From the image as testimony, as literacy destined it to be, to
the image as pretext for new experiences-medium of visual
relativity and questionable morality- everything, and more, is
possible. Images can mediate in fast developing situations-
transactions, exchange of information, conflicts-better than
words can. They are free of the extra burden words bear and
allow for global and detailed local interpretation. Electronic
processing of digital photography supports comparison, as well as
manipulation, of images in view of unprecedented human
experiences requiring such functions. The metaphor of the
one-eye, which the photographic camera embodies, led to a flat
world. Cyclopes see everything flat. Unfortunately, but by no
accident, this metaphor was taken over in computer graphics.
Images on the computer screen are held together by the
conventions of monocular vision. Digital photography can be
networked and endowed with dynamic qualities. But what makes
digital photography more and more a breakthrough, in respect to
its incipient literate phase, is that we can build 3D cameras,
that is, technical beasts with two eyes (and if need be, with
more). This leads to practical experiences in a pragmatic
framework no longer limited to sequences or to reductionist
strategies of representation.
Who is afraid of a locomotive?
The image of a locomotive moving in the direction of the
spectators made them scream and run away when moving pictures
were first shown to the public.
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