Screenshot Situations: Imaginary Realities of Networked Images

TY - CHAP

T1 - Screenshot Situations

T2 - Imaginary Realities of Networked Images

AU - Tyżlik-Carver, Magdalena

PY - 2022/7

Y1 - 2022/7

N2 - Screenshots are images of the screen that capture what is on it at a particular moment in time. This documentary character makes them especially suited to register histories of technologies, art, and broader social and cultural practices that take place across networks. While many discussions of screenshots focus on links with photography, their networked character is less often addressed. This chapter takes the question “what happens to the image when the camera is replaced with the computer?”, which was the starting point for the curatorial research and exhibition project, Screenshots: Desire and Automated Image (2019), to investigate screenshots’ potency as a measure of what a network image is. Two digital and networked artworks presented in the exhibition are analysed as examples that capture networked and computational performativity of screenshots and give evidence of the apparatus of their making. The chapter argues that screenshots are units of measure that can be used to trace the infrastructural networks that make networked digital images such as screenshots. In the conclusion, screenshots are defined as images produced and reproduced as a result of human and computer interactions, and their network character, even if not visible in the image, can be accounted for.

AB - Screenshots are images of the screen that capture what is on it at a particular moment in time. This documentary character makes them especially suited to register histories of technologies, art, and broader social and cultural practices that take place across networks. While many discussions of screenshots focus on links with photography, their networked character is less often addressed. This chapter takes the question “what happens to the image when the camera is replaced with the computer?”, which was the starting point for the curatorial research and exhibition project, Screenshots: Desire and Automated Image (2019), to investigate screenshots’ potency as a measure of what a network image is. Two digital and networked artworks presented in the exhibition are analysed as examples that capture networked and computational performativity of screenshots and give evidence of the apparatus of their making. The chapter argues that screenshots are units of measure that can be used to trace the infrastructural networks that make networked digital images such as screenshots. In the conclusion, screenshots are defined as images produced and reproduced as a result of human and computer interactions, and their network character, even if not visible in the image, can be accounted for.

KW - network image

KW - photography

KW - computing

KW - algorithms

KW - culture

KW - value

KW - vision

KW - ways of seeing

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9780367550585

SN - 9780367557560

SP - 171

EP - 186

BT - The Networked Image in Post-Digital Culture

A2 - Sluis, K.

A2 - Dewney, A.

PB - Routledge

CY - London

ER -