Aesthetics After Photography - Workshop on 21-22 November 2008 - Online Registration now Open
Phillips, Dawn
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/research/activities/aestheticsafterphotography/autumn2008workshop/ <http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/research/activities/aestheticsafterphotography/autumn2008workshop/>
Topic: 'Photography as a Medium (post-digitalisation)'
Venue: Stewart House, Russell Square, London
Times: Friday 12.30 to Saturday 18.30
Organisers: Diarmuid Costello & Dawn Phillips (University of Warwick)
The widespread use of digital technologies in recent years, and their capacity for seamless integration with the traditional photographic processes, has reawakened interest in the nature of photography as an art. This 2 day workshop explores the questions that digital media raise for photography from a philosophical perspective in the light of recent technologies:
* What, if anything, does digitalisation tell us about the nature of photography as an art form? Is digitalisation internal to photography or an external adjunct? Is it a distinct medium or some hybrid intermediary form of traditional optics and digital processes?
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What are the implications for pre-digital conceptions of what distinguishes photography? If every aspect of the final image can be controlled by the photographer, is there a difference in kind between photography and other depictive arts, notably painting?
*
If digitalisation undermines basic assumptions about the evidential nature of photography once taken for granted, how does this impact on the ontology of the photography image, and the epistemic value of photography in general?
The workshop brings together, for the first time, philosophers working on photography with digital photographers. To date philosophical debate in this area has been hindered by an insufficiently fine-grained understanding of the technologies involved and their implications. This workshop seeks to redress this and thereby promote philosophical understanding of a technology that has significant implications for photography and the pictorial arts more generally.
Session 1 (Friday 12.45-15.00)
Jörg Sasse - Digital Relations Analogised
Silke Helmerdig - Difference? What Difference?
Session 2 (Friday 15.30-18.00)
Jonathan Friday - Placing the Digital Photograph: Issues of Medium, Representation and Aesthetics
Barbara Savedoff - Finding a Future in Photography's Past: Antiquarian Processes in a Digital Age
Wine Reception (Friday 18.00-19.00)
Session 3 (Saturday 10.00-12.30)
Robert Hopkins - Factive Pictorial Experience: Photography Before and During the Digital Revolution
Aaron Meskin - The Ontology of the Digital Photograph
Session 4 (Saturday 13.30-15.45)
David Campany - A Short History of Definitions
Peter Osborne - Anxiety about the Real: Art, Photography and Social Ontology (post-digitalisation)
Session 5 (Saturday 16.15-18.30)
Maarten Vanvolsem - Photography Beyond the Still Image
Patrick Maynard - Hands-on Digital
Abstracts for all the papers are available on the workshop webpage. Workshop papers will be available to registered participants on 14th November.
Places are limited - to reserve a place please register online.
For general queries, please email Dawn Phillips: dawn.p...@warwick.ac.uk
Dr Dawn M. Phillips
Research Fellow - AHRC Project: Aesthetics after Photography
Department of Philosophy
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
UK
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/research/activities/aestheticsafterphotography/ <http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/research/activities/aestheticsafterphotography/>
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