Conference 17-20 September 2003 Co-organisers:Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, The University of EdinburghArts and Humanities Research Institute, University of GlasgowEdinburgh College of ArtThis interdisciplinary conference investigated the role of visual technologies in informing, shaping and creating knowledge. Its overarching aim was to investigate the claims of scholars such as Barbara Stafford, Martin Jay, and Timothy Binkley that our own culture is currently, in the wake of the electronic revolution, undergoing a shift in which the visual medium, traditionally playing a secondary role as the illustration of text, is becoming the dominant medium of thought.The conference projected forward by casting backwards in time to survey the role of successive new technologies of vision in generating new cultures of knowledge, perception, and experience. From the seventeenth-century invention of the telescope and the microscope, and the progressive elaboration of spatial representation in photography, cinema, the x-ray, scanning technologies and the interactive computer screen, the conference addressed the broad role of technologies of the visible in culture.Conference ProceedingsConference sessions included both historical and thematic panels (see below). All were asked to reflect on the relationship of their topic to the emerging history of the new media and its cultural consequences.Plenary speakers included:John Bender (Director, Stanford Humanities Center)Tony Bennett (Director, Pavis Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Open University)Jonathan Crary (Professor, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University)Simon During (Robert Wallace Professor of English,University of Melbourne)John Gillies (Professor, Department of Literature, University of Essex)Martin Kemp (Professor of the History of Art, University of Oxford)Celia Lury (Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London)Michael Marrinan (Associate Professor of Art and Art History, Stanford University)Joel Snyder (Professor of Art History, University of Chicago)Mark Wigley (Professor of Architecture, Columbia University)Conference Sessions:Diagrams and Visual CommunicationMicroscopes and MacroscopesCultures of MappingVisual GeographiesVisual Technology and Artistic PracticeThe Camera’s EyeArchitecture and Urban Planning in the Digital AgeVision and IllusionMedicine and Technologies of ViewingA Social History of ViewingExhibition and DisplayImage and Text in the New Media: Thinking on ScreenCultures of Virtual InteractionLogo and Brand: Advertising and Global SpaceVisual Pedagogies Conference Programme Thursday, 18 September 2003 9 a.m. SESSION 1: PLENARY SESSION Jonathan Crary: Vision between Spectacle and Community Playfair Library Chair: John Frow 10.30 a.m. Coffee Raeburn Room 11 a.m. SESSION 2 Diagrams and visual communication Christelle Rabier: Constructing the Surgical Gaze: Visual knowledge in operative surgery (1760-1830) Bronwen Wilson: Learning How to Read: Print, physiognomy, and recognition at the end of the Renaissance Moot Court Room Microscopes and Macroscopes Angela Fischel: Microscopic evidence: prints and the reproduction of knowledge in early Microscopy Jennifer Downes: The astronomer as artist: Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687) and the problem of accurate representation in seventeenth-century telescopic astronomy Janet Vertesi: Picturing the Moon: Hevelius’ and Riccioli’s Visual Debate Lecture Theatre 183 Cultures of Mapping Kathryn Yusoff: The visual mapping of Antarctica as a place in time; from the geological sublime to ‘real time’ John Crowley: The Creation of a Global Landscape in British Visual Culture c. 1750-1820 Lorimer Room Visual technology and artistic practice Lyle Massey: Corpus Anamorphosis: The Embodied Space of Renaissance Perspective Francis Halsall: The Limits to Art History’s Perspective Lecture Theatre 175 Chair: Genevieve Warwick Vision and Illusion Frances Robertson: Vision and Illusion: Photography, the moon landscape and SFX model-making Vinzenz Hediger: Extending the Realm of the Visible into Prehistoric Times: Natural History and Animal Visibility in the Age of Digital Imaging Technologies Lecture Theatre 270 Exhibition and display Jill Fernie-Clarke: Hierarchy and Display in Painting and Print: Exhibiting Images of the Lower Orders in Late Eighteenth-Century London Judith Green: Exhibiting Imperial Knowledges: Curious Specimens of China in the 1870s Playfair Library Chair: Stacy Boldrick 12.30 p.m. Lunch Talbot Rice Gallery 1.45 p.m. SESSION 3 Visual geographies Joyce Hsiu-yen Yeh: Visualizing Englishness through the Taiwanese Camera’s Eye Michael Pesek: The boma and the peripatetic ruler. Mapping colonial rule in German East Africa, 1889-1903 Playfair Library The camera’s eye Andrea Nelson: Reading Montage: German and American Photo-Books and the Construction of Historical Memory Bernhard Malkmus: Photography as suspension of oblivion in the work of W.G. Sebald Angi Buettner: Haunted Images: The Aesthetics of Catastrophe in a post-Holocaust World Lecture Theatre 183 Medicine and technologies of viewing Katherine Boulay: Perfecting the Match: The Visual Economy of the Fertility Industry Jennifer Shaw: Alien Life: Ultrasound as Extension of and Challenge to the Medical Gaze Shannon Lowe: Neurotracing the Brainchild Lorimer Room A social history of viewing Chair: John Frow Richard Rushton: Mosaic time of the image Cheryce Kramer Tight Sight – Liberal Arts in the Service of the Visual Content Industry René Bruckner: Bergson’s Duration and the Disappearance of Ordinary Thought Lecture Theatre 270 Chair: John Frow Image and text in the new media: thinking on screen Janet Harbord: Diffusion and its discontents: the computer/cinema interface Orit Halpern and Tal Halpern: Dreams for Our Perceptual Present: Archives, Interfaces, and Networks in Cybernetics Moot Court Room Visual Pedagogies Judith de Luce: Digital Technology and Seeing the Ancient World Better Laura Mandell: Critical Mapping, or Spreading out: Meeting the Country House, the Author, and Postmodernity in the MOO Carlos Monroy, Richard Furuta, Eduardo Urbina and Enrique Mallen: Texts, Images, Knowledge: Visualizing Cervantes and Picasso Lecture Theatre 175 3.15 p.m. Tea Raeburn Room 3.45 p.m. SESSION 4 Diagrams and visual communication Mary Greig: The Aberdeen Beastiary, Television Soapies and God’s Imaginary Chris Werry: Ocularcentrism, Inscription & the Figure of the Computer in Cognitive Theories of Language Moot Court Room Visual technology and artistic practice Karl Hansson: The Figural and the Moving Image – Jean Epstein vs. Bill Viola David Lomas: “Modest ‘Recording Instruments'”: Science, Surrealism and the Medium of Visuality Lecture Theatre 270 The Camera’s Eye Sudeshna Guha: The Camera and the Spade: Photography in the making of archaeological knowledge. Guha Images (separate pdf) Paula Summerly: Anonymising the Patient: Clinical Photography in the late Nineteenth Century Josh Ellenbogen: Reasoned and Unreasoned Images: Alphonse Bertillon at the Paris Prefecture of Police Lorimer Room Vision and Illusion Koen Vermeir: The Magic of the Magic Lantern Uta Kornmeier: ‘Embedded’ in the French Revolution – Waxworks as reality reports around 1800 Lecture Theatre 175 Exhibition and display Cinzia Sicca: “A Warehouse filled with statuary that sent its goods principally to the English and American markets” (J.F. Cooper 1838). The Micali emporium in Leghorn, 1760-1868 Julia Noordegraaf: The Emergence of the Museum in the ‘Spectacular’ Nineteenth Century Lecture Theatre 183 Chair: Genevieve Warwick 5.15 p.m. Video Screening: “Standards (A Salute to the 20th Century)”Luis Valdovino Lecture Theatre 183 6.00 p.m. Conclusion 6.30 p.m. Buffet Supper Raeburn Room 8.00 p.m. SESSION 5: CONCURRENT PLENARY SESSIONS: Martin Kemp: Modelling Set-Ups in Paintings: the cases of Campin and Caravaggio Playfair Library Chair: Genevieve Warwick John Gillies: “Our vacant room”, body and space in the early modern world picture Lecture Theatre 175 Chair: John Frow 9.30 p.m. Conclusion Friday, 19 September 2003 SESSION 6 Microscopes and macroscopes Jutta Schickore: Investigating vision: Thomas Young, Michael Faraday, and David Brewster on microscopical deceptions Ohad Parnes: The appropriation of the microscopical Playfair Library Chair: Genevieve Warwick Visual geographies Beatrice Kümin: From Expedition Drawing to Ethnographic Photography: The Portraits of Brazilian Indians in the 19th Century Daniela Bleichmar: Viewing as possessing: the visual culture of natural history and the locality of colonial science, 1750-1800 Lecture Theatre 183 Chair: Mark Dorrian The camera’s eye – Chair: John Frow Barbie Zelizer: Journalism and the Voice of the Visual Pia Sivenius: Photography and Psychoanalytic Knowledge Lorimer Room A social history of viewing Haidee Wasson: Moving Images, Film Libraries, and the Cosmopolitan Home – 16mm in the 1920s Niamh McCole: The Cinematographe in Rural Ireland 1896-1905 David Hulks: Impermanence and Ephemerality: artistic and critical responses to the emergence of the Electronic Age Lecture Theatre 270 Architecture and urban planning in the digital age Yannis Zavoleas: New Technologies and Identity: new modes of representation in cyberspace Zavoleas images Joanna Weddell: Cybervisuality and Architecture Jennifer Gabrys: Cité Multimédia: Noise and Contamination in the Information City Lecture Theatre 175 Visual pedagogies Peter McKinney: The visual text. The experiences of collaborative creation of hypertext fiction John Bonnett: Changing the Aesthetics of History: The 3D Virtual Buildings Project Moot Court Room Coffee Raeburn Room SESSION 7 Diagrams and visual communication Elaine Yakura: Visual Presentations as Feature in Information Technology Consulting Lorimer Room Visual technology and artistic practice Ted Wayland: Turntablism Miriam van Rijsingen: LabWork: artistic in-sights in medical and microbiological visualisation technologies Rijsingen images Gerhard Lang: How do discoverers discover? Lecture Theatre 270 Medicine and technologies of viewing Heather Delday: Genescapes: visualization and value finding Meegan Kennedy: The Magic of Figures: Visual Narratives in the Nineteenth-century Case History Moot Court RoomChair: Mark Dorrian Exhibition and display – Chair: Andrew Patrizio Samuel Alberti: Viewing pathology in nineteenth-century medical museums Elizabeth Carlson: Luminous Labyrinths: Mirrored Palaces at the 1900 Paris Exposition Playfair LibraryChair: Andrew Patrizio Cultures of virtual interaction Stephanie Polsky: Previewing Digital Visual Knowledge Greg Elmer: Profiling Machines Michele White: Screen Differences by Design: Rendering Liveness, Presence, and Lived Space through the Internet, Webcams, and Television Lecture Theatre 183 Visual Pedagogies Lindsay Fitzclarence: Dirty Dancing meets Watson’s and Crick’s theory of DNA: The use of rock musical presentations to promote science and technology in schools Yvonne Eriksson: The use of pictures in teaching and its relation to scientific illustrations Maria Teresa di Palma: Vision: Illusion vs Knowledge. Geographical teaching and movies: a new approach Lecture Theatre 175 Lunch Talbot Rice Gallery SESSION 8 Microscopes and macroscopes Mieneke te Hennepe: A view inside the skin: Microscopy and the illustration of diseased skin Roberta McGrath: Looking for Life: Microscopy and Modernity Lecture Theatre 175 The camera’s eye Jeffrey Bleam: Performing Technology: Photography and the Actor’s Body in Nineteenth Century France Rolf Nohr: Picture-it!: “One dime – one minute – one picture” Damian Sutton: Rustling Leaves and Blimp-shots: CGI, Lumières, and perception after photography Lecture Theatre 183Chair: Mark Dorrian Image and text in the new media: thinking on screen Susan Currell: Screening Words: Rapid Reading and Visual Knowledge in America from 1879 to 1940 Charles R. Acland: The Swift View: Tachistoscopes and the Residual Modern Lecture Theatre 270 Logo and brand: advertising and global space Andreas Kitzmann: The Creativity Age: thinking differently in the Age of Networked Capitalism Ella Chmielewska: ‘Logos’ or the Resonance of Branding: close reading of the visual landscape of Warsaw Lorimer Room Tea Raeburn Room SESSION 9: CONCURRENT PLENARY SESSIONS: Mark Wigley: Back to Black: Color in the Age of Digital Architecture Lecture Theatre 175Chair: Stephen Cairns Simon During: Miltonic shows: literature, magic and the origins of modern spectacle Playfair LibraryChair: Genevieve Warwick Conclusion Conference Dinner – admission by ticket only George Heriot’s School, Lauriston Place Saturday, 20 September 2003 SESSION 10 Diagrams and visual communication Alex Purves: Re-viewing the Muse: Cartography and Visual Enquiry in Early Greek Thought Janina Wellmann: On the pictorial origins of modern biology: Pictorial instructions and developmental thinking Lorimer Room The camera’s eye Susanne Ramsenthaler: Playing at Distance: Photographic Perception and the Aspect of Touch Joy James: Becoming photographs: imag(in)ing selves Kelley Wilder: Seeing the Negative Lecture Theatre 183Chair: Mark Dorrian Vision and illusion Joseph Wachelder: The origins of rhythm in visual aesthetics Sudeep Dasgupta: Between the Retina and the Body: Regimes of Visuality and the Truths of Modernity Rob Shields: Perspective, Remembrance and Techniques of the Virtual Lecture Theatre 270 A social history of viewing Phillippa Plock: Regarding painting through the eyes of a woman. A social technology of gendered viewing in seventeenth-century Rome Amanda Macdonald: The character of bande dessinée’s historical knowledge: technological lag and epistemological anticipation Michèle Martin: When the illustrated press was a new media: Confrontation between image and text Moot Court Room Exhibition and display – Chair: Andrew Patrizio Susan Hazan: The Musesphere and the E-Museum Lecture Theatre 175Chair: Andrew Patrizio Coffee Moot Court Room SESSION 11: CONCLUDING SESSION Celia Lury: The brand as a new media object Tony Bennett: Slow modernism: seeing, evolution and the constitution of society Lecture Theatre 175Chair: John Frow Buffet Lunch Talbot Rice Gallery This article was published on Thursday 8 August 2024
