Technological visibility

Summary: This thesis reports on an exploration of technology and the nature of visual perception through the medium of a flatbed scanner. Natural laws and sensuality inform the content and the methodology used in the construction of artworks that enlarge and engage the viewer's experience of hyper-realistic printed images. The exploration of natural law consists of defining the role of opposition in nature. The terms Dionysian and Apollonian as applied to Nature by the author Michael Pollan are examined as analogues of the intersection of Nature and Technology. Five categories of opposites – atmospheric, internal, objective, time-based, and material – are explored in scanner-based images. The exploration of sensuality is expressed through the subject matter of the scanner-based images. Using the scanner, mundane and humble plant material is elevated in status and takes on symbolic and metaphoric meaning beyond its existence in the natural world. The exploration of technology uses the scanner as a disrupting medium in image production. By reducing, removing and replacing components so it cannot function optimally, the scanner leaves evidence of its role in image-making on the image itself. Analogies with responses to externally imposed stress in the natural world are explored, as is the concept of the artist as cyborg. The exploration of visual perception draws on the work of artists Uta Barth and Wolfgang Tillmans, who use different methods to divert the viewer's attention away from the primary subject matter of an image and onto that which is absent or overlooked (in the case of Barth) or the mechanics of image creation (in the case of Tillmans). The work of both artists is used as a touch-point for a series of scanner-based image explorations. Theorists Jeanne Randolph and Jonathan Crary provide a foundation for discussion of the space between the viewer and a photographic image, as well as the psychological and physiological engagement of the viewer wrought by the use of a technological medium. Plans for future projects that extend and expand the ideas presented in this thesis are also discussed.