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Visual Practices Across theUniversity

Jim Elkins, History of Art

[email protected] (use this for general correspondence)

[email protected] (use this for class correspondence)www.jameselkins.com (use this to buy books, and retrieve this and other texts)

www.imagehistory.org (use this to see History of Art public events)


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Questions raised by the presentations


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Contents

1. Documentation

2. Non-naturalistic images

3. Images that are not taken from a single viewpoint

4. Images that are actually made of multidimensional data

5. Images that have to be used in concert6. Image-processing software

7. Visual images as unquantified (unscientific, nonpropositional)

8. Visual analysis, formal and informal


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1. Documentation

Documentary and documentation = a kind of image that presents

itself as neutral, reliable, factual, uncreative

(but is known not to be)

Record = a kind of image that presents itself as neutral, etc.

(and is assumed to be)

Historians tend to use visual materials as evidence, and to trust

narratives to convey more difficult, undependable, ironic truths.A good source for this:

Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Use of Images as Historical Evidence


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Examples of images as documentation and as records:

Each photo captures an instant in an ephemeralcontinuum, and imposes its own aesthetics

(b) Bridgman Art Library vs Corel (this is on wikipedia.com)

(c) ine Hylands presentation (use of images as evidence)

(a) Bernadettes photos and Jools Gilson-Elliss performances

The court case found that no matter how artistic a

photograph of an artwork is, it is not creative andtherefore cannot be copyrighted

ine uses images as points of evidence, from whichdiscussions can expand

(d) The Bloody Sunday Tribunal

At least four kinds of visual images are taken to bedocumentary: (i) photographs, (ii) films, (iii) 3-DCAD environments, (iv) 3-D photomontages


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2. Non-naturalistic images

Some images require re-learning light, shade, naturalism...

A. Substitution of wavelengths

(i) or even kinds of waves: sound for light Andy Wheelers side-scan sonar

(ii) heterodyne detection the Wolf-Rayet star

(iii) false colour the Wolf-Rayet star Jim McGraths aerial view of Cork


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Non-naturalistic images, continued

B. Light in a photo brightness of the surface light = hard or rocky surfaces

(Andy Wheelers side-scan sonar)

C. Distance distance distance = time in thexdirection

(Andy Wheelers side-scan sonar)


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3. Images that are not taken from a singleviewpoint

(This goes to point no. 3 in Lecture 3: What counts as animage?)

A. Andys Wheelers sonar images are stitched together

from lateral views as the ship movesB. Atomic force microscope images (in Lecture 3) aremade by scanning across the surface with a pencil-shapedtip, the way a Cathode-ray TV screen scans across thesurface of the tube


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4. Images that are actually made ofmultidimensional data

(more than meets the eye)

A. Jim McGraths aerial photo of Cork is a composite of:(a) Four panchromatic camera views(b) Four monochromatic camera views(c) The superimposed National Grid(d) Whatever layers he adds in analysis


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5. Images that have to be used in concert

(The theorist here is William Wimsatt; hisexpression is the thicket of representation)

Nollaig Parfrey, who uses three visualization techniques for

diagnoses: TEM, immunofluorescence, light microscopy withHaematoxylin and Eoson (H&E) staining

Stephen McGraths images of the bacteriophage Tuc2009


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Examples of images used to represent bacteriophages:


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(a) TEM (transmission electron microscope) images


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(b) photomacrographs (close-up photos)


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(c) Ribbon diagrams of molecules

www.stjude.org/structural-biology/0,2540,432_2059_11435,00.html


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(d) Ball-and-stick models (Stephen did not use these)

www.ticam.utexas.edu/CCV/gallery/molecular-images/

These are the ultimate level of resolution,which the schematic parts diagrams aspire to


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(c+d) Ribbon and ball-and-stick combined

benjaman.net/


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(e) Printouts of the base pairs (chromatograms)


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(f) Graphs of the genes (gene maps)


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(g) Schematic drawings of virus parts


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www.photonics.com/XQ/ASP/url.readarticle/artid.246/QX/readart.htm, www.egglescliffe.org.uk/physics/particles/electron/electron.html

(h) Shaded 3-D computer models


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(h), shaded 3-D models, continued

A sequence attempting to find fine structure in thebacteriophage head.


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(i) shaded 3-D computer models: animations (for publicity and teaching only)


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(j) SEM (scanning electron microscope) images

These are uncommon in bacteriophage research.


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(k) life-cycle diagrams

www.mun.ca/biochem/courses/3107/Lectures/Topics/bacteriophage_replication.html


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(l) spectroscopy (with ribbon diagrams)

nmrresource.ucsd.edu/posters/thiriot02.html

6 I i f


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1. Outline drawing and counting (Pat Meeres presentation)

6. Image processing software

6 I i f


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6. Image processing software2. Mathematical modeling (Kieran Mulchrones contribution)


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Other examples of image processing:

Mar Shorten, whose software also drawsoutlines around objects

Jim McGrath, whose software translates 3-Dviews into height maps, etc.


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7. Visual images as unquantified (unscientific,nonpropositional)

In the sciences, images are taken to be propositional:

I.e., equivalent to propositions

Consequences:

(i) They can be used to calculate

(ii) They often need to be measured, or otherwise quantified

(iii) Anything non-quantitative is taken to be aesthetic


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Classic example of an image waiting to be quantified: bubble-chamber tracks of particles


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More recent, digital images of

particle accelerators, which

are already quantified

Discovery of the W particle,

showing places where particles

pass through detecting sheets


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Second example of an image

that is already quantified

All-digital X-Ray view of a

particle detector.

The particles come in left and

right.

The machinery is in red, as if

in perspective; the strengths

of the particles are imagined

as stacks of boxes.


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Best text for this difference between qualitative and quantitative:

Peter Galison, Image and Logic

A history of 20th c. microphysics, dividing it into two traditions.

Early 20th c. = image tradition: the singular, irreplaceable, photo-like image

Later 20th c. = logic tradition: the multiple, statistical aggregate,

usually digital, often diagrammatic and not photo-like


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Example of an image that awaits quantification:

Hubble image of distant galaxies; individualgalaxies are counted and measured


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Marc Shortens videos of birds are another

example. They need to be processed


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The final result is non-pictorial

(a graphic of movements), which then

becomes aerodynaics equations.


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Example of images that cannotbe quantified (Nollaig Parfreys images)

Medical semiotics is a counter-example to the rule that in science,

images need to be quantified before they are used


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8. Visual analysis, formal and informal

How should visual objects be read?

In Bettie Higgss presentation, there was informal reading (shesaid aesthetic or artistic) and formal (she said scientific)

1. Informal: immediate sensory information, unsystematic, no

disciplinary competence, qualitative, to do with feeling

2. Formal: quantitative, systematic, requires technicalknowledge (polarized light microscopy)

What are the boundaries of disciplinary competence?

(What is a discipline? Is it an accumulation of knowledge?)


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Questions will follow the contents of this file,

along with the three introductory lectures:

-- The idea of the university

-- Art and science-- Visual literacy

These are all summarized in the Table of contents

and Introduction to the book, on

http://www.jameselkins.com/html/upcoming.html

Revising for the exam


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Purposes of this course (from the introductory lecture):

1. To ask about the unity of the university:

If the faculties (schools, colleges) of a university are isolated from oneanother, in what sense is it a single institution?

2. To ask about the separation of arts and sciences:

If humanities students do not study sciences (except in popularized forms),are there two cultures (as C.P. Snow said)?

3. To ask about the role of the visual in university education:

It is often said the last hundred years are the most visual in the history ofWestern culture. But First Year university education continues to be verbaland mathematical. So, our central question:

Can images provide a lingua franca for the university?

4. To ask about the future of the history of art:

Art history is dissolving into visual studies. Should visual studies dissolve intoimage studies?


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Questions about the university(from the lecture on universities)

1. Should a university education involve fields outside of ones specialty?Outside of ones Faculty or School? And, assuming the answers are yes, what

principle might limit that expansion? Why not attempt a university-wide

education at the First Year level?

2.What should the ideal First Year course be? Should there be a First Yearcourse shared by all students?

3. Could such a course be based on visuality?


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Sample questions andanswers


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Sample question:

Choose one of the following theorists of the university andbriefly discuss his ideas: Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm von

Humboldt, Cardinal Henry Newman, Robert Maynard

Hutchins, Jaroslav Pelikan.

An answer:Kant thought that of the universitys four traditional faculties--

science, literature, classics, and philosophy--that philosophy

should be the preliminary field of study, because it is freed of

state interests and is not vocational.

The thought students could learn intellectual freedom bystudying philosophy, and then apply it to their professions. His

idea is the root of the contemporary interest in

interdisciplinarity.

From the lecture on the university


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From the lecture on science

Sample question:

Discuss two recent attempts to bridge science and

art. Take your evidence from class presentations or

from the examples discussed in the lecturescience and art. Say whether you think they were

successful or not, and why.


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Sample question:

Based on evidence in the course, argue for or against C.P. Snows claim

that there are two cultures in university life, scientific and

literary (artistic).

Sample answer:

Snow was thinking of hard science, rather than all sciences, medicine,

and engineering; and he was thinking of literature, rather than all the

arts and humanities.

So in fact there may be more links than he imagined. Also, some of the

best scientists have written popular-science books, and some of the

best scholars in the humanities have written books accessible to

everyone, so the gulf is not unbridgeable as Snow thought.

Even his essay Two Cultures is proof that conversations can bridge the

two groups. There may be as many cultures as there are Departments

in a university, or more; Snows theory is unhelpful and reductive.


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From the lecture on visual literacy

Sample question:

Name three examples of useless visualization, in which

scientists produce images even though they do not

require them for their research. If the images have other

purposes, name them.

Sample question:

Do you think image-making practices fall into families

like languages? Name three image-making practices (eg,

polarized light microscopy in geology) and tell how they

are related.


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Sample question:

Name two examples of the problem of documentation, and say whythey pose problems of objectivity.

An answer:

(a) Bernadette Sweeneys photos of Jools Gilson Elliss

performances: they are still photos of transient events, so theycannot document the performances fully. As photographs, they

bring their own viewpoints and aesthetics which might conflict with

those of the performance artist.

(b) The US law case Bridgman Art Library vs Corel, which maintains

that a photograph of an artwork is not itself creative, no matterhow skillfully it is done. This causes problems for professional

photographers, and for museums who hire the photographer and

then see other institutions profit from their work.

From this lecture (themes):


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Sample question:

Give two examples of images that require rethinking basic terms such as

light and shade.

An answer:

(a) Pat Meeres or Bettie Higgss polarized light photomicrographs of

rock sections, because the rocks arent really those colours. Denserrocks and thicker rocks may be dark, and some may be coloured, but

under the microscope the colours caused by polarized light are

superimposed on those values and hues.

(b) Andy Wheelers sonar images of the sea floor, because light patches

might indicate hard or rough ground rather than high ground. Also,shadows change length depending on how far the sea floor was from the

ship. Darker areas might not be shadows; they could be softer or

smoother areas of the sea floor.

From this file (themes):


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