The written component of this thesis is presented in accompaniment with an experimental hyperimage documentary artefact entitled Bridging Adelaide 2001. It is a hermeneutic text reflecting on practice that incorporates digital image capture, electronic image editing, human-computer interface design and hypermedia content development. Bridging Adelaide 2001 incorporates a photographic documentary that was produced by a collaborator and myself and first exhibited in 1981. That earlier work has been supplemented with digital imagery that I have produced as part of this research. In part, the thesis is a commentary comparing my practice as a photographer who has in the past used analogical techniques to produce documentary work for exhibition in public spaces and galleries and, my practice as a contemporary, digital image-maker and designer producing work using HTML for dissemination, in this case, via CD-ROM. I describe my experimental approach and call it ontological design after Winograd and Flores. I propose that Pickering's metaphor of the “dance of agency” arising from observation of scientific experimental practice, that theorises material agency, is also apt. My thesis explores the ontological implications of computer mediation and manipulation. An historical analysis of the development of software tools for graphics and artefacts of mediation in the form of trademarks is presented. A co-determined process, of tools making manifest desire in their capabilities and, of tools conditioning creative output is observed. The role of virtuality in relation to understanding the nature of tools is discussed. Three ontological models - one from Levy, one from Haraway and, one from Hayles - are overlaid with the intention of conveying a contemporary understanding of nature of virtuality, and of mediation and manipulation as a condition is described. The contemporary, networked computer mediation paradigm is contrasted with the mass media paradigm. The latter is associated with a dilution of photography's documentary authority, the former with re-establishing that authority. This differs from the common assumption that the transience of the digital image undermines its representational reliability. Phenomenological argument of Merleau-Ponty is presented in support of my claim that computer-mediation is corporeal. The actor-network theory of Latour and Callon provides means to argue for the social, political and cultural relevance of Bridging Adelaide 2001. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2004.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267536 |
| Creators | Holmes, Ashley M. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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