Source: Batchen, G. (2002) Each Wild Idea. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press. pp.165-174
The Oxford English Dictionary [online] defines digital as:
"Digital (of signals or data) expressed as a series of the digits 0 and 1 typically represented by values of a physical quantity such as voltage or magnetic polarisation.
1.1 relating to, using, or storing of data in the form of digital signals
1.2 involving or relating to the use of computer technology" (Oxford Dictionary, 2017)
Computing and photography as we know it were developed at around the same point in history, by people who shared interests and were part of the same peer group. Social and cultural conditions were examined from the birth of computing and photography as well as political and representational challenges. This chapter elaborated on Fontcuberta's observation of why digital photography could have been developed at the same time as computers.
Summary of the main points from this chapter:
The impending death of photography because of the emergence of digital photography as we know it today encouraged debate on whether photography and computing share a common history.
Modern computer pioneer - Charles Babbage (1833) Analytical Engine (English). Friends with Fox Talbot and John Herschel. 1839 - Fox Talbot sent 8 prints and calotypes (paper negative coated with silver iodide) to Babbage which he displayed on the wall. Babbage displayed a working model of the Difference Engine. Batchen speculates that "Babbage's drawing room encountered photography and computing together for the first time at the same time." (Batchen, 2002:165)
Talbot contributed to the design of Babbage's later computer. Babbage enabled Talbot's prints to be distributed in Italy. Babbage sat for a stereoscopic portrait and news of his death was photographed by Reijlander.
1839 - Talbot's image from a camera obscurer was subject to debate the "identity of photography... the source of it's generative power [and] was a photogenic drawing produced by the cultural merger of camera and chemistry , or [...]nature spontaneously representing itself?" (Batchen, 2002:166)
1837 - Babbage decided his computer enabled nature and God to represent itself in mathematical equations.
1839 - photography accepted in America to make photographs of landscape.
1839 - Talbot's contact printing of lace (taken from the lace itself) was seen as a representation of reality. Argument for photograph seeing "the world in binary terms, as a patterned order of the absence and presence of light." (Batchen, 2002:167)
1839 - Talbot made a photogenic drawing of lace (negatives produced on paper) magnified 100x through a lens demonstrating mathematics applied to photography.
1844 - Talbot made positive and negative copies of the lace (colours differed). Reproduction and repetition of the same object possible.
In conclusion, computers and photography were linked by "the transformation of human beings into data - in this case, digitised for the purpose of making predictive judgements that fix them in space and time (that photograph them). (Batchen, 2002:171)
Batchen compares the computer's lack of boundaries of power (where the user becomes the subject and the object at the same time) to the disciplinary power of photography using Michael Foucault's theory of panopticism where the subject becomes the prisoner and the jailer (or the subject and object of their own gaze) somewhere between reality and virtual.
Batchen recommends that contemporary critical art should be composed of maths and philosophy.
"An object is frequently not seen, from not knowing how to see it, rather than from any defect in the organ of vision." (Babbage cited in Batchen, 2002:174)
References
Batchen, G. (2002) Each Wild Idea. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press.
Oxford Dictionary. (2017) "Digital" definition. [online] Available from: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/digital (last accessed 5/1/17)
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