The following paper addresses the experience of reality in video-calls. To this extent, it first draws from Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological reflections that connect the question of reality with that of interaction and that of intersubjective communication. These reflections set the larger theoretical framework for sketching out ten theses with regard to the specific case of video-calls. To this extent it addresses issues like the public-private divide, the specific image-form of contemporary video-calls, the mutual intersubjective relations they involve, as well as (...) their specific spatiality and temporality. (shrink)

In his book The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich claims the index is an ontological condition of cinema. Manovich asserts digital cinema can never be indexical and therefore has fundamentally altered the very nature of cinema, reducing it to a form of animation. This paper offers a refutation of Manovich’s redefinition of cinema, showing that digital cinema can be indexical, but indexicality is not an ontological condition of cinema.

The idea that photographs can be explained as traces made by the things they depict has been a recurring paradigm in theories about the nature of the photographic medium. Walter Benjamin, Charles Sanders Peirce, Susan Sontag, Andre Bazin and Roland Barthes are a few of the many theorists who have used the paradigm of the trace to explain the nature of photographs. The paradigm can also be argued to have been a significant influence in the work of prominent artists such (...) as Gerhard Richter, Adam Fuss and Cornelia Parker whose work has explored the photographic medium. Through an exegesis and accompanying photobook this thesis addresses the question as to why the trace has proven to be such an enduring paradigm for explaining the nature of photographs, and how the paradigm can be perceived in art practice in recent decades. The subject of the photograph as a trace is investigated through conducting a review of the history of theoretical uses of the paradigm of the trace to explain the nature of photography. The work of visual artists whose practice can be seen as in agreement with or in opposition to these theoretical approaches was also reviewed. In conjunction with this research a series of photographic works was produced using alternative photographic techniques including pinhole photography, photographs and techniques combining digital film projection and phosphorescent plates. Seeing photographs as traces links these forms of image making to one of humanity’s earliest “discoveries”, the ability to interpret traces found in nature. Through such a connection photographs can be seen as a continuation of humanity’s ability to read traces and thereby understand and deal with the passage of time, to buttress processes of memory and belief. This thesis thereby explores a key means through which the photographic object is explained and understood, at a time when the use of photographs as a means of documenting and understanding the world is expanding at an exponential rate. (shrink)

Referring to Bauman’s concept of “liquid modernity”, this paper aims to discuss the new film theory that has emerged from the digitalization of cinema. The concepts of perceptual reality and elastic reality constitute the two most important parts of the theory. Bauman argues that contemporary modern societies are “liquid” because of their dynamic character. Although contemporary societies are in constant movement, he indicates that they lack certainty and borders, and flexibility and uncertainty become prominent instead. The digital cinema that Belton (...) has defined as “a false revolution” is nothing but 1’s and 0’s. The key concept here is CGI. Manovich points out that we have arrived at a digitally transformable reality that depends on computer programs and which is beyond photographic reality due to the digitalization of cinema: This is elastic reality. The second concept in the theoretical discussion of digital cinema through visual effects is brought by Prince : "Perceptual realism". This paper opens a theoretical debate through CGI examples and is based on the argument that Bauman's concept of “liquid” constitutes a social and cultural background for digital theory. (shrink)