Digital Fluidity: The Performative and Reconfigurable Nature of the Digital Image in Contemporary Art and Design.
The article “Digital Fluidity: The Performative and Reconfigurable Nature of the Digital Image in Contemporary Art and Design” by Marijke Goeting delves into the unique qualities of digital images, contrasting them with their analog counterparts. It argues that digital images are inherently performative, reconfigurable, and fluid, emphasizing their temporal and virtual configurations. Through analyzing contemporary artworks and designs, Goeting demonstrates how digital images’ flexibility and interactivity offer new forms of experience and meaning, distinct from traditional media. The article highlights the impact of digital technology on art and design, suggesting that understanding and experimenting with digital images’ medium-specific properties can unleash untapped potential for creative expression.

“Technically speaking, the production and form of digital images differ from that of analog images: instead of a  physical outcome of material or mechanical processes, the digital image has no definitive form but is essentially a  performance of code (Manovich). The perception—and therefore the use and experience—of the digital image are, however, still strongly connected to its analog counterpart, by regarding the digital image as a remediation of media  such as photography and film (Bolter and Grusin). This paper examines the medium-specific properties of the digital image, in order to expand its perception. I argue that fluidity, performativity, and reconfiguration are important concepts to consider since the digital image is always a temporal manifestation and virtual configuration of information. Specifically, I will explore contemporary works of art and design, such as artistic research project DepthKit, the work “Test Screen” by interaction designer Jasper van Loenen, the websites by artist Rafaël Rozendaal and the indie video  game Metrico. By analyzing these works, I will show how designers are already experimenting with the untapped  potential and future possibilities of the digital image (by hacking existing techniques and creating new tools) in order to create new forms of experience.”

Introduction 

hink of an image that can shrink or expand at any time. Think of colors that are rendered differently depending on where you see them. Think of people that together influence what they look at. Think of a composition that changes every time you view it. Think of these things, and you think of the digital image. At least, that is how Dutch-Brazilian artist Rafaël Rozendaal describes images that live on the Web.*
Yet for many of us who look at screen-based images every day, these qualities may not be that obvious. This is because a large number of digital images are digitized, meaning that they are digital reproductions of analog media such as  print, painting, photography, and film. Since digital media remediate such a large portion of our cultural production, they seem to have lost specific properties of their own. But, a digital image is not an easily reproducible painting or an easily manipulable photograph. It has its own particular, medium-specific characteristics and ways of conveying meaning that are fundamentally different from its analog predecessors. Consequently, employing theories and concepts from analog media in order to understand the digital will not bring us much further. It will not produce a fundamental understanding of contemporary digital media, nor will it help to realize the full  potential of the digital image. For media theorist Steven Holtzman, this was already clear at the end of the 1990s. As he wrote then: “we’ve barely begun to understand the possibilities of digital worlds. Today, we’re still approaching new digital media in terms of ‘old’ ways of thinking […] Most of what we see is built on a foundation rooted in the past. It isn’t conceived with digital media in mind and doesn’t exploit the special qualities of digital media.” Yet, as Holtzman argues, “it’s those unique qualities that will ultimately define entirely new languages of expression.”**

*“Formal Characteristics of the Browser,” Rafaël Rozendaal, accessed October 7, 2015, http://www.newrafael.com/texts/page/3/. 

**Steven Holtzman, Digital Mosaics: The Aesthetics of Cyberspace, (New York: Touchstone, 1998), 13–15.

All wrights reserved to the Marijke Goeting.

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