The application of non-representational theories to the digitally produced and circulated photographic image.

Over the last decade we have witnessed photography being employed in a range of new contexts, online image cultures and innovative image applications, which pose new questions about the status and value of the photographic image. From "Google Street View" to the augmented reality application "Photosynth", there is a broad and consistently growing range of applications that employ photography in ways that challenge and redefine the representational model of the photograph as an imprint of the real.
These new photographic applications allow us to reconsider the fundamental assumptions about images: the single point of view, the nature of authorship, the predetermined subject-object relationships. They also present us with conceptual challenges that question the validity of the traditional perspectival, representational and semiotic approaches to photography. This has been called by a number of scholars (Crary.1999. Mitchell.1998. Lovejoy.2004) a 'crisis' of the representational paradigm which calls into question the representational system of visuality based upon the Cartesian logic of the picture plain and perspective, which aligns the paradigm of representation with the logic of the human retina. It is this logic that is being tested by the digital 'simulation' of the analogue photography, but as yet there is insufficient understanding of how the computer code can be said to give cultural meaning or value an image, which remains a cultural value. The problem in a nutshell, is that developments in computing which entail the photographic image continue to outstrip current photographic theory's ability to fully account for the far reaching changes in image cultures.

What the research will do.

The research will focus upon the impact of digital databases and algorithmic systems upon our understanding of the formation, reproduction, storage and circulation of the digital image from across a number of knowledge disciplines with the aim of producing transdisciplinary multiple perspectives. The research will develop a means of connecting the historical concerns of photographic theory with the indexical and semiotic image with algorithmic and coding of digital image reading in the semantic web in order to produce a new theoretical synthesis. The research will do this by bringing a number of scholars from different disciplines together through web technologies and meetings to enquire into applications of non-representational systems and theories to the photograph. Here the work of Nigel Thrift, (2008) Non-Representational Theory is considered as a founding text relevant to such enquiries and which has sofar been applied to space and politics, but not the visual image.

What is the outcome.

The research will result in the production of a website and academic network dedicated to enquiries into the photograph and digital technologies. In addition it will convene research meetings in London to bring scholars and researchers from differing disciplines together to consider a common set of problems. Finally it will result in the publication of a special edition of Philosophy and Photography dedicated to the proceedings of the seminars and debates and interviews on the website.

Who Will benefit?
The research will be of direct benefit to The Photographer's Gallery, London who are developing a digital strategy as well as a research collaboration with London South Bank University over the next two years and the network research will feed into their approach through the involvement of Professor Andrew Dewdney working with the newly appointed Digital Curator at The Photographer's Gallery on digital photographic curation. This will allow the Photographer's Gallery to gain at first hand knowledge that will be relevant to the ways in which they develop a strategy. The Photographer's Gallery is a national and international organisation through which additional knowledge exchange will work within the field of other photography-based organisations dealing with contemporary photographic practice, exhibition and display. The Photographer's Gallery is further located within the UK public arts funding and policy network and the research outputs will contribute to the further development of national strategies for promoting digital arts. In particular the research will contribute to thinking about net users (prosumers) as potential new constitutive online and gallery audiences for the public arts. The link with The Photographer's Gallery in a sustained collaboration is a vital conduit for the research to impact upon the wider public realm. The research will influence the ways in which digital heritage is understood and the strategies for its management. In theorising the network user and their behaviours the research links to future audiences, which is of interest to such bodies as Nesta and the DCMS.

Professional New Media Practitioners
Whilst the research is of a primarily theoretical nature it considered that it will be of benefit to creative new media architects and designers in setting out new understandings of the processes of image search, circulation and meaning formation of the digital image. The research will impact in these commercial areas in more diffuse and longer terms ways through HE professional training, which will involve academics in a secondary set of tasks in translating the theoretical material into specific practice contexts.

Wider public interest to practitioners
The use of a website as a strategic method of transdisciplinary enquiry will also make the research accessible to a wider set of interested parties. This will include other individual, freelance new media professionals involved in website design, those looking for new thinking about the organisation of the archive, for photo-agency companies looking for new ways of setting up and using search engines and photographers interested in thinking about the circulation of their portfolios along different distributed lines. By developing the research online as well as through research seminars the research will maintain maximum openness and has the potential to impact in unexpected ways. In this last respect the value of theory to a range of new media, art and photography practices is also recognised.

The Oneline network approach will ensure global reach during and beyond the period of the network funding. It will foster greater inter-cultural understanding of visuality, a move towards the idea of transvisuality is implicit in the likely impact of the research. The impact upon technical fields of practice is to offer new paradigms for thinking about visuality and for the cultural and theoretical fields to offer new ways of including technical knowledge. The research network will report over an eighteen- month period and it is expected that it will continue to develop in further collaboration throughout the remainder of the decade. The research network represents an ongoing knowledge exchange between different academic disciplines and between academic disciplines and professional practitioners in sharing knowledge and skills.