Josh’s eloquently named, Purloined Letter Effect, where a wealth of detail hides the obvious, and its connection to the photograph escaped my understanding upon reading it. Following Katti might help, “Observing simply means… distinguishing and indicating” and in distinguishing detail one must do so from the obvious (54). The obvious is placed outside the field of observation.

Virilio’s immediate context for the Purloined Letter Effect might be of interest when further put against/into to Katti’s observational systems. V writes “The introduction of the fingerprint marks the decline of the story, of the eye-witness account and descriptive model” and one sees “the deficiency of the human eye and the aberrations of subjectivity: You only see what you look at and you only look at what you want to see…. Dupin, as objective a witness as any camera, is not subject to this ordinary human failing, a failing which makes the scene of the crime almost invisible for the average person who is distracted trying to take note of a welter of detail… the human eye no longer gives signs of recognition, it no longer organizes the search for truth” and with the metric photo recording all, “What counts is what is already there, remaining in a state of latent immediacy” (42-43).

In the photographic regime of surveillance the story and subjectivity are displaced by the latent image in the field of observation. Distingishing the latent image seems to be a powerful operation indeed, a paradox of relying on and shoving away of presence that seems to bring the body out of present tense possibility (and action/effective voice?) and into a controlled realm of archival possibility.

Archival possibility is a vague term, I think I mean something in line with V’s predictive capability: under orders to “organize aerial-intelligence image production ‘like a factory’ thanks to the division of labor… Aerial observation had in fact stopped being episodic from the beginning of the war; it was not a matter of images now, but an uninterrupted stream of images… statistical trends… the interpretation of signs, the development of visual codes… the secret of victory- predictive capability” (48).

So the ascendence of the latent image means the assendence of statistical prediction. Prediction is not observation but would probably feed back into distinguishing choices. Where do these formations of latency and prediction fall into Katti’s systems of observation, blind-spots and second degree observation (a term I need help understanding)? It seems both the archive and predictive machinery are likely to bring together first and second degree observations. Would this bring instability to the systems or serve to hide the system’s instabilities? How about the relations here to cybernetics which seems to collapse archives and prediction onto the body (player/user) to immidiatley change (distinguish?) the enviroment? Dystopian futures (collapsed into the body?) seem to be crawling into my brain, but perhaps the cybernetic acknowlagement of systemacicity and lack of unity might make the above formation powerful a la neo in the matrix? Probally depends on ability for second degree observation and whos in control.
posted by chr15 at 2:08 AM

Notes on The Giant:

-was the man in the dept. store stealing a flashlight? shouldn't virilio be going crazy over this?

-the "anthropomorphic camera movements" that virilio talks about (50) were rather startling - the pans and tilts, constant scanning of surv. cams. perhaps it was more the vhs than the camera quality, but i thought it was fascinating when the images streamed across the screen out of focus. this rather amorphous visibility, when coupled with the raindrops stretching cars or pedestrians beyond normal boundaries, seemed like a sort of "skin" persisting in the image - a glare perhaps?

-Hoberman's article on Klier and The Giant (CTRL_SPACE, 82-3) talks of the rampant power and exquisite boredom of surveillance - both, i think, were made particularly clear in the film. The images did seem to be searching out crimes at some points, as well, or perhaps searching for something else. Despite the stark awkwardness of the sex parlor scene, with women stretching and posing on a revolving platform while men sat staring on from 4 feet away ("sexy girls, ya"), what seemed more invasive/peculiar was the surveillance images from the bank, where a woman is shown making a withdrawal of some sort. Was the camera scrolling across her face and body in close-up for safety purposes, or for pleasure? The proximity (lens zoomed in so that only hands or chest could be seen) seems to suggest the latter.

-when the final segment cuts from the model camera to shots of the apparatus itself, i couldn't help but feel duped. the mobile camera seemed to mimic the movement of a tank (or hummer, as david suggested) surveying the evacuated streets of a city under arrest, and the imprecision of the image quality made the buildings and trees seem "real" - whatever that means. when klier cut to shots of the apparatus itself, i couldn't help thinking metaphorically. "what's the difference?" one might ask.
posted by josh_g at 6:37 PM

Virilio's discussion of Gericault's portraits of mad people is confusing.

"It is perhaps more apt to call them the artist's conversion of the clinical sign to enhance the painted work which then becomes a documentary, an image loaded with information: the conversation of a perception of the special detachment that enables the doctor or surgeon to make a diagnosis simply by using his senses and repressing any emotion due to the effects of terror, pity or repulsion" (38).

So the painting becomes a conversation? A sort of medium of communication between Gericault and the med students? Or b/t Gericault and the sign?
Thoughts?

Also, the next paragraph, where Virilio likens the Gorgon to "a kind of integrated circuit of vision that would seem to bode a future of awesome communication," is tripping me up. Permeation??


Overall I liked the Virilio, even if I haven't determined the overall thrust of his text. In ch.3 he sets up an intersting dichotomy between the speed, inertia, mobility of increasing communication/representation technology, and the Gorgon-like fixety of the subject, life, movement, obtainted through the quest for "more light."

Also, Virilio's discussion of what we may call representational technology's Purloined Letter Effect - "the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street [which] escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious," or the crime scene rendered invisible by "a welter of details" (43) - seems to correspond with the paradoxes of observation set up by Katti: the blind spot, and the reveal-conceal duality implicit in every act of observation. Opacity and all that.

Also, Virilio's conclusion to ch.3, where he talks about how technology is vacating bodily presence in the courtroom, is interesting when read against Ernst's conclusion, where bodies merge with data and become invisible to the king's (video)eye. As is V's focus on the disenchantment of the eye - the abberations of subjectivity, the farewell to the cameraman.

Ernst's discussion of the internet transforming TV broadcasting from a distribution apparatus into a communication medium was interesting (462). His part on the new aesthetics of life formed by realtime technology was radical as well (463).

Katti: "The paranoid structure almost works even better when there is no certainty whether or not one is now being observed..." I agree. Visible surveillance technology (cameras) generally give me the feeling that nobody is watching.
posted by josh_g at 1:51 PM