From the image to digital culture


'Edmond Couchot Edmond Couchot

The transition from the optic to the numeric has radically changed the techniques of image automatization; at the same time, the corresponding systems of representing the world have changed, too. The representation of reality – or its substitution by an expression of individual imagination – is replaced by the simulation of reality by mathematical MODELS. In fact, the (automatic) digital image is no longer an optic projection of reality on a representational level (the level of the image in perspective construction, the photographic print plate, the film strip or the video tape), but a MATRIX of numbers reduced to electronic micro impulses. This matrix does not produce reproductions more or less corresponding to reality but strange and paradoxical, entirely HYBRID creations. The digital image is an art of HYBRIDIZATION, or, if you like, of CROSSBREEDING.

It is, in the first place, the hybridization of artistic and informatics know-how, of technology and language, of calculation and of the image, of symbols and of hard and software, of representation and of simulation – because it is one of the paradoxical characteristics of the synthetic images that they are often mistaken for the most realistic photographs. But it is also the traditional relations between image, subject and reality that are changing profoundly. One might say, for example, that the creator of an image as well as its beholder become united with it because of the interactive techniques that permit direct interaction by instruction or by analogous systems. Thus, the reality that has become a digital simulation by synthesis, turns from transitory representation to hybrids of image, creator and beholder. From the moment the images consists of numeric matrixes only, it becomes easy and tempting to invent new forms, but also to mix entire images or parts of images and to crossbreed images of various origins (paintings, drawings, photos, films, video, texts and also purely synthetic two- and three-dimensional images). And this extraordinary capacity of crossing, that is characteristic of the digital image, is more than a mere juxtaposition of figurative elements of differing nature, origin and function. It is an ORGANIC COMPOSITION that produces objects and beings never seen before.

However, this phenomenon is not exclusively one of the image, it manifests itself in all numerical techniques, thus announcing itself as a decisive SOCIAL PHENOMENON affecting all spheres of TECHNO-CULTURE. Therefore, we have every reason to believe that this phenomenon is more than a window to a new visual world, the GERM OF A DIFFERENT CULTURE that may bring forth the very best, but also the very worst.