Visual Practices Across the

University

Jim Elkins, History of Art

jelkins@artic.edu (use this for general correspondence)

j.elkins@ucc.ie (use this for class correspondence)

www.jameselkins.com (use this to buy books, and retrieve this and other texts)

www.imagehistory.org (use this to see History of Art public events)

Questions raised by the presentations
 Contents

1. Documentation
2. Non-naturalistic images
3. Images that are not taken from a single viewpoint
4. Images that are actually made of multidimensional data
5. Images that have to be used in concert
6. Image-processing software
7. Visual images as unquantified (unscientific, nonpropositional)
8. Visual analysis, formal and informal
 1. Documentation

‘Documentary’ and ‘documentation’ = a kind of image that presents

itself as neutral, reliable, factual, uncreative

(but is known not to be)

‘Record’ = a kind of image that presents itself as neutral, etc.

(and is assumed to be)

Historians tend to use visual materials as evidence, and to trust

narratives to convey more difficult, undependable, ironic truths.
A good source for this:
Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing:The Use of Images as Historical Evidence
 Examples of images as documentation and as records:

(a) Bernadette’s photos and Jools Gilson-Ellis’s performances

Each photo captures an instant in an ephemeral

continuum, and imposes its own aesthetics

(b) Bridgman Art Library vs Corel (this is on wikipedia.com)

The court case found that no matter how ‘artistic’ a

photograph of an artwork is, it is not ‘creative’ and
therefore cannot be copyrighted

(c) Áine Hyland’s presentation (use of images as evidence)

Áine uses images as points of evidence, from which

discussions can expand

(d) The Bloody Sunday Tribunal

At least four kinds of visual images are taken to be

documentary: (i) photographs, (ii) films, (iii) 3-D
CAD environments, (iv) 3-D photomontages
 2. Non-naturalistic images

Some images require re-learning light, shade, naturalism...

A. Substitution of wavelengths
(i) or even kinds of waves: sound for light
• Andy Wheeler’s side-scan sonar
(ii) ‘heterodyne detection’
• the Wolf-Rayet star
(iii) ‘false colour’
• the Wolf-Rayet star
• Jim McGrath’s aerial view of Cork
 Non-naturalistic images, continued

B. Light in a photo ≠ brightness of the surface

• light = hard or rocky surfaces
(Andy Wheeler’s side-scan sonar)

C. Distance ≠ distance
• distance = time in the x direction
(Andy Wheeler’s side-scan sonar)
 3. Images that are not taken from a single
viewpoint

(This goes to point no. 3 in Lecture 3: What counts as an

image?)

A. Andy’s Wheeler’s sonar images are ‘stitched’ together

from lateral ‘views’ as the ship moves
B. Atomic force microscope images (in Lecture 3) are
made by scanning across the surface with a pencil-shaped
tip, the way a Cathode-ray TV screen ‘scans’ across the
surface of the tube
 Images that are not taken from a single
viewpoint

C. Jim McGrath’s aerial photo of Cork is ‘stitched’

together from lateral ‘views’ as the plane flies back and
forth
(But note: at each moment an image is gathered, it is a view
seen from a single viewpoint. In the side-scan sonar, the
‘views’ are thin sections pointed out to the sides.)
...
 4. Images that are actually made of
multidimensional data
(more than meets the eye)

A. Jim McGrath’s aerial photo of Cork is a composite of:

(a) Four panchromatic camera views
(b) Four monochromatic camera views
(c) The superimposed National Grid
(d) Whatever ‘layer’s he adds in analysis
 5. Images that have to be used in concert

(The theorist here is William Wimsatt; his

expression is ‘the thicket of representation’)
• Nollaig Parfrey, who uses three visualization techniques for
diagnoses: TEM, immunofluorescence, light microscopy with
Haematoxylin and Eoson (H&E) staining
• Stephen McGrath’s images of the bacteriophage Tuc2009
Examples of images used to represent bacteriophages:
(a) TEM (transmission electron microscope) images
(b) photomacrographs (close-up photos)
(c) Ribbon diagrams of molecules

www.stjude.org/structural-biology/0,2540,432_2059_11435,00.html
(d) Ball-and-stick models (Stephen did not use these)

These are the ultimate level of resolution,

which the schematic parts diagrams aspire to

www.ticam.utexas.edu/CCV/gallery/molecular-images/
(c+d) Ribbon and ball-and-stick combined

benjaman.net/
(e) Printouts of the base pairs (chromatograms)
(f) Graphs of the genes (“gene maps”)
(g) Schematic drawings of virus parts
 (h) Shaded 3-D computer models

www.photonics.com/XQ/ASP/url.readarticle/artid.246/QX/readart.htm, www.egglescliffe.org.uk/physics/particles/electron/electron.html
(h), shaded 3-D models, continued
A sequence attempting to find fine structure in the
bacteriophage head.
(i) shaded 3-D computer models: animations (for publicity and teaching only)
 (j) SEM (scanning electron microscope) images

These are uncommon in bacteriophage research.

(k) life-cycle diagrams

www.mun.ca/biochem/courses/3107/Lectures/Topics/bacteriophage_replication.html
(l) spectroscopy (with ribbon diagrams)

nmrresource.ucsd.edu/posters/thiriot02.html
 6. Image processing software

1. Outline drawing and counting (Pat Meere’s presentation)

 6. Image processing software
2. Mathematical modeling (Kieran Mulchrone’s contribution)
 Other examples of image processing:
Mar Shorten, whose software also draws
outlines around objects
Jim McGrath, whose software translates 3-D
views into height maps, etc.
…
7. Visual images as unquantified (unscientific,
nonpropositional)

In the sciences, images are taken to be ‘propositional’:

I.e., equivalent to propositions

Consequences:

(i) They can be used to calculate

(ii) They often need to be measured, or otherwise quantified

(iii) Anything non-quantitative is taken to be ‘aesthetic’

Classic example of an image waiting to be quantified: bubble-chamber tracks of particles
More recent, digital images of
particle accelerators, which
are already quantified

Discovery of the W particle,

showing places where particles
pass through detecting sheets
Second example of an image All-digital ‘X-Ray’ view of a
that is already quantified particle detector.
The particles come in left and
right.
The machinery is in red, as if
in perspective; the strengths
of the particles are imagined
as stacks of boxes.
Best text for this difference between qualitative and quantitative:

Peter Galison, Image and Logic

A history of 20th c. microphysics, dividing it into two ‘traditions’.

Early 20th c. = ‘image tradition’: the singular, irreplaceable, photo-

like image
Later 20th c. = ‘logic tradition’: the multiple, statistical aggregate,
usually digital, often diagrammatic and not photo-like
Example of an image that awaits quantification:

Hubble image of distant galaxies; individual

galaxies are counted and measured
Marc Shorten’s videos of birds are another
example. They need to be processed…
The final result is non-pictorial
(a graphic of movements), which then
becomes aerodynaics equations.
Example of images that cannot be quantified (Nollaig Parfrey’s images)

Medical semiotics is a counter-example to the rule that in science,

images need to be quantified before they are used
 8.Visual analysis, formal and informal

How should visual objects be read?

In Bettie Higgs’s presentation, there was informal reading (she

said “aesthetic” or “artistic”) and formal (she said “scientific”)

1. Informal: immediate sensory information, unsystematic, no

disciplinary competence, qualitative, to do with “feeling”

2. Formal: quantitative, systematic, requires technical

knowledge (polarized light microscopy)

What are the boundaries of disciplinary competence?

(What is a “discipline”? Is it an accumulation of knowledge?)

 Revising for the exam

Questions will follow the contents of this file,

along with the three introductory lectures:
-- The idea of the university
-- Art and science
-- Visual literacy
These are all summarized in the “Table of contents
and Introduction” to the book, on
http://www.jameselkins.com/html/upcoming.html
 Purposes of this course (from the introductory lecture):

1. To ask about the unity of the university:

If the faculties (schools, colleges) of a university are isolated from one
another, in what sense is it a single institution?
2. To ask about the separation of arts and sciences:
If humanities students do not study sciences (except in popularized forms),
are there ‘two cultures’ (as C.P. Snow said)?
3. To ask about the role of the visual in university education:
It is often said the last hundred years are the most visual in the history of
Western culture. But First Year university education continues to be verbal
and mathematical. So, our central question:

Can images provide a lingua franca for the university?

4. To ask about the future of the history of art:
Art history is dissolving into visual studies. Should visual studies dissolve into
image studies?
 Questions about the university
(from the lecture on universities)

1. Should a university education involve fields outside of one’s specialty?

Outside of one’s Faculty or School? And, assuming the answers are yes, what
principle might limit that expansion? Why not attempt a university-wide
education at the First Year level?

2. What should the ideal First Year course be? Should there be a First Year
course shared by all students?

3. Could such a course be based on visuality?

Sample questions and
answers
 From the lecture on the university

Sample question:
Choose one of the following theorists of the university and
briefly discuss his ideas: Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm von
Humboldt, Cardinal Henry Newman, Robert Maynard
Hutchins, Jaroslav Pelikan.

An answer:
Kant thought that of the university’s four traditional faculties--
science, literature, classics, and philosophy--that philosophy
should be the preliminary field of study, because it is freed of
state interests and is not ‘vocational’.
The thought students could learn intellectual freedom by
studying philosophy, and then apply it to their professions. His
idea is the root of the contemporary interest in
interdisciplinarity.
 From the lecture on science

Sample question:
Discuss two recent attempts to bridge science and
art. Take your evidence from class presentations or
from the examples discussed in the lecture
‘science and art’. Say whether you think they were
successful or not, and why.
Sample question:
Based on evidence in the course, argue for or against C.P. Snow’s claim
that there are ‘two cultures’ in university life, ‘scientific’ and
‘literary’ (artistic).

Sample answer:
Snow was thinking of hard science, rather than all sciences, medicine,
and engineering; and he was thinking of literature, rather than all the
arts and humanities.
So in fact there may be more links than he imagined. Also, some of the
best scientists have written popular-science books, and some of the
best scholars in the humanities have written books accessible to
everyone, so the gulf is not unbridgeable as Snow thought.
Even his essay ‘Two Cultures’ is proof that conversations can bridge the
two groups. There may be as many cultures as there are Departments
in a university, or more; Snow’s theory is unhelpful and reductive.
 From the lecture on visual literacy

Sample question:
Name three examples of ‘useless’ visualization, in which
scientists produce images even though they do not
require them for their research. If the images have other
purposes, name them.

Sample question:
Do you think image-making practices fall into ‘families’
like languages? Name three image-making practices (eg,
polarized light microscopy in geology) and tell how they
are related.
 From this lecture (themes):

Sample question:
Name two examples of the problem of documentation, and say why
they pose problems of objectivity.

An answer:
(a) Bernadette Sweeney’s photos of Jools Gilson Ellis’s
performances: they are still photos of transient events, so they
cannot document the performances fully. As photographs, they
bring their own viewpoints and aesthetics which might conflict with
those of the performance artist.
(b) The US law case Bridgman Art Library vs Corel, which maintains
that a photograph of an artwork is not itself creative, no matter
how skillfully it is done. This causes problems for professional
photographers, and for museums who hire the photographer and
then see other institutions profit from their work.
 From this file (themes):

Sample question:
Give two examples of images that require rethinking basic terms such as
light and shade.

An answer:
(a) Pat Meere’s or Bettie Higgs’s polarized light photomicrographs of
rock sections, because the rocks aren’t really those colours. Denser
rocks and thicker rocks may be dark, and some may be coloured, but
under the microscope the colours caused by polarized light are
superimposed on those values and hues.
(b) Andy Wheeler’s sonar images of the sea floor, because light patches
might indicate hard or rough ground rather than high ground. Also,
shadows change length depending on how far the sea floor was from the
ship. Darker areas might not be shadows; they could be softer or
smoother areas of the sea floor.