CS A5: Draft extract

A first attempt – it’s a bit of a dense, to say the least. But a first stab and will see what Matt says about it – pretty sure I might want to rewrite it to be more friendly but I’ve never written an extract before and am not entirely sure about acceptable tones:

A 5000-word essay exploring the structural significance of digital imagery within a global reality that is largely networked, interconnected and interactive, when formerly, it was more likely to be viewed as a series of isolated albeit hierarchical entities.

Drawing on Karen Barad’s synthesis of quantum science and critical analysis, coined ‘agential realism’, the essay results in more questions than answers. It is also hindered by limitations of, to quote Barad, a “Cartesian habit of mind” (2007: 49). Such habits inform the language we use to describe contemporary reality and are embedded in acceptable academic conventions. However, structural transformation means inevitable changes to our language, perception and physical reality, whether we agree or not, are aware or oblivious. While describing some key tenets of an agential realist’s view, focusing in particular on entanglement, a range of visual art is examined in an effort to make sense of apparently contradictory statements by well-regarded and oft-quoted theorists about the photographic image today. Michael Fried’s assertion that photography matters as art as never before (2008) is queried alongside Daniel Palmer’s suggestion that photography is all but over (2014:144). Can these seemingly opposite views both be true at the same time in an entangled world? Despite the difficulty of tackling a subject too far-reaching to be adequately broached within a 5000-word limit, the effects of the changes described above have led to ethical difficulties, which present image-makers of all persuasions with conundrums which increasingly cannot and should not be ignored.