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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - A World of Imprints: The Epistemology of Visual Evidence Between Digital and Virtual Media-Ecologies
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2022/06/27
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Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - A World of Imprints: The Epistemology of Visual Evidence Between Digital and Virtual Media-Ecologies
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                                                                                       A World of Imprints: The Epistemology
                                                                                       of Visual Evidence Between Digital and
                                                                                       Virtual Media-Ecologies
                                                                                       Rosa Cinelli/Ph.D. Thesis Abstract1
                                                                                       Ph.D. in co-direction:
                                                                                       Università di Milano
                                                                                       ERC Advanced Project “An-Iconology. History, Theory and Practices of
                                                                                       Environmental Images”
                                                                                       Université Côte d’Azur
                                                                                       Extended reality research and creative Center xr²c²
                                                                                       DOI 10.54103/2036-461X/17982




                                                                                          Throughout the history of mechanical images      be defined as a visualization, composition, or
                                                                                       — the first of which is surely photography — the    assemblage: all of these are complex concepts
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       capacity of the image to adhere to its object or    entailing different theories and archaeologies. A
                                                                                       referent has influenced its positioning within      new type of imaginary challenges the traditional
                                                                                       aesthetic, artistic, and semiotic theories.         tools commonly used to describe photographic
                                                                                       Referentiality, understood as the ‘founding order   and filmic images, such as, for instance, Peirce’s
                                                                                       of photography’,2 was considered the cornerstone    very concept of the index.3 While it is true that
                                                                                       of a precise ontological definition of the image    a complete feeling of scepticism towards the
                                                                                       and has contributed to creating a link between      image — often prophesied by the detractors of
                                                                                       mechanically generated images and the realm of      the digital revolution — has not completely taken
                                                                                       veridiction.                                        over, it is possible to state that the procedure
                                                                                          Nevertheless, today, new mediatic practices      which allows for an image to be regarded as a
                                                                                       like Virtual Reality, CGI, and AI-powered images    visual fact seems more often to derive from a
                                                                                       (such as machine vision) are increasingly           context-based rhetorical mechanism4 than to
                                                                                       challenging the epistemological paradigm of         be guaranteed by the technical genesis of the
                                                                                       what counts as visual evidence. From immersive      image. This seemingly very subtle change, since
                                                                                       and visual journalism to forensic practices and     it does not entail a radical transformation from
                                                                                       data-driven investigations, a vast panorama         the pragmatic point of view, is nevertheless a
                                                                                       is taking shape in which photographic images        very theoretically rich node as it suggests a
                                                                                       are more and more blended with computer-            shift from the ontological to the rhetorical plane
                                                                                       based ones, creating uncanny configurations         of discourse. Must the traditional ontology of
                                                                                       which are reshaping the regimes of visuality as     the photographic image as a truthful — or even
                                                                                       well as our information economy. At times, this     sacred — imprint be discarded for good?
                                                                                       polymorphic class of composite images may              Ethical concerns may also be raised when


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 22 no. 38 2022 · ISSN 2036-461X                                             153
this hybrid visual regime is considered in its          forms of empathy,14 raising again the question of
socio-political agency. Contemporary journalism         the representability of others’ sufferings as well
practices, such as visual journalismi5 and the          as issues in power and gaze distribution.
emerging fields of forensic aesthetics6 are                When contemplating this spectre of practices,
imposing new challenges to research. Making             many questions can be raised: are we
broad use of so-called ‘algorithmic’ devices,7          witnessing the affirmation of a new kind of visual
these experimentations are aspiring to confer full      regime regulating the realm of veridiction by
visibility to complex socio-political phenomena,        simultaneously hyper-stimulating an empathic
ranging from humanitarian conflicts and                 response and completely eluding the percipient
migrations to the ecological crisis. Re-signifying      subject? What kind of images are now worth
what Paul Virilio already referred to as ‘the           believing in, at a time of an increasing hybridization
vision machine’,8 a very problematic posthuman          between ‘traditional’ photography and new
dimension is added to the very human relevance          technological imageries? How do these new
of visual evidence.                                     developments in the realm of the image affect the
  This ‘forensic turn’ in visual studies9 — or,         slippery relationship between the document and
rather, the ‘visual turn’ of forensics — is proposing   the artistic genre of the documentary? And more
revisions of aesthetics and media theories, since       generally, is it still possible to talk about images
an important part of such investigations aims           at all, or should we give up this concept in favour
to make sensible and evidential what so far has         of a different one?
been considered as a ‘mere’ thing, such as the             This doctoral project aims to try to answer these
dust that is lifted in an explosion, the cracks in      questions by considering photography’s episteme
the walls of a building, or the growth patterns of      and its remediations in the contemporary media
trees in forests.10                                     ecology. Particular attention will be paid to the
  On the other hand, looking at what seems to           semiotic concept of index as well as to those
constitute a more sensationalist pole of the            of trace, imprint, and document. Drawing from
scope, the experiences proposed by the field            visual culture studies and media-archaeology
of Virtual Reality immersive journalism11 are           approaches, this project aims to articulate a
characterized by the idea of reporting on news          theoretical framework that will fill these research
episodes, providing the viewer not only with a          gaps, and it intends to do so by adopting an
hyper-realistic rendering of their object but also to   interdisciplinary methodology combining the
make him or her feel as if she or he were assisting     field of aesthetics, semiotics, and theory of
at the scene of the event. The verisimilitude           photography.
of sensorimotor movements allowed by the
head-mounted device, the plausibility of the
reconstruction and the emotional and empathic
response of the experiencer confer a sense
of quasi-reality that is linked to a very strong
sense of presence. The feeling of almost ‘being
there’12 suggested by these ‘out-of-frame’13
images creates a perpetually unfolding present,
which seems to re-actualize the ‘has been’ of
Barthesian memory with forms of immediacy: ‘I
am there’, ‘that is’, ‘this is happening’. However,
this sense of presence does not come without
the risks of what has been regarded as ‘toxic’



154                                                                              Cinelli, A World of Imprints
   Notes
    1
        Ph.D thesis supervised by Barbara Grespi (Università di Milano) e Matteo Treleani (Université
   Côte d’Azur). For information: rosa.cinelli@unimi.it.
     2
        Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. By Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 77.
     3
         B. Grespi, ‘L’evidenza dell’immagine. Postfotografia e idea documentaria’, Dalla parte delle
   immagini. Temi di cultura visuale, ed. by Barbara Grespi and Luca Malavasi (Milan: McGraw Hill,
   2022), 61–104.
     4
       André Gunthert, L’image partagée (Paris: Textuel, 2015).
     5
       Some examples are, The Citizen Evidence Lab held by Amnesty International, the visual journalism
   section in the New York Times online journal, or the website Bellingcat.com.
     6
       Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability (New York: Zone
   Books, 2017), Eyal Weizman and Matthew Fuller, Forensic Aesthetics. Conflicts and Commons in the
   Politics of Truth (London, New York: Verso, 2021).
     7
        Ruggero Eugeni, Capitale Algoritmico. Cinque dispositivi postmediali (più uno) (Brescia: Scholé,
   2021).
     8
        Paul Virilio, The Vision Machine, trans. by Julie Rose (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
   1994).
     9
        Cf. David Houston Jones, Visual Culture and the Forensic. Culture, Memory, Ethics (London:
   Routlege, 2022); Thomas Keenan, Eyal Weizman, Mengele’s Skull. The Advent of a Forensic Aesthetics
   (London: Sternberg Press, 2012).
     10
        Weizman, Forensic Aesthetics.
     11
        Some of the most famous examples are: Hunger in Los Angeles (Nonny De la Peña and others,
   2012); Project Syria (Nonny De la Peña et al, 2014); The Protectors (Catherine Bigelow, 2017); Omni
   (Ai Wei Wei, 2017); Home After War (Gayatri Parameswaran, 2018); Reeducated (Sam Wolson, 2021).
     12
         Matthew Lombard and others, Immersed in Media. Telepresence Theory, Measurement &
   Technology (Berlin: Springer, 2015).
     13
        Cfr. Andrea Pinotti, Alla soglia dell’immagine (Torino: Einaudi, 2021), and Pietro Conte, Unframing
   Aesthetics (Milano-Udine: Mimesis, 2020).
     14
        Lisa Nakamura ‘Feeling Good about Feeling Bad: Virtuous Virtual Reality and the Automation of
   Racial Empathy’, Journal of Visual Culture, 19.1 (April 2020), 47–64.




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