Digital imaging and its effect on our Contemporary Culture
There are many concerns about the new media of digital imaging and manipulation and its affect on political, ethical, judicial issues and our contemporary culture. The main concern that is usually focused on is the question of truth and a person who believes every image that they may see. Some examples would be when Playboy and Vogue airbrush their models into a perfect vision. Or when National Geographic increased the space between the pyramids on the cover in 1982, does it betray the public and history.
Over the years, many people have stated that digital imaging has caused the death of photography and even the death of painting. One hundred and fifty years after the beginning of photography, its death is announced. The introduction of computer-driven imaging processes that allow "fake" photographs to be passed off as real ones. The viewers then start to loose their faith in the photographer's ability to deliver the truth. Therefore the medium loses its power as a privileged conveyor of information.
Photography may even be robbed of its cultural identity as a distinctive medium while we are entering a time when it is no longer possible to tell any instance of reality from its stimulations. The introduction of computerized images created changes in ethics, knowledge and culture. Computer images started to contribute or replace camera stills entirely. This was happening in many commercial situations, such as photojournalism and advertising. As well, we are able to print these images out in photographic quality. A person then wonders if they are able to believe in the truth of images that we see in newspapers, magazines and on the television. In the last ten years, digital images have turned the history of imagemaking on its head by making a photograph as plastic and changeable as a painting. When photography was first introduced in the middle of the 19th century, it was used in periodicals and books. Business' in the industry today also drive the evolution of new technology; as prices of software and hardware drop and performance, user interface, and output get better, the old preconceived boundaries between art and technology will fade away.
This is an evolutionary process not a revolutionary one. Artists and photographers have been collaging, airbrushing, solarizing, retouching, and vignetting for over a hundred years. Now it is just transferred onto a computer and made it possible to do the same things and much much more in less time by the click of a button. Images on television, the internet and on print, form our knowledge of the world today. As a result much digital illustration presents us with work that is conceptual and second hand, this genre already has a powerful hold on human perceptions. Working with a computer enables the individual to interact with the raw material of our culture directly. Any drawing, painting or photograph can be translated into binary data that is understood by the computer. This allows the operator to manipulate the image very easily using the power of a computer.
This new media of digital imaging has affected our artistic contemporary culture in a positive and negative way. It is amazing of what can be accomplished with a simple image and the force of technology. However, is it betrayal to us as humans that it is in our nature to believe what we see? It is your choice to see it as a negative or positive. But no matter what, the computer itself continues to depend on the thinking and world view of the humans who program, control and direct it. While the human survives, so will human values and human culture - no matter what the image making instrument being used.