Hearing is vision, othered.
At some point in history, increasing image resolution started to only have an effect on film, leaving negligible obvious impact on photography. That is tantamount to saying that with the tremendous increase in image resolution evinced in the last decade or so, perceived motion happened to have been affected more drastically than the image proper was.
The feigned motion of pixels caused by their rapid changing of tone gives photography’s game away… namely, the game we call indexicality. Indexicality is maintained in a taut relationship between subject and object. Booming, pulsating pixels in film obliterate any notion of indexicality. One sees the ship moored far out at sea… one turns the head and looks the other way… one looks again at the photograph, and the ship is still there, moored in the same spot far out at sea. Film makers ought to take Heraclitus’ words with a sizeable pinch of salt. There is no such thing as ‘the filmic’, as there is no such thing as ‘the pictorial’.
Visual perception is in no need of any resolution updates, this simply because the seeing you happen to be seeing you happen to be seeing with your very own eyes. Strictly speaking, your eyes are not seeing the photograph; as a matter of fact, they are being told what to see.
If you want Ontology (and you should want Ontology), analogue photography is the way to go.
If you want everything that can be (and who on earth wouldn’t want everything that can be?), then, surely, digital is the way to go.
But, then again, who the fuck wants Ontology?
And, if you want everything that can be, doesn’t the world suffice?
Featured Image:
L. March 2019 at Marsaxlokk, Malta. Photograph by the author.
