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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00823
- Thesis Title
- Proxistant Vision
- Author
- Synne Tollerud Bull
- E-mail
- synne AT bull.miletic.info
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- PhD
- Year
- 2020
- Number of Pages
- 330
- University
- University of Oslo, Norway
- Thesis Supervisor
- Liv Hausken
- Supervisor e-mail
- liv.hausken AT media.uio.no
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Ina Blom
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Faculty of Humanities /Media Aesthetics, Media and Communication / Media and Communication / Media Aesthetics
- Copyright Ownership
- Synne Tollerud Bull
- Languages Familiar to Author
- Norwegian, English, German
- URL where full thesis can be found
- NA
- Keywords
- Satellites, drones, observation wheels, remote sensing, geodata, cinema and cartography, art history, media archeology
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- In this dissertation, I have identified a visual modality that combines proximity and distance for which I devised the term proxistant vision. The current proliferation of proxistant vision in contemporary visual culture is an outcome of the recent surge in the development of aerial imaging technologies such as observation wheels, drones and satellites. I have pointed to how smooth proxistant vision (SPV) multiplies across screens and devices through 3D animated flyover effects in digital maps, computer games, architectural models, data visualizations and CGI cinema. I have furthermore demonstrated how this visual modality involves multiple sensor and mapping techniques, where digital environments are made up of datasets translated into wireframe and composite assemblages. The key objective of this research project has been threefold: to trace the genealogy and understand the operation of the proxistant visual modality as it traveled from periphery to center stage in the 21st century mediasphere, to explore its alternative potentialities in contemporary art practices, and, finally, to reflect on the worldviews that underpin smooth proxistant vision. I structured my approach into three chapters pertaining to three aerial strata of machinic operations, with mobility, navigation, and scale figuring as key cartographic concepts respectively. My study of proxistant vision is therefore primarily situated between cinema studies, cartography, art history and media archaeology. I hope to have demonstrated that proxistant vision, although primarily manifested through the moving image today, has emerged from cartographic practices of mobility and navigation and the dream of a scalable world. My dissertation thus serves three purposes. First, it shows how the seemingly different disciplines of cinema and cartography come together in a visual modality that currently proliferates across practices and fields. Secondly, it traces some of the technological and historical contingencies with which proxistant vision operates today. Finally, the dissertation concludes with a reflection on the worldviews that such visual modality may produce.