Steve Carrick: University of Chester
‘Parameters R us: the digital superstore’
Stream: Repetition and Technology

This paper proposes that there is an important shift in attitude and methodology in relation to practice, for those artists operating in the digital world. Using examples drawn from my own experience and self - reflexive digital practice, and my thoughts surrounding that practice, the paper investigates the effects that impinge on the process of making when the emphasis is on the adjustment of parameter sets, rather than on the direct manipulation of material.

I am not suggesting that this is a totally new phenomenon but rather that digital making tends to promote this sort of approach above any other. We start our digital work by choosing settings – image size, resolution, frame rate, timecode etc. We increasingly veer towards working at the abstract computation level which we manipulate and adjust to produce an impact on a cultural level in terms of the reading of images, objects and ideas.

A large part of my practice involves the notion of the assisted readymade, the manipulation of some aspect of a found object or image. Bearing in mind that most images and objects in the world today are simulacra, the opportunity for repeating the same process on the same type of object or image is virtually endless and repeat, repeat is the mantra of digital operations.

My current ‘digital’ work revolves around several different strands but a number of these, in many ways, address the nature of the digital tools themselves and their operations and implications in relation to copying and repetition. Some of this work involves the manipulation of images whilst other work refers to the possibilities inherent in treating software itself as a found object.

Rubens

I am interested in how the simple adjustment of some very basic parameters, that are inherent in image manipulation software, can be used creatively in the process of digitally assembling an image. Within this methodology, although the adjustments are made within a process that contains immediate feedback in terms of action, evaluation and response, it is these simple parameter shifts, rather than any traditional mode of painting or drawing, that hold the key to the construction of the image. 

I am in the process of producing continuous digital copies of a painting by Rubens (‘The rape of the daughters of Leucippus’,1615 – 1618) where the original is simply duplicated, scaled and inverted in layers of varying opacity to produce new images in an essentially limitless series. No new information is added - no painting, filtering, smearing or blurring takes place and the final image occurs simply through the accumulation of the same information in different formats rather than the addition of new components.

When I look at paintings by Rubens I have no real interest in any specific content or cultural readings but rather I find myself drawn to their formal painterliness and the ways in which colours and forms interact in an almost abstract sense.

By continually altering the image digitally, I essentially remove the intrinsic content to produce innumerable plays of form and colour that drift between figuration and abstraction, making reference to the history of painting before, during and after modernism. The use of layering and transparency between layers, provides a shifting, indeterminacy and blurring of outline that is the digital equivalent of ‘sfumato’ (a painting technique which blends areas into one another through miniscule brushstrokes, which makes for a rather hazy, albeit realistic, depiction of light and color) in the analogue world.

This very basic manipulation continues in each image until virtually all direct references to any particular form are removed and replaced with images of apparent objects that hint at a diversity of possibility rather than denote any specific reading. As Lev Manovich has pointed out:

‘Regardless of whether a new media designer is working with quantitative data, text, images, video, 3-D space, or combinations of them, she employs the same techniques – copy, cut, paste, search, composite, transform, filter’(The Language of New Media, 2002).

Cut, copy, paste' is a universal action within digital media and the function not only to 'save' but to 'save as' allows for the multiplicity of digital artefacts with no essential degradation

Mona Lisa

Working in the opposite direction I am intrigued by the ways in which the blurry possibilities of sfumato in an image can become fixed, absolute and unreadable in the digital world. I am interested in the reduction of iconic fine art images to a level where their cultural reading is totally lost - at what point does a digital copy lose its impact within a cultural language and become simply a set of coloured squares or a series of numbers operating at a level of disinterested information?

Digitising an image essentially flattens it, removing its inherent rich specificity as an object and replaces this with a grid of pixels each of which has no more significance and no more properties than any other. The digital image is always made of the same stuff – absolutely and with no possibility of change. The pixel cannot gradually shift towards something else – it will not decay or get rounded, less sharp or fuzzy edges.

By using an image editing program to ‘select’ the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa (Leonardo Da Vinci circa 1503 – 1507) – an epitome of analogue sfumato, and vague indeterminacy, in terms of its manifold psychological readings – this familiar cultural sign can be reduced to a single discrete entity – a one pixel resolution image with a single specific colour value available as RGB or CMYK components. This implies (albeit in an extreme and slightly ridiculous or absurd manner) that the analogue indeterminacy of the image can be repeated by simply applying the right colour values.

This is of course to a large extent true – any digital image could be made ‘from scratch’ by filling in pixels with the right colour values. ‘Painting by numbers’ is often a derided, artless process but this is essentially what Photoshop provides in a more detailed but perhaps no more sophisticated form – in order to repaint the Mona Lisa digitally no skill is actually required, just the knowledge of the colour value of each individual pixel and the paintbucket tool.

This highlights the fact that there are only two parameters that need to be dealt with in a digital image – the number of pixels and the colour values of each individual pixel. These parameters define both the infinite stability of the digital image as well as, paradoxically, its infinite malleability. Despite all that painting and filtering, and apparent pushing, blurring and smearing of pixels, the Photoshop virtuoso can do nothing more than deal with the above pair of parameters.

The non fractal nature of large parts of reality versus the always self similarity of the digital, means that blowing up a digital image always gives pixels, whereas magnifying reality introduces new worlds.

Poser

This opportunity to reduce content to the level of numbers or parameters also operates within the relationship between 3D modelling software and its real world counterpart, sculpture.

In the 3D human character modelling and animation program ‘Poser’ there are a number of set ‘poses’ for the in-built figures to adopt and amongst these are several that are derived from a selection of icons of western sculpture (including a pose for the ‘Venus de Milo’ with arms included). Essentially by clicking a button the user can instantly generate a human figure in the appropriate pose.

However, perhaps more interestingly, the pose could also be produced by manipulating the essentially neutral stance (upright with arms raised to shoulder level on either side) of one of the base figures included in the program, adopting a process that in some ways approaches a digital equivalent of ‘making’ or ‘sculpting’ or at least arranging (which in this case involves some sort of reverse engineering).

In the poser programme the parts of the body can be moved by apparently grabbing hold of them and pulling them in different directions but in actual fact this is often an unsatisfactory and importantly imprecise way of arranging a particular pose. Instead the programme offers a series of dial wheels that operate just like their mechanical counterparts and can be turned to precisely rotate or move a part of the body ‘at a distance’ without any need to actually take hold of it. This ‘machined’ precision and distancing from human error continues in the sense that the body parts can also be adjusted by simply typing in appropriate values and not applying any actual apparent physical (albeit metaphorical) manipulation of anything.
.

Hip: Twist 11, Side 40, Bend 19, Xtran 0.015, Ytran –0.065, Ztran –0.034
Abdomen: Twist 5, Bend 22
Chest: Twist 43, Bend 39
Neck: Bend 22
Collar: Twist –4, Bend 20, Frt/bck 14
Rt shoulder: Twist –69, Frt/bck 66, Bend –56
Etc.etc.

The above list sets out some of the parameters required to make a copy of Rodin’s sculpture ‘The Thinker’ (1902). The end result, which of course always looks exactly the same, is a bastardised version of the real sculpture that bears some resemblance in terms of pose, but very little in terms of the dynamic flowing mass that Rodin is renowned for.

Presenting the complete list of the parameters required to recreate ‘The Thinker’ as a wall based text emphasises and promotes the essentially awkward relationship between real 3D forms and their virtual, digital or imaginary equivalents. The aspirations and claims of the software version are registered as pathetically limited if not overblown and ridiculous.

Breaking down reality into discrete values introduces monumental and essentially limitless complexity whereas within the operation of the software everything is fixed, limited and exact.

It is clear that if the above parameters are copied the ‘desired’ end result will occur – error and chance have no place in this – there will be no ‘happy accidents’.

What is perhaps most important about this crude impression of the real is not its lack of verisimilitude but that it is an indicator of a shift in attitude in terms of practice for those artists operating in the digital world.

To reduce Rodin’s sculpture to a set of parameters reduces the importance of the dynamic activity of making – the process whereby events continuously accumulate to impact upon each other to produce a final result. What becomes important in the digital world is not the dynamic and vigilant, yet ad hoc intervention and response within a process, but rather the need for precision, carefully aligned to intention, in terms of calculating and setting parameters before the event. The parameters are set and then tested followed by adjustment and retesting but it is only in the parameter setting stage of this feedback loop that the artist has any control or input.

The reliance on the specificity of parameter sets to (re)produce (repeat, repeat endlessly) the same result every time leads to an abandonment of the possibility of chance intervention – as said before there are no happy accidents in the digital world unless a serious malfunction occurs - whereupon the ‘happiness’ might well be a misnomer. Randomness could occur but importantly it has to be factored into the parameter settings.

Timeline

Digital video editing programs provide the opportunity to randomly access video clips at any moment and to distribute these to any moment along the timeline. Any video clip can be copied and reused with no loss of quality. The digital video editing program maps time onto a spatial grid as the video clips are arranged in layers along the timeline. It is the capability for the continuous copying (repeat, repeat) and arranging of sections of video within the program that allows for the possibility of the work outlined below.

I am in the process of extending this idea to create a more overt interdependence between the spatial grid and the video that results from its arrangement. Instead of the spatial grid operating simply as a means of producing the ‘correct’ edit, I am arranging the video clips to form a text or simple image within the layers of the timeline whilst at the same time the resulting video will play back this arrangement in some form that refers back to the text or image ‘written’ in the timeline. The written text of the timeline produces the spoken text and images of the video which in turn refers back to the written text.

The work becomes a tautology of interdependence and has similarities to the ‘box with the sound of its own making’ by Robert Morris (1961) where the sound produced in the process of making a box is recorded and then played back alongside the finished work.

 

Video slo mo

Digital video artists often talk about speeding up or slowing down a section of video by simply changing a percentage value. In actual fact this process has no real relation to speeding up or slowing down in the real world.

This cannot be said of a digital video clip where any apparent speeding up of the playback is essentially achieved by removing frames and thereby losing information. Similarly, slowing down a video clip is achieved by duplicating the existing frames so they last on screen for a longer period of time and the inherent structure of the clip is fundamentally changed.

 

Fire
Some aspects of 3D modelling and animation programs promote the notion of the software as a time-delayed fabrication system acting in response to a set of parameters decided by the artist. Particle systems are seen on screen in most cases as small dots, circles or lines and they must be rendered by the software for their real effects to be seen  Here there is a significant time lag as the software calculates the results of the given parameters eventually producing an image or series of images.

The consequence of this is a stuttering process of testing and reconfiguring rather than any haptic fluid response. We monitor and regulate but in a start stop fashion, rarely interrupting the process – we wait until it is done.

These digital particle systems can be used to create effects such as fire and water that mimic their real counterparts to such an extent that they appear to be records of a natural event rather than a synthetic construction. However this reality is disturbed when it becomes apparent that by using the same parameter settings perfect duplicates of these complex and apparently individual phenomena can be made. This promotes an off the shelf mentality with the software operating as a superstore of readymade, repeatable solutions.

How does this possibility of repetition shift and distort our sense of the real and the natural – how can something look real but also, as a perfect duplicate, transgress natural possibilities? Interestingly this phenomenon has been emphasised and interrogated by traditional sculptors such as the arte povera artist Guisseppe Penone with a sculptural installation titled ‘to be a river’ (1995 – 1996). In this work the artist has removed a small boulder from a river and then, taking a larger rock from the same location, he has carved the latter to closely mimic the former so that without intense scrutiny the pair of rocks appear identical.

Graph editor

It can be slightly disconcerting to watch the look on the faces of animation students when they encounter the animation section of a 3D software package.

Within a 3D animation package they quickly begin to realise that it is the reading and manipulation of function curves within the graph editor that is the key to successful animation. It is not that the animators using these programs don’t need to know the fundamental principles of animation, because they do – and all good animators know them very well irrespective of the methodologies involved- but rather that they need to understand how to map appropriate movements in 3D space onto a 2D graph and vice versa.

With a graph for each of the XY and Z axes of every property this abstraction away from any direct and palpable depiction of movement often operates at a level that some students find hard to grasp. The relatively simple act of making a convincing bouncing ball in one plane involves the manipulation of a large number of graphical parameter sets, whilst the animation of a moving 3D figure ramps up the complexity enormously. 

Interactive

This abstraction away from any metaphorical manipulation of material finds its apotheosis in authoring programs such as Director or Flash where the real power of these software tools lies in the artist’s ability to read and write code. Here the artist operates in tandem with the logic base of the computer, adopting a methodology far removed from most if not all traditional media even if the results have a similar look.

At this point the artist, perhaps not uncritically, fully embraces the digital on its own terms but it is interesting to wonder what has been discarded or what has been limited by this acceptance?

Conclusion

If a quadrat from the digital world was sectioned off, isolated and scrutinised in all its richness and diversity could it compare to its analogue counterpart?
Does the complexity of the digital in all its networks and webs and sheer abundance match the endless possibilities of the analogue world?

With the shift from analogue to digital, and perhaps from the real to the symbolic, what happens to time, process and decay? What happens at the sour edges of reality where perhaps once clean, crisp and uniform phenomena become distorted, worn and infested with otherness?

Particularly in virtual 3D worlds there is no sense of a gradual shift from one thing to another as the objects are confined by discrete limits within what is essentially a vacuum or void space.  At what point in the digital world does a stray plastic bag get caught on some (polygon or NURBS constructed) railings and gradually wither and flap in the wind? Where are the constantly shifting stains and patinas of the urban sprawl?

Are the equivalents to be found within the litter of pop-ups, viruses and spam emails that circulate around the internet appearing and disappearing, either there or not there, but never apparently something in between?
 
What happens to gradation? What happens to the gradual shift from one cultural phenomenon to another? What happens to the Venn diagrams of existence within the digital, the discrete, the absolute and the fixed? Where are the overlaps and the gradual slippage from one thing to another? Where is the imperfection and its importance as a dynamic unknown – a chance diversion from intention that contains the seeds of new possibilities?

The loop and non destructive repeats provide the endless, stable remapping of time, preventing any time driven or process driven interference. There is no opportunity for chance to intervene in a way that has not been pre-planned – chance can’t just occur – it has to be defined, built in, programmed.

The uncontrolled, random slippage, variation or degradation within a traditional mono-print or analogue video copy is not truly available to the digital artist but could be mimicked to an extent by building some degree of randomness into the operation of the software.

To a large degree within the digital, the best I can hope for is a long but finite list of possibilities that can be drawn from at random. The key point is that all the members of the list are essentially 'known' by the computer but their appearance at any one time is randomly determined. If a member of the list is repeated then exactly the same effect occurs. In the analogue world the list is infinite within so many key factors that true repetition is impossible and therefore the resulting artefact is infinitely variable and can be truly unpredictable and random.  

It is interesting to note that programs such as Photoshop, Premiere or Painter appear to have no functions to produce such algorithmically driven random variations. Absolute Control is obviously, and obsessively, more important than diversity and chance in the digital world.

In the digital realm at what point does faith in the particular state of an image or object become paramount? The undo and redo or repeat available within software makes it so much easier to mess with things and not worry that you have missed the decisive moment – but once a canvas is covered with paint it is difficult, if not impossible to go back to the start.

In the digital world manipulating by hand becomes clumsy and inadequate and even when this is being done there is always one eye checking the shifting parameter values – nothing is ever changed in the digital world without a feedback box reminding you of what you are doing and by how much.

 

Bibliography
Manovich, Lev, The Language of New Media, MIT Press; New Ed edition,Cambridge MA. 2002