the discrete image

notes on Bernard Stiegler's The Discrete Image (2002), about the invention of digital photography and cinema.

life is always already cinema.

stiegler agrees with derrida's critique of the opposition of the signifier and the signified, which proposes that language is always already writing, and in order for language to be written, it must already be a writing, a system of traces, a grammatic of discrete elements.

image mental ∄ → image mental ≔ image object

• ∄ image-object sans image mental,
• ∄ image-mental sans image object.
• image-object lasts, image-mental ephemeral.
• ∄ image → ∄ imagination sans memoire ∴ question de l'image porte sur traces et inscriptions, ≈ écriture.

discretization

• barthes proposes that photography is ēpokhē to time, memory and death.
• manipulation is the rule of the digital photo, contrary to the essence
• one cannot confirm if what I see in a digital photo exists or not ∴ analogico-digital breaks with bazin's objectivité de l'objectif, l'intentionalité (phenomenology)
• distinguish true and falls is harder, exploited and generalized w/mass media, dangerous panic decomposing social bond.
• digital technology allows us to manipulate and transform information unlike analog technology.
• infinitively manipulable but still a photo, it keeps something from the this was.
  • → This was but there is something that isn't quite right. this is because analog photo is a technical synthesis.

3 main types of reproducibility have constituted and overdetermined great epochs of memory and the relations to time in the west. (letter, analog, digital)

• reproducibility of the letter (written → printed)
• analog reproducibility (cine, photo → walter benjamin)
• digital reproducibility
• analogico-digital image combines 2 reproducibilities (digital, analog) ∴ shows they are not opposed and need to be overcome.
• the analog image is ∴ always discrete since its reality effects are determined by the photographic (framing, dof) and literal context in which it is inserted. seems continuous but is discrete.

director/editor's job is to hide the discontinuity by playing with it (analysis), continuity then comes from spectatorial synthesis (done by good artists)

• animated image ≔ plurality of discontinuous images sequentially connected
• spectatorial synthesis: the belief that this was is. made by audience (retinal) persistance and expectations of sequential connections
• discontinuity dissolves all the more effectively the more cleverly it is orchestrated
• production/realization.

discretization opens new artistic, theoretical and scientific knowledges of the image.

• digitization allows the this was to be decomposed analytically by discretizatizing the continuous.
• barthes's photographic reality effect has now been integrated into all techniques of digital treatment simulation.
• spectator's relation to the image is ∴ an analytic relation as well.
  • ⤷ the question is the relation between synthesis and analysis.

3 kinds of images (analog, digital, analogico-digital) → 3 kinds of intuitive technical knowledges (conditions of image production) → 3 different kinds of belief.

• the visual image is synthetic in 2 ways: synthesis as belief, the this was effect, is a combination of 2 syntheses (spectator and camera). spectator is affected in the way he synthesizes the image.
  • This requires an image-object ∴ technology.
  • synthesis from the subject comes from its knowledge of the technical conditions of an image-object's production.
• each image, either analog or digital, contains both knowledge and gaps in knowledge. This new awareness leads to a different form of understanding and knowledge.
  • analogico-digital technology of images opens an epoch of analytic apprehension of the image-object.
    • since synthesis is double, new analytic capacities → new synthetic capacities.
    • this discretization breaks up a continuity ∴ changes the way the observer's viewing. (discretization concernant regard est transformé)

since greece we live in an era of the relation to language, shaped by the generalization of alphabetic writing that gave rise to logic, philosophy and science. the analogico-digital is of the same order.

• the adoption of alphabetic writing made analysis and synthesis of language much easier. generalization → discretization.
• relation to the analog image is going to be very discretized as digitazion techniques of animated images become widespread. this will open a critical access to the image and a chance to develop a culture of reception.

now there's two syntheses (spectator + camera): evolution of technical synthesis → evolution of spectatorial synthesis.

• new image-objects will create new mental images and another intelligence of movement (not knowledge of the image but a new techno-intuitive knowledge). this will be influenced by other knowledges which opens up "la chance"
• technology gives us the chance to look at cinema in a different way. analysis (production) and synthesis (consumption) are more connected, making cinema similar to literature. fft
  • alphabetic writing reveals the discrete characters of language
  • reading and writing (can't do one without the other)
  • implies the rethink of hollywood's schema of analysis/production - synthesis/consumption.
• technology will make it possible to watch a movie analytically, making text and tv closer than now.
  • we will be able to navigate though the flow of images in a nonlinear way, with toc and indexes (like books), true hypermedia?
• technological synthesis is not a replica nor double, like writing is not a replication of speech.
• life (anima, mental image) is always already cinema (animation, image object).