Data Bending

In today's class we focused on data bending. Usually employed in 'Glitch Art', data bending allows for the manipulation of the information within a media file. Just like how an effects pedal can manipulate the sound created through an amplifier when an electric guitar is played, there are a number of ways we can manipulate the way an image looks.

The above images were manipulated by changing and editing the text information of the image in a computer app called Text Edit.

Original Image

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Example of .txt file

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By changing and replacing a variety of numbers with something of a different numerical value, I was able to produce the three images above that was originally an image of president-elect Donald Trump. I completely changed the image to the point where you can't even make out who the original picture was taken of. I wanted to make a link to the lies that Donald Trump expressed in his election campaign to the images I produced. When viewing the images you feel as if you're missing a vital piece of information in order to sense of them, just like how many people felt about Donald Trump in his election campaign - when viewing the way he conducted his campaign, I felt as if he wasn't giving us all the information and he had to rely on lies, 'fake news' and rhetoric. It distorted the way I thought about American politics, just like how these images actually distort the way we see Trump. 

Manipulated Image

Original Image

Another example of Databending (or Datamoshing in this case) was achieved by turning the original image into a sound file and using the computer software Audacity to apply sound effects to the sound file. We then convert the manipulated sound file back into an image file and the results can be seen in the manipulated image. The effect used here was 'echo' and we can see how the colour of the image has been changed radically. Although I have not manipulated the image as much as the ones show before, it's interesting to see how something a little more subtle can make an existing image more interesting to look at.

Analog to Digital: The Indexical Function of Photographic Images - Corey Dzenko

Marshall McLuhan: "The medium is the message."

The 'medium'  is any extension of the human senses .

The 'message' explains how a new medium affects culture.

Digital photography accelerated and enlarged traditional photographic processes due to transforming photographs from objects into data. This change from analog to digital photography challenges changed whether photography remains a representation of reality.

A digital photograph means a lack of physical connection between the photographs subject and image. An analog photographic process contained a certain 'physicality' that the a creation of digital photographs do not possess.

In digital technology it's easier to edit tangible data to create images of subject that never existed in reality, which casts doubt on the connections made between photography and reality. However, digital images rely heavily on how we understand analog photography as we treat them in the same way. 

Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin use the term 'remediation' to describe how characteristics of older media are used to establish the cultural uses of newer media. They claim that when a medium has convinced viewers of its immediacy, then following media attempts to make use of this. For example, graphic icons used on computers are used again to identify a similar piece of software.

By maintaining the conventions in which we understand analog photography, a transition has been created from analog photographs to digital photographs. Online newspapers still follow the same structure for their articles of printed newspapers for example.

Kerry Skarbakka - Stairs (2002)

This image was posted to the website FailBlog.org by the photographer. Viewers of the website responded to the image as if the subject was actually falling down the stairs and failed to realise this image has actually been constructed by the photographer through editing techniques. The viewers read this photograph as if it was reality and not a manipulated image. This is an example of how we still understand digital photographs as if they were analog photographs. Dzenko argues that these images impact viewers' reception of images more than theories of digital photography's lack of indexicality. 

Circulation and Authorship of the Photo Image

Authorship refers to the person who has legal ownership of an image which may have been shared, on social media for example.

Circulation is the way in which we go about sharing these images. Dictionary definition is 'the public availability or knowledge of something'.

The images we upload to social media are accessible by anyone in the world. If they have this level accessibility, couldn't others use the photographs that we have chosen to share with the world and use them to create their own pieces of art? Who would the photographs belong to in this case?

Michael Wolf

"Real Fake Art" 

German artist and photographer can be used as an example. In this series of photographs, Wolf, takes pictures of his subject holding pieces of art that aren't his own. Wolf doesn't have authorship of the piece of artwork in the image, but he does have authorship of the photograph of someone holding the piece. 

Is Emoji Replacing Our Need for Human Interaction? Samir Goel

"As we spend less time together in person, emoji fills a hole in allowing us to convey our ever-shifting sense of identity to both those who matter most and strangers. Emoji’s are now being used to represent who we are and what we stand for."

In this short article, Goel argues that digital communication can never convey real human interaction. He explains how the 'Emoji' was created to bridge this gap between digital communication and face-to-face human interaction. He claims that the introduction of emoji's into digital communication is an attempt to reduce the need to connect in person.

However, people are are dissatisfied that emoji's on representative of themselves. Goel uses Rayouf Alhumedhi's campaign as an example of this. Alhumedhis campaigns for an emoji to be created showing the faces to be wearing a hijab to represent female, muslim social media users.

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This article has given me inspiration for some of my images for my photo-essay. I intend to incorporate famous icons, emojis and WhatsApp text bubbles into my images to explore the points raised about face-to-face human interaction by Goel in this article.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/can-emoji-replace-human-interaction-samir-goel?trk=hp-feed-article-title-channel-add

JPEG & RAW - Examples from Landscape Photography Task

DSLRs have the ability to simply just take JPEG images and be processed from within the camera. While the photographer is in charge of setting the exposure, if a JPEG setting is being used, then the camera will process that image to add blacks, contrast, noise reduction, sharpening and then render the image to a compressed JPEG file format. This is a 'loss' file format, meaning that the file has been compressed.

It is important to understand 'dynamic range' before we talk about .RAW files. Dynamic Range is the amount of tonal range detail from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlight (see notes on histograms in photoshop post). Dynamic Range detail is significantly reduced as compared to RAW.

Edited RAW Image (converted to JPEG)

Unedited RAW Image (converted to JPEG)

RAW files are essentially uncompressed and unprocessed images that retain all of the detail that was available to the camera sensor. One obvious observation is the file sizes of RAW images are huge in comparison to JPEG files.

RAW files, when added to Photoshop, allow a window to edit the RAW image before it is then properly edited in the software. Above you can see examples of my experimentation with the graduated filter tool and the adjustment brush tool. The graduated filter tool allowed me to darken and and show details of the cloudy sky. The adjustment brush tool allowed me to make the trees, grass and buildings in the middle of the image appear more vivid.

RAW files are not always useful, especially if they are just for uploading to an internet blog for example. But for my project I will set my camera to take both a RAW file and a JPEG when shooting for images to be included in my final submission.

A Series of Photographs from the Street Photography Task

Editing on Photoshop

Unedited

The majority of the images I that I categorised on Adobe Bridge fell under the 'Maybe' or 'Maybe with Editing' categories. In our workshop we looked at a few ways we can edit images.

Firstly, we looked at what information the histogram feature on Photoshop can show us. A histogram has the ability to display an images tone range in graphical form. A histogram with gaps on the left of the graph indicated a photograph that is overexposed (image is too bright) and one with gaps on the right of the graph indicates an images that is underexposed (too dark). An image with a good tonal range and correctly exposed is one that will display pixels right across the graph. An interesting feature I would like to explore further is the 'All Channels View' which seems to show individual histograms for each colour channel.

I was demonstrated the Brightness/Contrast method of adjustment. This allows you to make simple adjustments to the tonal range of the images. From moving the Brightness slider to the right, it increases tonal values and expands image highlights. Moving the slider to the right decreases tonal values and expands the images shadows. A photograph that I took of an electrician in a doorway was one this feature definitely benefited from. It allowed his face to just come into view, but not so much that it didn't fit my subject criteria!

I also explored the vibrance adjustment tool for my images. I wanted to some more of the muted colours in my images to stand out a little more so increased the vibrance, I also slightly increased the saturation, which increases the intensity of all the colours in the image. I realised after experimenting with this tool not to over do it as it can make skin tones look unnatural.

Another obvious feature of my editing process was my use of cropping. The cropping tool allowed me to cut out sections of the whole image. As I like this image, but it doesn't fit my selection criteria, I used the cropping tool to remove the upper part of the face of one of the subjects in the image.

Edited