{"id":1323,"date":"2012-05-23T05:48:40","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T12:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/blog\/2012\/05\/magery-in-the-21st-century\/"},"modified":"2012-05-23T05:48:40","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T12:48:40","slug":"magery-in-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/blog\/2012\/05\/magery-in-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"MAGERY IN THE 21st CENTURY"},"content":{"rendered":"

MAGERY IN THE 21st CENTURY<\/span><\/p>\n

by Oliver Grau, Editor; with Thomas Veigl<\/span>
\nThe MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011<\/span>
\n424 pp. illus. 132 b\/w. Trade, $40<\/span>
\nISBN-10: 0262015722.<\/span><\/p>\n

With contributions by<\/span>
\nSean CUBITT, Martin SCHULZ, Eduardo KAC, Thomas VEIGL, Stefan<\/span>
\nHEIDENREICH, Olaf BREIDBACH, Dolores & David STEINMAN, James ELKINS,<\/span>
\nWendy CHUNG, Christa SOMMERER & Laurent MIGNONNEAU, Marie Luise ANGERER,<\/span>
\nPeter WEIBEL, Adrian CHEOK, Tim Otto ROTH, Harald KR\u00c4MER, Lev MANOVICH,<\/span>
\nMartin WARNKE, Oliver GRAU and Martin KEMP<\/span><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Trebor Scholz, Eugene Lang College The New School for<\/span>
\nLiberal Arts (NY)<\/span> scholzt@newschool.edu<\/a><\/span>
\n(Full hyperlinked version “New Literacies for a New Aesthetic?”<\/span>
\nby Trebor Scholz:<\/span> http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/dx5dwsb<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

As a ten year-old, passing by the Forbidden City of the East German<\/span>
\nHead of State and his functionaries sparked my imagination. The walled<\/span>
\ncomplex, tucked away in a forested area near Berlin, was guarded by an<\/span>
\narmed division of the Stasi. Back then, you couldn’t Google for images<\/span>
\nof this residential compound; Pinterest, Google Earth, and civilian<\/span>
\ndrones were not around. And even if they were available, there was no<\/span>
\ngrassroots way of mass-reproducing images or texts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Images invade our consciousness. They can bear witness when words are<\/span>
\nused up. They can mobilize, gratify and inform. They can be put to work<\/span>
\nas evidence, argument, accusation, and proof. Images can help us to make<\/span>
\nsense of our surroundings. We surrender to the onslaught of images;<\/span>
\nsometimes the anti-punctum: senseless, lackadaisically composed, and<\/span>
\nextraneous. But images also fail us: the desensitizing overabundance of<\/span>
\nvisual material does not stop all the atrocities depicted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Visuality in the early decades of the 21st century is not merely about<\/span>
\nimage manipulation software though, it is about entirely new attitudes<\/span>
\ntoward visuality. In the early years of the 21st century, the collection<\/span>
\nof essays Imagery in the 21st Century, edited by Oliver Grau with Thomas<\/span>
\nVeigl sets out to understand what will constitute an image, and what are<\/span>
\nnovel ways to generate, project, and distribute pictures.<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagery in the 21st Century resulted from a conference that Oliver Grau<\/span>
\nconvened. It traverses the disciplinary divides between art history,<\/span>
\nanthropology, and cell biology, focusing on: the ecological and ethical<\/span>
\ndimensions of screen technologies (Sean Cubitt), a course on image<\/span>
\npractices in the university (James Elkins), machinima aesthetics (Thomas<\/span>
\nVeigl), medical illustration (Dolores and David Steinman), the obsession<\/span>
\nwith source code (Wendy Hui Kyong Chun), novel cultural interfaces<\/span>
\n(Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau), the museum as Noah’s Arc<\/span>
\n(Peter Weibel), and the Warburg Image Atlas for a digital age (Martin<\/span>
\nWarnke).<\/span><\/p>\n

At first, I asked myself, what holds the twenty chapters in this book<\/span>
\ntogether. What do all the puzzle pieces add up to? An analysis of<\/span>
\ncontemporary imagery felt like an uncomfortably all-embracing ambition.<\/span>
\nJohn Berger, for example, focused on the way oil paintings primarily<\/span>
\nreflected on the status of those who commissioned the artwork. What are<\/span>
\nwe talking about when we are thinking about contemporary visuality? The<\/span>
\nadvent of infographics, games, CCTV, animated gifs, art generated by<\/span>
\nalgorithms, histograms, 4D visualizations, or Instagram? Constructively,<\/span>
\nthe authors reflect on imagery not merely through the lens of a specific<\/span>
\ndevice, genre, social practice, or social function, and it becomes clear<\/span>
\nthat image literacy can no longer be the exclusive domain of art<\/span>
\nhistorians. But are we really, as the book suggests, amidst an image<\/span>
\nrevolution? “The curse of the \u2018perpetually new\u2019 is perpetual,” Bruce<\/span>
\nSterling writes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, visual culture invades societies that are largely unprepared. We<\/span>
\nsurrender. Appropriately, one important axis of discussion in Imagery in<\/span>
\nthe 21st Century concerns the question of much-needed image literacies.<\/span>
\nThe editors aspire to extract a crosscutting literacy that can catch the<\/span>
\nelusive phenomena of contemporary visuality. Grau calls for an image<\/span>
\ncompetency for our culture that is still largely dominated by writing.<\/span>
\nDo we speak the language of the image? Illiteracy, Grau suitably<\/span>
\nsuggests, has largely been overcome in most countries but the inability<\/span>
\nto interpret images adequately, has not been sufficiently considered.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the proliferation of digitization, we are inundated with heaps of<\/span>
\ninformation. In this Age of Big Data, the ever growing pile of data<\/span>
\nbecomes unknowable as David Weinberger and others have pointed out.<\/span>
\nThere are ever more data but fewer theories to make sense of them. The<\/span>
\nworld has become harder to know. Visualization, aggregation, curation<\/span>
\nand the filtering of data become core competencies not only for<\/span>
\ndesigners but also for journalists, scholars, artists, and scientists.<\/span>
\nThere is no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter<\/span>
\nfailure, as Clay Shirky declared. This is also true when it comes to<\/span>
\n\u201cabuses of the visual,\u201d as James Elkins put it referring to<\/span>
\ncompulsively created, senseless images. Oliver Grau and Thomas Veigl<\/span>
\ndemand new forms of visualization to face this explosion of knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

For me, the visual should not merely connect us to the sciences, as<\/span>
\nElkins suggests, but also to the political power of images. Think of the<\/span>
\nwork of the British cultural critic Judith Williamson (e.g., Decoding<\/span>
\nAdvertising), the artworks by Alfredo Jaar, Emily Jacir, Trevor Paglen<\/span>
\nor Alan Sekula. Or, take the recently published book Right To Look, in<\/span>
\nwhich Nicholas Mirzoeff argues that “visuality has been central to the<\/span>
\nlegitimization of Western hegemony.” Such discussion of global image<\/span>
\npower as political force is indispensable. In his chapter in Imagery in<\/span>
\nthe 21st Century, \u201cVisual Practices the University: A Report,\u201d James<\/span>
\nElkins suggests that today, learning mainly happens through images.<\/span>
\nAlready in 1924, the German art historian and cultural theorist Aby<\/span>
\nWarburg used arrangements of images from distant times and places. In<\/span>
\nhis Mnemosyne-Atlas he combines images to create meaning. In fact,<\/span>
\nWarburg’s writing is hard to understand without comprehending his<\/span>
\nAtlas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do images really push themselves in front of words, as Elkins claims?<\/span>
\nHave words hopelessly deteriorated? The editors argue along those lines:<\/span>
\n\u201cIt would appear that images have won the contest with words.” (6)<\/span>
\nIndeed, long-form platforms like WordPress grow slower than short-form<\/span>
\nwriting and image sharing through micro-blogging services. The image<\/span>
\nsharing board Pinterest grows at an explosive rate. An Instagram photos<\/span>
\nmake sharing even faster than tweets. But thinking of the media<\/span>
\nrepresentation of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 or the Kosovo War in<\/span>
\n1999- images failed to make these atrocities vivid enough; they did not<\/span>
\ndo very much. Susan Sontag concludes that narrative and contextual<\/span>
\nframing establish more meaning than images. But luckily learning in<\/span>
\ncolleges and universities is still largely based on texts. Part of my<\/span>
\nresponsibility as a professor is to bring students into the intimate,<\/span>
\ndelicious sphere of reading. The visuality of Khan Academy\u2019s<\/span>
\nhand-written lectures on videos is an interesting hybrid. But still, we<\/span>
\nlargely discover the universe through words. The long sentence is worth<\/span>
\ndefending against the click-click moments of the networked cacophony.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sean Cubitt’s in his chapter \u201cCurrent Screens\u201d instructs us to consider<\/span>
\nspecifically the ethical-ecological layer of discussions about screen<\/span>
\ntechnologies. Her emphasizes that our culture is highly material,<\/span>
\nespecially when you consider the ecological footprint of the raw<\/span>
\nmaterials. LCD screens, for example, are poorly biodegradable and<\/span>
\npotentially significant water contaminants. Sean Cubitt demands that<\/span>
\nnext steps cannot be achieved without respect for the poor and for the<\/span>
\necosphere. Cubitt’s essay also reminded me of the fact that an avatar in<\/span>
\nthe virtual world Second Life consumes as much electricity as a real<\/span>
\nlife person in Brazil. The “immaterial” can’t escape the burden, the<\/span>
\nsolace, and social costs of the material world.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this discussion of visual culture, media art has a role to play. How<\/span>
\ncan we rescue digital artworks from oblivion? Oliver Grau’s warns of the<\/span>
\ntotal loss of our cultural memory of digital art of the past ten years.<\/span>
\nMost definitely, hardware and operating systems change and without<\/span>
\nexplicit, thoughtful, and well-funded efforts, most works will indeed be<\/span>
\nlost. There is no one-fits-all preservation solution. Oliver Grau, who<\/span>
\nis also the author of Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, provides<\/span>
\nimpressive examples of indispensable media artworks like Jeffrey Shaw’s<\/span>
\nT-Visionarium.<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter Weibel, in his chapter, states that a degree of democratization<\/span>
\nand personalization of technology has helped to empower users. We are<\/span>
\nall consumers and producers of visual culture. Art, too, is included in<\/span>
\nthis democratization. Painters no longer have a monopoly on creating<\/span>
\nimages ever since photography made it possible for everyone to take<\/span>
\npictures. Artists have lost their monopoly on creativity. Museums,<\/span>
\nWeibel suggests, are floating crates. They are meant to store works in<\/span>
\ntheir bellies, just like Noah\u2019s Ark. They are meant to assure that<\/span>
\nartworks do not perish. If we inquire how many works have been preserved<\/span>
\nduring the last century, the estimates vary between 1% and 7% of the<\/span>
\nwhole production of art. Museums have done a poor job, Weibel states.<\/span>
\nThey have passed judgments with the guillotine of history\u2013separated out<\/span>
\nthe majority of art and rejected it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, when I return to the former East Germany, my GPS powered<\/span>
\ncellphone will not only lead my way, but it will also reveal all that<\/span>
\nwas hidden back when I drove by Erich Honecker Secret City. Smartphones<\/span>
\nembed geographic location in the photos that I capture. While pressing<\/span>
\nmy fingers into the hardcover of Imagery in the 21st Century, I can\u2019t<\/span>
\nstop myself from asking why a publication that is so much about the<\/span>
\nliquidity of the frameless image, the shrinking shelf life of the jpg, a<\/span>
\nbook that so heavily relies on hyperlinked references, is not published<\/span>
\nonline. High quality images, animated gifs and videos could be included<\/span>
\nthis way. An interactive, web-based publication, however, could have<\/span>
\nbetter served as an open educational resource, made the content<\/span>
\navailable to far more people, very much supporting the kind of thinking<\/span>
\nthat the publication encourages. This is not a shortcoming of the<\/span>
\neditors but it behoves all of us to find adequate and creative responses<\/span>
\nto the old business models of mechanical reproduction. I was thrilled to<\/span>
\nread Grau\u2019s Imagery in the 21 Century and I will use it in my teaching.<\/span>
\nThe book can be brought into productive conversation with Nicholas<\/span>
\nMirzoeff’s Right to See, David Weinberger’s Too Big To Know, Cathy<\/span>
\nDavidson’s Now You See It, and also Design Studies: A Reader, edited by<\/span>
\nmy New School colleagues Hazel Clark and David Brody. Imagery in the 21<\/span>
\nCentury is a fabulous resource for the reflection on contemporary<\/span>
\nvisuality.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MAGERY IN THE 21st CENTURY by Oliver Grau, Editor; with Thomas Veigl The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011 424 pp. illus. 132 b\/w. Trade, $40 ISBN-10: 0262015722. With contributions by Sean CUBITT, Martin SCHULZ, Eduardo KAC, Thomas VEIGL, Stefan HEIDENREICH, Olaf BREIDBACH, Dolores…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-related-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}