Shifts in the Photographic Paradigm through Digitality AND the Aesthetics of Noise”
p. 46-57
Texte intégral
From analog to digital
1The Langlois Foundation for the Arts, Science & Technology1 published in 2005, under the direction of Jean Gagnon, an online version of the CD-ROM which served as the catalog for my solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in 1997. Titled “George Legrady: From Analogue to Digital”, the exhibition traced the transitions of my work, over a twenty-year period, from analog to digital processes in photographic representation and practice to interactive media. My intention here is to highlight some of these transitions.
Fig. 1. From Analogue to Digital: Photography and Interactive Media, George Legrady © 1997.

2My first digital works created in the mid to late 1980s focused on deconstructing the pixel-based photograph through the exploration of noise as an aesthetic element in the creation of still images. The subject of noise became for me a means to understand the power of image processing and the critical issues of how computation may impact on representation and belief, given the fact that the digital photograph is so easily manipulated at the pixel level, in comparison to the chemical-based image. The digital still images I produced at that time required the acquisition of computational programming skills, a new form of artistic practice, exciting in its capabilities to precisely define procedures, to layer sequences of processes and to undo operations as needed without damage to the original. Creating images through computer code was a major discovery as it seemed a natural step to someone coming out of a photographic background, where the exploration shifted from recording images through an optical-mechanical device to constructing images by both staging and manipulating in a post-production process. A bonus procedural component consisted of the world-transforming “undo” button which allowed for correction, and infinite reconstructing through the re-compiling of code. I became aware that aesthetic decision-making procedures could be formulated in terms of a sequence of logical conditional statements not unlike rules of language.
Fig 2. George Legrady Studio with Targa System, Los Angeles, George Legrady © 1988.

3The process had a familiarity that I immediately linked to precedents in the sequential and modular artworks of Sol Lewitt, and the syllogistic propositions of Lawrence Weiner, Doug Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, and others associated with conceptual art. My engagement with image processing by which to transform digital images through mathematical procedures defined in computer code seemed to me an esoteric practice until I came across two resources from the engineering field that created contextual frameworks. Claude Shannon’s Theory of Information,2 provided such a conceptual framework by which to make sense of signal in relation to noise, opening the way to powerful metaphors and aesthetic visual narratives. An ingenious publication titled Beyond Photography3 published at Bell Labs by Gerard Holzmann4 and some of the Unix team, offered numerous examples of mathematical formulas to transform images that pushed my skill-sets up an extra notch.
4Resources and references were limited but I discovered articles in Byte Magazine, Clifford Pickover’s articles such as “From Noise comes Beauty”5 and other earlier Bell Labs works such as Bela Julesz and Leon Harmon’s “Recognition of Faces”6 published in Scientific American.
Transitioning to digital: truevision targa system (1986)
5In contrast to the field of electronic music composition, the exploration and use of noise in the visual field had a late start, to a great degree explained by the limited development of display screens and image capture boards which only entered the market in the mid-1980s. Prior to that, standard computer displays could only deliver up to 16 colors, without tonal variations.
6Having learned programming in the studio of the painter Harold Cohen7 in 1981, I had to wait until 1986 to gain access to hardware technology that allowed for capturing, digitizing and transforming multiple tone-scaled digital images. A University of Southern California Innovative Research Grant and an IBM Project Socrates Grant in 1986 provided for an early, affordable digital imaging system, the Truevision Targa 168 graphics system [Fig 2.] by which images could be digitized and reworked through computer code.
Fig 3. Syringe, 64 % Value Free, 1988. George Legrady, digital media, custom software, George Legrady ©.

Early projects (1987-1991)
7The still-image experiments that I first engaged in on the Targa system explored the processing of images from the perspective of removing information, or augmenting visual noise. These were featured in a number of groundbreaking venues, among which a solo show “From Noise to Signal” at the USC Atelier Gallery at the Santa Monica Mall9 in 1987. My work was included also in a number of influential exhibitions such as “The Photography of Invention”, at the National Museum of American Art10 (1987), “Digital Photography: Captured Images, Volatile Memory, New Montage”11 at SF Camerawork (1988), an exhibition curated by artist Jim Pomeroy, considered to be the first exhibition addressing the intersection of digital photography in relation to cultural critique. News Beirut received an honorable mention at Ars Electronica12 (1988).
Fig 4,5. Beneath the Surface, Scratching the Surface, 1988. George Legrady, digital media, custom software, George Legrady ©.

8The challenges and conceptual questions discovered through the process of investigating the potential of digital transformation in relation to the social impact at both the production and reception level were brought into focus in a paper “Image, Language, and Belief in Synthesis”13, presented at the College Art Association, and later published in the CAA Art Journal and Critical Issues in Electronic Media14 edited by Simon Penny.
Digital noise, algorithms & interactivity
9The introduction of hardware and software in 1992, such as QuickTime and Lingo, Macromedia Director’s scripting language, by which to introduce time-based interactivity for broad multimedia resources from image to text, documents, movies and sound, pushed my projects toward cultural narrative and interactive digital media installations. Nonetheless, the topic of visualization and noise has re-occurred on a regular basis.
Fig. 6. Equivalents II, 1992, George Legrady, digital media, custom software, works on paper, Installation at the International Center for Photography, NYC, George Legrady ©.

Fig. 7. Equivalents II, 199, George Legrady, digital media, custom software, works on paper, Installation at the International Center for Photography, NYC, George Legrady ©.

10Equivalents II (1992) was presented in the “Iterations” exhibition curated by Tim Druckrey at the International Center of Photography (1994), and eventually in the Siemens sponsored “Photography After Photography” exhibition curated by photography historian Hubertus von Amelunxen. The installation consisted of a computer into which the public would type a phrase and the software generated a cloud image using a two-dimensional fractal algorithm. At the end of the image creation, the program would bring up all other phrases that had similar words in them. The title referred to the 20th Century photographer’s Alfred Stieglitz’ work realized in the 1920s that created intentionally abstract photographs of clouds which he described as forms not of the world but of the photographer’s state of mind.
11Transitional Spaces commissioned for the opening of the new Siemens Headquarters in Munich in 1999 consisted of three motiontracking projections. The installation Garden Entrance was placed at the transit security gates separating the public exhibition space from the private offices. A blurred image of a garden began to oscillate when we would approach the gate. As we would continue to advance towards the gate, the image would be more focused, becoming recognizable as the entrance to a garden.
Fig 8, 9 & 10. Garden Entrance, 1999, George Legrady, digital media, custom software, works on paper, George Legrady ©.

12When we would stop, the image would gradually cover itself with visual noise reminiscent of film dust, rapidly obliterating the image. Any movement would erase the dust. Whenever we would walk through the turnstile from public to private or vice-versa, the projection would then be replaced by the circular beam of a night guardsmen’s flashlight.
13Voice of Sisyphus (2011), an installation proposed in collaboration with spatial sound engineer Ryan McGee and composer Joshua Dickinson, was a time-based study of a single photograph, realized as a continuous performing audio-visual composition. It was presented as a multimedia installation with a large cinematic projection and 4-channel audio, specializing sounds by speakers positioned in each of the four corners of the exhibition room. The photographic image taken at a formal ball some time in the past had been chosen for the theatricality of the image.
Fig 11. Voice of Sisyphus, 2011. Installation at Edward Cella Gallery, Los Angeles. George Legrady, digital media, George Legrady ©.

14The composition unfolded as regions of the image were selected, filtered, and transformed into audio waves which were then shaped through software. The artwork’s distinctive feature was the fact that the sound composition was created in real-time out of the analysis of visual regions in the photograph through the sampling of pixel clusters. The installation artwork began as an experiment to explore the potential of engineering processes such as image processing and frequency filtering, to create visual noise implemented in real-time through custom software resulting in a combined visual and sonic multimedia experience. This was then translated into an artwork which could operate on its own over time, continuously transforming the texture of a single black and white photograph.
Fig 12, 13 & 14. Voice of Sisyphus, 2011. Animation screen shots, George Legrady, digital media, custom software, George Legrady ©.

15The translation of sampled data from image to sound in the Voice of Sisyphus, and the transition from text to image in the Equivalents II both explore the potential of an aesthetic equivalence from one medium to another, but such simulated synesthetic modeling is significantly challenging as the perceptual experience of an image, a sound, or a text cannot fully be transferred, either at the literal or metaphorical levels through the movement of a set of digital data from one domain to the other.
16The repetitive nature of the composition and sequences provided the title for this work, bringing to mind the Greek myth of king Sisyphus’ dilemma who was compelled to ceaselessly roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down repeatedly.
Conclusion
17In his clearly formulated book Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic,15 composer Curtis Roads draws on a rich history of contemporary electronic compositions to highlight noise as one of the most vital compositional tools in the field of electronic music. He quotes the 19th century acoustic pioneer Hermann Helmholtz (1885) to define noise as “the sensation of noise due to non-periodic motions”. In digital image, noise may be assumed to be extraneous, unwanted, out of context, disruptive, and any other descriptive word that position it as something to be purged in order to purify the quality of an image. The noisy image was discovered in parallel with the evolution of the age of the machine in the late 19th century, as an integral component of the process by which technical devices functioned. Scratches on a film, dust on a negative, chemical stains, and all such things that were in the way of the perfect image have been reconsidered for their aesthetic value, extending the complexity of how we decipher images.
Notes de bas de page
1 https://www.fondation-langlois.org/legrady/
2 Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1949).
3 Gerard J. Holzmann, Beyond Photography, The Digital Darkroom (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1988).
4 http://spinroot.com/pico/front.pdf
5 Clifford Pickover, “From Noise Comes Beauty: Textures Reminiscent of Rug Weavings and Wood Grains Spring from Simple Formulas,” Computer Graphics World 11: 3 (March 1988): 115-116.
6 Harmon, L. D., “The Recognition of Faces,” Scientific American 229: 5 (Nov. 1973): 71-82.
7 http://www.aaronshome.com/aaron/index.html
8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truevision_TGA
9 http://articles.latimes.com/1987-07-05/entertainment/ca-2234_1_george-legrady
10 https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/photography-invention
11 http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/g.legrady/glWeb/Projects/noise/CameraworksLegrady.pdf
12 http://www.aec.at/prix/en/winners/1988-prix-gewinner-computergraphik/
13 http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/glWeb/publications/publ_art/textimage.html
14 http://www.sunypress.edu/p-2040-critical-issues-in-electronic-m.aspx
15 Curtis Roads, Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Auteur
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George Legrady
Media artist working in photography and digital media installations. Born in Budapest, he also holds American and Canadian nationality. His work has been shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; at the 3rd Lyon Biennale; at the Haus der Kunst in Munich; at the ZKM in Karlsruhe; at the musée des Beaux-Arts in Brussels; at the National Gallery of Canada; at the PS1/MOMA in New York; at MOCA Taipei in Taiwan; at the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai; at the National Gallery in Prague; at the Bogota International Book Fair, among other venues. He has received support as a Guggenheim fellow as well as from the Creative Capital Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Canada Council for the Arts. His artworks are part of numerous museum collections, including those of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among others. He is the head of research on experimental visualization in the Graduate Program of Media Arts and Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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