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Softimage: Towards a New Theory of the Digital Image
With today’s digital technology, the image is no longer a stable representation of the world, but a programmable view of a database that is updated in real time. It no longer functions as a political and iconic representation, but plays a vital role in synchronic data-to-data relationships. It is not only part of a program, but it contains its own operating the image is a program in itself. Softimage aims to account for that new reality, taking readers on a journey that gradually undoes our unthinking reliance on the apparent solidity of the photographic image and building in its place an original and timely theorization of the digital image in all its complexity, one that promises to spark debate within the evolving fields of image studies and software studies.
154 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 26, 2021
This book is more of a translation of Manovich to theories of deconstructing photography. In doing that, it does a good job. However, I feel as though this book is unnecessarily restrictive to its notion of "image" in order to merely mark its territory as offering a new definition of photography. In that, the book is not "towards" a very long lasting goal.
What this book explains well is that by studying Manovich's Software Studies research closely and comparing this to older notions of media, a new conception of photograph is long overdue. Technologically the photograph is paradigmatically different at a cultural level than what it was for most people when film was the primary medium of photography. Google Street View and Computer Vision have tied images together in a kind of continuity that is inescapably hegemonic culture now.
This book is 30 years too late, and is still stuck in trying to retheorize Deleuze's Cinema 1 (with more of a descriptive physics than a metaphysics) showcasing technologies that existed more than a decade before this book was written. Yet, for some reason, this book does not even approach Bergson and Deleuze, who offer key arguments that should be addressed when it comes to the metaphysics of movement and "still" images. For Deleuze however, he calls this "cinema" whereas this book limits itself to extending from photography. Why not just call it "cinema"? Why hold ourselves to explaining photography? It's summarizing what we all know and have experienced, and it need not be restricted in this way.
The notion of images are not exclusively photographic. Images are either of mind, or projections in the world about the world or about mental events. "Image" here seems like heavy-handed metaphysical machinery for a book that is limited to redefining photography. And yet, even for that goal, this book maneuvers around those who have already theorized this exact thing, granted with less of an interest in Manovich and existing examples. In total, it feels like this carves out a particularly narrow kind of image in order to avoid particularly important literature. Either this book should have been about the blurring between digital photography and videography in online applications, or it should have explored more kinds of digital images, such as comics, memes, gifs, etc.
However, there is some simplicity of theorizing here, which could help give a technological justification in theory to actual feature extraction and discussing how the world isn't being "remapped" into spacial movements.
What this book explains well is that by studying Manovich's Software Studies research closely and comparing this to older notions of media, a new conception of photograph is long overdue. Technologically the photograph is paradigmatically different at a cultural level than what it was for most people when film was the primary medium of photography. Google Street View and Computer Vision have tied images together in a kind of continuity that is inescapably hegemonic culture now.
This book is 30 years too late, and is still stuck in trying to retheorize Deleuze's Cinema 1 (with more of a descriptive physics than a metaphysics) showcasing technologies that existed more than a decade before this book was written. Yet, for some reason, this book does not even approach Bergson and Deleuze, who offer key arguments that should be addressed when it comes to the metaphysics of movement and "still" images. For Deleuze however, he calls this "cinema" whereas this book limits itself to extending from photography. Why not just call it "cinema"? Why hold ourselves to explaining photography? It's summarizing what we all know and have experienced, and it need not be restricted in this way.
The notion of images are not exclusively photographic. Images are either of mind, or projections in the world about the world or about mental events. "Image" here seems like heavy-handed metaphysical machinery for a book that is limited to redefining photography. And yet, even for that goal, this book maneuvers around those who have already theorized this exact thing, granted with less of an interest in Manovich and existing examples. In total, it feels like this carves out a particularly narrow kind of image in order to avoid particularly important literature. Either this book should have been about the blurring between digital photography and videography in online applications, or it should have explored more kinds of digital images, such as comics, memes, gifs, etc.
However, there is some simplicity of theorizing here, which could help give a technological justification in theory to actual feature extraction and discussing how the world isn't being "remapped" into spacial movements.
January 25, 2023
There's a lot of text here that is unnecessary or obscuring not very much at all. However, the parts on the moving image and the stills are interesting, and the analysis of Google Street View helps me understand more about why GeoGuessr is so popular, as a real life reenactment of a common fantasy. I also found the JPEGs series to be provocative and interesting, as a ideal of a sample of an ideal (even though the explanation given meanders around and does a lot of unnecessary wordplay). WORKERS (leaving the factory) was also something I would have definitely liked to see.
In general the artworks presented are unique and make genuine points about the digital image, while the explanations suffer from excessive theory. The definition here of the softimage is at least intuitively appealing; the image that is no longer a depiction of geometric reality, but in context to others a depiction of change. The softness highlights the insubstantial quality of the image, its capacity for easy change, recontextualization, or removal.
In general the artworks presented are unique and make genuine points about the digital image, while the explanations suffer from excessive theory. The definition here of the softimage is at least intuitively appealing; the image that is no longer a depiction of geometric reality, but in context to others a depiction of change. The softness highlights the insubstantial quality of the image, its capacity for easy change, recontextualization, or removal.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews