Augmented

Membrana Vol. 3, no. 1
2018

editorial

Today, the digital augmentation to personal worlds and public spaces revolutionises how we experience both each other and ourselves. With historically unparalleled acceleration, photographic technology is ever-more immersive and interactive. This principally visual medium can react dynamically and blend realistically with our environment in real-time to add layers of novel data (across sensory modalities auditory, haptic and olfactory). Thus, with the application of the augmented photograph within a smartphone app, social network, or some other channel, our perceptual-cognition becomes increasingly embedded (between our interactions) and extended (beyond the organism). The affordances of enhanced viewer-made-participant experience, immersed in a composite visuality superimposed over the “real world,” have already begun to inspire: visual activism, protest representation, and contested identities; photo and documentary journalism; counter-information and dataveillance; remediation or reconceptualization for the iconic historical imaginary; family as well as social histories by way of shifting album paradigms; and other areas of inquiry. The notion of augmentation combines the indexical qualities of the “traditional” photographic image with “new” digital forms and functionalities.

Authors

Alexander W. Schindler, Ana Peraica, Cedric Kiefer, Clio Flego, Devon Schiller, Jernej Čuček Gerbec, John Hillman, Lenart J. Kučić, Louise M. Hisayasu, Miha Colner, Murat Durusoy, Patricia Prieto-Blanco, Richard Whitlock

Artists and Projects

Amalia Ulman, Ariel Caine, Ashley Gilbertson, Cedric Kiefer, Clement Valla, deadendthrills, Forensic Architecture, Harun Farocki, Johann Gabriel Doppelmayer, John Hillman, Kerem Ozan Bayraktar, Leonardo Sang, Murat Durusoy, Nataša Berk, Nuri Sergen Şehitoğlu, onformative, Patricia Prieto-Blanco, Public Lab, Richard Whitlock

Content

Vol. 3, no. 1
2018
06/08/2020

Essay

Images as Mediated Realities

Vilém Flusser and Harun Farocki in Meta-dialogue

Louise M. Hisayasu

Vol. 3, no. 1
2018
06/08/2020
https://doi.org/10.47659/m4.026.ess

6 min.

Reality is becoming increasingly mediated by autonomous entities, whose systems locate themselves within a blackbox.

A critical gaze and an investigative guise are necessary in a time where the uneven boundaries between “the real” and the phantasmagoric are blurred into our conceptions of reality. We are surrounded by interfaces, screens, virtual spaces and infinite networks. Technologic advancements departing from the photographic medium have the potential to change our relations to our surroundings and our conceptions of ourselves through images. We are no longer merely receivers of images, we are active producers of them; In the 1980’s, philosopher Vilém Flusser and filmmaker Harun Farocki were already engaged in questions aimed at understanding our relationship to images and our responsibility towards the production images. Both urged their readers and spectators to engage in dialogue, to understand the phenomenon of photography and its direct correlations to mass communication structures.

Keywords: codes, communication theory, reality, responsibility, technical image

Alberro, A., & Elsaesser, T. , 2014. Farocki: A Frame for the No Longer Visible: Thomas Elsaesser in Conversation with Alexander Alberro. E-flux, Journal #59, [online] November. Available online here. [Accessed 20 Nov. 2018].
Arantes, P., Nesteriuk, S., 2016. Programing the Visible: Dialogues between Vilém Flusser and Harun Farocki. Flusser Studies, 21.
Elsaesser, T., 2004. Harun Farocki: Working on the Sight-Lines. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Flusser, V., 2011. Into the Universe of Technical Images. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Flusser, V., 2002. Writings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Paglen, T., 2014. Operational Images. E-flux, Journal #59, [online] November. Available online here. [Accessed 20 Nov. 2018].

Vol. 3, no. 1
2018
06/08/2020

Review

Amalia Ulman, Photographer and Artist

Miha Colner

Vol. 3, no. 1
2018
06/08/2020
https://doi.org/10.47659/m4.008.rev

4 min.

Contemporary consumerist culture reacts very positively to visual manifestations of wealth, popularity and enviable lifestyles, something which Instagram enables and promotes.

Miha Colner (born 1978) has graduated from Art History and works as a freelance curator and art critic. Colner works as a curator and programme coordinator at the International Centre of Graphic Arts / Svicarija Creative Centre in Ljubljana. He is also active as a publicist, specialised in photography, printmaking, artists’ moving image and various forms of (new) media art. In the period 2006-2016 he was a curator at Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography, Ljubljana. Since 2005 he has been a contributor of newspapers, magazines, specialist publications, and his personal blog, as well as part-time lecturer. In 2006, he became a member of the project group Station DIVA at the SCCA Institute in Ljubljana, which is creating an archive and conducts research on Slovenian video art. In 2007, he co-curated and co-organized Break 2.4 festival, held biannually by K6/4 Institute. Since 2005, he has also worked as an art critic and a regular member of the cultural department at Radio Študent – he is an editor of the show on contemporary art Art-Area. He is also a regular external contributor to the daily newspaper Dnevnik and to the magazines Fotografija and Art-Words. He occasionally contributes to other specialist magazines on fine art and music, such as Maska, Forum, Časopis za kritiko znanosti, Flash, Folio, Zarez, Art Kontura, Frakcija (Croatia), Foto dokumenti (Serbia), Flaneur, Cluster (Great Britain), and Sculpture Network (USA).

He lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

http://mihacolner.com

http://www.mglc-lj.si

Amalia Ulman (1989) is a visual artist born in Argentina. In 2011 she graduated from the Central Saint Martins College in London. In her author’s practice she addresses phenomena such as class struggle, social gender, representation of individual in mass media and on social networks, while using photos, videos, performative practices and modern communication tools, which often go beyond classical gallery practices. Ulman lives and works in Los Angeles.

Vol. 3, no. 1
2018
06/08/2020

Review

Absence at the Time of Expected Authenticity

Nataša Berk

Miha Colner

Vol. 3, no. 1
2018
06/08/2020
https://doi.org/10.47659/m4.010.rev

11 min.

By blurring her visual identity in a public virtual space, which is almost subversive in the period of generalised extrovertedness and narcissism, Berk turns to the postulates of the dominant culture. Nevertheless, it is with this steady state of absence, during expected authenticity, that she receives a new and different type of attention from the users of social media networks.

He lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

http://mihacolner.com

http://www.mglc-lj.si

Nataša Berk graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and since 2003 she regularly creates and presents multimedia and interdisciplinary works, projects and actions ranging from performance, the adoption of identities and situations, photographs, videos, drawings to visual poetry. She lives and works in Maribor, Slovenia.

impressum

MEMBRANA 4 / 2018 • ISSN 2463-8501 • https://doi.org/10.47659/m4

publisher: Membrana, Maurerjeva 8, 1000 Ljubljana • tel.: +386 (0) 31 777 959 • email: info@membrana.org
editors: Jan Babnik (editor-in-chief), Ilija T. Tomanić • guest editor: Devon Schiller
editorial board: Mark Curran (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland; Freie Universität Berlin, Germany), Ana Peraica (independent researcher, educator, Croatia), Witold Kanicki (UAP Poznań, Poland), Miha Colner (International Centre for Graphic Arts, MGLC, Ljubljana, Slovenia), Lenart Kučić (independent journalist, Pod črto, Slovenia), Emina Djukić (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Jasna Jernejšek (independent researcher, curator, Slovenia), Asko Lehmuskallio (University of Tampere, Finland), Devon Schiller (independent researcher, USA), Robert Hariman (Northwestern University, USA) • advisory board: Alisha Sett, Andreia Alves de Oliveira, Iza Pevec, Matej Sitar
article contributors: Miha Colner, Murat Durusoy, Clio Flego, Jernej Čuček Gerbec, John Hillman, Louise Hisayasu, Lenart J. Kučić, Ana Peraica, Patricia Prieto-Blanco, Devon Schiller, Alexander W. Schindler, Richard Whitlock
translations: Tom Smith • proofreading: Tom Smith, Anja Kos
image & projects contributors: Forensic Architecture, Murat Durusoy, onformative, Nataša Berk, Amalia Ulman, Ashley Gilbertson, Kerem Ozan Bayraktar, Dead End Thrills, Leonardo Sang, Clement Valla, Nuri Sergen Şehito lu, Harun Farocki, Vilém Flusser, Patricia Prieto-Blanco, Johann Gabriel Doppelmayer, Richard Whitlock
design: Primož Pislak
printing: Cicero • print-run: 400

all images and texts © Membrana, except when noted otherwise • editorial photograph: onformative, from installation view of Meandering River [audiovisual digital artwork], Berlin, Funkhaus, 2017. Used with permission. • last page photo from: screen capture from video by Harun Farocki, Eye/Machine III (Auge/Maschine III) © Harun Farocki, 2003.