Registering Vision: Saturation, Surveillance and the Contemporary Image in Spain and Mexico

摘要

"Registering Vision" examines the state of the image at a time of saturating surveillance and compulsive documentation in Spain and Mexico. I question whether the image, as traditionally understood, continues to be a necessary component for theorizing visual culture. This question is treated largely from the perspective of how our understanding of the image has shifted from an aesthetic or representational order to one that is fundamentally algorithmic in nature. As the digital image becomes dominant at every level of human endeavor, it is not clear that the image continues to be something that is primarily seen or that accurately captures what is clearly visible. For example, Paul Virilio and others have turned attention to the growing concerns of sightless vision laid out in the nineteen-nineties, exacerbated now by totalizing models such as Google Earth or increased drone warfare, or indeed robotics in general. Vision and image are no longer entities tethered to one another: their relationship is one mediated by saturation as a third party, either through overabundance or obfuscation. Consequently, this form of sightless vision, having to do in large part with the algorithmic image, generates a loss of visuality that can be read through material properties of the digital (bit/data erosion, thermal imaging techniques, facial recognition software) that also highlight techno-ideological resources. Does the image get washed out, lost in the archives of instantaneity, and therefore stymied in its pretention of longevity? Are we living the last historical moments when a camera is needed to form an image capable of either producing or withholding information? In terms of surveillance, which is both a symptom and cause of the current predicament, the question should be carried over to whether the changing status of the image alters or reinforces resources used to keep watch on what is often the racialized and politicized body of the other. Ultimately, this dissertation investigates image saturation and the reverberating effects that this new landscape has on both our environment (natural and synthetic) and our personhood.