10.54103/2036-461X/17980
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17980
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
La haute et la basse définition des images. Photographie, cinéma, art contemporain, culture visuelle, sous la direction de Francesco Casetti et Antonio Somaini, Milano-Udine: Éditions Mimésis, 2021, pp. 363
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
22
Reviews / Comptes rendus
2022-06-27
2022-05-31
2022-12-30
2022-12-30
149-150
Cinéma & Cie
Andrea Pinotti
2022/06/27
10.54103/2036-461X/17980
149
Università degli Studi di Milano
2036-461X
38
en
150
La haute et la basse définition des images. Photographie, cinéma, art contemporain, culture visuelle, sous la direction de Francesco Casetti et Antonio Somaini, Milano-Udine: Éditions Mimésis, 2021, pp. 363
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/17980/15818
22
                                                                                       La haute et la basse définition des
                                                                                       images. Photographie, cinéma,
                                                                                       art contemporain, culture visuelle
                                                                                       sous la direction de
                                                                                       Francesco Casetti et Antonio Somaini
                                                                                       Milano-Udine: Éditions Mimésis, 2021, pp. 363.
                                                                                       DOI 10.54103/2036-461X/17980




                                                                                          Anyone who has delivered an article or volume          Philosophy (Ernst Cassirer), phenomenological
                                                                                       with illustrations to a publisher will sooner or        psychiatry (Erwin Straus) and cultural
                                                                                       later have had one or more images sent back to          anthropology (Robert Hertz) have laid the
                                                                                       them, accompanied by the prompt reprimand:              foundations of an investigation that aims to
                                                                                       ‘the definition is too low. Please resend the file in   explore those value investments and show their
                                                                                       higher definition’. The frustration of the author –     natural and cultural roots. The volume La haute
                                                                                       who may have thought they could get away with           et la basse définition des images. Photographie,
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       a quick screenshot in .png format or who found          cinéma, art contemporain, culture visuelle,
                                                                                       themselves needing to reproduce an image that           edited by Francesco Casetti and Antonio Somaini,
                                                                                       exists only as a lightweight .jpeg on the web – is      effectively collaborates with this investigation at
                                                                                       usually followed by a frantic series of attempts        the level of the theory and practice of images,
                                                                                       to improve the source image by using image              with particular (but not exclusive) reference to
                                                                                       enhancement or image upscaling software                 technical and digital images, contributing to
                                                                                       (such as DeepImage), upgrading the original             a problematization of that same polarity and
                                                                                       information so as to achieve an editorially             the values associated with it (rich/poor, clear/
                                                                                       acceptable result.                                      confused, precise/imprecise etc.).
                                                                                          Low is bad, high is good. And not only in the          As the editors argue in their Introduction, the
                                                                                       merely numerical and quantitative sense of              distinction between the definition of high and low
                                                                                       measuring the pixels contained in a digital file.       takes on a meaning that is not only technological,
                                                                                       The definition of images thus adapts to the             but also aesthetic, epistemological, economic and
                                                                                       millenary tendency to load the fundamental              political. At the technological level, the progress
                                                                                       relations of space (high/low, but also right/left       in devices for recording, encoding, transmission
                                                                                       and front/back) — relations that are rooted in          and manipulation of images constantly reshapes
                                                                                       the anthropos as an oriented and situated body          the high-low relationship. At the aesthetic level,
                                                                                       — with axiological and symbolic values: ‘to start       the possibility of appreciating or not appreciating
                                                                                       off on the right/wrong foot’, ‘to report a sinister’,   certain details of the image, according to its
                                                                                       ‘to be always one step ahead’, ‘low blow’, ‘to walk     resolution, has an impact both on our sensory
                                                                                       tall’, ‘State of right’ (and not of wrong)...           experience (aesthetics as aisthesis) and on our


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 22 no. 38 2022 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                  149
artistic experience (aesthetics as art theory); it      surfaced in Plato’s Parmenides. Once again, then,
also has an impact to the point that we might           a dialectic that we could define as aesthetic-
even question whether we are dealing with the           pragmatic, aimed at inducing in the observer a
same image and the same work in the case                sensorimotor behavior of approaching or moving
of different definitions of the same one. At an         away from the image, and of lesser or greater
epistemological level, the level of knowledge           perceptual integration on the part of the observer
to which we have access depends directly                (a theme that would later become central to the
on the informational content of the image. At           mediological approach of McLuhan, not by chance
the economic level, financial investments in            a reader of Wölfflin).
increasingly sophisticated technologies make the          The volume brings together contributions
pace of device obsolescence ever faster (‘today’s       from specialists in film theory, media and visual
high definition inevitably tends to become              culture studies (in addition to the curators,
tomorrow’s low definition’). At the political level,    Erika Balsom, Raymond Bellour, Emmanuel
the distinction between high and low definition         Burdeau, Enrico Camporesi, Arild Fetveit, Filippo
negotiates the dialectic between the regimes            Fimiani, Jacob Gaboury, André Habib, Frédéric
of visibility and invisibility, with inevitable         Monvoisin, Roger Odin, Peppino Ortoleva, Marie
consequences for information accessibility (the         Rebecchi, Lina Maria Stahl, Peter Szendy).
investigations conducted by Eyal Weizman and            And, significantly, it gives voice to artists (Hito
the Forensic Architecture group he coordinates          Steyerl, Jacques Perconte, Thomas Hirschhorn)
at Goldsmiths in London are a striking example          who have placed at the center of their practice
of this with regard to military/civilian opposition).   and reflection the questions of image definition
  These are levels that we can certainly                and of the multiple senses — from the aesthetic
distinguish in the analysis, but which are evidently    to the political — produced by the dynamics of
intertwined in the concrete practices of the            compression/decompression, impoverishment
production and reception of images today. The           and pixelization.
contemporary situation, however, does not jump                                           Andrea Pinotti
out of the blue; its archeology is inscribed in a                     [Università degli Studi di Milano]
longue durée that the editors propose to designate
as the polarization between ‘neat’ and ‘flou’,
crucial for the history of pre-digital images. They
recall in this regard — in addition to the poetics
of flou in the history of analogue cinema, and the
difference between photographic pictorialism
and New Objectivity — also the Renaissance
opposition between linear perspective (based on
the rigorous geometrization of the represented
space) and aerial perspective (played instead on
pictorial shading and atmospheric effects). We
could add here that distinction between images
to be observed from close up and images to be
appreciated from afar, which was made famous
by art historians such as Heinrich Wölfflin and
Alois Riegl respectively for the transition from
Renaissance to Baroque and the transition from
Egyptian to late Roman art, but which had already



150                                                              La haute et la basse définition des images
