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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00560
- Thesis Title
- Photography from the Turin Shroud to the Turing Machine
- Author
- Yanai Toister
- E-mail
- yt AT yanaitoister.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- PhD
- Year
- 2015
- Number of Pages
- 271
- University
- Sydney
- Thesis Supervisor
- Ross Gibson
- Supervisor e-mail
- Ross.Gibson AT sydney.edu.au
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Sydney College of the Arts
- Copyright Ownership
- Yanai Toister
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English, Hebrew, German (basic)
- URL where full thesis can be found
- ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/14911
- Keywords
- Photography, Turin Shroud, Turing Machine, Analogue Photography, Digital Photography, Vilém Flusser
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- Photography has always been a migratory system of representation. Today, it is integrated into numerous systems, in a profusion of specialties, sub-disciplines and disciplines. Within many of these domains, the exponentially growing powers of information processing enable the manufacturing of images that are seemingly photographic, yet partly (or fully) synthetic. How do we define these images? Are traditional disciplinary accounts relevant?
Photography’s cultural value is most often measured in terms of its products, the various kinds of pictures that it generates. Instead, photography can be interrogated by studying the dynamic relationships between its components: the electromagnetic, optical, mechanical, chemical and recently mathematical elements and procedures that combine as a process that produces images.
This dissertation utilizes two metaphors for defining photography: the Turin Shroud and the Universal Turing Machine. The former is presented as a set of propositions that facilitate new understandings about the history and theory of photography. The latter is introduced as a conceptual model that expands the theory and philosophy of photography into new realms, most notably those of new media and media philosophy.
In support of this novel exposition, and to more adequately portray the trajectory of photography’s reincarnation as a form of computation, various terms from Vilém Flusser’s philosophy are reinterpreted and further developed. Through these it is suggested that photography is a family of programs wherein both ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ characteristics always coexist. These are not to be seen as mutually exclusive qualities but as complementary discursive modalities. Further, because photography has always had mathematical qualities and potentialities, the recent technological turmoil does not designate the ‘end’ of the medium, but rather its coming of age. Importantly, now that the medium of photography has become media, photographic images should no longer be understood as bearers of ontological qualities but only as epistemic containers.