| This dissertation is an exploration of if and how modalities of vision and the character of the visual are changing due to the relatively recent rise in digital imaging technologies. It addresses how we conceive of images that are intended to have or are interpreted as having documentary, legal, or scientific truth value, and how we can construe an evolution of these conceptions by looking back at the history of photography, cinema, and instrumentally aided vision in science. How do digital imaging technologies---from digital cameras and photo-editing software to computer-generated brain imaging---change our understanding of the relation between world, image, and subject? To what extent does our understanding of this relation still persist in a mechanical notion of vision and reproduction, and to what extent are archetypes of computation and information affecting how we think of it? What are the consequences of thinking of an image as a representation, as data, or as a model? What has been the result of attempts to theorize a semiology of photographic and cinematic images? The current shift in technology both allows us and requires us to revisit our assumptions about lens-based, analog images in order to come up with an approach that can account for the historical changes that have occurred in imaging technology in a satisfactory way. |
