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Aug

2008

"Image Disembodiment?", by Bernard Languillier

Found via ...? Kazys Varnelis?, Geoff at BLDGBLOG? (can't place it, but at some smart blog I read), an essay by Bernard Languillier about how the digital process is changing our relationship with printed images. It's a to-read-later piece for me right now - haven't had time to read it thoughtfully yet, but it promises some compelling insights (something a bit better than Emily Gould's recent piece in MIT's Technology Review, "It's not a revolution if nobody loses," which ostensibly bases itself on Walter Benjamin's pivotal essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction").

www.luminous-landscape.com/...disembodiment.shtml

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embodiment disembodiment photography imagery digital_pictures printing bernard_languillier

many of us still feel the need to somehow return our images to the physical world they originated from by printing them
the death of Paper.
9 more annotation(s)...
- Photographers will be able to create their images in the very environment in which their customers will in the end view the photograph. Standards will be defined that specify how a virtual fine print should be created for ultimate viewing I various possible customers configurations.
  - Yule Heibel on 2008-09-15
    - intriguing (scary?) idea: that photographers / artists / producers would in future create work with consumer totally in mind -- puts a whole new (digital) spin on patronage. In Renaissance, patrons demanded artworks suited to specific settings/ purposes, but not perhaps as micro-managed as this...?
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- Beyond technology though, this evolution will only be possible because of a much deeper change in the way people relate with time, stability and dependence
- I see a clear trend in which people have been taught to accept various aspects of their lives to be less permanent than they were in the past. This will reduce the need for images that have to be here to stay, in other words reduce the need for archival quality in photograph embodiments.
- The paradigm of property started to vanish with software licenses in which owners became life long borrowers. The concept evolved with the notion of software as a service where the usage of software itself becomes the good being owned.
- Another key enabler will be changes in the way people deal with the concept of property.
- Property becomes an instantaneous item that vanishes as time passes by
- I believe that a virtual fine art market would further accelerate and multiply creative opportunities by letting remote players unleash forms of artistic collaboration we are only starting to imagine. It does for sure extend far beyond photography.
- This along with the need to deal with more IT aspects as part of the fine art selling process will result in new business opportunities for federated online art dealership.
- This could threaten the survival of smaller producers. Will a few get visibility and survive while others cannot afford to invest in the tools and define a distribution network? The way shareware software is sold today provides interesting hints regarding suitable go to market approaches in such a context.