DAC Home   Digital Anamorphosis
Mark Hansen 
Assistant Professor, English 
Princeton University 

 
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"Digital Anamorphosis" focuses on the problematic of the digital image. Specifically, I argue that digitization transforms the photographic (and also, by implication, the cinematic) image into a set of data that correlates with spatial dimensions very different from those governing geometrical perspective and natural perception. My paper is an effort to develop an experiential correlate to this digitization of the image that has been variously dubbed the "vision-machine" (Virilio), "absolute knowledge running on an endless loop" (Kittler), the "automation of vision" (Manovich), and "machinic vision" (John Johnston). To do so, I focus on the work of digital interactive artists who, in various ways, seek to develop new modes of human perception that correspond to the spatial coordinates of this new computerized "vision." It is precisely to demarcate a difference between a human form of perception and computer vision that I invoke the term "anamorphosis." In a way that both resonates with its Lacanian deployment (since it correlates a "beyond vision" with the human dimension) and departs from it (since it displaces the priority of geometrical space in favor of what I shall develop as an affective, bodily space), digital anamorphosis characterizes our experience of being "in" the space of the image as a space specifically of digital data. I use Robert Lazzariniís skulls (2000) to demonstrate this point. Though they appear to be traditional anamorphic renderings, Lazarriniís four CAD generated skulls do not resolve thmselves within a geometical space but "make sense" visually only within the logic of the computer. The effect generated by Lazzariniís work - one of amused bewilderment and also alienated discomfort - exemplifies the general claim I advance regarding the digital art enviroments I examine: they each, in various ways, respond to the challenge of redefining human spatial perception within the coordinates of digital space by provoking a crisis in the visual faculty and catalyzing proprioceptive or affective bodily modalities of spatial orientation. The paper is divided into two sections. In a first section, I discuss the "automation of vision" that has led to the divorce between "machinic vision" and human visual capacities. Specifically, I play William Mitchellís focus on digitization in terms of possibilities for manipulating the image against Lev Manovichís suggestion that digital images are synthetic and should be understood as renderings of data. I argue that Manovichís understanding is crucial if we are to grasp the radical impact of digitization on the spatial experience of the image. In the second section, I focus on the works of three interactive media artists, Tamas Waliczky, Miroslav Rogala, and Jeffrey Shaw, who each develop interfaces, employing our bodily movement and proprioception, that catalyze new, properly human modes of experience of the new image spaces produced by computers. 

 

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