I'm also interested to hear more on the subject of
'mystification'
From wikipedia entry for information:
When referring to the meaning content of a message
Shannon noted “Frequently the messages have meaning”…
these semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant
to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is
that the actual message is one selected from a set of
possible messages”
We do of course realise that information is always
embedded within some sort of material substrate, so we
talk of the RAM space an image occupies in bits and
bytes etc., as well as the representation of it on the
screen through graphics processors, right through to
an eventual print-out. This more Mckay like attitude
to information is the grounding of Shannon's model; we
cannot ignore the semantic apsects.
My interest in groundlessness (this may be misleading
as a term) is that information is of course a pattern
within any drawing framework, which also include the
working artist and chosen medium.
As an artist working with digital components as part
of a framework, this pattern is not fixed in quite the
same way that a conventional drawing is. At best it
resides in RAM, or perhaps somewhere else, i.e between
a pen touching a piece of paper, which is being fed as
a video signal, live into some sort of processing
software that prints it, and then saves it as a file,
suggests to me that dissection of this framework would
locate the drawing in all parts; this is the
groundless quality, but I'm willing to concede that
the term may be misleading.
The principal interest I have is in drawing's
translation from one part of a framework to another,
for translation always presupposes an original, which
i s absent here, or seems to be. From RAM to the
screen we have inter-semiotic transfer, discrete bits
translated into visible pixels (crudely stated).
Perhaps by this stage, only our intentions indicate
that drawing is what we are doing, for the results
more like something other; I know that a print of a
drawing is a print for instance and not a drawing.
There seems to something inherently contradictory
about the whole thing.
I appreciate everyone's efforts in helping to shape
and clarify these ideas.
but is then translated into a static file, printed or
played as a piece of music; it's up for grabs. One
thing is for sure, and that is that it's not visible
under normal conditions.
--- John Stell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Julian makes a good point, which seems sometimes to
> be forgotten,
> that digital images (and not just images of course)
> always have
> some physical realization. This is usually on some
> kind of electronic
> storage medium (CD, magnetic disc, etc) but could in
> principle
> just as well be printed or even written by hand on
> paper in some
> agreed coding such as a sequence of numerals zero
> and one. Equally
> we could realize the information in knotted string
> or modified
> genetic material.
>
> These physical realizations don't actually seem to
> be what we
> think of as the digital data itself, which is
> something more
> abstract than any physical realization. I think
> there is an
> analogy with numbers and other abstract things. We
> talk about
> "the number ten" or the idea of "a square" without
> having
> to mean any ten things or any particular square.
>
> Is the digital image something as distinct from any
> physical
> realization, just like writing the word "square" is
> distinct
> from the idea of a square?
>
> The difference between digital images and
> printmaking or the non-digital
> photographic image is that the digital is an
> abstract entity which can
> be denoted by many physical realizations all of
> which carry exactly
> the same information. [I mean the physical
> realization of the
> data itself, not a printout of the image.] With a
> photographic negative,
> the original has status not just because of its
> cultural significance,
> but because it cannot be copied perfectly. Similarly
> a printmaking
> plate cannot be copied perfectly, and printing from
> it always
> entails some physical damage to the plate which
> cannot be
> be restored to something that would be agreed to be
> the same plate
> as the original.
>
> I'm not sure what Julian means by 'mystification'
> and would
> interested to hear any clarification of this, but it
> seems to
> me that there is something fundamentally different
> about digital
> information.
>
> John Stell
>
> On Sun, 9 Jul 2006, Julian Howell wrote:
>
> > I have a resistance to a mystification of digital
> drawing that seems to arise from comparisons with
> > 'traditional' drawing. I prefer to think of
> digital image-making as more akin to photographic or
> > printmaking processes than to directly marking
> surfaces.
> >
> > Digital artwork does have a physical state - an
> arrangment of electrons on a silicon chip - and
> > although we cannot see this directly, we are used
> to this virtuality, from photography. We take a
> > picture on film and we can't see it until we do
> something to it to make it visible. What I think of
> as
> > the 'grain' of digital images (the pixel
> resolution) is usually very crude compared to
> drawing
> > directly on a surface. Vector images don't have
> the same grain as bitmap images, but both are still
> > dependent on output devices (printer, screen,
> plotter etc), which are still very crude compared to
> > marks on a surface.
> >
> > It is possible to alter digital images
> extensively, but it is also possible to process
> film, printing
> > plates or drawings extensively or to translate
> them to the stimulation of other senses.
> >
> > Some of the wonder of digitalisation is the speed
> with which changes and translations can be
> > made. And this is enabled partly because digital
> images contain information which (at present) is
> > vastly simplified compared to what our senses are
> used to dealing with.
> >
> > Julian Howell
> > (Kingston University MA drawing as Process
> student)
> >
>
> --
> Dr John G. Stell room: E.C.Stoner
> 9.15
> School of Computing phone: +44 113 34
> 31076
> University of Leeds fax: +44 113 34
> 35468
> Leeds, LS2 9JT email:
> [log in to unmask]
> U.K.
> http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/jgs
>
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>
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