Post-Photography: Photography & Art in the Post-Digital and Post-Internet Era

Title: Post-Photography: Photography & Art in the PostDigital and Post-Internet Era

Author: Niamh Mitchell

Publication Year/Date: May 2024

Document Version: Fine Art Hons dissertation

License: CC-BY-NC-ND

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20933/100001303

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Post-Photography: Photography & Art in the Post-Digital and PostInternet Era

Fine Art (Hons)

Word Count: 6964

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) degree in Fine Art.

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design

University of Dundee

2023/24

Abstract

“Post-digital” and “post-internet” are relatively new terms which attempt to define and categorise the altered state of contemporary art, media and wider culture, in the wake of the digital and internet revolutions. Photography has been particularly affected, as the means of image production has become merged with the means of distribution, in the personal smartphone. Kim Cascone (Cascone, 2000) is credited with popularising the term in his article for the winter volume of Computer Music Journal, discussing what he refers to as “glitch” music. For Cascone, and the musicians he invokes, the digital medium of the computer lacks inspiration, and so they have taken to exploiting the computer as a medium itself Expanding upon this foundational text, with reference to the writings of Florian Cramer, Rosalind E. Krauss, Walter Benjamin and Seth Price, this dissertation outlines the essential concepts of the post-digital/internet movements This body of research contextualises the analysis of the presented artistic examples of Chris Bowes, Dan Holdsworth, Catherine Rose Evans and Katja Novitskova, and draws conclusions about the nature of the postdigital and post-internet photographic artwork.

List of Figures

2.1 (p. 14) – Coleman, J. (1983) Living and Presumed Dead [Projected images with synchronised audio narration] Available at:

https://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/36-james-coleman/works/43652/ (Accessed: 07/01/2024)

3.1 (p. 16) – Price, S. (2002) Dispersion [Essay presented in a printed book] Available at:

https://sethpriceimages.com/post/42277603863/dispersion-2002-seth-pricedownload-pdf

(Accessed: 07/01/2024)

3.2 (p. 19) – Duchamp, M. (1917) Fountain [Signed porcelain urinal] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_%28Duchamp%29 (Accessed: 07/01/2024)

4.1 (p. 20) – Bowes, C. (2020) Monitor [Multi-screen installation, live video feed] Available at:

https://www.chrisbowes.com.au/artwork/monitor (Accessed: 07/01/2024)

4.2 (p. 21) – Bowes, C. (2023) Sun-Kissed [Series of photo positives, transparent mounts] Available at:

https://www.chrisbowes.com.au/artwork/fragments (Accessed: 07/01/2024)

4.3 (p. 23) – Holdsworth, D. (2012) Transmission: New Remote Earth Views, Mount St. Helens, A10 [Digital render, framed digital print] Available at:

https://holdsworth.works/transmission-mount-st-helens (Accessed: 07/01/2024)

4.4 (p. 24) – Evans, C. R. (2021) Exploded View, 121a [Silver gelatine contact print mounted on aluminium] Available at:

https://catherineroseevans.com/#/exploded-view/ (Accessed: 07/01/2024)

4.5 (p. 25) – Novitskova, K (2012) Approximation 1 [Digital print on aluminium] Available at:

https://www.katjanovi.net/macroexpansion.html

(Accessed: 07/01/2024)

Introduction

“I was first introduced to the term ‘post-digital’ in 2007 […] My first reflex was to dismiss the whole concept as irrelevant in an age of cultural, social and economic upheavals driven to a large extent by computational digital technology.”

(Cramer, 2014)

I – Background

“Post-digital” is a term coined in the early 2000s by Kim Cascone, who used it to articulate the concepts underlying the rise of “glitch music,” within the wider genre of electronic music (Cascone, 2000). It has since been the subject of much discourse in the visual arts, with many artists adopting the label of “post-digital artist,” while art critics and historians debated thoroughly the semantics and problematic implications Florian Cramer elucidated the term in his aptly titled essay, What is ‘Post-Digital’? (2014), sketching a more widely applicable definition based upon Cascone’s (2000) initial concepts and assertions Post-digital attitudes have been spurred on by the absorption of art, media and culture, as well as (crucially) their means of production, and distribution, into the digital space, i.e. the computer. Inextricably linked to the rise and integration of the computer device within our culture is the internet, enabling worldwide communication and computation. Naturally, the internet prompted massive shifts in cultural and artistic thought, too, spawning the equally misleading label of “postinternet.”

II – Focus & Value of this Research

The aforementioned texts lay the groundwork for the key concepts of this investigation; however, the former is concerned primarily with music, and the latter more broadly with arts and culture in general. I want to investigate these overlapping, muddled terms and how they apply to photography specifically. Photography has been altered drastically in the wake of this rapid technological progress, in its role in society and its character, and potential, as an artistic medium. While Cramer does consider what constitutes a postdigital artwork, the scope of his essay does not explore the lasting repercussions for photography

III – Aims & Objectives

Through analysis of the texts, with subsequent complimentary writings, followed by examples of relevant artistic works, this dissertation aims to: unpack and define the

terms “post-digital” and “post-internet;” investigate historical discussion of the automation of photography and art; and examine how these concepts manifest, and are explored, in photographic artworks.

1 – Post-Digital?

At the turn of the century, many artists and musicians were responding to the rapid digitisation of the time, which was spearheaded by the internet and personal computer. The computer offered digital alternatives for composing, painting, producing music, animating, editing, designing, etc., becoming near all-encompassing in its everexpanding suite of available software. In many cases, the computer made these processes simpler, and more accessible, granting amateurs access to professional tools. This accessibility through commodification threatened and undermined the academic institutions, as many newly emerging artists and musicians were self-taught through the software. Naturally, this change was polarising for artists and musicians, as previously manual/analogue processes, which required technical skill and dedicated learning, were digitised in the form of computer software. Computers were also the primary means of distribution for these newly digitised mediums through the internet – which will be expanded in greater detail in the following chapters.

1.1 – Cascone’s Glitch

“The tendrils of digital technology have in some way touched everyone […T]he medium of digital technology holds less fascination for composers in and of itself. […T]he medium is no longer the message; rather, specific tools themselves have become the message.”

(Cascone, 2000)

In the wake of this upheaval, composer Kim Cascone discusses what he terms “postdigital” music in his article, titled, The Aesthetics of Failure: “Post-Digital” Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music (2000). He describes the general artistic dissatisfaction with the computer, and its natural transformation into an instrument Of course, the use of the computer as both a medium and an instrument was nothing new, as producers readily made use of synthesised instruments in their music, but, for many, these instruments were merely an imitation of the “real thing” and were uninspired Artists instead turned their attention to exploiting and pushing (often deliberately breaking) the limitations of the medium: the software itself. Cascone (2000) uses an analogy of a portrait artist shifting their focus to landscapes, or “the background,” to

better explore the boundaries and character of “the background,” which is often secondary to “the foreground,” or the subject. This subtle shift of focus from sounds produced by software to sounds that are the software, is what Cascone terms as “postdigital.” Not the possibilities of computer music, but the possibilities of the computer as music.

“The ‘post-digital’ aesthetic was developed in part as a result of the immersive experience of working in environments suffused with digital technology: computer fans whirring, laser printers churning out documents, the sonification of user-interfaces, and the muffled noise of hard drives. But more specifically, it is from the ‘failure’ of digital technology that this new work has emerged: glitches, bugs, application errors, system crashes, clipping, aliasing, distortion, quantization noise, and even the noise floor of computer sound cards are the raw materials composers seek to incorporate into their music.”

(Cascone, 2000)

Music produced with software would disguise its origin by masking any digital “imperfections” or robotic sounding “perfections.” Dissatisfaction with the computer stems from its weakness of being simultaneously perfect and imperfect, not good enough and too good. For example, a hardware synthesiser may be chosen over a software synthesiser model because of its “warmer” character and “fuller” sound; conversely, a producer may choose to play in notes by hand, over sequencing them with a grid, because it adds a “human” feel, as opposed to robotic precision. The post-digital musician is a step beyond the mainstream electronic musician, who embraces the cold software synths and robotic computer sequencers: the post digital musician reduces the software synth to little more than noise and overloads the sequencer until it can no longer keep up.

1.2 – Cramer’s Clarification

Upon first consideration, “post-digital” is a misleading and almost nonsensical term. The idea that we, as a global civilisation dependant on machines for nearly all aspects of life, are anywhere close to a period after technology is ridiculous. “Post,” here, is intended to mean a response to, not after, as in post-punk, wherein the post-punk movement was a deviation from the preceding punk movement, but not its replacement/successor. Post-digital music is an artistic response to the digital state of music, exposing its altered character and state. Elaborating on Cascone’s term, Florian Cramer (2014) strips it down to its constituent words and examines their colloquial and

philosophical meanings, in an effort to give a clearer, more universally applicable, definition.

“The term ‘post-digital’ in its simplest sense describes the messy state of media, arts and design after their digitisation (or at least the digitisation of crucial aspects of the channels through which they are communicated).

Sentiments of disenchantment and scepticism may also be part of the equation, though this need not necessarily be the case.”

(Cramer, 2014)

To understand post-digital in relation to the visual arts, Cramer questions our categorisation of what is “digital,” versus what is “analogue,” and he concludes that the terms are used and understood in a more colloquial and popular cultural sense, than objective. Digital, by literal definition, is not intrinsically electronic and it is not intrinsically computational. Simultaneously, analogue is not intrinsically noncomputational. Something that is digital is a system divided into distinct units, for example, ones and zeros, whereas analogue is any number of signals on a continuous scale, e.g., sound, light. These definitions conflict with the colloquial notions of what is analogue and what is digital, as Cramer (2014) points out, a guitar fretboard is a digital system, whereas the flow of electricity through a computer’s circuit board is analogue A digital system is an abstraction of the physical world, to be interpreted by humans, computers, or other. Cascone (2000), however, did not accurately use the word digital, we are to understand it in the colloquial sense, to mean electronic, computational, sterile, cold, etc

Though this digital resistance echoes the discontent of the arts and crafts movement around a century-and-a-half prior, and is not without a sprinkling of romanticism, the post-digital movement is more nuanced than a resolute denouncement of digital technology. Whereas the proponents of the arts and crafts movement were firmly antiindustrial, post-digital artists are not opposed to digital technology itself; what they are opposed to is digital hierarchy Digital technology offers (theoretically) limitless and continual expansion of possibility, as manufacturers and developers push for innovation, fuelled by consumer demand. Post-digital takes an anti-capitalist stance and renders technology, past and present, equal. The computer is not better because it is newer, more advanced, but equally the paintbrush is not purer because it is simple, less complicated and abstract. Each has its own discrete strengths and is suited to particular uses, and the post-digital artist exploits these to full effect. For an artwork to be considered post-digital, an artwork must scrutinise digital technology, the artwork itself does not necessarily have to incorporate digital technology. The work is a criticism of the aesthetic, technical, political and cultural conventions of digital technology.

2 – The Degradation of Photography as a Medium

Prior to the digitisation of photography, it had already been subject to radical changes as it changed from a “specific medium” to a “theoretical object,” as Rosalind Krauss writes (1999) The driving force behind these changes was commodification Commodification of the art object as well as the tools of the medium, these being the camera. The art object was commodified through photographic reproduction and subsequent distribution, and the camera was commodified by the industrial manufacturer. Krauss (1999) places the responsibility on Sir Walter Benjamin for raising photography into the realm of the theoretical, due to his writings in the first half of the 20th century. To better understand Krauss’ argument, a brief explanation of Benjamin’s original texts will be beneficial, as there are several key concepts which tie into it

2.1 – Aura

The concept of an artwork’s “aura” is the foundation of Benjamin’s (1968) essay, which he uses to illustrate an artwork’s uniqueness. The uniqueness of an artwork is what makes it difficult to imitate or reproduce A manual reproduction, by hand, will always fall short of an original because it cannot perfectly mimic all the discrete details, the energy of that moment, and the natural effects of age. A mechanical reproduction of an artwork, by means of a photograph, undermines an original on two fronts: the first, a photograph can show the artwork in greater detail than is possible to see with the eye, with enlargement and magnification by a lens; the second, a reproduction can travel everywhere faster, more easily, and be in multiple places simultaneously

Despite this, a reproduction lacks the presence of an original because it also lacks a “unique place in time and space” (Benjamin, 1968). Through scientific testing, an artwork can be accurately dated to reveal its age and history, with evidence to point towards its past owner(s) and location(s). A multiplicity of reproductions can exist in any number of places and belong to any number of owners at once, devoid of any authentic history A photograph depicting a piece of famous architecture lacks the unique location of the original; it lacks its dimensions, its texture, the people who use it The architecture has been extracted from its physical and historical context and reduced to a mere image.

“One might subsume the eliminated element in the name ‘aura’ and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of a work of art.”

(Benjamin, 1968)

2.2 – Cult and Exhibition Value

Contributing to this withering of the aura is the “exhibition value” (Benjamin, 1968) of the reproduction in direct opposition to the “cult value” (Benjamin, 1968) of the original To use one of Benjamin’s examples (1968), a cave painting has what he calls cult value. The painting would be shared with others but chiefly it was for the eyes of spirits. The cult value of the arts has evolved from the ritual, and it calls for art to remain concealed, to limit its viewing This exclusivity is inherent in the art object. Because it has a unique location, it can only be viewed wherever it resides, and its physicality, be it large or small, dictates the maximum size of its audience at any given time. Practically, a painting cannot be properly viewed, let alone thoughtfully considered, by a crowd Artworks displayed in galleries acquire added cult status from the galleries themselves, based on their perceived prestige and exclusivity.

The photographic reproduction of a painting depreciates its cult value by degrading its aura. It becomes unnecessary to travel to the museum, queue, buy a ticket and navigate the public to view it, as it now exists everywhere via photo-reproduction, and so it is less intrinsic to its unique location. In existing everywhere, an artwork can be viewed and considered by the masses on a scale that an artwork could not hope to reach before mechanical reproduction. Benjamin (1968)writes that, while many debated whether photography could be considered “art,” a more useful question would be: how will photography transform art?

2.3 – Krauss’ Technical Supports

“For photography converges with art as a means of both enacting and documenting a fundamental transformation whereby the specificity of the individual medium is abandoned in favor of a practice focused on what has to be called art-in-general, the generic character of art independent of a specific, traditional support.”

(Krauss, 1999)

Following on from Benjamin’s observations, Krauss (1999) writes from a time closer to the current day, when the camera had then already become a commodified and ubiquitous object, present in almost every home. The cameras themselves had advanced to the point of full automation, so that operation was incredibly simple. More so than in Benjamin’s day, the eye assumed, from the hands, full authority of the reproduction. Photography had long since left behind the intimacy of its history and the state of the medium was far removed from the slow and methodical portraits of its

beginnings. It was a theoretical medium, a producer of copies with no true original, utterly lacking in uniqueness and authenticity as an art object

Photography entered the realm of art while simultaneously dismantling the very concept, according to Krauss (1999). Critiquing the assertions of fine art through painting is limited by the specificity of painting, as painting is a kind of art, whereas photography is not so bound by specificity. Conceptual work thrived in this theoretical medium, and if it was not inherently photographic it was often mediated through photography. Many artists took advantage of the medium’s potential for mimicry and sought to emulate an amateur and haphazard aesthetic, photographs depicting nothing at all. The camera was used as a reflexive method of creating non-art.

Eventually, and naturally, professional quality equipment trickled down to the consumer and so the amateur aesthetic of box cameras was eclipsed. Consumers gradually became equipped with quality, interchangeable lenses and robust, fast SLR and rangefinder camera bodies. The 1980s heralded the popularisation of home-video which, along with the eventual invention of what Krauss (1999) refers to as “digital image making,” replaced traditional photography as a common social practice. Photography had become a relic, a technology of the past, and rendered obsolete by its technological successors. It is through its “obsolescence” (Krauss, 1999) that Krauss believes photography possesses the power to reassert itself as a specific medium by means of its “technical supports,” (Krauss, 1999).

“Rather, it concerns the idea of a medium as such, a medium as a set of conventions derived from (but not identical with) the material conditions of a given technical support, conventions out of which to develop a form of expressiveness that can be both projective and mnemonic.”

(Krauss, 1999)

Krauss (1999) presents the artist James Coleman and his work with slide projectors as an example of this. Coleman deliberately places slide-carousels, enlargers and projectors prominently in the exhibition space to centre them as an integral part of the work. In the case of Living and Presumed Dead (Coleman, 1983) the obsolete and clunky technical support of the projectors click, whir and hum away as the slides are sequentially displayed.

Aside from the obvious presence of the outmoded projectors, he draws deliberate attention to the nature of the two-dimensional still through the photographs themselves The “actors” portrayed are arranged facing outwards towards the viewer, disallowing for the immersion into narrative usually performed by the camera in motion pictures. Krauss (1999) draws the comparison between Coleman’s work and the comic book because they are both composed of sequential, isolated and static scenes. Comic book illustrations feature the “double face-out,” in which two characters in a scene are looking outward so that both characters’ expressions can be shown. A motion picture may choose to show both characters separately, but this does not translate so well to the graphic novel, wherein the short and transitory shot of cinema becomes something static and is framed between its preceding and succeeding scenes. Coleman makes no attempt to disguise the unreality and lack of authenticity of the photographic still, he works with the flatness and biased perspective. This direct confrontation of the unreality, mediated through obsolete technology, is a step towards the reinvention of the medium. Within the limitations of the technology, he attempts to assert aesthetic conventions which render the slide as a specific medium.

Fig 2.1 - Coleman, 1983

3 – Post-internet and the Power of Distribution

“Post-internet” art hits many of the same notes as post-digital art but still stands as its own distinct movement Similarly, the term refers to a response to a cultural, political and artistic shift, a response to the mass internet access brought about by the simpleto-use home computer, and, of course, followed by the smartphone. As with the digitisation of media, we are still experiencing and dealing with its repercussions, the repercussions of unrestricted access to information and personal interconnectivity. Benjamin’s prediction of what the future held, and to a degree even Krauss’ discussions of photography as a post-medium, could not have anticipated the scale and rate of transformation to which art and media were subject, at the hands of the internet and the world-wide-web (note: the terms “internet” and “world-wide-web” / “the web” are often used interchangeably, when they are in fact distinct. The web is all the sites and pages that can be viewed online, whereas the internet is the worldwide system of communication which the web runs on. For the sake of simplicity and continuity, I will henceforth refer to both as the internet. As with the definition of “digital” in post-digital, the internet is used more colloquially than technically)

While the internet was in its infancy, and was relatively niche, it birthed what is known as “net-art,” yet another superficially similar descriptor. Net-art is art designed for and experienced exclusively online, often taking the form of a web page, email or posts on existing sites. Though the line between the two can be blurred, net-art stands more as an historic movement (spanning from the 1990s to the early 2000s) than an artistic genre Post-internet art is not limited to online digital media, in many cases, it is the polar opposite, and therefore it is not to be conflated with net-art. Web-based artworks from the net-art era required a degree of technical literacy, with regards to coding, etc., whereas today the barrier for entry is far lower. Anyone is capable of creating webbased artwork, or artwork shared on the web, due to an abundance of simple to use software options and sites available to host such work. As Krauss noted regarding the conceptualists of the ‘60s, post-internet art, too, is often mediated by photography. Artists are less concerned with the discrete art object itself; instead the work is realised through photographic reproduction and distribution.

3.1 – Dispersion

Seth Price offered his essay (/ artwork) Dispersion (2002) amidst the cultural turmoil of the early years of the internet, as a spirited proposition of the “emancipatory potential” of mass-circulated media. Though he himself admits in the text that his writings are a hopeful and utopian ideal, it is nonetheless useful in further understanding the artistic potential of the internet. Dispersion is referred to as an essay-

slash-artwork because it is an essay on distributable media which is itself presented in distributable form, both in physical print and freely accessible digital PDF, and is written/made by Price, who is considered an artist This very notion of what is, and what is not, accepted as art is debated within the work, questioning the linguistic distinction between the artist and producer of mass media, e.g., the musician. Dispersion offers further exploration of the redemptive powers of the obsolete, as introduced by Krauss, starting with the failings of contemporary conceptualism and leading into the powers of mass-media in artistic communication.

Classical conceptual artists strive to dismantle the artistic institutions, namely the gallery, by merging art with life. However, by the nature of conceptual work, this effort gives way to the very traditions to which they stand in opposition to. Price (2002) states that much of the artwork of the early 21st century positions itself as conceptual, tenuously linked to the historical classical movement. A painting is recognisably an art object, whether it is hung on a gallery wall, or amongst rubbish in a skip, whereas the conceptual artwork, lacking in the specificity of a medium, cannot be distinguished as an art object without artistic context, such as the gallery space. Attempting to bring art into the space of everyday life dissipates its status as an artwork, and the artist’s status as an artist. By its dependence documentation, the conceptual artwork is subjugated by the conventions of traditional art and exhibited as such.

Fig 3.1 - Price, 2002

“[Conceptual art] faces the problem that it must depend on a record of its intervention into the world, and this documentation is what is recouped as art, short-circuiting the original intent.”

(Price, 2002)

To escape the slowly archiving and cataloguing sphere of high art, the artist must find a method of successfully synthesising life and art, and here Price presents massdistributable media as a vehicle, “a system that depends on reproduction and distribution for its sustenance, a model that encourages contamination, borrowing, stealing, and horizontal blur” (2002). The current commercial and industrial state of media moves at an ever-increasing pace, a pace that does not accommodate the contemplative and esoteric conceptual artwork. Classical conceptualism, despite its potential to be universally accessible, was perceived as utterly elitest, failing to reach beyond the eyes and ears of the high art circles, where it was acknowledged, recorded and moved past. For it to be distributable on a mass scale, conceptualism cannot maintain its incomprehensibility, instead it must adopt the conventions of mass media, not simply its guise. In doing so, the method of production becomes inextricably embedded in the artwork itself, and distribution becomes integral to the artwork’s success.

The printed page has been utilised by the artist many a time, but for Price these attempts were “dryly theoretical” (2002), in proposing an alternative to the white cube gallery. Acknowledging that this discourse around accessibility overlaps with the discourse of public art, he summarises two key faults in the debate for public art. Its first fault is the rejection of any traditional or institutional gallery framework under the assertion that economics distinguish private from public. There must be no barrier of price, public = free; secondly, the conflation of “public” with “shared physical space,” as this reduces the artwork to a monument, or architecture, having a “unique place in time and space,” as Benjamin wrote (1968) It becomes a site of pilgrimage, again rooting itself in the ritual, in an age where the public is less and less interested in shared communal experience. Mass media has been rapidly digitised and subsequently distributed via the internet, and thus our media consumption has become predominantly digital and mediated by the internet. We need only think of the rise of streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+, which is inversely proportional to the decline in cinema audiences Industrial and commercial producers of mass media are also largely uninterested in the communal experience, even with the above examples, as media becomes ever more personally tailored to individual tastes via the algorithms these corporations employ. Contradictorily, “social” media is overwhelmingly insular.

3.2 – Post-Internet

“All of those who took on the role of cultural producer, content creator, were forced to weather the changing terrain of influencer culture. Wedded to the social media for visibility, they were also extremely vulnerable to deplatforming and the small secretive shifts in how content is prioritised… …at odds with the long-form reflection needed for art.”

(Unsound Festival, 2022)

The internet today exists as a mass archive for media, past and present, an unlimited resource It can be mined for cultural artifacts, to be re-packaged and redistributed, unadulterated or modified beyond recognition. Media is distributed on the internet freely with little regard for intellectual property, nor legal ownership. This attitude of thoughtless selection reflects Duchamp’s selection of the “readymade,” and how Fountain (1917) “[enacted] the dispersion of objects into discourse” (Price, 2002). The readymade was a term coined by Duchamp in 1916 to describe “commercially available, often utilitarian, objects” (Museum of Modern Art, no date) which he declared to be art. These conceptual works sought to question the nature of art and the status of the artist, questioning the necessity of skill and beauty in an artwork, simply: what makes an artwork art? Duchamp’s answer: it is art because the artist declares it so. Fountain, arguably the most infamous and controversial of the readymades, consisted of a urinal with “R. Mutt, 1917” scrawled on it. The power of Fountain was that it was not necessary to make the pilgrimage to view it, in order to understand its message (overlooking the fact it was never exhibited), as it was widely circulated by media coverage and photographic reproduction, notably the Stieglitz photograph In this sense, Fountain is more an artwork of distribution than a unique object, substantiated by its circulation and discussion.

A contemporary parallel, birthed by the medium of the mass-media archive, the internet meme, is an artless selection of a readily available image, affirmed through its mass circulation. Duchamp’s readymades undeniably caused an uncomfortable stirring in the high art circles, though Fountain did more to expand the potential for exhibition for galleries than shift the cultural understanding of art. However, Price presents it as a lesson in the powers of distribution as a medium for conceptualism, leaving behind the limited scope of the discrete art object

4 – The Post-Digital, Post-Internet, Post-Medium of Photography

4.1 – Bowes

“It is unsettling to think that while we watch screens, they quietly watch back at us. We are often passive to this exchange, ignoring the consequences of constant surveillance for technology’s comfort and convenience.”

(Bowes, no date)

Fig 1.2 - Duchamp, 1917

Chris Bowes is an Australian multidisciplinary artist whose work spans photography, video, installation, and beyond. He has described himself as a post-digital artist, with his approach to making work centring on the exploitation of the failures in digital technology, peeling back the veneer of the screen or user interface. Though he studied photography, and it constituted the majority of his practise, he has since moved away from defaulting to using a physical camera, and the final artwork being the tried-andtested physical print. With his more recent post-digital and conceptual work, Bowes has striven to reduce photography to its most fundamental chemical properties. In a discussion of post-digital photography with Rory Gillen, representing Photo Access (an Australian non-profit photo-arts association), he humorously states, “It’s so hard to take a unique photo anymore!” (Photo Access, 2021) He explains that, as previously mentioned, automated cameras have become nearly universally accessible, and imagesharing is ingrained in modern social culture, leading to an abundance of pictures being taken every day The Reinvention of the Medium is referenced as one inspiration for his ideas, with the concept of technical supports (as a means to reinvent the medium) being of particular interest and fascination. Hence, his work is photographic but not easily categorised as “photography ”

Fig 4.1 - Bowes, 2020

Monitor (Bowes, 2020) is an interactive video installation, composed of twenty-four monitors, two webcams and two computers, interconnected by a mass tangling of cables The monitors display a warped and distorted feed of the video captured by the cameras, which are almost hidden amongst the jigsaw of screens. Due to the differing aspect ratios and dimensions of the screens, the video is scaled and stretched differently on each, rendering it a fragmented jumble of individual frames. The distortion imparted by the translation from life into digital data, and then back into a video, is self-evident in the work. In a similar gesture to Coleman, Bowes has chosen to display the two computers as part of the arrangement, so that the system itself is apparent, right down to the messy multi-socket extension cords. This pushes against the sleek presentation style that is prevalent in the audio-visual, or (more broadly) digital, arts Aside from the use of cameras and screens, what renders the work photographic is the performative experience offered to the viewer. It has an obvious resemblance to a distorting funhouse mirror, which invites the reflected participant to move around and play with the object. Naturally, this led viewers to photograph themselves displayed on Monitor, in that moment becoming photographers.

The image, or rather the digitally manipulated image, is central to the concept of Monitor, but with Sun-Kissed (Bowes, 2023) there is no semblance of image. Sun-Kissed was exhibited as one part of the Fragments (2023), a solo exhibition which considers

Fig 4.2 - Bowes, 2023

the philosophies of Heraclitus in relation to photography, both the content of his writings and the ambiguity and discourse surrounding the texts themselves Only fragments have been recovered, leading to countless disparate interpretations by philosophers, academics and historians. Absence of a definitive truth, obscured by ambiguity in context, is inherent to the nature of the photographic image, which is only ever capable of partial truths With regard to the content of the texts, Heraclitus believed in a flux of the elements, “on those stepping into rivers staying the same, other and other waters flow” (cited in Graham, no date), which Plato simplified to: “…he [said] you could not step twice into the same river” (cited in Graham, no date) Semantics aside, to avoid the risk of becoming pedantic, Bowes’ Fragments work from Plato’s assertion that Heraclitus spoke of everything, including reality, as being subject to constant flux. The ever-changing nature of the world means that the same photograph can never be taken twice, as what is photographed will never be exactly the same, especially not the natural light of the sun.

Sun-Kissed is a series of photo-positives, each mounted between two layers of transparent material and arranged in pairs, seemingly containing nothing at all. They were produced using a handmade camera which allowed Bowes to “photograph” the colour of the light, which he did at both sunrise and sunset over several days. In Bowes’ artistic statement for the work, he says, “the work’s aim is to reduce landscape photography to its most basic form, imbuing photographic film with an impression of the sun rather than capturing it washing over the environment” (Bowes, 2023). These repetitively scheduled pieces highlight the flow of change without the unnecessary clutter of a traditional photo-image. The sculptures’ transparency and lack of framing are emblematic of the truthfulness of these photographs. They show nothing and therefore exclude everything, along with any hint of agenda and politics present in the technically precise reproduction of life.

4.2 – Holdsworth

“The nature of Holdsworth’s images mean that they are devoid of any markers such as trees or natural elements to give an idea of scale or perspective such as atmosphere, creating a distorted image that is initially hard to figure out. This has the effect of creating an other-worldly view, similar to images sent back from the moon or asteroids, but of a familiar place that we recognise from traditional landscape images.” (Osborne, 2020)

British artist Dan Holdsworth has a practice rooted in photography but is pushing for something beyond. His work synergises the photography and the sciences, in this case scientific data. Transmission: New Remote Earth Views (Holdsworth, 2012) is a project utilising the data from topographical scans to create three-dimensional renders of various famous geographical sites in the United States, including the Grand Canyon, Mount Saint Helens and the Half Dome of Yosemite National Park. These renders have been presented as prints, organised by site, with each displaying a large print of the overhead “plan view” and selected virtual viewpoints. The perspective views grant a degree of humanistic perspective but, as Osborne points out, they are “devoid” of the usual markers that would normally orient and contextualise our perception, and, aside from these details, the images are also completely without colour, both in the terrain and sky, furthering the “other-worldly” comparison (Osborne, 2020). Considered in the context of digital modelling, the renders almost appear unfinished, as if they have yet to be textured.

Photography enables reproduction of what we call “reality,” whether that reproduction is authentic or not; Transmission: New Remote Earth Views, presented as photographic, depicts not our reality but a digital reality, a computerised perception of our world With Sun-Kissed, Bowes introduced a purely chemical photographic

Fig 4.3 - Holdsworth, 2012

perception of landscape. Here, we see the world through the bias of the computer, which, having been fed only topographical data, has no consideration for the flora and fauna populating and inhabiting these landscapes. It sees only a multiplicity of points, distributed on an x, y and z axis. This post-digital approach to the landscape grants a non-anthropomorphic viewpoint to challenge our perception of the landscape image, and the natural landscape depicted.

“Photography as a process, fundamentally defined and made of time material, has the capacity to communicate ideas about human relations to time which, in the context of our current cultural climate, I believe give a great source for people to rethink their relationships with nature.”

(Holdsworth, 2013)

Continuing the thread of digital perception of time, Australian artist Catherine Rose Evans’ work Exploded View (2021) is an investigation of shared memory, as affected by the digitisation and circulation of media footage. She selected her personal memory of the demolition of the Royal Canberra Hospital in 1997 for investigation. Distorting stills

4.3 – Evans

Fig 4.4 - Evans, 2021

appropriated from a recording available on YouTube on a flatbed scanner, Evans created a series of prints as an unreliable visual testimony to the happening. Each still is compressed, stretched and warped, vertically and horizontally, symbolic of the subjective perception of time which the memory unreliably records. By using stills from the YouTube video, each print features a literal graphic timeline running through them, again deliberately distorted by Evans, displaying blips, spikes and gaps. This timeline of stills is ordered linearly, with the final print showing an almost silhouetted crowd in the foreground. Situated amongst these disembodied heads, the video camera’s viewpoint amongst the onlookers implicates the viewer, absorbing them into this altered memory. Evans positions YouTube, and by extension the internet media archive, as a collective memory. Drawing images from the video is akin to drawing from personal memory because the computer is an integrated, synthetic enhancement of human memory.

But does this digital memory affect our perception of the digital? Memories projected into and circulated in the internet stratosphere could become transformed in translation. Could this lead to a tangling and muddying of the organic and the digital?

Katja Novitskova, an Estonian installation artist, “[…] had this crazy idea that, in the future, the attraction we feel to technology would be similar the pull and attraction that

4.4 – Novitskova

Fig 4.5 - Novitskova, 2012

we feel for a very attractive, cute animal” (Unsound Festival, 2022). Macro Expansion (Novitskova, 2012) includes aluminium cut-outs of stock-image animals, utilising the aesthetic properties, or lack thereof, of utterly banal, licensable imagery These (nearly) flat sculptures mimic digital collage, as if they have no mass and have been superimposed on the gallery space. Hard edges and cold metal are in obvious contrast to the “cute” animals, perhaps an observation of the sterility of the monetised images. The artist writes in her statement: “Fuelled by human attention and primordial carbon, these massive populations of info-matter are roaming the Earth” (Novitskova, 2012). These post-internet works potently exemplify the art object designed for reproduction, as sculptures they are structurally simple and are only suited to viewing from the front. In their resemblance to low-effort Photoshop they invite photographs, to be translated again into digital form to fully achieve the pseudo-digital effect Interviewed by Luca Francesconi as part of a joint exhibition (which they were both exhibiting in), Novitskova spoke about her process:

“When I am preparing an exhibition I sketch not just the ideas I have around the exhibition or single works, but the potential visual documentation of it. […] Image-making is probably then the best way to talk about this practice –no matter how big are the resulting physical installations, their origins and final products are images ”

(Novitskova, 2013)

Conclusions

In this final chapter, I summarise the findings of my research in relation to the research objectives, as laid out in the introduction, to clearly understand how these various “post-isms” affect, and are manifest in, contemporary photography.

“Post-photography makes room for so many practices beyond photography with a capital ‹P› to be included in our debates. It allows us to move beyond disciplines and traditional canons of photo theory. It prepares the ground for making sense of the diverse eco-systems of image production and consumption that we live in today. We can reappropriate this ‹post› to suggest moving past the question of what photography essentially is, and privilege questions as to what photography is becoming in social, aesthetic and political terms.”

(Brückle and Mutiis, 2020)

I – Defining Post-Digital and Post-Internet

Fundamentally, the post-digital movement stands as a critique of the prevalence and unanimous acceptance of digital technology. Resisting the digital hierarchy, post-digital advocates the continuation of traditional and manual techniques, and the re-use and recycling of “out-dated” technology. Post-digital artworks create a dialogue between the dissonant categories of analogue and digital technologies, through trans-mediation and interchange between them. Post-internet responds to the specific effects of the internet, which can (and often does) overlap with what is considered post-digital. The key and distinctive aspect explored by the post-internet is the international communication facilitated by technology, enabling the mass circulation and distribution of media. All this circulated material remains suspended in what is effectively a mass-cultural archive, exploited by the post-internet artist who appropriates and recycles old media and images, akin to the post-digital recycling of technology. The post-internet artwork often exploits the very system it critiques as a means of distribution, affirming itself as an artwork through circulation and exchange.

II – Critical and Philosophical Foundations

Before its digitisation, the camera had already been monetised as a profitable commodity and the photographic image thus also became commodified. The result of this is the widespread reproduction, and subsequent withering, of reality and the arts, as the concept of “the original” is degraded by a multiplicity of mechanical copies. Photography’s talent for copying caused its transcendence into the realm of the theoretical as it lacked the specificity of a traditional medium. Classical conceptualists took advantage of this non-specific character for their own agenda, mimicking the amateur aesthetic concurrent with the early commodification of the camera, producing artless images Eventually, this amateurism was erased by the technical advancement of the consumer camera, which soon became an obsolete technology, as consumer interest naturally shifted to the next and best invention. However, the ubiquitous and obsolete possess the potential for self-emancipation, and reinvention of photography as a medium, by establishing specific conventions derived from the technologies themselves. This proposition of establishing a medium built on specific technical supports is a fundamental concept of the post-digital movement.

III – Artistic Responses

Bowes has turned his focus away from the traditional photographic image of representation, instead reducing photography to its fundamentals of light and chemistry. Drawing from Benjamin’s discussions of aura and the cult, his interactive works exemplify an effort to anchor the photographic to a unique, original object. Holdsworth offers a different deconstruction of photography with his digital stills of simulated terrain, blurring the line drawn between the digital photograph and digital data as a photograph. This confronts our reliance on photography to depict reality and our inherent trust(/distrust) of the authenticity the photograph Evans explores the photographic fundamental of time and its relation to memory, how the internet serves as shared consciousness She plays with the unreliability of the digital medium in performative manipulations of appropriated content, symbolising the sub-surface distortions of truth. Lastly, Novitskova posits the continuous flow of content uploaded to the internet as something organic, imagining how these synthetic creatures would interact with our world. Her digital visual aesthetics are brought into the physical space as an analogy for our interaction with the simulated internet space.

IV – Photography’s Unique Potential

The altered state of the photographic medium, divorced from specificity of its traditional roots, has been inextricably tangled in the digitisation of media and rampant circulation of images on the internet Due to its position in driving this cultural upheaval, it has the opportunity to confront it directly. Adopting both post-digital and postinternet ideologies, utilising technological obsolescence combined with the recycling and appropriation of existing media, boldly resists the continual forward march of image-technology and new media. By exploiting photography’s tenuous relationship with truth, the authenticity of the digital space can be examined, inviting us to consider our co-dependency. In its infinitely distributable and viewable form, it can reach an infinitely wide audience, outpacing the cataloguing of high art. The ubiquitous obsolescence of the digital image is not without redemptive capacity.

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