%
+1.00
Time
Fig. 1
Gradient overlayed onto footage Time -1.00
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0.00
+1.00
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T he Unstable Ima g e
Chapter 02
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Imaginative Spatialisation
T he Unstable Ima g e
The film contains lapses in which fleeting instances of clarity are seen when the speed of the movement is decreased right before and after the camera takes a turn. These few clear frames become visions suspended in the mind amidst a rolling succession of blurred space, which brings to light the implications of delay and duration in image viewing. The warped movement through the space, coupled with staggered visions of clarity give rise to a new way of interpreting built space, prompting the viewer to spatialise and map their own understanding of the carpark in their minds.
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Access
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+ in s t a n t a n e o u s + in e x h a u s t i b l e
in t ro du c in g
D ur a t i on to al ter
C on s umpt i on + swif t + detached
IN A C C UR AT E P RO C E S S IN G
3 Duration & Delay Digital search engines and visual feeds have begun to present to us mass quantities of imagery. The provision - extended to us within a sophisticated and universally understood digital network - is quick but detached. This immediate access to an ever expanding world of information has facilitated a culture in which visual data seems to just sweep over our consciousness, and imagery is swiftly viewed, but not interpreted.
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Encountering images displaces our consciousness into an imaginary mental world, in which each succession of image prompts another recreation of an experiential reality.
Our perceptual systems are admitted to an inexhaustible domain of information in the digital realm, where duplication, storage and manipulation is efficiently and instantaneously delivered for public circulation with no loss of quality. Our eyes perceive streams of imagery faster than our consciousness is able to process them, generating inaccurate syntheses of materiality and spatiality. The consumptive culture that seizes the ease and immediacy of image has resulted in a hasty disregard for content unable to bypass our mental filters. Is the immediacy of the image responsible for our disengagement with it? Can the introduction of delay and duration induce more thoughtful interpretation? Could these inaccurate readings of the physical potentially still function as built space?
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The flatbed scanner is an instrument used conventionally to create duplicates of documents. By attaching a lens and constructing a means of adjusting focal length (see fig.2), the scanner was renewed into an apparatus to duplicate real world scenes.
Fig. 2
Chapter 03
Dura tion & D ela y
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Chapter 03
Dura tion & D ela y
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There is an element of duration as the new device interprets the scenes through a moving strip, a contrast to the more common handheld devices that deliver the instant capturing of photographs. It holds the user responsible for the framing and the focus of the image, both of which must be estimated and manually adjusted.
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Dura tion & D ela y
Chapter 03
Dura tion & D ela y
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The span of time in capturing the scene is one that we are unaccustomed to, and the absence of a screen to monitor and tweak the final results creates an unstable and unpredictable process of image making. The scene is able to change mid capture, and any slight movements of the instrument or subject matter results in extreme changes to form and space. These metamorphoses of still life call for a new understanding or complete reinterpretation of space.
T he Ima gine d Perc ept
Role U s er
P r o c e s s ing t o r e p r e s e n t in
T he U n s t a ble Im a g e 30
A b s e nc e o f t he P hy si c a l
t o m a k e s e n s e o f, t o s p a t i a lis e
u s in g + associations + experience
an
IM A GIN AT I VE RE A L I T Y
4
Across Dimensions The image is a notion often accustomed to the idea of visual representation,or a ‘second-hand sensation’.
“...we grasp the entity, the ‘anatomy’ and the meaning of an image before we are able to identify its details, or understand it intellectually.” 5 - Juhani Palasmaa
‘imagining is to be distinguished from perceiving not by reference to the objects it intends, but by reference to the act of intending. The mental image is not just a thing existing alongside other things, it is a unique orientation of consciousness towards things’.6 When dealing with images of spaces, we can understand that both the physical and the imagined places share the same contents they are just configured differently. “The image and the percept are not therefore different objects of consciousness; they are different ways of being conscious of objects.”7
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In the context of the imagining and interpreting of images, however, Jean Paul Sartre argues:
Across Dime nsions
This series of collages deal with purely digital based imagery that does not exist in the physical world. Their content has no purposeful significance or meaning. Although the elements cannot physically exist, users who are familiar with the digital world exercise the act of imagining and are able to draw associations to understand each image in a three dimensional sense.
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Whilst the image is traditionally thought of as existing on a flat, two dimensional plane, these collages demonstrate that concepts of depth and space can be subconsciously projected during our processing of images. It is our knowledge of the digital world in combination with our experience in our physical world that allows us to imagine implied proximities and mentally spatialise the image into a physical form.
F ig 1 . 3 ( app endix )
When perceiving, it is second nature for viewers to search for meaning or significance, even when the subject is seemingly incomprehensible or unrelated. We tend to subliminally inspect the entities that enter our perception in an attempt to grasp their essence, even if the content is shapeless or formless.
In 1990, the Museum of Modern Art hosted the Intel sponsored exhibition “Information Art: Diagramming Microchips”, in which computer chips were dramatically enlarged and presented as intricate surfaces.
It can be argued that no imagery can be meaningless as we have seen that the act of perceiving is often in relation to the corporeal world. The modes and availability of visual content have presented imagery as stimuli that is often disunited or stripped of its symbolic and contextual specificity, extending to the public an open system of unique interpretation, in which each viewer can reinscribe with their own meaning and comprehension.
As a subject, the microchip had never been exposed for viewing, and although it was not technically understood by the public, it was compared to the aesthetics of woven textiles and aerial views of cities. The catalogue discusses the mystery of the chips as objects that are sensorially inaccessible to us, but argues that they are “patterns for delectation; we can take pleasure in them even if we don’t understand the technology.”8
Chapter 04
Across Dime nsions
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Across Dime nsions
Rather than concluding our interaction with imagery at a point where it has prompted our imaginations with unseen forms and spaces, we can instead regard it as a tool to materialize a two dimensional image into a three dimensional form.
Chapter 04
Across Dime nsions
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By drawing the collages in elevation and section, I was forced to make a series of decisions and negotiations to demonstrate my interpretation of the pictorial space.
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Across Dime nsions
Chapter 04
Across Dime nsions
In furthering this project into a more pragmatic and physical context, the images became measurable and more conceivable as something existing in the third dimension. It became more apparent that each user would have their own personal responses when associating imagery with their own knowledge.
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This translation across dimensions demonstrates that a viewer’s experience and their personal understanding of both digital and physical reality results in an imaginative projection in which an alternate and conceptualised world is breathed into the image.
Across Dime nsions
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Mercator Projection
Transverse Mercator Projection
Across Dime nsions
Tissot’s Indicatrix: Distortion of Mollweide Projection
The science of map projection demonstrates a means of working back and forth across the second and third dimensions. With the Earth understood as a spherical formation, there have been several attempts by mathematicians to unravel its surface and achieve the most accurate representation of its geometries. Naturally a set of distortions occur, with each method differing slightly to the next in the depiction of shapes and distances, the extent of distortion measured through Tissot’s Indicatrix. Map projection offers a somewhat mathematical and measurable reading of working across dimensions and monitoring distortion. It allows us to perceive and understand the Earth’s surface in a manner that defies the limits of the human perception, and presents a calculated solution in processing images of space, and the space of images.
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The process of rendering flat stimuli into physical forms unmasked a series of complications that required the investigation of intricacies contained within the image. The practice of pushing content into another dimension can be regarded as a reversible operation, in which the position of each dimension in such a process can be interchangeable. If we think back to the genesis of the image, it can be understood as the flattened depiction of the real world. Not only are we able to materialise image into a physical arrangement, but it is the capturing of the physical into the pictorial that prompts this translation in the first place.
Across Dime nsions
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Original Panorama
The challenging of the human perception and calculative logic of crossing over dimensions is comparable to the technology that allows us to digitally capture panoramic views of our surroundings. Digital panoramas allow us to view our environment well beyond our periphery, display it on our devices for virtual navigation, and unpeel it into a strip of image, altering the understanding of the space through a back and forth, convoluted transfer between the flat and the physical dimension.
Chapter 04
Capturing and unpeeling a 360째 panorama of a narrow fire escape presented the space as an elevation, transforming the initial understanding of the space and allowing for the regeneration of its configuration. It exposed the opportunity to investigate the algorithm applied in the generation of panoramas, another demonstration of the logical and formulaic processing of space.
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F ig ure 1.4 ( a p p e ndi x ) In his Mountain Tour series, Kim Asendorf produces glitched versions of mountain scenery, abstracting space through an algorithmic process of pixel sorting - a mathematical means of manipulation that allows for unpredictable results.
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Approximated Unpeeling: 360 revolution as an elevation and its configured plan
Across Dime nsions
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Across Dime nsions
In contrast to the unpredictable and associative manner of envisioning space, the execution of panoramas presents a measurable medium of distortion and interpretation - and therein lies another opportunity to regenerate space. The trend of working reversibly and back and forth across dimensions brings to question the implications of applying formulas to renew interiors - what if this algorithm - initially used to unpeel a space whilst inevitably distorting it - was inversed and applied to a regular image of space? By applying the panoramic framework to a standard photograph of the same fire escape, the resulting image can be imagined as an unpeeled rotation of space. The reassemblage of space takes course when this imitation panorama is folded back up as a surround.
Chapter 04
Across Dime nsions
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Application of Panoramic Framework
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Across Dime nsions
The spatialisation of the refolded sweep allowed the containment of an open space as an interior, and changed its function from walkway to enclosure.
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The abstraction and investigation into a basic diagram gave way to the inception of new space and demonstrates just one of an endless amount of possible results when allowing design to be informed by image.
Chapter 04
Across Dime nsions
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T he Ima gine d Perc ept
Epilogue
The devices that capture images have now become agents of ambiguity that exercise the compression of space within a flat plane. The perceptual flattening of still life evidenced in the viewing of pictures fosters dubious readings of spaces, transmuting the activity of perception into a critical scanning of visual content for allusions of dimensionality that can be converted into a logical understanding of space. These devices are able to produce imagined critiques and rearrangements of space that have their own prospective uses - whether that be a renovation in form or in function. As such, the image can be understood as a mediator between the perceived and the imagined. The mind retrieves memory of image and knowledge stored in our subconscious, and creatively fuses a spectrum of experiences and understandings to reproduce or simulate
This produces The Imagined Percept. Seizing the combinatorial nature of our perception will allow the reworking of the original, and the generation of new propositions. An analysis into the capabilities as well as the failings of imaging technology brings into question the impact of the digital age on the role and value of the image. The authority of the image has evolved alongside our perception of it, and instabilities within images, intentional or otherwise, have already changed the pace and order in which we process visual content. Accidents and glitches can be understood as a resource to draw from rather than dismissed as mistakes or failures. The negotiations occurring in the translation back and forth across dimensions can be perceived as processes of design rather than compromises. The parameters of these approaches are ever extending, with the opportunity to respond across a multitude of spatial typologies. When combining the unregulated nature of human association with the indiscriminate emergence of distortion in image making, we are confronted with few limitations and unending possibilities in the production of space. By acknowledging image making as a tool for informing space making, we are able to access a depth of resources to respond to, reconfigure and revisualise our surroundings.
the real world.
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Today, images function as proxies for our physical surroundings and can consequently alienate its viewers from object and material. The editing of images in the contemporary world sees the dematerialisation and reconfiguration of visual content, empowering its users and giving them an ‘absolute mastery over its every particle’9. The power to manipulate causes a series of complications to arise on the issue of representation and credibility, but such complications give way to unpredictable but compelling readings of the represented physical world.
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Notes 1
Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination (London: Routledge, 1994), 383.
2
Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millenium (USA: Harvard University
Press, 1988), 57. 3
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 8.
4
Berger, Ways of Seeing, 9.
5
Juhani Palasmaa, The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in
Architecture (West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2011), 43. 6
As quoted in Richard Kearney, Poetics of Imagining: Modern to Post Modern
(New York: Fordham University Press, 1998), 49. 7
Kearney, Poetics of Imagining, 57.
8
Cara McCarty, ‘Information Art: Diagramming Microchips’, ed. by The Museum
of Modern Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990), 2. 9
L. P. Gross, J. S. Katz, and J. Ruby, Image Ethics in the Digital Age
(University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 191.
T he Ima gine d Perc ept
Bibliography Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 1972. Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science
Fiction. London: Duke University Press, 1993. Calvino, Italo. Six Memos for the Next Millenium. USA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. London: University of
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California Press, 1984. Frosh, Paul. The Image Factory. New York: Berg, 2003. Gross, L. P., J. S. Katz, and J. Ruby. Image Ethics in the Digital Age. University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Kearney, Richard. Poetics of Imagining: Modern to Post Modern. New York: Fordham University Press, 1998. Low, Joni. “Mystery beneath Our Walk.” Vancouver, 2014. McCarty, Cara. “Information Art: Diagramming Microchips.” edited by The Museum of Modern Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990. Palasmaa, Juhani. The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2011. Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the
Imagination. Oxford: Routledge, 2004. Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich. “Imagination and Creativity in Childhood.” Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 42, no. 1 (2004). Wikipedia. “Map Projection.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection (accessed June 9, 2013).
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Appendix
1.1 S c r e en Play S W G 3 G a llery, 2014
1.2 jpeg ny02 Thomas Ruff, 2004
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1.3 I B M - D i a gram of Dynamic R a n d o m - A c cess Memory Chip M oMA, 1990
1. 4 Mountai n T o u r Kim Asendor f , 2 0 1 0
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Vi vie nne L a 2014