University of South Australia

Southern Australian School of Art

Project Coordinator
Ashley Holmes
holmbase@iweb.net.au

Dean Bruton
dean.bruton@unisa.edu.au

World Name: Spans
 

Project Description

As new media usurps the old and invents, what has become of photographic theory? Will photography ever recover from its post-modern deconstruction? Is the work of structuralist photographer Lew Thomas, published in 1978, as complete and final statement on photography as it then seemed? Making a comment, that is relevant to current authorship discussions, Thomas threw his Nikon in the air to enable the camera to take a picture. This research paper follows a trail from that point through post-structural campsites left by recent commentators such as William J Mitchell, George P Landow, Pierre Levi and Katherine Hayles. A case is put that the kinesis and synthesis of digital imagery as applied in hypermedia liberates photography from the unitary analogical loop that Lew Thomas and others revealed. Current and emerging post-photographic hyperimage formats are reviewed. Critical theory relating to interactivity, virtuality, and on-line locality is surveyed. However, at the heat of this research project is a project to design an experimental documentary web site. A serial image photdocumentary, first exhibited in 1982, is revised, extended and represented in an online format. The subject of the documetary, bridges metaphorically reflect an aim of the project, which is to create an on-line repository for further information about the localities pinpointed by the bridges. The bridges are rephotographed and the software enables a net user to toggle between temporally separated similar views of the urban catchment environment using the computer mouse. Historical and anecdotal information is layered into the hypertext format. I am additionally interested in developing a VRML interface, which will incorporate a terrain model of the Torrens River Valley. Involvement in the Active Worlds Educational Universe is seen as an ideal opportunity to present hypermedia experiments and preliminary papers for international peer evaluation and to partake in online dialogue.