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The Instrumentalization of the Senses
(también disponible en Español)
by Andres Tapia-Urzua
From the pictorial to the photographic image; from the photographic to the electronic image; from the electronic to the digital image; and to the numerical relation of digitality...
If we consider that since the middle of the nineteenth century, subjective intervention over a visuality based on a rational/Cartesian paradigm was one of the main characteristics of Modern art, it is surprising to realize how the physical principles of the computerized image and those of the fifteenth century Renaissance perspectival representation are equivalent.
Just as the physical laws of perspective apply to artists like Da Vinci, Alberti, and Durer, who referred to the image as if they were explaining geometrical and mathematical concepts, the composition of the computational image is constituted from numerical relationships. The difference is that this "new" numeric conception of the image has a micro and internal character, since it's located in each particle/pixel that composes the digital image.
Since mankind has been discovering new techniques of control over nature, these techniques have transformed the human relationship to the world. Equally, diverse forms of conceiving the image have been the reflection of technical tendencies, which have influenced the imagination of the era. In the techniques utilized for the production and the development of the contemporary image, for example, this relationship between the techniques of representation and of reality is understood in such a way that our formal understanding (representation) of reality has surpassed its referent. Form is so predominant over the image that it snatches away the ethical and emotional meaning of the content. The predominance (saturation) of the image makes people process the World as if it were a picture—a voyeuristic montage instead of an instance of moral action. The image of digital engineering is unbounded from a direct relationship with nature. Since it is the image and nothing more than the image, as a rechargeable cliché, that fascinates with the surety of its effect; the power of the image and its pragmatic possibilities; its efficiency; the crystalline neatness of its transparent, controlled visual artifice. Recyclable images are recontextualized as products (goods) in a store of preexistent visions.
The main "creative" variable of the computational/digital dispositive of production is its accuracy, its control over the image, the total subjugation of each particle/pixel to the "subjectivity" of the user. Curiously, this "subjective" operation depends on a methodological menu pre-established in a digital universe which has been traced beforehand by the designers of corporate hardware and software.
As with video, the majority of the technological advancements for the production of the computerized image have been developed by "select" groups of scientists and researchers and, initially, utilized by another "select" group of technicians and professionals at the service of systems of surveillance and defense. Examples of this use can be found in the surveillance cameras that today exist in financial, commercial and educational institutions, in the recognition cameras mounted on the U.S. missiles used during the Gulf War, in decoding cameras and on interactive computer systems used for the development of robotic tanks and helicopters, etc. These technologies, when surpassed, become available for mass consumption; their commercial distribution provoking deep sociological alterations in a variety of ethical, aesthetic and moral relations, within societies that coexist and participate in the same world market system.
The truth is that we have reconditioned our imagination to the algorithmic equation of new technologies of the image. We have become accustomed to play with the representations of time and space accumulated in our memory, as if history were a big atemporal puzzle (Postmodernism). In general, we participate in a transparent visuality; not dangerous, it is used only to marvel. We understand the sense of things from the instrumental visual archives of the already represented. In large measure, contemporary visual productions are based on banks of images that support narrative strategies of what historically has been made visible already. Individual subjectivity loses meaning in front of an "objectivity" of globalizing character that promotes what is predictable and instrumental in the image; the pragmatic that often blinds us through the montage of technologies whose systems and programs of premeditated obsolescence are in constant need of checking and renewal (control and dependency).
Just as the visions that throughout history have served as liberating forces for reason and the senses have been many, artists who today pretend to respond creatively to the digital challenge of our age know that the originality of new forms of image production is found in the imagination of each individual user of the computerization, and not in the computerized platform itself—that is, not in systems of massive production with pre-established parameters and limits.
What has not been made visible yet exists and will continue to exist through a subjective activity where the imagination is a product of desire, love, and the instinct for survival. The imagination constitutes itself as curious, non-conformist, diverse, representative, wise, and brave—as alternative routes to what has been already traced.
Today, as ever, the unknown of the artistic and of the human, in the face of systems of massive production and of instrumentalization of the senses, deserves an original answer.
Andres Tapia-Urzua is a Media Artist at the Media Design Center, Carnegie Mellon University, and is also the director of Plan Z Media. He is both a Mid-Atlantic Media Arts and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellow. Twice nominated for a Rockefeller fellowship, his work has been extensively exhibited in venues such as the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California; the Global Multimedia Interface, London, UK; and the Biennial of Video and Electronic Arts, Santiago, Chile. Tapia-Urzua's work explores the liminality of a cross-cultural, cross-technological identity.
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