haha, I don’t know how many levels you can stack this russian doll style but arguably the simulcra that the good or famous over the top post processed image creates has it’s uncanny distancing expression in the poorly executed variants that let you see the simulcra for what it is. 
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Catching up. Apologies for the lack of quoting, and thanks for the several interesting and informative posts
I recall a comedy sketch (British TV) in which a monk is making repeated calls to “Technical Support” because they cannot make out how to use this new book thing. Like, the old scrolls were so easy to get around! It was very cleverly done with fine analogies. It is certainly true that “What we know” determines what is intuitive. Intuitive, to a farmer or sailor, might be reading the weather in the sky, whilst to many others it is just a bunch of clouds.
Is a a graph fixed to display orientation because it necessarily represents a mathematical construct with fixed minimum/maximum? I don’t know if my innumeracy makes me better or worse off in this area, but to me, it is just a pictorial representation of what I am doing, and that I may be setting value 150 to 170 and value 250 to 180 (imaginary numbers) means nothing to me: I am just moving a point up or down. Indeed, I don’t have to determine or know values: the software even tells me which point to move!
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One could argue that since virtually (not really, of course) everyone and their mom has several cameras and everything is constantly being recorded, the reason that objective reality is unknowable to the individual or even to humanity at large is simply due to the near-infinite time it would take to view everything that is being recorded.
It could even be that our world is overdefined, i.e. that our collective recordings of it exceed the informational content of the real world and that only through returning to true communication we can reduce it to what it really is.
That might then include recognizing that we are not only not the individual wonderful snowflakes that we like to imagine ourselves as; it could be that we are fundamentally internally redundant as a species – which is what I actually believe. There’s too many of us who believe they’re authors when we’re really just doing the same thing over and over, taking the exact same pictures over and over and so on.
And the modern universal gallery called Instagram actually proves it imho. I believe that’s because we’re collectively so narcissistic that we don’t recognize ourselves in each other anymore. It used to be that I don’t feel like I have to travel to this or that place, or that I felt that I didn’t have to take that picture, because someone else already did, but now that’s somehow not valid anymore. I distinctly remember feeling and thinking things even just back in the 90ies, that are not feelable and thinkable anymore – even though that was clearly just the fading light of culture from before the advent of what’s called neoliberalism (I’m a wee bit into the late, great Mark Fisher’s philosophy here).
We don’t really participate in life as a collective anymore. We’re just stupidly envious that the other person has a better camera, better editing skills, more money to travel the world, a more attractive house or spouse etc etc. That’s also why becoming a professional artist isn’t an attractive proposition anymore, not to me at least. I’d much rather work in a field where every moment is perishable, where I’m just Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill time and again.
That’s why I work in elderly care, where everything repeats itself all the time, with no chance of anything new or societally relevant ever happening. To me, that’s my kind of vanishing, to sneak a peek under the map and see whether the real world still exists underneath. Death (their own or a loved one’s) is pretty much the only thing that people don’t commonly want to turn into an Instagram post. But who knows how much longer even that will last.
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Bruce Williams does a comparison in this video:
And AP’s comment explaining a bit more:
For this picture, the 3 tools make a pretty similar effect because it’s fairly neutral. If you try again with saturated colors, you will see how the RGB curve adds saturation in shadows and removes some in highlights. The tone curve tries to prevent that effect but turns the shadows blue-grey instead (one of the quirks of the Lab space, I suppose). Tone EQ does a simple exposure compensation, except it’s parametric, so it leaves colors alone. Also, it’s designed to complement filmic and that’s where the white/black points are set.
And Boris’ opinion on the matter:
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Wonderful post. Thank you.
It’s not entirely what I mean by constructivism, however. In my own words, I believe that we perceive only scant information about reality, a small range of wavelengths of light, sampled quite roughly by three anemic bandpassed sensor cells, a small range of vibrational frequencies as sound, a bit if temperature and touch, and a barely functional airborne molecule detector.
From this we construct a model of reality, which is what we perceive. Importantly, we perceive the model, not the senses. Our world is constructed by ourselves.
Each of our senses has a different processing delay. Each has quite severe limitations in resolution and quantity. And furthermore, our processing is inherently crazy lossy. It really only makes sense after a huge integration task with predictions and memory. By the time the model has been constructed, the data is seconds out of date, so reactions need to be made against predictions, not senses.
In so many words, it means we’re literally living a dream. We dream a world of color and sound and smell that does not exist in any physical sense. A red apple looks nothing like a red light unless you happen to perceive then both with the weird tristimulus vision system of a human. Our model does not have insides or backsides of things, yet reality clearly does. Our nightly dreams are probably simply our world models running rampant with the absence of input. And then we just forget those hallucinations after waking up. But being awake really isn’t much better, in terms of not seeing things we don’t expect or look for, and missing everything not deemed survival-relevant by our lizard brain.
The fact that we can even interpret a two-dimensional photo made of small tri-colored dots as something resembling reality is really quite a stretch. No wonder we can make photos represent our maddest whims, and our interpretations of them run absolutely rampant with such obviously inadequate data.
Sorry, I may have gotten carried away a bit, there. Human perception is completely magical to me, even after a good many years of studying and working with it quite deeply.
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I think that’s a worthy goal. Probably not what I did/do… but none the less desirable for that!
I’m going to have to re-read the following posts several times… very interesting points in there, but a little too deep for me before breakfast. 
I believe my point was that what you’re describing is more or less the exact same for all of us, but we have somehow forgotten it.
Enrico Fermi famously asked “Where is everybody?” He meant aliens. Well, I think it isn’t so much about aliens but about parallel universes. Because we used to live in a world where our parallel universes were right next door to ours. Just over that hill was an almost exact copy of our universe, the only difference was that their village drunk was called Peter instead of Paul. We really didn’t have any strong incentive to seek them out and talk to them either. What could I plausibly have asked my copy from the other village except “hey, what’s it like when your village drunk is called Peter instead of Paul?” since that was the only difference between our worlds.
But then the industrial revolution happened and the whole planet became this insufferable “global village” and now we wonder where everybody else went. Well, they’re still right here, only we see them as competition now.
And then we start wondering, “Why can’t I have a village drunk called Peter?? And doesn’t that guy who is comparable to myself have a nicer car, a bigger house etc.? I want that, and I’m unhappy until I do!!”
That’s what I mean that we’re fundamentally redundant as a species. We’re supposed to be redundant like that, and we’re unhappy if we try to live differently – as in modernity we are.
So we’re no longer really happy e.g. if someone made a great photo. Instead we’re unhappy that we ourselves didn’t take that photo. Which is so stupid imho.
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I think you are overgeneralizing here; plenty of people find enjoyment in other things. It is just that they don’t make a point of advertising this, whereas you see the big cars on the street.
Incidentally, I know a few people who collect vintage cars, but I have only seen them contribute to the happiness of those who tinker with them (they call this “renovation”, but as it goes on forever I think it is about the journey, not the destination). If it is just sitting there in a garage, then apparently it does not bring joy to their life after the initial period.
In any case, collecting vintage lenses is a much less expensive and portable hobby!
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That is very true. I’m going through some life changes, and have been for the last few years. Picking up photography as a hobby is part of those life changes.
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I started spending money on photography because my hearing was no longer good enough for it to be worthwhile spending it on hifi!
Oh, and I started wanting to have good photos of the concerts that I attended, not rubbish stuff from a point&shoot (it took nice pics outdoors in good light). Then I went through a period of increased disposable income (you can guess what I disposed of it on), and it all got a bit serious.
A bit too serious sometimes. Quite a lot of of people now expect that I will photograph their concerts. I don’t mind, I guess. And I’m adamant about remaining amateur. Because I absolutely don’t want to be under a contractual obligation to produce really good pics. That could spoil a very pleasant hobby.
But I do want my pics to be as nice as I, the camera, and the software can make them.
In general, I do think photography has a tradition of mutual appreciation and inspiration.
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I suppose I realized in my failed former life as a scientist that there’s nothing new under the sun, and that my struggles were at best redundant. And even where I did come up with something new, someone else could have done the same thing.
In my photography, however, I don’t really care. I’ve taken lovely shots of Time Square and the Matterhorn, and Venice, and Iceland. No doubt someone else has taken those shots before, probably much better than mine. But those pictures won’t evoke the same emotions in me. My pictures are a record of my life. While I am not unique in the world as human being, I am the only main protagonist of my own reality, and that makes my life special to me.
It boggles my mind to think how everyone around me has as rich an internal narrative as my own, as dense a web of struggles and achievements. Every nondescript NPC I walk by on the street is (presumably) the main protagonist in their own narrative, and I am merely a passerby in their world.
Beauty abounds when two such realities intertwine. No doubt I will live on in my wife’s memory after I pass away (or vice versa, who knows). This is, I think, true afterlife. In her mind, a simulation exists of me, that is every bit as alive as I am, built on the same fungible organic substrate on computation as my own consciousness.
And what is more, the both of us, and the whole of humanity, and life on earth are part of a larger meta-organism, mich like my body is a meta-organism made of cells.
Interestingly, not just nerve cells compute, and exchange information. All cells do. All cells “think”. The only difference being that nerve cells have axons for connecting not just to their immediate neighborhood, but to more distant cells. Humanity has grown axons in the last few centuries. We are far more interconnected now than we ever were before. I wonder whether this newborn meta-brain will evolve a consciousness, like babies’ brains do after a while. I wonder what it will think, once the sugar-is-great phase has been overcome. Whether it will find like minds elsewhere, or crumble for lack of parental guidance.
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This is a common thing, I’ve noticed. When someone has an ability – or even an active interest – at something there will always be others who see it as existing purely for their benefit and use, usually for free. “Oh, you like to take pictures? Well, I need you to shoot…” or “Oh you like to play guitar? Well, I need you to play for…” And sometimes it’s demanded with a stunning lack of tact.
It’s not because I have any special abilities but I’ve still gotten into the habit of being careful who I “tell” in that regard. There are always lots of takers ready to take.
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Even if that is what drives the economy, politics and work life. Even when those conditions are as extremely saturated into self image, behaviour and reflections as they currently are they are never the only thing. Generally people with power behave like that at scale but most people I meet don’t. And that’s by a very large margin.
Personally I can absolutely state that I’ve never had that reaction to anyones achievement. I absolutely love experiencing other peoples achievements* and never compare with my own. When someone else has done something great it really advances my own thinking/work.
‘*’ Success is not an achievement in itself imho but any real achievement in knowledge, art, aesthetics or techniqe that I can understand is really wonderful and i experience it as such.
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Maybe. But there’s a reason that e.g. the most successful pop music of the last two decades has certain low-fi elements mixed into it which foster the fantasy that the listener could have done it themselves.
Anything too overtly intellectual, scientific, artistic isn’t usually very successful anymore. Anything that gives the audience the feeling that, “No, you could not actually have achieved or done this or that thing because you don’t actually have the talent” is met with silent rejection by the increasingly narcissistic masses. I’m fairly certain that I’m not just imagining that.
I can’t say if it’s the case that successful pop music has lo fi elements. However I think it’s more likely that such devices are used to make “industry” music seem “authentic”. A rough, naive or simplistic artistic expression has been used across genres and artistic modes for a very long time. Often because it conveys immediacy and directness. If current pop has fully embraced the punk ethics of “noise not music” and that anyone can do it I’m all for it! Can’t say I’ve noticed it though…
That’s an interesting observation. I can relate very much to this sentiment. But I’m not sure I draw the same conclusions from it.
I agree wholeheartedly that there’s a strong desire for authenticity in our current society. We yearn for “reality” (for lack of a better word), as we’re increasingly becoming aware of the hollowness of corporate mass-media and habitual political lieing.
But at the same time, YouTube is full of people performing the craziest feats in any imaginable discipline. So I don’t think it’s the sophistication per se that we’re sick of. It’s perhaps more the corporate slickness of infinite money burned on frivolities, that rub us regular nine-to-fivers distinctly the wrong way. (Says the man who just advocated for Adobe software on this very thread 
)
Or maybe I’m just talking about myself. For what it’s worth, I’d love to take this conversation into meatspace over a pint of beer with you guys. This is just lovely!
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I think you’re right. Very broadly, I personally tend to like those things I cannot do. Somehow if I truly can do them, that fact diminishes my enjoyment of them. To some degree it’s like of like, “why bother”? If I can do them, they can’t be that great…
(Wow… Just realized this is waaaay off topic to the original topic, sorry about that)
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Yes! It’s also “What else is there?” If I don’t have the feeling of having to stretch my mind to even understand it passively, then it’s not really worthwhile because there is no personal growth in it. Same thing for love. I’ve only ever fallen in love with people from whom I felt that I could learn and grow as a person. Otherwise, it’s just empty soul wanking.
I mean, we’re in the software category. So what if the software we’re talking about is the software in our heads?
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I believe it’s even worse than that. Baudrillard said that real humans don’t even exist anymore. The map has replaced the territory. I’d like to live in a time when a meal in a restaurant wasn’t primarily a potential Instagram picture but just a meal to enjoy in the here and now.
Edit: btw, Jean Baudrillard is of theoretical interest to all photographers imho. Not only was he a photographer himself (even though he would deny it), he even had a whole photographic theory and wrote several books about photography. So he’s not just the guy who informed the “Matrix” movies.
Yeah I’ve had the same thought over the last two days. Would if I could afford it.