The Digital Prosthesis: between Perception, Representation and Imagination

Through practice-based research, this thesis poses the following question: To what extent can an artist use the digital camera and its processing as a prosthesis for human vision and embodiment in order to produce artworks that propose a relationship to the object world that corresponds to the exploration of a singular vision? Can the moving image operate between perception, representation and imagination? Can the moving image engage its viewers in a manner similar to painting? What forms of installation can correspond to these research questions? Triangulating a fine art practice in moving images with theoretical research into the philosophical analyses of perception, prosthesis, Flux-Image and the Matrixial Gaze, and with comparative studies of the practices of contemporary artists working with the moving image and varieties of installation, this thesis researches the relationship between the human subject, digital photographic prostheses and the external world with specific relation to time. Chapter One provides an analytical account of my work and exhibitions to explain the major questions I explore through practice. Chapter Two proposes a series of theoretical frameworks structured by the cultural and linguistic studies of prosthesis, a study of Paul Cézanne and the phenomenological concerns of being-in-the-world by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Deleuzian notions of cinematic movement/memories/time, Christine Buci-Glucksmann’s Flux-Image and Bracha Ettinger’s the Matrixial Gaze and Metramorphosis. In Chapter Three, works and installation practices of three moving–image–based artists, Pipilotti Rist, Hilary Lloyd and Elizaeth Price, are introduced in order to explore modes of video installation. The thesis concludes with the presentation of the final exhibition See the Seeing (July 2015). Digital prosthesis is not only a tool for generating archives and documentary effects. The thesis concludes that it also provides an alternative way of perceiving and imaging the world. The thesis examines the question of artworks’ escaping from the conventional role of photo-mechanical image in representation and communication to see how moving-image artworks could generate an individual perception of the object, that is not an image of some thing, but a solicitation to viewers to stay with it. The works seeks to generate affection (in Deleuze’s sense) while intervening in the flow of flux–image in the contemporary time.