I just discovered this as a draft – but never posted. The following passage is great.
“We might also beg questions of photography’s current relationship to non-representational theory here, a space in which we attempt to do away with the linguistic connotations of “reading photographs”. For as Piere Taminiaux notes in his The Paradox of Photography (2009) ‘Photography thus signifies both an end and a beginning to representation.’ Whichever theory of representation one might support, let’s remember John Harvey’s lines in his Photography and Spirit (2007), as both a criticism and a warning against such inconsistencies, which seem to forget that in the context of photography (and pertinently in the case of the algorithm), magic might not be made by the makers of photographs at all: ‘Pseudo-photographic relics and spirit photographs share not only the mystery and miracle of their manufacture but also the status of being representations of the spirit by the spirit’ [my italics].” (2015)
Update after finding post:
It seems that scientific theory is heading towards rendering representation key to our existence (Hoffman, 2019), I am not sure what to make of “Photography thus signifies both an end and a beginning to representation.’ It’s an odd sentence which I can’t make head nor tale of.
I do know Representation is under suspicion. On the one hand, science tells us we might only exist in a world of representation and reality is an illusion – on the other, science suggests phenomena rather than representation matters most. (Barad, 2003) Barad’s critique/thesis “refuses the representationalist fixation on “words” and “things” and the problematic of their relationality, advocating instead a causal relationship between specific exclusionary practices embodied as specific material configurations of the world (i.e., discursive practices/(con)figurations rather than “words”) and specific material phenomena (i.e., relations rather than “things”).”
Daniel Rubenstein argues against Michael Freid’s negation of theatre as art, quoting Lyotard. ” In Libidinal Economy Lyotard proposed that the role of the artist is to lay bare the mechanisms of theatrical [perhaps here we don’t even need the word theatrical] representation, to show that if there is anything real about representation, it is because there also exists a fully real virtual domain constructed not from objects and things, but from intensities, desires and surfaces” (2017)
As I figure out what my A3 research question is – the word representation seems to be one of the key subjects along with performativity and the collapse of fixed and certain boundaries (which representation seems so reliant on). I keep thinking about the conundrum of maths – supposedly the least emotive language that exists. Is maths a language or is it a real thing. Apparently, the clever people can’t make up their minds. But what if it’s both?
Hoffman’s book on reality paints a picture (see the video on Aeon in references) that seems to suggest that our reality is *one giant representation – a user interface, the purpose of which is to ‘hide reality’ which allows us to ‘control [our] reality’. Our objects are icons that we recognise to work out our best fitness choices – otherwise, we would be distracted by reality. Not sure yet where the maths conundrum fits here – but I do think if Hoffman’s theory has any credence then the illusion we create is the only reality we know and have, therefore it is real to us least, even though it is also representation. (“As an actor, I was not trying to fake it – I was trying to live it” – the most extreme example, the Method.)
*”When I see an apple it is a data structure – I am rendering it when I look at it. This rendering happens in everyday life (a description of fitness payoffs.)
- data structure
- rendering
- space-time itself is a data structure
- conscious agents – passing experiences back and forth
- reality is like a vast social network
- Emergence
- Entanglement
Barad, K. (2003) ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter‘ In: Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (3) pp.801–831. At: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/345321 (Accessed 30/10/2019).
Blight, D. C. (2015) Photography Is Not Magic: Photographic Images and their Digital Spirit. (AXA Online] At: https://americansuburbx.com/2015/10/photography-is-not-magic-photographic-images-and-their-digital-spirit.html (Accessed 06/11/2019).
Aeon (2019) It’s impossible to see the world as it is, argues a cognitive neuroscientist | Aeon Videos At: https://aeon.co/videos/its-impossible-to-see-the-world-as-it-is-argues-a-cognitive-neuroscientist (Accessed 06/11/2019).
Rubinstein, D. (2017) ‘Failure to Engage: Art Criticism in the Age of Simulacrum‘ In: Journal of Visual Culture 16 (1) pp.43–55. At: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470412917690970 (Accessed 06/11/2019).
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