Images in the Net: Media Ecosystems and Visual Culture

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Immagini nella rete. Ecosistemi mediali e cultura visuale [Images in the Net. Media Ecosystems and Visual Culture] is a book by Elio Ugenti which examines the impact of social media on contemporary visual culture. With reference to the notion of an image ecology, it show the radical transformations of subject and image as part of a new media ecosystem. In the following article, Elio Ugenti outlines the key ideas and themes of the book.

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To investigate the current role of the visual experience entails – additionally and in particular – comprehending what kind of dispersion dynamics are at work in the many images that constantly cross the media and institutional boundaries within which they have been historically produced. It means, therefore, cross disciplinary borders, keeping track of the movements, intersections, and exchanges happening between images. As Jacques Aumont wrote in his book L’image, «no single category of image could be studied in isolation without taking into account all the others».

At the same time, it is increasingly difficult to disregard the interactions among technological devices that can vary widely one to another. It is those very interactions that seem to determine not only an increase in contents so great that images feel ubiquitous in our everyday life, but also – and this is what I believe is the most interesting aspect to dwell on in this book – their own transformation in terms of quality, which has produced a broad range of new forms of interactions that end up redefining their own function through the use – or re-use – of images.

It becomes of pivotal importance not to view the new visual media merely as a complex set of technical and technological instruments, but rather to focus on the processes of mediation through which they act. As such, I need to expose the object of my study – that is, contemporary visual culture – to the relational and dynamic logics that regulate the way it works, in an attempt to study it in situ, in its dynamism, in a place where objects tend to fuse and blur together, that is, the Net. Understanding the logic behind this is my main concern.

In a very short time span, the apparent endlessness of content aggregators such as YouTube or Google Images, alongside the viral spread of visual and audiovisual content throughout the Web, has determined our (natural, almost unconscious) familiarity with the form of the archive, and specifically of the digital archive.

Although the definition of “archive” attached to these platforms is not unanimously shared and is often debated, I am in complete agreement with Catherine Russell, who acknowledged the existence of a predominant cultural form founded on the reassessment of the primary importance of the canonical forms of linear and consequential consumption, in favour of non-linear and fragmentary forms. In this context, according to Russell the digital archive constitutes a new expressive medium, which leads to such a new way of looking at the world that it becomes a new language.

Oxymoronically, it could thus be argued that the digital archive is the only possible medium in the post-media age, or at the very least that, because of certain characteristics it has (fragmentation, non-linearity, interactivity, content heterogeneity), it is more likely to surpass media specificities.

The methodological necessities that come with such a definition of the problem prompted an in-depth investigation of the issues that – starting from the second half of the Nineties – were raised in the field of the visual studies. The first chapter will take into consideration the premises that are at the root of the research of several scholars in this field, which seems – in many ways – still profoundly heterogeneous and hard to delineate clearly. These premises, after all, seem to only partly address the needs imposed by the contemporary media and visual scene: attention to popular culture and forms of visual, non-artistic representation; attention to the social practices that are connected to the spectatorship and – in a broader sense – to vision? reveal? (or “display practices”, as William J. Thomas Mitchell would define them); the relationship between text and image or, in other words, the interconnection between forms of visual communication and forms of textual communication.

Starting from a ,close theoretical, examination of the study models that allow us to assess the ways the socio-cultural context connects with the production, consumption and circulation of the images, I will try to reflect upon the criticism levelled against visual studies as well as on the answers that have been provided over the years and will even be able to point out the existence of the different (and not always aligned) currents of thought and research running through the studies on visual culture, which will enable me to analyse the premises underlying the several disciplines that converge in visual studies.

The core of the chapter will contemplate at length the subject of this inter-disciplinary research area, questioning the relationship established between “visuality” (in a broader sense) and the image. Thoughts regarding the meanings of the very concept of image will follow, stressing the need for it to be conceived as a concrete visual element that can be expounded and observed. While pondering these aspects, a comparison between Anglo-American and European (chiefly German and French) visual studies will be drawn briefly, and ultimately I will try to identify the tools which are most suitable for a study of the image in the post-media context.

In the second chapter, the attention will shift more specifically to the mechanisms regulating the circulation of images throughout the Internet, as a means to problematize the necessity for a dynamic and relational theoretical model that is able to account for the coexistence of numerous images (varying in typology, content or media source) and numerous individuals that similarly connect through them, all within the same media environment.

The debate surrounding the study of visual culture will emerge once again through mentions of the concept of “Pictorial Turn” as theorized by Mitchell, in order to probe its possible theoretical and methodological implications in an environment built on what Lev Manovich defined as “database logic”. The disruption of linearity deriving from this logic makes room for interactions with visual and audiovisual contents, which seem to be made possible by a new condition of existence of the contents themselves in a fragmentary form determining certain interaction modes between images that are very distant in origin.

Using Sunil Manghani’s observations about “image ecology” as a framework, a reflection on the relationship between visual and media environment will be attempted while taking   the subject’s activity,into consideration as well as the tactics (intended in a very similar way to those of Michel De Certeau) governing that activity, and what the subject’s actions entail with their shift in front of the images and within a consumptive context marked by hypermediation.

The third chapter,, will then focus on the changes that have occurred in the uses and functions of amateur photographs in the passage from the analogue to digital age and, more specifically, after the interconnection that arose between the devices producing the images and those allowing them to quickly spread on a large scale.

The image will here be considered less as a visual object and more as a complex socio-cultural phenomenon, which – once again – cannot be fully understood without reflecting on the medium.

The theoretical considerations carried out in the first chapter will, at times, be shown in a new light in the following chapters, in order to test the effectiveness of both the analyitical tools and the methodological approaches discussed in the first part of this book.

Elio Ugenti

Image in the Making

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Manghani, You are so good as to have a theory about me which I don’t at all fill out, 2013

‘…language is not a tracing of reality’ – Roland Barthes, Systeme de la Mode (1967)

‘As we are drawn to sit down by the stream just here, or to pause at just this painting along the wall, so too anomalous individuals, people and things, draw our lives out … And letting yourself be drawn requires that you not be focused on any point. It will be active, for you have to prepare yourself, but it is not intentional. Being drawn in by the music or the smell is a way of losing yourself as you dissolve into scent’s sensuality.’ – Gordon C.F. Bearn, Life Drawing (2013)

The Image that Failed to Shock?

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‘Some viewers may find the following image distressing to look at’ (ITN)

An x-ray image which appears to show a foetus with a bullet lodged in its head was released to news media via the aid agency Syria Relief in an attempt to raise awareness of the current plight of civilians caught up in Syria’s civil war. More specifically, the image has been circulated amid concerns that snipers in Syria are not only targeting civilians, but are targeting individual body parts as if playing a game.

British vascular surgeon, Dr David Nott, who regularly volunteers in war zones around the world, working with NGOs such as Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Red Cross, has recently returned from Syria. He has been speaking to various news  outlets to offer a picture of what is happening and raise his concerns. Despite extensive experience in assisting the injured in similarly difficult circumstances around the world, Dr Nott has expressed particular concern about the nature of the violence in Syria:

“I’m sure that snipers were having a game,” he says. “Some days, we would have many necks wounds. Some days, we would have only groin wounds. Some days, we would have only chest wounds. And to me it seemed that… various parts of the anatomy where being targeted.” He says he asked other doctors about it. “I was told that there are 72 snipers in this city at the moment… and it’s a game and they are getting packets of cigarettes and things for targetting as many people in the anatomical region as they can.” (Source: http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-10-18/how-can-you-help-syria-heres-one-doctors-story)

Despite the UK government’s pledge back in September 2013 to ‘lead the world’ in getting humanitarian aid to refugees in Syria, Dr Nott has argued that little, if anything, has been done to help those staying within the country’s borders. The release of the x-ray image was a very deliberate attempt then to raise consciousness. Arguably, however, it has failed to make any significant impact. Speaking frankly in interview with Eddie Mair on the BBC’s PM current affairs programme, Dr Nott explained about the use of the image:

‘I came back and I felt there was something that could possibly change this. I had a photograph of a baby … whose mother was shot in the uterus and we had this picture of the baby with a bullet in the head. So, when I came back I said to Syria Relief: ‘Surely this is going to do something, surely this will change the way this war is viewed. What do you think we should do, should we publish it, should we not publish it?’ Syria Relief said: ‘Yeah, I think we should publish it, because hopefully it will change something’. I said, ‘well okay, let’s go for it. Let’s just try and see if we can change something, and wake up the world to the horrors of what’s going on’. But I’m really disappointed to say that nothing has changed. Although that photograph was published, nothing has changed. And I’ve knocked on the doors of various people in government, I’ve gone to see various people and I’ve shouted at various meetings about how the United Nations should do something to put boots on the ground to protect people, to protect workers, get humanitarian aid in. I’m very disappointed that nothing has really happened’. (BBC PM, 31.12.13)

In looking at how the x-ray was actually placed into the flow of news production and consumption, it is easy enough to think back to John Berger’s direct critique of the dissemination of news, with his BBC programme Ways of Seeing from the 1970s. In one particular sequence we see Berger flicking through the pages of a magazine, bringing to the screen the juxtaposition of documentary photographs showing great suffering, together with advertising images of affluence and abundance which flank the pages of the magazine. He speaks to camera:

 The words and pictures on these pages all appear to be real and all belong to the same language. The texts, the photographs taken in Pakistan, the photographs taken for publicity, the editing of the paper, the layout, the printing, all are elements of the same culture: our culture. Yet, between each page there is such a fissure, such a disconnection, such incoherence that one can only say this culture is mad. (Berger, Ways of Seeing, Episode 4, BBC)

The above YouTube video of the ITN broadcast of the Syrian x-ray image presents similar kinds of fissure. As with all such video clips, it jostles with millions of other online materials seemingly creating a ‘mad’ culture, with the footage itself working its way through the network of viewers in quite unpredictable ways. One particular irony of the clip comes from the fact that YouTube creates a front-image prior to anyone viewing the clip. Unsurprisingly the image selected in this case is the x-ray image itself. Yet, apparently, this image is so potent that it comes with a warning. Following ITN’s ident, but before the film piece plays, we receive the following message: ‘Some viewers may find the following image distressing to look at‘. How are we to feel looking at the image now, having already seen the image before pressing play? The cat is out of the bag. The danger has passed.

The conundrums of the image as evidence of horror and war might usefully remind us of Susan Sontag’s seminal book On Photography (1979), which closes with the evocative idea of an ‘ecology of images’:

Images are more real than anyone could have supposed. And just because they are an unlimited resource, one that cannot be exhausted by consumerist waste, there is all the more reason to apply the conservationist remedy. If there can be a better way for the real world to include the one of images, it will require an ecology not only of real things but of images as well’ (Sontag, On Photography).

Sontag’s remark reflects upon the relationship between images and reality, which to this day is still frequently characterized in the terms of the Greek philosopher Plato, who advocated we ‘loosen our dependence on images by evoking the standard of an image-free way of apprehending the real’ (Sontag, 1979, p.153). The argument associated with Plato is that images are illusions; furthermore that the world revealed to us through our senses is only a poor copy of its true ‘Forms’, which can only be apprehended intellectually. We can consider Sontag was interested, though ambivalent, about the way photography can overturn the Platonic philosophy of images and reality. ‘Cameras’, she writes, ‘are the antidote and the disease, a means of appropriating reality and a means of making it obsolete’ (Sontag, 1979, p.179). Crucially, then, a so-called ‘ecology of images’ is meant to urge us to take images seriously as part of reality.

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Atom-like: Robert Hooke’s Micrographia Crystals

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An illustration of crystals from Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665)

A recent episode of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time examined the development of the microscope, an instrument that of course revolutionised how we ‘see’ the world at a granular level. The programme’s presenter, Melvyn Bragg, was joined by three notable guests, Jim Bennett (Visiting Keeper at the Science Museum in London), Sir Colin Humphreys (Professor of Materials Science and Director of Research at the University of Cambridge), and Michelle Peckham (Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Leeds), who discussed the early development of the optical microscope in the seventeenth century,  its centrality to scientific enquiry by the nineteenth century, and then  developments of the electron microscopy from the 1930s, which today is one of the most powerful tools of modern science.

The invention of the microscope is varied, but one prominent pioneering scientist was Robert Hooke in England, whose publication Micrographia: or, Some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses : with observations and inquiries thereupon (1665) was the first major publication of the Royal Society, and indeed the first scientific best-seller, gaining the instrument wide public interest. The book is also notable for first coining the biological term cell. However, of particular interest for the study of images, is the suggestion that Hooke drew what we might now call atoms.

A delightful moment in the radio programme, Sir Colin Humphreys produced a book for his fellow guests to see (but which of course the  programme’s listeners could only hear about). In referring to the image shown above, he noted how Hooke’s drawings are suggestive of atoms. While Hooke may not have described them this way, they are drawn. In the same way I discuss in Image Studies (Chapter 7), about how Darwin can be understood to have thought about evolution through the act of drawing, Hooke’s illustration might be said to resolve complex ideas without recourse to words. I’m grateful to say, in correspondence following the radio programme, Sir Colin Humphreys explained the drawings to me as follows:

This is an engraving of 4 crystals of different shapes at the top. Underneath this there are sketches by Hooke of different shaped crystals with spheres inside, showing how different arrangements of spheres can give rise to the crystal shapes. It seems to me that Hooke would not have made these drawings unless he thought the crystals contained such spheres inside them, and he surely must have been thinking that these spheres were atoms.

(You can listen to the full discussion about the history of microscopy on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time).

The Art Gallery in an Expanded Field

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Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, ‘From Me to You – Close but Distant Journeys’ (2013)

Contemporary art galleries typically curate works in one of two ways. Either we get to view artworks chronologically,  grouped within specific (if predictable) periods, or the works are presented thematically (under the direction of the curator). The latter has perhaps proved the more versatile for the ‘consumption’ of modern art, underpinning the design of blockbuster exhibitions and sponsored collections. Tate, for example, has a regular programme of thematic exhibitions (often involving the comparative hanging of two or more artists), along with themed rooms of the permanent collection. Notably, however, Tate Britain has recently taken a ‘bold’ decision to rehang the entire gallery chronologically (see Guardian’s ‘in pictures’).

In the main, the reorganisation of the gallery has been met with praise (see: BBC Tate Britain rehang ‘triumphant’); though some are more sceptical. Jonathan Jones, writing for the Guardian, thinks the rehang is a ‘terrible idea’, because, he argues, it relegates many pre-20th century art to the storerooms, which he suggests is a ‘scandalous lack of regard for national treasures – and British history’. Nonetheless, those in favour have noted the significance of putting work into its social context, rater than by schools or styles. It is an approach that bears some relation to  John Berger’s arguments in Ways of Seeing. More pertinent, however, as an emerging trend different to a chronological or thematic approach, is  what we might call a relational curatorial practice, concerned with an ‘expanded field’ of the art gallery, whereby visitors to the gallery are encouraged to share in a process with the curator to make connections across a variety of artworks, and indeed outwards, linking to the wider domains and demands of visual culture. Such a view can be understood, in part, as a response to a problem faced by galleries in an ever-expanding visual culture. A major AHRC-funded research project, Tate Encounters: Britishness and Visual Cultures (2007-2010; recently been published under the title Post-Critical Museology, by Andrew Dewdney et al. (2013)), shows, for example, how the Tate’s relaunch of its website in 2000 was part of a corporatist extension, and coincided with greater emphasis upon content creation through the inauguration of the Tate Media division. At this point in time, the brief given to the web designers was to ‘disseminate the brand to a global audience’, as Tate prepared the way for the opening of Tate Modern. The argument made by the Tate Encounters project is not that Tate ignored its audiences (quite the opposite), but a deeper point that there is a underlying disconnect between the ‘the art museum and what has been termed the expanded field of visual culture, which it is argued is present for audiences as a feature of everyday life, but not as yet developed in the practices of the art museum’.

Suggestion here of ‘relational’ curatorial practice is inevitably to make some connection to relational aesthetics, generally defined as ‘a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space’ (Bourriaud, N., Relational Aesthetics,  p.113). For Bourriaud the artist is more a ‘catalyst’ of something than the centre of attention. Similarly, then, the relational curator is someone who allows the visitor to bring a range of possibilities to the artworks, so going beyond the interpretative strategies inherent to (and inherited by) art practice and criticism. Tate Liverpool’s curator, Francesco Manacorda, is seemingly in tune with such ideas. In interview, following his appointment at Tate Liverpool, he remarks on his hope to let Tate Liverpool ‘grow and develop through its diverse audiences – be that local people, children and young people, or international visitors. I especially believe that a museum should always be in dialogue with its audience as without it the institution just does not even exist. I hope for Tate Liverpool to become a well loved site for collective experiences and dialogues, and we can only prepare the right situation and invite people to take part in this. Going on a successful journey with our audiences is what I hope for’ (itsliverpool.com).

An example of a ‘relational’ curatorial approach – one that deliberately evokes journeys with its audience – is the summer exhibition at Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art, under the title of ‘From Me to You – Close but Distant Journeys‘ (2013). Drawing on the museum’s own collection, which dates from the 1940s through to the present, the exhibition is described as an introduction to contemporary art, but specifically attempts to use artworks ‘to create encounters with ‘others’’, so presenting, what the curators’ describe as various ‘journeys’ through the exhibition. These we can understand as physical journeys through a selection of artworks, but also imagined journeys inspired by and associated with (and through) the works. As the curators put it:

To commune and coexist with different things and to accept the existence of multiple worlds—these can be said to form part of the important messages that are widely transmitted by art works. Looking towards ‘others’ in this way may ultimately lead us to question the meaning of ‘self’. The distance that exists between ‘me’ and ‘you’ simultaneously seems both close yet distant. Why not walk along trying to recall all the various faces you have met in the past?

The exhibition presents six journeys. In the first, ‘Stories from Unknown Countries’, visitors are surrounded by videos presenting narratives in various unfamiliar languages. This is followed by a journey through photographs of children in Tokyo by Takashi Homma. As the curators suggest: ‘We find ourselves trying to discover the characteristics of “Tokyo children” within their faces, however they remain unmoved, appearing to defy any attempt at categorisation. It can be said that Homma has used this aspect of the children to create a universal image of “others”’. The third room offers a journey traced through a work by the controversial art group  Chim↑Pom; in this case a piece from one of their early projects, ‘Thank You Celeb Project – I’m BOKAN’, which offsets a quest for celebrity with the creation of an artwork made from a landmine. The fourth journey, ‘Gulf Between Me and You’, uses video works of Dennis Oppenheim’s ‘Transfer Drawings‘, Izumi Kato’s ‘basic life forms’, and other artists’ work to unsettle the ‘closest yet furthest distance that exists between “others”’. The fifth journey further develops the theme showing works about animals (and imagined animals) as a means to ‘represent absolute “others” for human beings, but upon which we project our emotions’. Finally, the last room offers a collection of portraits, all hung in tight proximity to one another, forcing (uncomfortable) collisions between the paintings, but also providing a startling effect on entering the room as so many ‘faces look back at us’ (see the photograph at the top of this entry).

Physically, we might say the exhibition is really not so different from any other – although the final room, as noted, offers a fairly unusual, dense hanging of paintings. Yet, the whole setup feels very different. There is a deliberate invitation made to visitors to meet the artworks at some midway point – a sort of neutral spot in which the very definition of things can change, clash, and/or combine. The artworks are not simply there to be viewed, nor even to activate the audience, but are actually needing to answer the call of the viewer. To offer dialogue. Perhaps the next step is to somehow allow the wide ranging views that arise in this space to equally resonate as a collective experience…

Lichtenstein: Beyond the Dots…

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Landscape with Philosopher, 1996. Oil and Magna on canvas, 264.2 x 121.3 cm.

Roy Lichtenstein’s widow, Dorothy, recently landed the bombshell that her husband became frustrated at ‘forever being labelled a pop artist’ (Guardian, 18 February 2013). It was a term very much of a moment, capturing an important shift towards a culture of reproduction, of mass goods, bright graphics and new media. Yet, Lichtenstein and fellow pop artists went on to have long and productive careers. Their visual acuity, curiosity, inventiveness and technical acumen tell of a much deeper commitment to the image than the playful aesthetics of popular culture might initially suggest. Dorothy Lichtenstein’s remark coincided with the preview of a major retrospective of Lichtenstein’s work at Tate Modern. The show is the most comprehensive since the artist’s death in 1997,  and brings together 125 paintings and sculptures. There are some surprises in store, but of course many of the works will be familiar, even if the originals have not been seen by visitors before. Lichtenstein’s ‘brand’ of pop art is highly recognisable, influential in many spheres and widely disseminated and echoed. We might be forgiven for thinking paintings about reproduction lend themselves well to their own mechanical reproduction. Look closer, however, and we see a rather more complex picture…

Of course, on one level, as The Observer review puts it:

Everyone knows what a Lichtenstein looks like: the stylish black outline, the uninflected printer’s-ink palette, the Ben-Day dots and super-precise images, so condensed and diagrammatic, with their unwavering sense of elegant design. Explosions blossoming in mid-air, jilted girls crying a river, the fighter pilot forever locked on his target – all preserved in Lichtenstein’s cryogenic style. Which, bent on deducing the basic grammar of other people’s images, and reprising it in one of his own, has long since become as familiar as the commercial art from which it derived.

The opening room of the exhibition puts us straight in the picture. Lichtenstein’s ‘brushstroke’ paintings parody the mark-making of abstract expressionism (that was of formative influence), and bring to life his signature palette and cool style. In the next room, the engagement with popular culture is writ large, and includes a wonderful rendering of a Disney illustration, Look Mickey (1961). Given today’s ever more complex and precious copyright laws, I can’t help wonder if work of this kind can emerge now. Of course, we might say Lichtenstein, along with other pop artists, actually helped to intellectualise the discourse of intellectual property that has grown up around our image culture.

In moving through the chronology of Lichtenstein’s work, Dorothy Lichtenstein’s comment about the constraints of the pop label becomes increasingly understandable. The works reveal an on-going commitment to explorations of the image as a set of complex aesthetic, conceptual and technical problems. The most ‘revealing’ room in this respect is arguably Room 9, which shows a set of ‘mirrors’, again all rendered using Lichetenstein’s characteristic use of Benday dots. Walking into the room is an incredible experience, as if you have walked into the pages of a huge book, as if engulfed by the grandeur of an illustrated fairy-story. Lichtenstein painstakingly studied the pictorial conventions of representing mirrors and reflections in commercial catalogues. He also experimented with real mirrors, learning how different effects were produced with different lighting. Returning to the subject of the mirror again and again he painted many different versions – in each case, as a mock trompe l’oeil, the representation of the mirror fills the canvas, which is typically shaped to appear as an object we take to be a mirror frame. You know these are not real mirrors, you know they cannot offer reflections, yet as a room filled with the representation of many light incidents you cannot help feel emptied of your own image, as if all the mirrors of the world have been drained of the ability to look back. If only for an instance, entering this room of mirrors renders us one dimensional; an experience more profoundly self-revealing than standing before any real mirror.

Mirror #2 (1970)

Lichtenstein’s paintings can be characterised as ‘metapictures’. W.J.T Mitchell coins the term in his book Picture Theory (1994). He describes metapictures as ‘pictures that refer to themselves or to other pictures’, which is to say they are ‘pictures that are used to show what a picture is’. The idea behind the metapicture is to consider what it would mean to ‘think’ about pictures without having to resort to a second-order discourse of any kind. As with other pop artists, Lichtenstein’s handling of popular imagery is less about the content of the imagery than their formation and mediation. ‘Brushstrokes in painting’, Lichtenstein once said, ‘convey a sense of grand gesture … But in my hands, the brushstroke becomes the depiction of a grand gesture’. On the one hand, then, the metapicture can be self-referential about its own formation. It is about the making of a picture – epitomised in Lichtenstein’s case with his persistent use of the Ben-Day dots as explicit reference to the technical process of print media. Equally, however, the metapicture can  refer to images as a collection, or in terms of their genre. This sense of the metapicture is apparent with Lichtenstein’s rendering of comic-book imagery, Disney characters and also Chinese landscape painting.

Lichtenstein’s late ‘Chinese landscape’ works, which date from 1996 to the year of his death, 1997, will perhaps be new to most visitors’ eyes – although, with their dots, they are unmistakably Lichtenstein. The artist held a deep, and long-standing interest in traditional Chinese painting. In the Tate’s catalogue, Stephen Little notes:

Perhaps the aspect of Song dynasty landscape painting that most enthralled Lichtenstein was its spare technique: the ability to suggest a vision of a vast and harmonious universe in a highly economical manner. The origins of this vision lie in Daoism, which focuses on the pursuit of balance, simplicity, harmony, humility, and mindfulness. Lichtenstein’s paintings achieve these goals to a remarkable degree and demonstrate that he had grasped much of the underlying conceptual framework that informed the traditional Chinese approach to landscape. (p.89)

In Landscape with Philosopher (1996; cat 124, shown above) there is a shimmering ambiguity to the landscape, which gives a sense of mystery and/or a meditative quality. As Little puts it: ‘it is nearly impossible to tell whether the narrow white V-shape cleft at the painting’s lower center is to be read as in front of, or behind, the area of graduated dots on a blue ground to the immediate right of the cleft. Does the white cleft represent the sheer face of the cliff, or mist in a recessed valley or defile (i.e., is it a positive or negative space)? Traditional Chinese painters, especially of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, delighted in this type of visual ambiguity, spatially challenging the viewer and creating an unsettling tension within the landscape’ (p.89).

When one conjures to mind the works of Roy Lichtenstein, it is easy to think of their imagery taken from comic books and cartoons etc. And it is easy to think his work is simply an elevation or re-framing of popular culture. What is more difficult, but more rewarding to remember is that Lichtenstein was a painter through and through. Indeed, what you really experience when seeing so many of his works in the ‘flesh’ – as evidenced by the Tate’s retrospective – is  how rich the canvases are and just how poorly they reproduce on page or screen.

For more on the concept of the metapicture and debates of reproduction see Chapter 6, ‘Visual Culture’ of Image Studies: Theory & Practice (Routledge, 2013). See also Chapter 4, on ‘Drawing and Painting’.

Virtual Reality Microscope for Histopathology

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Dr Roy Ruddle (from the School of Computing, University of Leeds), recently gave a presentation at Bradford University about a research project developing a Virtual Reality (VR) microscope. As the video clip (above) shows, the VR microscope is a new technology that seeks to digitise the process of diagnosis in histopathology. Histopathology refers to the microscopic examination of tissue in order to study the manifestations of disease, which is used extensively in the diagnosis of cancer. In clinical medicine, a biopsy or surgical specimen of skin tissue (or histological sections) are prepared on glass slides. A doctor will  work with a desk-based microscope to view each slide to make a diagnosis. On any given day a case load will involve looking though anything from 20 to 100 slides, if not more. On average each slide will be viewed for up to just 3 minutes.

The development of the VR microscope seeks to allow diagnoses to be made quicker, but as accurately as, a conventional microscope; an essential step in making digital pathology suitable for routine use. The research team have sought to achieve this by combining ‘giga-pixel’ displays with VR technology and ‘intelligent navigation’ techniques. They have developed both a single-user workstation for clinical work and a multi-user ‘Powerwall’ for teaching (see video clip). The digital process first requires the glass slides to be scanned. However, in order to create digital images that are of comparable quality to that which a doctor can view down the lens of a conventional microscope, the resolution of the image is such that if you printed out a picture of a single slide it would be the size of a squash court. The technologies required for this project are not new as such. We already possess the means to scan slides and to view them on a computer. However, the key aspect of the project is to create a system for viewing the image that is sufficiently large to allow a doctor to examine the same area of a slide at a comparable resolution. This involves bringing together multiple screens to create a single, large viewing area.

Technological innovations aside, the research project centres around an analysis of user interface. The findings to date are not necessarily conclusive, but nonetheless appear to show that the VR microscope can match the use of a conventional microscope in terms of both efficiency and quality of the diagnostic process. The crucial issue however is less about the single use of the microscope, but rather the organisational implementation of the system. One selling point of the VR microscope is the speed and simplicity to send the digital slides anywhere around the country to gain an immediate second opinion. Rather than needing to place a physical slide in transit, it is possible to digitally transfer the file across the internet. However, while currently we can rely on another hospital to have a conventional microscope for viewing a slide, we cannot yet assume availability of the necessary viewing equipment to handle a digital slide. The issue becomes acute when a diagnosis is required in the middle of an operation. What was most interesting about the talk given by Dr Ruddle, was not so much the ins and outs of the project itself, but rather the audience in the room. During a Q&A session it was apparent most people in the room were medical practitioners (not computer scientists). While there was genuine interest in the technological achievements of the project there was equally scepticism – if not anxiety – about organisational implementation.

In effect the VR microscope project is seeking to achieve something akin to the ‘revolution’ of digital radiography, which is now generally regarded a significant achievement in the medical field. However it has taken decades to be realised as the standard, embedded system within the NHS. Geoffrey Rivett gives some of the history, as follows:

“In 1985 the Hammersmith Hospital expressed a wish to develop a filmless radiography department, and over the next ten years the first such system in the UK was created, partly from central funding but mainly from charitable donations. All forms of imaging equipment were interfaced to the computer system. Straight X-ray images were recorded on special screens and read digitally by laser. The data created were vast, as each chest X-ray required more storage space than the Bible. Images were fed to immense computing facilities, for distribution by fibre optic cable to workstations throughout the hospital. The high definition of the images and the ability to magnify areas of interest and change their density and contrast were found by clinicians to be a substantial advance. More complex images, such as those produced by scanning, could be displayed, rotated and examined in three-dimensional form.” (Geoffrey Rivett, National Health Service History)

The implementation of a new system such as the VR microscope brings to light various aspects of going digital. While there are obvious advantages in terms of integrated, networked storage and viewing systems, digital technologies can quickly reveal limitations or at least clumsiness when working at high resolutions and dealing with subtle forms of image analysis. It is also apparent, that while it is perfectly possible to digitise a process, such as in this case diagnosis in histopathology, it is never a matter of simply bringing the technology together, but rather involves a great deal of consultation and human testing in order to get over the real hurdle of implementing something at a organisational level. The VR microscope project provides one very good example of the complexities and possibilities when bringing together of the separate fields of computing science and medicine.
For more on scientific imaging see Chapter 7 of Image Studies: Theory & Practice (Routledge, 2013).

For more information on the VR microscope, see:

http://www.virtualpathology.leeds.ac.uk

Virtual Microscope project website.

Publications

Randell, R., Ruddle, R. A., Thomas, R., & Treanor, D. (in press). Virtual reality microscope versus conventional microscope on time to diagnosis: An experimental study.Histopathology.

Randell, R., Ruddle, R. A., Quirke, P., Thomas, R., & Treanor, D. (2012). Working at the microscope: analysis of the activities involved in diagnostic pathology.Histopathology, 60, 504-510.

Randell, R., Ruddle, R. A., Thomas, R., & Treanor, D. (2011). Diagnosis at the microscope: A workplace study of histopathology. Cognition Technology & Work, 1-17. DOI: 10.1007/s10111-011-0182-7

Treanor, D., Jordan Owers, N, Hodrien, J., Quirke, P., & Ruddle, R. A. (2009). Virtual reality Powerwall versus conventional microscope for viewing pathology slides: an experimental comparison. Histopathology, 5, 294-300.

Roland Barthes: An Exercise in Drawing

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A visit to the Bibliothèque nationale de France (in the same building, many years ago, Walter Benjamin handed over his ‘Arcades’ convolutes to George Bataille for safe keeping): Here I was afforded the opportunity to view the ‘drawings’ of Roland Barthes. Drawings in that they were made on the flat surface, and feel best in one’s hand, or viewed horizontally. Drawings in that they are mainly formed of lines. Yet painterly too, with the use of inks, acrylics, and pastels. The colours bear minor instances of blending, of collision. Through this ‘medium’ a picture might nearly form.

I’m inclined to call the drawings ‘exercises’. Despite Barthes having produced many hundreds of drawings over a decade, there is very little variation. Working mainly on sheets of paper (and always of a scale convenient to working on a small table top), the drawings offer irregular interconnections of marks, colour and line. If you look a little more, perhaps you discern the recurrence of a sweeping directionality, from left to right, working diagonally across the paper. Or perhaps not. All the mark making, however, is contained within an imaginary frame, usually set an inch or more from the edges of the physical paper.

Barthes drew in the afternoons, in-between writing, and mainly in the vacation periods that allowed for a regular routine. The simplicity of the drawings, and the lack of deviation suggests less an exploration of drawing, more an exercise in drawing. Like a child completing their homework when they return home from school, the drawings are the work of a writer who has slipped out from the study. And like the school child at home, whose handwriting and concentration are allowed to wander, Barthes appeared to complete these exercises (each diligently numbered and dated) with a handwriting that was entirely free, undone. The drawings are methodical, yet portray only play. And while we might think them depictions of ‘nothingness’, their materiality (and the inscription of time) make for an archive, a diary, a study in ‘idiorrhythmy’ (to use Barthes’ guiding term of the  lecture course Comment vivre ensemble). The drawings yield an individual at peace; a making of/in calmness, pleasure.

Despite leafing through many examples of the drawings, I must admit the  first one I saw was the one that held me the most. It was love at first sight. The small sheet, little more than 20cm x 15cm, is held in a cellophane slip making the inks glisten with the reflection of the ceiling lights of the library.  Number 403, 18 Juin ’72, is atypically black and white, a series of dabs, streaks and brief lines. (The drawing is reproduced, if poorly, in the catalogue of an exhibition held in Rome in 1981, Roland Barthes, carte segni, p.160, plate 228 – here it looks heavy and smudged). Again the drawing gives the sense of diagonal directionality, from left to right (though you can never quite swear to such a schema). It is really just a dance of writing without letters upon undistinguished paper, a little creased in the upper right, appearing to have taken a spillage, then blotted dry. The bottom edge of the paper has been cleanly cut, but for a little serrating  and tearing  on the right hand side. As with each of the drawings, it is dated on the right and numbered on the left, just beneath the ‘framed’ picture space. And, in this particular case, appearing from the underside , as if a blue vein showing through skin, we read in reverse the signature ‘R Barthes’. The ‘R ‘is voluminous, the curves flowing away from the stem like a German ß [Eszett], and which is again echoed in the ‘B’, followed through with an ‘r’, ‘t’ and ‘h’ as small, even peaks and troughs. Set upon the end, a microcosm of the entire drawing: the plurality of a neat, flowing, and overwritten ‘s’.

…I just had to let them go. Put them back in the large, flat grey box. I shall return…

See Also: video of Roland Barthes’ drawings, which features curators Guillaume Fau and  Marie-Odile Germain, from the library’s Department of Manuscripts, and Céline Flécheux, lecturer in aesthetics, Université Paris-Diderot.

Patrick Keiller: London

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23rd February 2013, 2 – 4 pm
Old Fire Station, 84 Mayton Street, N7 6QT
£4/£2 conc. (Book Tickets)

As part of the Reel Islington Film Festival 2013 I will be introducing one of my favourite films: Patrick Keiller’s London (1994). Here is an extract from my introduction:

London is the sort of film that we experience as being greater than the sum of its parts. Visually, the film is static, slow. If you’re like me, the first time you watch it you’ll get 15 minutes in and think: “Interesting. I wonder what is going to happen?”. A lot does ‘happen’, but not in any narrative sense. Visually this film is of a tradition of new objectivity. We are shown everything as it is, unfiltered, though frequently from a point of view we might not usually adopt.

The text of this film, the script, ambient sounds (added later) and the narrator’s delivery, all contrast with how the film works visually. The text weaves fact and fiction. It plays with literary references, philosophical ideas, statistical data, romantic and speculative pondering – all of which are the ‘findings’ of Keiller’s imaginary, unseen protagonist, Robinson, and all vicariously relayed to us by Robinson’s friend, assistant, lover  – who again we never get to see, but we hear his words (voiced by the actor Paul Scofield).

Through this aesthetic of text and image is rendered London of 1992: A fourth successive Tory election victory has returned a government that Robinson fears has little or no interest in social or cultural affairs. All dominated by the City, and global finance more broadly. Terrorism also has a palpable presence in the capital. In showing all of this, while simultaneously drawing upon vignettes and quotations of nineteenth century England, London paints an allegorical picture of a city (a nation?) in decline.

Keiller has been described a ‘poet of blank statistics’. We watch and hear all in lingering detail. The narrator’s controlled deadpan delivery, combined with static cinematography, gives the film a certain neutral quality – it does not take sides, yet it places everything in a precarious, on-edge position…

Glam! The Performance of Style

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I think perhaps the invite arrived inadvertantly, but I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to attend the press preview of Tate Liverpool’s new exhibition Glam! The Performance of Style. I had sat in on a research event back in the Autumn last year, where I listened to some prickly debates about whether or not it was going to be appropriate to curate both fine art and pop music. I left that event a little concerned, but I needn’t have worried. The exhibition makes for both a sophisticated and lively blend of media, domains and tensions; without pandering to the spectacle of nostalgia (it will be interesting to see if the V&A’s forthcoming David Bowie Is can achieved something similar).

On entering the gallery I adjusted to the shocking pink walls adorned with a range of 1970s ephemera and glittery costumes. Somewhere in the distance yowled Bowie, and all around was the light clatter of technicians busily setting right various displays and finalising wall texts. The exhibition’s curator, Darren Pih, admitted to being a little stressed, yet displayed nothing of the sort. We talked briefly of a glorious Jarman super-eight encountered in the first room, which immediately calibrates the subtle intentions of the exhibition as a whole.

Our conversation was cut short, with Pih fielding a series of interviews to camera. His recurring refrain as he explained the collection again and again was how Glam marks the emergence of a convergence culture. Perhaps we take that culture for granted today. Indeed, the exhibition reveals a dynamic, edgy interdisciplinarity that today is shorn of such intensity. As Pih notes:

…historians have increasingly identified blind spots in the traditional narrative that posits 1970s Britain as experiencing a post-1960s hangover, locked in socio-economic declinism, a society hamstrung by industrial disputes. If 1970s Britain was such a dead-end, how was it able to produce such vibrancy of pop music, film and fashion? Why have its styles and tastes been repeatedly revived, continuing to find purchase in the contemporary imagination? (Darren Pih, Glam: The Performance of Style, 2013, p.9)

A key consideration of the exhibition is the growing confidence of the British art school from the 1950s, which we can trace through to the developing pop scene, epitomised by the likes of Bowie and Roxy Music:

Art students’ openness to the relevance of all creative experience led to a promiscuous intermingling of ideas and ideals across the disciplines of fashion, design and applied arts, fine art and pop music. Richard Hamilton’s Swingeing London 67 (f) 1968-9 is emblematic of this coming together, through its appropriation of a mediated image of the gallerist Robert Fraser handcuffed to Mick Jagger following their appearance in court on drugs charges. The era’s liberal art-informed ambience also fuelled the imagination of David Bowie, who followed a curriculum infused with art and graphic design at Bromley Technical College. In 1969 Bowie also co-founded the Bechenham Arts Lab, a centre hosting artists’ studios, poetry readings, light shows and theatrical and dance performances. (Darren Pih, Glam: The Performance of Style, 2013, p.19)

It isn’t simply that fine art informed other areas of practice. Glam as ‘convergence culture’ was genuinely the experience of convergence, or perhaps more appropriately divergence; shifting the very locus of art well beyond its known parameters, so making this exhibition (in a gallery) ever more challenging and significant.

Coolly and quietly walking through the rooms during the preview was the critic Paul Morley. His appreciation of Glam is known to anyone who has read his music journalism (or more recently his book Words and Music). He was there as part of the BBC’s Review team, and sure enough the following evening appeared on TV along with the show’s presenter, Martha Kearney. The two of them initially joked about the opening room looking exactly like their teenage bedrooms. It is clear the exhibition tugs on the heart strings of anyone who lived through the period. Morley has always been an incisive critic of nostalgic obsessions, particularly within the domain of pop culture and music. Yet, in speaking of this examination of Glam, he was keen to acknowledge its intellectual approach.

My TV set was still black and white when Glam came to dominate Top of the Pops, but that did nothing to prevent the colours shining through. I vividly recall having to change channels with a dial not a switch, yet I must admit Glam was – if not such a distance experience – always only a vicarious thrill. From where I stood, Glam was all about transgression (even if I didn’t know such a word then). Like punk, which was to follow, Glam was the manifestation of a contest not in overtly political terms, but in cultural, aesthetic forms. Yet, unlike punk, the transgressions of Glam were not rebarbative, but about new and alternative forms of beauty, pleasure and ambiguity. What was deeply satisfying upon entering the exhibition, I found myself still confronted with such transgressions. That’s what makes its curation so important.

See also:

Glam! The Performance of Style: Room Guide

Glam! at Tate Liverpool: through a mirrorball darkly

Interview: Darren Pih on Glam!

Glam! The Performance of Style Glitters up Tate Liverpool [Bay TV Liverpool]

Image & Critique: Image-Thought-Text

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Image & Critique: Image-Thought-Text
An International Conference for Theorists & Practitioners

Saturday 13th – Sunday 14th September 2003
Lakeside Arts Centre
University of Nottingham

Images surely need no introduction, yet that is all too often what we are inclined to give. So, what else might we afford images to say or show to us? The specific intellectual and cultural context for this conference has been referred to as the ‘visual’ or ‘pictorial’ turn, which raises the problematic of a purported shift away from a typographic or textual culture to a visual one. The recent trends in fields of image studies, visual culture, and visual rhetoric are important markers of just such a shift in intellectual focus. This interest has inspired a wealth of new and exciting research, as well as effecting a redefinition of theoretical concerns and (inter)disciplinary boundaries, which in turn has brought to light new positions, problems and dilemmas. What role, then, might images themselves play in relation to critical inquiry, and how are we to re-think the inheritance of ‘textual’ or linguistic modes of cultural and political analysis? In order to examine some of the key issues, and also to experiment with new ideas and modes of thinking and research, the conference brings together both distinguished theorists from across a number of disciplines, and innovative artists and practitioners whose work encompasses both images and text, so that we may develop our understanding and appreciation of the relationship between images and texts, as well as thinking further about the role they play in cultural and political critique.

The conference sessions are organised around four broad, and undoubtedly interlacing themes: (1) Visual literacy – an enquiry into what this mode is and who can lay claim to it, as well as, how such a mode of engagement can be understood to contribute to critical theoretical debates; (2) Placing the Visual – an consideration of relation of images to ‘things’, and the interface of images, texts and contexts; (3) Visual Rhetoric – questioning the role images and the ‘visual’ play in the understanding and use of critical and cultural theories, including how we might understand images in, and as the writing of philosophy and history; (4) Visual theory – to consider the status and efficacy of visual theories following the recent and rapid growth in teaching visual culture and critical art history. The conference will close with a Summary & Roundtable Debate in which all panellists will join for a final question and answer session to debate the themes and issues raised throughout the conference.

In addition, as part of a consideration of visual literacy, and using images as a ‘practice of thought,’ the conference includes a Practical Workshop, Figuring out Thinking, in which participants will experiment with image manipulation techniques to form critical images constellations, or Denkbilder (cf. Benjamin).

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