CALCULATING IMAGES: REPRESENTATION BY ALGORITHM IN MEDICINE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Time of Conference: March 4-5, 2005
Place: IHC McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB, 6th floor
Convener: Sven Spieker
CONFERENCE WEBSITE

CONFERENCE PROGRAM
PAPER TITLES AND ABSTRACTS
DOWNLOAD FLYER

The international conference we are planning investigates the digital image at the interstice of art and the sciences. Since the beginning of the 1990s, when researchers focused on digital photography, the digital image has not found the attention it deserves. We therefore want to begin with a series of basic questions that place the digital image in the context of other digital and non-digital imaging technologies. What does it mean to speak of images in the digital age? How does the digital image correspond to other technical images, such as photography and film? Where does the specificity of digital images lie in terms of their production and reception? Does the digital image represent an absolute break in the history of the (technical) image, or should we regard it, on the contrary, as the culmination of that history? Is it sufficient to oppose the principally “unbounded” (unframed) digital image to the image of film, an image that is in essence nothing more than a sequence of independent stills viewed at rapid succession? Or do digital images, i.e., images produced from algorithms, fall out of the history of the mechanic image by their very nature? Finally, how serious should we take the widespread assumption that the most important difference between digital and non-digital images lies in the interactive nature of digitally produced images? These are some of the questions that will introduce our discussions.

However, crucially, no discussion of digital images can limit itself to ontological questions alone (“What is a digital image?”). What digital images “are” emerges from their manifold use in different scientific and artistic contexts, from medicine (Positron Emission Tomography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, etc.) to digital art and satellite surveillance. In all these areas digital images have radically changed our understanding of such notions as control/surveillance; objectivity; evidence; vision; encoding; media, and emergence. Apart from that, we should not forget that the digital image, unlike film and photography, is an evolving technology in constant development that will shape our perception of the world for a long time to come.

Alongside the conference we are organizing a thematically related, collaborative exhibition project in Los Angeles that will bring together artists, scientists, and historians, and that will critically reflect upon the issues raised by the conference.

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

Morana Alac (UC San Diego)
Marie-Luise Angerer (Academy of Media Arts, Cologne)
Harun Badakhshi (Charité University Hospital Berlin)
Maurice Benayoun (University of Paris)
Lisa Cartwright (UC San Diego)
Philippe Codognet (Université de Paris 7)
Mark Cohen (UCLA Brain Mapping Center)
Eric de Jong (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena Institute of Technology)
Miguel Eckstein (UC Santa Barbara)
James Elkins (Art Institute, Chicago)
Wolfgang Hagen (Berlin)
Stefan Heidenreich (Berlin)
Hans-Christian von Herrmann (University of Jena)
Luc Jaeger (UC Santa Barbara)
Marsha Kinder (USC Annenberg Center for Communication)
Wolf Kittler (Cornell University)
George Legrady (UCSB)
Thomas Levin (Getty Center/Princeton University)
Lev Manovich (UC San Diego)
Lisa Parks (UC Santa Barbara)
Joel Snyder (University of Chicago)

Contact:
Sven Spieker, Associate Professor
Department of Germanic, Slavic, Semitic Studies and
History of Art and Architecture
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
fax 805-893-2374
spieker@gss.ucsb.edu
http://www.gss.ucsb.edu/faculty/spieker/

CALCULATING IMAGES is generously supported by the following institutions:
UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center; Goethe Institute of Los Angeles; Consulate General of France; CNRS (Paris); UCSB College of Letters and Science; UCSB Office of the Provost; UCSB Office of Research; UCSB Department of Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies; UCSB Department of History of Art and Architecture; UCSB Comparative Literature Program.

<<back