Mark B. N. Hansen, The AUtomation of Sight and the Bodily Basis of Vision - kredati/media-theory-encyclopedia GitHub Wiki

The Automation of Sight and the Bodily Basis of Vision

Stephan Goslinski

Introduction

“The Automation of Sight and the Bodily Basis of Vision” is the third chapter of Mark B. N. Hansen’s book, New Philosophy for New Media, published in 2004 by The MIT Press. In this chapter, he outlines the challenges posed by developments in computational technologies relating to vision and perception, and how these challenges must effect the way scholars and artists think about human perception.

Primarily, he explains how the way in which these new technologies remove certain preconceptions regarding the formation of images (such as the importance of perspective for making meaning in images) places an impetus on humans to reinvest in the body as a centre for perception (i.e. thinking about perception not as purely visual, but as synthesizing the various body-based senses, such as tactility, proprioception, memory, and duration).

Definitions

Hansen appropriates several terms, both common and technical, on which he inscribes his own definitions. These terms include:

image – a document of information (98), not restricted to just the visual, but also able to include information drawn from affect (101); a “vehicle for perception” (98)
automated sight – the technological process by which an object is perceived without any analog involvement (94-95); it has the potential to operate on time frames too fast for human vision, and is thus a threat to the relevance of human vision (103); the category of perception here is problematized by Hansen’s Bergsonist definition of perception, which is dependent on affect, which machines lack (101)
digital – this refers less to medium of an image (i.e. an image as digital because it exists in a computer network), and more to the process of an image’s creation (95), which is wholly virtual and refers to “a data set, not a fragment of the real” (95)
perception – Hansen defines perception slightly differently at different points, alternatively referring to it as the “task of processing information” (99) and as “an active…rendering of data” (106). Regardless, as Hansen defines it, it is dependent on affection, and therefore must be embodied (100).
affect – a collection of body modalities, including “tactility, proprioception, memory, and duration” (101)

Summary

In this chapter, Hansen turns his eye to the idea perception, specifically trying to pin down what developments in computation (such as automated vision) reveal about human perception and the role that humans play in a technologized and vastly digitized world.

To lay the groundwork for his discussion, he first discusses the idea of the image, and how digital technologies have changed the way we think about images. To this end, he opens the chapter with an illustration pulled from Ridley Scott's 1994 film, Blade Runner. He recounts how in the film, Decker, the protagonist, inserts an analog photograph into a device that extrapolates it into a virtual 3D environment, which Decker can manipulate, and from which he can draw information (the identity of a suspect) that literally did not exist in the original photograph.

Hansen addresses the first-glance impossibility of the situation, but then expounds on this instinct in order to address the attitudes toward images that cause it. He comments that traditional views of images (especially those informed by photographic and cinematic schools of thought that advocate for the indexicality of the image, such as Roland Barthes and André Bazin) treat images as discrete, objective representations of reality. Instead, he will argue that the way in which Blade Runner approaches images, and the way he will approach them, informed by conceptions of digitization, is as data points extracted from a larger set.

He argues that the way we perceive the world is not through discrete, objective pictures like a photograph, but rather by interpreting a vast wealth of information (visual and affective) into a digital image. Likewise, synthetic images, such as computer-generated images, are modeled in the same way--they intake data and create a digital image of the “world,” which is then photographed by a virtual camera within the computer.

However, it is at this point that he introduces an important distinction. Whereas human perception is predicated on the (unconscious) formation of images and the (conscious) interpretation of these images, computers do not require the digitized middle step of the image in order to process information for use. He refers to this process as automated sight, and it is a fundamentally post-human process, one which neither requires, nor allows for, any human perception (at least without mediation through image-making). As such, he is not particularly interested in discussing the progress or potential of this domain, but rather on how understanding vision in this way can change the ways we understand human perception, specifically in relation to the body.

To this end, he first outlines the way(s) in which human perception is not directly visual, but is rather wholly informed by ones’ body—facilities of memory, duration (the rate at which we perceive time), and all other senses (beyond even the cardinal five), which form an affective web. This is fundamental for his argument for two reasons.

Firstly, it categorizes his definition of perception, which he borrows from Bergson; by Bergson’s logic, all perception, whether it seems purely visual or not, is in fact contaminated by affection. This isn’t necessarily negative, despite connotations of the term ‘contaminated;’ rather, this means that the foundation of any image is much broader than just visual stimuli, and as such, machines (which lack the potential for affection) cannot truly perceive anything.

Secondly, despite an inability to perceive, machines are still able to see and process data, and are able to do so on timeframes far beyond human comprehension. The potential of affection to Hansen then, is the ability to reinvest in embodied means of perception; correspondingly, rather than being absorbed as a post-human part of a larger ‘vision-machine,’ Hansen advocates that technologies of sight should be used as prosthetics to bolster the capacity of human vision, while keeping perception the domain of the human.

Discussing several artworks by artists Tamàs Waliczky, Miroslaw Rogala, and Jeffery Shaw and others, he underlines the way in which new media art can re-present the way that perception functions by staging it outside our mind, but fundamentally encouraging focus on the body. In other words, these artworks encourage the type of perception that involves both optical vision and affection, and by their form, remind the participant that this type of perception is happening.

For example, Shaw’s installation, The Golden Calf, presents an augmented reality experience wherein a viewer points a tablet’s camera at an empty pillar, but on the screen, a statue of a golden calf appears atop the pillar. As the viewer moves around the pillar and “views” it from different angles, the calf can be “seen” from different angles (including, in the calf’s metallic sheen, appropriate reflections of the room around it). In doing so, the viewer is confronted by the ways in which their own physical, embodied movement, impacts the way in which the digital image is formed.

Finally, Hansen returns to a theoretical discussion of the body as a site of perception, thereby grounding the potential demonstrated in the artworks he discussed. His closing is a hopeful one, asserting that, through aesthetic experimentation with new media art, we will become more aware of the need for embodied perception, and that reconfiguring our ideas toward this new ‘reality’ is well within the realm of possibility.

Context

Hansen writes out of a tradition of thought based on the concepts presented by Henri Bergson (1859-1941), a French philosopher whose 1896 book, Matter and Memory, has become a fairly influential text with regards to the conception of the image, and thus is of great importance to Hansen.

Bergson surmised that, rather than belonging to either the realm of tangible matter or cerebral representation, images lie somewhere halfway (Bergson vii-viii). Images, and by extension, our perceptions, are informed by both the innate qualities of objects and by processes of the mind—they reflect the independence of the objects, which have qualities that exist outside of our mental processes, but also the mental processes which treat external stimuli.

He puts forth this dualism as a response to the contemporary debate between proponents of idealism (which places the impetus for perception squarely on the mind) and realism (which places the impetus for perception squarely on the innate potential within objects). Effectively, he uses the term ‘image’ as a tool to distance perception from either one of these bases; if it can be established that all we perceive is images of objects, rather than the objects themselves, this creates some flexibility in how perception can be defined, as it is no longer wholly dependent on either the objects themselves, or our understanding of the objects.

Central to this argument is his opening affirmation of both “the reality of spirit and the reality of matter” (Bergson vii), the impetus for his investment in dualism. This particularly is an area that is of great importance to Hansen, though not necessarily directly. Rather, Bergson’s assertion manifests itself in his writing as a respect for the ways in which the spirit (or, roughly, consciousness) is dependent on not only the brain, but also myriad other bodily processes (Bergson xi). Therefore, human perception for Bergson is entirely dependent these processes, which run together as affection—“there is no perception without affection” (Bergson 60).

Additionally, Hansen calls upon the work of Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), another French philosopher whose own work draws heavily on Bergson, both in support and critique. Deleuze expands upon Bergson’s discussion of images in his 1983 book, Cinema 1: The Movement Image, in several areas. One such area is the concept of immanence, of the viewer (body and mind) situated within a universe of images, unable to remove oneself from it and attain an outside perspective. Rather, Deleuze classifies the brain as “one special image among the others” (Deleuze 62). As John Johnston, commenting on Deleuze will point out, this implies an illegibility within this system, at least in terms of human perception (Johnston 47). The body and mind, fixed in the centre of this web, cannot perceive it without the use of technology.

Discussion

While it is worth noting that this is only one chapter in a much larger book, and several of the facets below may be expounded upon at later points, it is also worth looking at the way in which this chapter, standing alone, addresses the targets at which it aims.

Goals & Argumentative Structure

Early into this chapter, Hansen introduces an illustration drawn from Kate Hayles which she terms “’the Oreo structure’ of computer mediation” (Hansen 96). This structure, which imagines such mediation as a three-step process consisting of an analog input and output (the ‘cookies’ of the metaphor) and a digital change (‘the stuff in the middle’). He foregrounds this in order to comment that “if we are to understand the impact of this complex transformation, we must not simply attend to the analog outsides, but must deprivilege our modalities enough to allow the digital middle to matter” (96-97). This affirmation is a useful starting point for a reading of the chapter, as it clearly lays out his primary goal: to make the middle matter.

Understanding this, we can see that with the rest of the chapter, he presents two main complementary goals, or effects of this primary goal: he seeks to [1] establish the ways in which progressions in automated sight have changed the way in which we can and must think about human perception, and [2] highlight the ways in which new media art provides avenues to encourage, train, and model this thinking. Furthermore, he calls not for an abstract or untargeted reassessment, but rather for one which establishes (or more accurately, affirms) bodily modalities (primarily those which form affect) as the centre of human perception.

He works towards this goal primarily by using two distinct methods.

Firstly, he goes about outlining what is effectively a history of thought pertaining to automated sight. He walks through various thinkers on the subject, including William Mitchell, Lev Manovich, Jonathan Crary, John Johnston, and Paul Virilio, ventriloquizing their related theories, and then offering criticism.

What is particularly important about this tactic is the way in which he places these sometimes very different thinkers in conversation with each other, in order to highlight the benefits and detriments of each of their thoughts, and how they in many cases build off of each other, if unintentionally. Considering that he fundamentally disagrees with some of these thinkers (Mitchell in terms of logical basis and Johnston in terms of application), this dialogue frames the criticism as fairly positive and holistic.

Consequently, this mirrors Hansen’s assertion regarding the role that technological developments have had on considerations of human vision. His argument is predicated on the fact that these developments, which could logically manifest as “the threat of total irrelevance” (103), can in fact act as “a challenge to the human, one that calls for nothing less than a reconfiguration of the organic-physiological basis of vision itself” (100). I.e. it is necessary to understand the depth of the threat of automated sight in as much detail as Hansen presents them, in order to understand the degree to which the re-embodiment he affirms is truly good news.

To support this positive message, and provide concrete illustrations of what can be done when one understands both the threat and the solution, he employs his second method of progression: he turns to examples of new media art that underscore the aesthetic considerations pertaining to this new philosophical landscape.

Looking at works by Tamàs Waliczky (The Garden, The Forest, Focusing), Miroslaw Rogala (Lover’s Leap), and Jeffery Shaw (Place: A User’s Manual, The Golden Calf, The Forest), the chapter shifts from historicized treatise into complementary showcase. Here, Hansen examines each artwork and elucidates the ways in which they each address “crucial ‘problems’ posed by the digitization of the technical (photographic) image” (120-1).

Furthermore, this discussion of art, and especially its potential to encourage changes in the viewer’s thinking, calls back to the opening of this chapter, in which Hansen describes a wildly imaginative, though nonetheless generative, scene from the beginning of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. This scene, which sees protagonist Rick Deckard introduce an analog photograph to a computer, which can then read it as part of a data set rather than a “physical inscription on light sensitive paper” (94), and thereby extract data from the larger set that does not actually exist within the photograph, can be read as a prophetic glimpse into the already manifesting potential of automated sight. This of course foreshadows the way in which the artworks discussed later on would model reactions to this very technological development, and thus establishes an art-based frame around the chapter’s argument.

By foregrounding these artworks, and by extension, an importance of art practice in this conversation, he presents the problem of automated vision as one with a clear solution, or, if not a complete solution, then at least the first step in an adaptation. This in turn casts a positive, or even “felicitous” (101) light on the challenge this chapter lays out; it would not be too far afield even for this chapter to be seen as a rally call of sorts, for new artists and scholars to answer this challenge.

Complications

While this chapter presents a fairly comprehensive analysis of the implications that developments in automated sight have on philosophies of perception (in a generic sense), and the aesthetic concerns of related new media art, it nevertheless presents some opportunities for criticism and expansion.

Firstly, there is little discussion provided with regards to the political implications of Hansen’s theory. This is especially surprising, given that he draws heavily on thought from Paul Virilio, even mobilizing his considerations of an individual’s “’freedom of perception, and the threat brought to bear on freedom by the industrialization of vision’” (Virilio, quoted in Hansen 105), as laid out in his 1997 book Open Sky.

Additionally, one could expand Hansen’s thoughts to consider the way in which the automation of vision or his embodied response could affect, or be affected by questions of identity, especially gender. His consideration of embodied prosthetics for one shares many similarities to ideas discussed by Donna Haraway in her 1985 treatise, “A Cyborg Manifesto.” Both camps share a focus on the way in which the technological prosthetic is incorporated into their respective gestalt organism (Hansen 122-123, Haraway 178)--for Hansen, the body-mind, and for Haraway, the cyborg--but differ greatly in the meaning of this incorporation; Haraway advocates an abstract post-humanism (evident throughout her essay, though not specifically stated), one which Hansen vehemently opposes (Hansen 99-100). Elucidating these similarities, and moreover navigating the gulf of difference, could prove quite a generative undertaking.

Current Applications

Virtual and augmented reality have progressed significantly in the years since this chapter was published, to the point that some of the artworks Hansen described have commonplace reflections, available in the average smartphone. Tamàs Waliczky’s Focusing for example, is echoed in modern technologies such as Google Portrait Mode, which allows for digital manipulation of focal length after a picture has already been taken, resulting in the potential for virtually limitless images from one capture.

Advancements in gaming have led to motion control (most successfully, the Wii and the X-Box Kinect), incredibly photorealistic virtual reality, and even enhanced immersion in traditional console gaming. The effect achieved with Lover’s Leap, in which participants interact with the images via their body, though in a way that highlights their complicity over their control (they are not aware exactly which actions result in which images) (112) now has a popular duplicate with every gamer who has experienced a wayward button press or non-natural gesture that resulted in an action they had not premeditated.

Furthermore, Pokémon GO, Snapchat filters, and 360 Degree photos now native to social media such as Facebook recall Shaw’s The Golden Calf (albeit with less complexity in some cases), and yet are ubiquitous.

However, all of this development calls into question the main thrust of Hansen’s thoughts about new media art; he calls the art that he addresses “concrete instantiation[s] to the fundamental shift underlying the postphotographic process” (111), but if applications of the same underlying technological principals are now available as facets of everyday life, has their potential to change our thinking changed?

One potential way to schematize this issue is to map German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s (1892-1940) conception of ‘play’ onto the domain of new media art (and adjacent manifestations). For Benjamin, film facilitates a playground of distraction, in which the actor plays “in front of an apparatus” (Benjamin 111), and the viewer participates in this play through the distraction brought about by movie-watching processes, and thereby receives the film’s ideology on a habitual level. As such, in Benjamin’s context, film is a “true training ground” (120) for ideologized persons.

Significant thought might be dedicated to the study of new media art, especially in its ubiquitous form, to determine whether it could have the same ideological effects. Furthermore, though in this chapter, Hansen is only interested in the training new media art provides regarding embodied perception, the fact that these technologies are already widely applied right now suggests that some ideology is being transmitted and/or perpetuated. To extend Hansen’s study in both technical directions (which this chapter already focuses on) and in political directions would necessarily warrant a look into what this ideology is—whether it is Hansen’s good news of embodied perception, or something more sinister.

On this note, it is also important to consider the political baggage of Hansen’s claims. He highlights the way these new media artworks so effectively encourage participants to reinvest in embodied perception, but he does so without clearly fixing a political goal of embodied perception. Aside from disavowing post-humanism (Hansen 99-100), Hansen’s political biases are kept out of his discussion. Comparing him to Benjamin, a staunch Marxist, reveals how politically dry his criticism is; Benjamin’s idea of play as a training ground is intrinsically linked to the subject that it was to train: a Marxist subject.

Relatedly, the new media art of today displays several key aesthetic differences when compared to the art that Hansen discusses, one major one being a focus on beauty. Many new technologies that capitalize on the trends Hansen discusses are developed and employed for the sake of making digital images more aesthetically pleasing: the aforementioned Google Portrait mode and Snapchat filters are examples of this.

Rather than challenge perspectival norms, like the works of Waliczky and Miroslaw, these technologies seek to smooth out glaring abnormalities and accentuate characteristics of perspective that are seen as visually pleasurable (e.g. depth of field). Aside from opening up lines of questioning that probe why these manifestations have become the norm for such technologies (as opposed to artworks like those Hansen discusses which are not traditionally beautiful), these developments may also inspire criticism into questions of pleasure and commodification of images.

Firstly, regarding pleasure, work by scholars such as American philosopher Steven Shaviro could be easily applied to address the demands of both ideas of pleasure, and Hansen’s focus on affectivity.

Shaviro’s consideration of Grace Jones’ art in “Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales” (2010), specifically regarding the digital manipulation of her image in her music video for “Corporate Cannibal” highlights the way in which non-traditional representations of beauty and power partner with affective triggers to create a unique sensory experience. Mobilizing this line of discourse might provide insights into the potential of new media (or at least post-cinematic, to use Shaviro’s term) art in a more current milieu than the one from which Hansen is writing; conversely, it could also provide insight into the way in which more popularized new media technologies either achieve a similar effect, or fall short.

Regarding the commodification of images, Hansen’s Bergsonist underpinnings perfectly situate his consideration of embodied prosthetics within Deleuze’s idea of the dividual, which he illustrates in “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (1992). With an understanding of digitization that reframes images as data points drawn from a larger set (Hansen 95), and the body-mind as one image in a web of images (99), there is a threat of division within the continuum of a human and their technological prosthetics (i.e. the distinction between person and prosthetic becomes less clear, and thus technologies of control can treat both person and prosthetic as one, dividual set of data).

Further investigation along these lines would need to foreground the role that new media technologies play in domains that interact with, rely on, or participate in technologies of control, such as social media and schooling. One would need to examine the ways in which value is produced from the images that are generated in these environments, and in doing so, track the ideologies implicit in these instances of image generation and distribution. This would potentially provide new insights into the value of re-embodying perception, insights such as: how does embodiment of perception alter the ways in which humans are made divisible?

Bibliography

Works Cited

Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer, MacMillan, 1927.

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

---. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

---. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” October, vol. 59, 1992, pp. 3–7.

Hansen, Mark B. N. “The Automation of Sight and the Bodily Basis of Vision.” New Philosophy for New Media, The MIT Press, 2004.

Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, Routledge, 1985.

Shaviro, Steven. “Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate, and Soutland Tales.” Film-Philosophy, vol. 14, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1–102.