Augmented
- Membrana Vol. 3, no. 1
- 2018
editorial
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.
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
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
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.