User:Marie Wocher/Image and Interface- Text Draft

Images are produced and reproduced, everyone has the chance to manipulate images. One image the reproduces the same, creates another meaning and at the same time makes the original more meaningful. Every image is a thousand times reproduced. Every time the same picture is reproduced, we see it a little bit different. Same, same, but different. It is like telling a story like Laric's says that in the telling and retelling people reveal not the action, but themselves. Same, same, but different.

Every picture becomes a part of the archive. At the same time we can influence the archive and are influenced. Do we know the original image, is it finally important to know what is original and what is fake or manipulation? Images, manipulated or not influence our thought, they change our reality. In the example in Olivier Laric’s film, where he shows lots of versions of the same image of rockets I easily could take a manipulated version of the original image for granted. But not only the manipulation of images change reality, also the mass of the same picture changes our view. Something that is reproduced often, claims attention. If I want or not, the image will stick in peoples minds. It is the same principle like the like button works. Every like creates a parallel world, the world in which it is true. The image exponentiate with every manipulation of the same. Zidane's clout during the football world championships became an icon, that where reproduced a thousand times. With each reproduction it became more popular, more important. Is reality influenced by the mass of an image and not by the image itself?

To me, it is fascinating how images form a society. Almost every situation we never experienced in our life, we already know from images. For example, if your partner cheated on you, you know how to behave. Even if it is the first time for you in this position and you actually don't know how you personally would react, you have a catalog of options in your mind, because you have seen this situation a hundred times.

We recognise every image as something we already know. Everywhere we encounter images or fragments of images that we recognise from somewhere else. This is why one image never stands for itself, it always talks to another image.

We are influenced by pictures just like we are influenced by the interface. not only images, also interfaces modulates the behaviour of the user. For example the google search is a modulation, we are influenced by the search results google spits out as well as the order in which we see the results. Or another example is that i-pod files are not accessable, we just take it for granted, we accept it and live with it. In Harun Farocki's documentary I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts interface modulates the behaviour of the user.

The documentary shows the shift from a disciplinary society to a society of control, in this example behaviour is directed and modified through the interface. The interface is the architecture of the building, the behaviour between guards and prisoners, the system of surveillance etc

Is it important to know what is the original? What does originality mean? Is originality equated with authenticity? In Olivier Larick's film, he says that that authenticity is decided by the viewer. Due to his background he/she will assess what he/she finds authentic. Because the viewer decides about authenticity, multiple realities coexist. In DIAL HISTORY by Johan Grimonprez several truths exist next to each other. The film is a chronology of hijackings that has happened until 2003, when the film was made. The film is a fictional narrative that examines the value of the spectacular catastrophe culture. DIAL HISTORY mixes photographs, analog and digital images, it combines documentaries, science-fiction movies, existing movies and footage that is created by Grimonprez. What is truth, what is fiction, what is original, what is fake? Borders blur and finally the film doesn't want to be a documentary, Grimonprez uses the influence of images to influence our feelings, our knowledge.

Why does authenticity plays such a big role in the present? How often you hear sentences like: Just be yourself, be authentic. Authenticity became apparently very important in the age of copy and paste. If it doesn't matter if the image is the original or not, as long as we have the feeling that it is authentic, Originality plays apparently no role anymore. At least in the digital world. In the digital world it is not about the image itself, it is about the documentation. Products have no authenticity in the digital world. But in the analog world originality seems to become increasingly important. In fine arts for example the prices that artefacts reached at Christie's and Sotheby's increased during the past two decades. Another example: for a limited edition of an LP of Bob Dylan huge sums are expended. A whole branch of the economy deals with the creation of soul of products. We don't by the music, the music we could easily download as mp3, we by a product that has an aura.

Fred Ritchin describes this perception of the permanence offered by the digital: Digital is based on an architecture of infinitely repeatable abstractions in which the original and its copy are the same; analog ages and rots, diminishing over generations, changing its sound, its look, its smell. In the analog world the photograph of the photograph is always one generation removed, fuzzier, not the same; the digital copy of the digital photograph is indistinguishable so that ‘original’ loses its meaning.