Reflections on Digital Media & Culture
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Intoxicated by colour
Who can resist colour! Colour provides a metaphor for pleasure, health and vitality. Spring is colourful; winter is grey. The world of the child is supposedly bright with innocent colours, compared to the dull tones of old age and decay. But don’t efflorescences of colour also indicate contamination, virulence and toxicity?
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This is Dying Matters Awareness Week in the UK. We are a “death denying” society inept at dealing with bereavement, planning for the end of life, and making arrangements for after we are gone. On the other hand, thanks to television, films, video games and the Internet, we confront our mortality every waking moment of … Continue reading
Why do adults and children like to see animals as characters in fictional stories and cartoons, especially when stories about animals are so confusing? Everyone knows that Micky Mouse (a mouse) lives in a house and has a pet Pluto (a dog) and a friend Goofy (a dog that talks). I recently caught up with … Continue reading
Designed by Walter Gropius and built in 1925-6, the Bauhaus building in Dessau has undergone extensive restoration. Work was completed in 2006 (www.bauhaus-dessau.de). The influence of this design school on architecture, furniture, fashion, photography and education is well documented. No designer is immune from the Bauhaus effect, whether supporting or resisting its respect for the qualities … Continue reading
Panoramic photography, of the kind now common on digital cameras and smart phones, allows you to sweep your camera from a fixed point around 360 degrees (or part thereof) to produce a composite image to present either as a flat plane or to be revisited as an immersive simulacrum. What happens when bodies get in … Continue reading
Most of us harbour the suspicion that being photographed removes something essential: if not our souls, then privacy, security, self image, the way we want to look. According to Susan Sontag the camera can ”presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate” (Sontag, 1979, p.13) … and from a safe distance. … Continue reading
3D is moving in. Nintendo has released its 3DS hand-held game system: “no need for special glasses.” Titanic is being retro-fitted as a 3D movie. 3D cinema reminds me, if I ever needed reminding, of the symmetries of the human body, and hence of our whole perceptual apparatus (ie all the senses). Philosopher Mark Johnson emphasises … Continue reading
Now I can see clouds, little fluffy clouds, distinctly, well-formed and illuminated, or at least I can reproduce skies in digital photography, thanks to the HDR, High Dynamic Range photography feature built into many digital cameras and smartphones.
David Hockney sends digital paintings of flowers to his friends by email. These are pictures he created on his iPhone and iPad. Some of these images are now on show at a gallery in Paris (Fleurs Fraîches at the Fondation Pierre Bergé). It’s pleasing that artists of his stature can embrace new technologies and explore … Continue reading
