Associate Professor
Dr. Damien Charrieras
SCM City University of Hong Kong
Seen and Unseen: Synthetic Photorealism and Visual Vernacular
The term synthography (Reinhuber 2024) refers to images created synthetically and which actually forgo the lens-based processes (“[a] term for synthetically created photo-realistic images). These images, as mentioned by Reinhuber, can look as if produced by conventional lens-based apparatus - yet they aren’t. Rather than the result of the orthogonal projection of light, these images appear as provisional stabilisations happening at different moments, at the confluence of different technologies and practice of different scales.
The reality effect is not the result of a synchronic capture, like in traditional photography, but a layered process involving a mix of automated photorealistic imaging technologies (based on numeric symbolism/data capture) and human apprehension of photorealism. Whereas traditional photographic capture is dedicated to registering the complexity of reality, synthography converts conceptual/language-based time into realistic pictures. We could infer that synthography gives rise to a simplified and schematic version of photorealism - because (of the romantic idea of) the inexhaustible complexity of reality that the camera can capture (“In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality”, Stieglitz - bar the junk spaces of modernity Koolhaas criticized) is replaced by the limited apprehension that the human mind can fathom of reality. Yet this synthography is not simply about the ontology of the image automatically produced (fake and artificial, yet “there” and “real”), but also the expression of complex digital and material processes, and in this sense, it is as vernacular as the reality captured by the traditional film camera. How to position human phenomenology in this new visual ecology, and to what extent do the processes involved in synthography relate to a phenomenological level?
BIO
Damien Charrieras is a cultural studies scholar and a media theorist. He is currently an associate professor at the School of Creative Media (SCM), City University of Hong Kong. He is programme leader for the Master of Art in Creative Media (MACM). He is the director of the Center for Blockchain and Generative Culture. His current projects investigate situated forms of digital creativity in urban settings (media arts, electronic music), the diverse technologies used to conceive 3D real-time environments (especially game engines), blockchain in video games and art, and new pedagogical approaches to worlds as contingent systems.
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Dr. Damien Charrieras
SCM City University of Hong Kong
Seen and Unseen: Synthetic Photorealism and Visual Vernacular
The term synthography (Reinhuber 2024) refers to images created synthetically and which actually forgo the lens-based processes (“[a] term for synthetically created photo-realistic images). These images, as mentioned by Reinhuber, can look as if produced by conventional lens-based apparatus - yet they aren’t. Rather than the result of the orthogonal projection of light, these images appear as provisional stabilisations happening at different moments, at the confluence of different technologies and practice of different scales.
The reality effect is not the result of a synchronic capture, like in traditional photography, but a layered process involving a mix of automated photorealistic imaging technologies (based on numeric symbolism/data capture) and human apprehension of photorealism. Whereas traditional photographic capture is dedicated to registering the complexity of reality, synthography converts conceptual/language-based time into realistic pictures. We could infer that synthography gives rise to a simplified and schematic version of photorealism - because (of the romantic idea of) the inexhaustible complexity of reality that the camera can capture (“In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality”, Stieglitz - bar the junk spaces of modernity Koolhaas criticized) is replaced by the limited apprehension that the human mind can fathom of reality. Yet this synthography is not simply about the ontology of the image automatically produced (fake and artificial, yet “there” and “real”), but also the expression of complex digital and material processes, and in this sense, it is as vernacular as the reality captured by the traditional film camera. How to position human phenomenology in this new visual ecology, and to what extent do the processes involved in synthography relate to a phenomenological level?
BIO
Damien Charrieras is a cultural studies scholar and a media theorist. He is currently an associate professor at the School of Creative Media (SCM), City University of Hong Kong. He is programme leader for the Master of Art in Creative Media (MACM). He is the director of the Center for Blockchain and Generative Culture. His current projects investigate situated forms of digital creativity in urban settings (media arts, electronic music), the diverse technologies used to conceive 3D real-time environments (especially game engines), blockchain in video games and art, and new pedagogical approaches to worlds as contingent systems.
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