Digital Structure

In this chapter, I consider whether digital images are digital in the strongest sense; namely, qua images. Assuming that a digital image is one that is made and screened digitally, there is a further question as to whether the representational scheme to which the image belongs has a fundamentally digital structure. Answering this question requires close analysis of Nelson Goodman’s classical account of the analog/digital distinction. It also requires a response to Goodman’s insistence on the essential analogicity of the pictorial. Such a response points to the uses of digital sampling and quantization technology to impose digital structure on encoded, replicable images.

Digital Ontology and Appreciation

This chapter takes up the aesthetic implications of images belonging to digital schemes. I consider how the most basic feature of digital scheme types—namely, their inherent replicability—properly conditions appreciation of digital artworks. Returning to the art examples from chapter 1, I show that the inherent replicability of digital imagery does not guarantee the multiple instantiability of digital image-based works. In the digital age artists face a choice as to whether to limit their works to a particular exhibition space, or make their works universally available on the screens of networked computers. I explore the interpretive significance of this choice and the way such significance rests on recognition of the underlying digital structure of an artwork.

Digital Realism

In this chapter, I acknowledge that a study of the digital image would not be complete without a discussion of realism. The widespread concern about whether to trust digital images is tied up, for many art and media theorists, with particular accounts of realism (e.g., Rodowick 2007). The notion of realism is a complex one, and this chapter provides some important theoretical background on one central kind; namely, the kind had by traditional photographs. This prepares the way for a discussion of digital “photorealism” as it is derived from traditional “photographic realism.” Through an analysis of “live-action animated” films, I develop an account of photorealism and its effect on the viewer’s experience of the composite—i.e., part recorded, part computer-generated—shot.

Digital Interactivity

This chapter concerns the distinctive and distinctively prominent forms of interactivity realized in digital art. The focus is on the complex relation between interactivity in the visual arts and the inherent replicability of digital representation. First, I show that, despite appearances to the contrary, replicability and interactivity are compatible in the case of digital images. To do this, I argue that an artwork’s appreciative display—the structure by which the work is intended to convey its artistic content—comprises not just the materials of the work but also their uses. Then I can explain both the transmissibility of the digital image—in terms of a single display type—and the interactivity of the digital image in terms of the boundaries for modifying instances of the type in question. Once this explanation is in place, I look at ways in which the combination of transmissibility and interactivity—a combination that is unique to images that are digital—has significance for the interpretation and social function of art.

Digital Media and Appreciation

This chapter takes up the aesthetic implications of the technology of digital images. Taken together, digital technologies for production and presentation can be understood as the materials that, used for artistic ends, comprise the media of digital art. The challenge for this chapter is to defend medium-based artistic appreciation in the digital age. I argue that awareness of the uses to which an artist puts digital materials is crucial for understanding the particular embodied achievement that is that artist’s work. The kinds of image-based art examples used in this chapter are diverse. They include examples from earlier chapters but also films that rely on a digital workflow.

Digital Imaging Technology

In this chapter, I examine one sense in which digital images are digital; namely, in virtue of being made and presented with digital technology. I begin by outlining some general theoretical commitments regarding the nature and conditions of appreciation. Broadly speaking, the appreciation of art is to be understood in terms of the differential exercise of cognitive skills. Such skills can be exercised when an appreciator takes into account the distinctively digital technology involved in both the production and the screening of digital images. I give some important background on the functioning of computers and digital display tools. This background helps us understand the debate surrounding potential aesthetic losses and gains when working creatively with digital, as opposed to analog, tools.