Undigital Photography: Image-Making beyond Computation and AI

Abstract

This chapter brings into conversation Trevor Paglen’s understanding of photography in terms of ‘seeing machines’ with Zylinska’s work on nonhuman photography to probe the algorithmic aspect of perception and vision across apparatuses, species and time scales. The rationale behind this conversation is to imagine better ways of seeing the world at a time when it’s being reshaped by artificial intelligence and machine vision. It is also to envisage better ways of acting in the world. While both seeing and acting can be undertaken by human and nonhuman agents, the reflective process on what constitutes this goodness will be uniquely human. By way of framing her argument, Zylinska proposes the concept of ‘undigital photography’. This is borrowed from the academic discipline of Computational Photography, a field which deals with images captured by means of digital computation rather than optical processes. ‘Undigital photography’ is an alternative name given to this field. Yet in this term Zylinska also identifies a conceptual promise for rethinking our understanding of image-making in the age of artificial intelligence. The chapter includes a discussion of a project from Zylinska’s own photographic practice which engages with human and nonhuman intelligence – and labour.