In theory, in the digital Habitat, nothing ever dies. As I pointed out before, the digital habitat is an environment that is purely transcendental, no bodies allowed.
The notion of a universe that is 100% virtual is nothing new. All religions build their empire on that fundamental notion of „spirit“ as something opposed to „body“. The body dies, but the spirit survives. Philosopher Hegel found that spirit only manifests itself in the form of negation. “But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself ... Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. This power is identical with what we earlier called the Subject.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel If you look at old paintings, the forerunners of our overexposed visual environment, you understand that they served the purpose to show that the transcendental universe from time to time becomes visible. In the form of „revelations“. The angels and all of god’s entourage reveal themselves, they show up in rather mundane situations and leave the witnesses in awe and transformed. There were always, of course, also the darker revelations, in the form of ghosts, vampires and zombies. In the digital habitat, there are only „revelations“, but this time around, they are generated by a computer. Which means, they lack a materiality, but that doesn’t mean they are not real. A new term for that techno-revelation had to be invented, and the term is „virtual“. There is a new movie out and I think this particular one shows like no other movie the „state-of-the-art“ of what „digital“ means. It is a documentary called „They shall not grow old“, by Peter Jackson, a director famous for his „Lord of the Rings“ movies, among many other blockbuster fantasy films. They shall not grow old is based on original footage from World War I from the British Archives. But Jackson has digitally enhanced this footage to the point where it looks like it was filmed today on a 4k RED movie camera or something like that. The footage is no longer black and white, it shows a lot of detail and depth, the movements are fluid and natural, not irregular and bumpy. Take a look for yourself here. The point is - that film is no longer what we used to call a „documentary“. Why? Because a documentary is build on the assumption of analogy - technically and philosophically. A genuine documentary would show us not only what had been documented but also the mechanism of documentation that had documented it. Not long ago, there had been a few minor scandals when it became evident, that some New York Times and National Geographic Photographers had manipulated their images. The ethics of the NYT (quote: „There’s probably no more troubling issue facing photojournalism than the digital manipulation of images that are supposed to faithfully represent what’s in front of the camera.“) had been infringed, because the newspaper obliges every contributing photographer to not manipulate his pictures in any way. Those times are over, this brief period of analogue photography and reporting, and the thinking that came with it. The new revelations are all around us and in the digital age, the old maxim „Seeing is Believing“ has been turned on its head to „Believing is Seeing“. And with that, we’re back to the 14th century. The dark ages are here again!
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AuthorThomas Behrens Visual Communication is not only taking part in the digital transformation - actively and passively - he will also reflect on it. Hence the blog. Archives
January 2021
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