It easy to imagine that the digital is a weak and limiting impression of the infinity of qualitative phenomena inherent in the analog. The traditional way of seeing this relationship is that the digital samples the analog and creates an approximation of the real "object" in bits, 1's and 0's, on and off. But in this has always been the case in the way perception works, and is especially true of the film.
In effect, the process of filming has been traditionally seen as analog because it translates light (electro-magnetic energy) through a chemical process into an image that then uses light to project it. It would appear that the analog is preserved and not sampled in the way a computer will take light and sample it at a pre-defined degree and store an approximation of the continuous light into a grid of pixels. but, this is if we only consider the material aspect of light and ignore the temporal.
Film can capture light continuously, but doesn't treat time the same way. In this case it samples at 24 frames per second; the same way a digital interpretation of a sound wave (electro-acoustic energy) is sampled at 44,100 times a second (common sampling rate for CD quality sound). The time element of a film requires the limits of human perception to re-interpret the sampled images into an analog continuum. 24 frames a second passes the threshold of our visual digital perception well enough that we see continuos movement where there isn't really one. If we where to film at 2 frames a second and play it back at that speed we would notice the lack of interstitial movement.
In the digital capture of light the same phenomena is present, but now it samples the materiality of the light as well as the time. Again, a high sampling rate (high-resolution) will not be obvious to us since it may pass the threshold – due to the mechanism of light-perception in the cone-cells of our eyes, the light diffraction due to the humidity in the air between the projector-screen or screen-eyes – we would see continuous light. Whereas a low-resolution image would make it appear as though we are seeing the digital sample. This is just an illusion as the requirement of light in order to see, is always analog. What you would be seeing are little squares (pixels). But the little squares are perceived as analog image.
If we say that the digital image is not a true copy it is because we are pre-supposing an objective original model of which we are trying to replace with a copy. But, instead we could use the term simulacrum to represent a copy that does not stand in for its object, but exists as an object on its own. As Brian Massumi states, "The terms copy and model bind us to the world of representation and objective (re)production"(The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). And, he mentions in an interpretation of a simulacrum;
The thrust of the process is not to become the equivalent of the "model" but to turn against it and its world in order to open up a new space for the simulacrum's own mad proliferation. The simulacrum affirms its own difference. (ibid.)
Can all art not be seen as a simulacrum instead of a copy? Do people really still think that a photograph (analog or digital) captures "true" reality?
The process of translating from the analog to the digital creates new "objects"every time and it when we try to equate them to the "original" object that we end up in a process of judgment. Can we still speak in these terms without reverting to outdated notions of objective reality and absolute truths? Shall we go back to a Platonic world view where the artist is seen as a mere copier of reality?
5 comments:
Here is the John Belton quote I was talking about from Rodowick's The Virtual Life of Film:
"Though output to electronic displays, the digital “image’s” fundamental form is …tokens of numbers that neither occupy space nor change through time. [part of the image that remains constant over several frames is therefore given to us in frame one, then replaced in successive frames by a numerical code that refers us back to frame one. For that particular part of the image, we are seeing one brief moment of time and space again and again" (in Rodowick 2007: 137).
Regardless of differences between analog and digital, both are still simply representational, and all representation contains inherent problematics in relation to the original.
It terms of art, for myself it becomes more interesting from this perspective: when the 'original' no longer exists, (over time) does the last good copy take the place of the original?
What if we stopped considering things in terms of their relation to an "original" and instead looked at everything as just being what it is.
A person, a photograph of the person, a painting based on that photograph, and a magazine picture of the painting. Each of these things is what it is. if the original was all that mattered then the only thing there would be would be the original person. And when it comes to what constitutes an original "object", we can get into some real trouble!
Excellent post and comments. What the question of the "original" overlays (as does the question of "realism" too often posited as what is loss when the cinematic turns to the digital) is - as you say - the process of perception itself, which in-mixes both the Whole and the crystal (depending on how time and movement coincide).
Daniel Dennett would likely say the same thing in terms of best draft consciousness..." we are seeing one brief moment of time and space again and again." Dennett says that we are constantly come up with improved drafts or versions of our experience of reality.
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