Between Presence and Program: The Photographic Error as Counterculture
The book is an Open Access publication which has had 45K downloads (at Feb 2021):
Link to Book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-42097-0
Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42097-0_9
I was invited to contribute a chapter to this book which explores interdisciplinary relationships between technology, the digital, art practice and research in the arts across a range of art forms. The book is part of a Springer series on Cultural Computing which presents current research in Human-Computer Interaction in the context of culture and creativity.
The chapter is part of the larger practice-led project In Pursuit of Error (2014 – to date) which investigates the photographic error as a cultural phenomenon. The project includes several additional peer-reviewed publications; this output represents the most significant to date.
- Submitting institution
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University of Chester
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32-05/623056
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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10.1007/978-3-030-42097-0
- Book title
- Technology, Design and the Arts -Opportunities and Challenges
- Publisher
- Springer International
- ISBN
- 978-3-030-42096-3
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- June
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The chapter contributes to debates on photographic representation, digital materiality and glitch aesthetics and identifies the unique position of the photographic error in contemporary digital practice.
The chapter advances the central research questions of the project: the ostensible disappearance of the error in digital photography; how the error challenges accepted standards of photographic representation; the nature of agency in photography and the value of the error as a developmental tool in creative practice.
In Pursuit of Error grounds the theoretical exploration of the error in observable practice. Through regular open calls, amateur and professional photographers and artists in the UK and internationally contribute their photographic errors to the project, along with a narrative to explain how the error occurred and their perception of it. Contributions are analysed to identify significant characteristics of image and process.
Using this database as a starting point, a range of theoretical frameworks have been applied to interpret the error, including aesthetics, epistemology and performance theory. The chapter builds on this methodology, using New Materialism and Critical Technology studies to articulate the error specifically in relation to technology.
Significantly, practice suggests that the photographic event extends before and after the moment of taking an image, casting ‘photographing’ as an extended time-based event which is durational and performative. In this context, the chapter critiques developments in camera technology as ideologically driven toward an ‘ideal’ photography informed by concepts of objectivity, disembodiment and the ‘instant’.
Using Actor Network Theory, the chapter reimagines the relationship between camera and photographer. It reveals how the error destabilizes hierarchies of control and agency established in camera design, and reasserts the material presence of both parties in the act of photographing. In so doing, it presents a revitalized concept of photography as an embodied practice that challenges accepted notions of photographic representation.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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