The image above comes from "The beauty of the virtual world caught in the photographic image", a project which sets out to document virtual worlds in much the way one might in the 'normal' world. Robert William Overweg approaches the subject from the perspective of an art student whose work is 'engaged with the truth and reality issue in images. Especially news/media images. My essay of course deals with Susan Sontag, Jean Baudrillard, all the reasons why photography fails as messenger of the truth. It is allways[sic] a representation of the truth. Photography is the translator of the truth but one with a serious handicap.' (via)

It is in turning from this to look at Jason Evans' quasi-essay, quasi-resource on the state of modern 'serious' photography and its relationship to the web that we might begin to raise serious questions about the nature of photography in an unreal world. His links point us all over the web - he wonders:

Imagine if the Internet had emerged in the early twentieth century. [...] I guess it is simply a matter of time before a generation not weaned on paper and chemicals sees the manufactured bubble of “art photography” for what it is, and begins to explore the potential of an inclusive, affordable distribution network and its inherently interesting formal qualities.

This fortnight, with a number of fresh posts in our ongoing exploration of Appropriation in Creative Practice, from a fresh manuscript of Betaville and the beginning of a series in Last Days, where I would most like to focus in the light of the comments about photography above is on a couple of posts from Jeff Thompson and Anne Percoco, and Asa Stahl's comment that 'giving a link to a web page is not standard procedure for reference'.

Jeff restarts his work by taking a second movie - this time, The Graduate. By taking a short section of the film in which a blurred yellow flower fills the frame as his point of reference, he invites David's comment / question relating to decayed film stock and the movie Decasia. David references Green Screen, but we might as easily reference Obscured Room, in which anecdotal evidence about obscured vision lead to a series of twisted and obscured photographs. In the light of the comments above regarding photography as the messenger or translator of truth, how do these lenses help us to understand the world, whether it be a personal reading of a movie (also interpreted as meme translation or subversion) or the illustration of a story?

It is just such a set of all-encompassing lenses that the philosopher JJ Gibson suggested we wear at all times in order simply to make sense of the world -

Gibson assumed that we perceive in order to operate on the environment. Perception is designed for action. Gibson called the perceivable possibilities for action affordances. He claimed that we perceive affordance properties of the environment in a direct and immediate way. This theory is clearly attractive from the perspective of visualization. The goal of most visualization is decision making. In short, Gibson claims that we perceive possibilities for action. i.e. surfaces for walking, handles for pulling, space for navigation, tools for manipulating, etc. In general, our whole evolution has been geared toward perceiving useful possibilities for action. (via)

Such an action-based view of the world creates all sorts of problems when we attempt to move it between media. Just what decision is required when one perceives Oldenburg's Typewriter Eraser? How does this means of telling a simple message about the physical world allow us to understand the element's affordances and thus translate those to a form of meaning. Perhaps it is the reverse - we cannot make decisions about the objects of art as they are not true elements that call for our action?

Quite how we choose to act based on this overflow of information - and it is hardly that Gibson is regarded as seriously now as he may have been at one point - there are all sorts of questions raised that link immediately to Asa's comment on 'procedures'. What series of procedures must I undergo when faced with something I know not to be 'real' (be it outsize eraser or a picture of a virtual world) compared with those that I must undergo when faced w/ the 'real'?

- Oliver Luker