[ecrea] NECSUS Spring 2018_#Resolution

NECSUS Spring 2018_#Resolution

guest edited by Francesco Casetti (Yale University) and Antonio Somaini 
(Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3)

One of the striking features of contemporary visual culture is the 
presence of a double, contrasting tendency. On the one hand a drive 
towards higher and higher degrees of definition and resolution of 
digital images, cameras, and screens, and on the other the wide 
circulation of images in low definition and resolution, images that are 
blurred, grainy, pixelated, and degraded in different ways. The first 
tendency – the rush towards higher definition – is promoted by marketing 
and advertising and is often associated with a whole ideology that 
weaves together values such as mimetic precision, sensory enhancement, 
immersive participation, and technological progress. The second one – 
the persistence of low definition – is often linked to a search for 
authenticity and to a need to explore the various aesthetic, visual, and 
temporal effects produced by different tools of image degradation such 
as grainy filters, pixelization effects, and glitch that are 
increasingly accessible to a wider public. How can we explain such a 
double tendency, which can be detected throughout the different domains 
of contemporary photography, cinema, visual arts, television series, and 
social media? What are its cultural meanings and its aesthetic, 
economic, epistemological, and political implications? How do the 
different degrees of definition of the images circulating across 
contemporary visual culture contribute to define and organise the /media 
environments/ in which our personal and social experience takes place?

More than 50 years ago, in his /Understanding Media: The Extensions of 
Man/ (1964), Marshall McLuhan placed the distinction between high and 
low definition at the center of his media theory. By studying the 
technical specificities and the perceptual reception of the messages 
produced by different media, McLuhan formulated the crucial distinction 
between ‘hot media’ and ‘cool/cold media’, whose various implications 
are discussed throughout his entire book. The few details provided by 
the ‘mosaic mesh of light and dark spots’ that characterises the low 
definition of the television image, for example, were considered by 
McLuhan to be the reason that explained the high degree of audience 
perceptual and emotional involvement, as well as the emblem of ‘a 
passion for depth involvement in every aspect of experience’ that he saw 
emerging in various cultural domains such as literature, music, the 
visual arts, the press, fashion, design, and politics.

Even though the validity of many of McLuhan’s analyses cannot be simply 
transferred from the visual and media culture of the 1960s to the 
current visual and media landscape, we believe that his core intuition 
is still valid. The different, constantly changing degrees of definition 
that can be found in visual, sound, and audiovisual media do not have 
just a purely technological and perceptual dimension but also a wide 
variety of cultural, economic, and political implications. In her 2009 
/e-flux/ essay ‘In Defense of the Poor Image’, the German artist and 
theorist Hito Steyerl made a crucial contribution in this direction by 
studying the way in which the circulation of low-definition, highly 
compressed still and moving images brings to the fore the existence of a 
sort of ‘/lumpenproletariat/ in the class society of appearances’ that 
is in deep contrast with the polished and impeccable visual material 
promoted by marketing and industrial logics.

We believe that it is now time to further develop these insights in 
order to understand the multiple aesthetic, economic, epistemological, 
and political implications of high and low definition within 
contemporary visual culture and contemporary media environments. Indeed, 
the question of resolution not only differentiates the ways in which 
digital images appear on the various screens with which we interact 
during our daily lives; it also contributes to define the different 
regimes of ‘distribution of sensible’ (Rancière) elicited by media, and 
consequently the configuration of space in which media operate. In other 
words, the varying degrees of resolution of images may affect not only 
our perception of them but also the way in which we locate them. Hence 
the profound impact of resolution degrees on the textures and structures 
of various media environments: from the screens of our smartphones, 
tablets, and laptop computers to those of home theater installations, 
from IMAX to D3D projections, from immersive video installations to 
different types of VR gear.

For this special section in NECSUS we call for contributions that 
analyse the current cultural meanings and the various aesthetic, 
economic, epistemological, and political implications of high and low 
definition and resolution in a wide variety of visual and audiovisual 
media. The proposals can deal with one or more of the following issues:

# what are the values currently associated with high and low definition 
and resolution?

# how do high and low definition and resolution affect the circulation 
of visual and audiovisual contents through contemporary visual culture?

# how do high and low definition and resolution affect our perception of 
the temporal status and the historicity of different visual and 
audiovisual contents?

# how do high and low definition contribute to defining the textures and 
structures of media environments? How do they influence our experience 
of media environments?

# what is the cultural role played by the different degrees of 
definition and resolution that characterise visual and audiovisual 
formats (.jpg, .tiff, .mp4, .gif, etc.), with their different forms of 
lossy or lossless compression?

# the analysis of interesting cases of high and/or low definition and 
resolution in contemporary photography, cinema, visual arts, television, 
and social media

# aesthetic practices based on the choice of exploring high and/or low 
definition and resolution

# economic implications of high and/or low definition and resolution

# the cultural meanings of the filters commonly used on social media 
(Instagram, etc.)

# the cultural meanings and the aesthetic, ethical, and political 
implications of pixelisation

# the cultural meanings of datamoshing, glitch effects, and other forms 
of image degradation

We look forward to receiving abstracts of 300 words, 3-5 bibliographic 
references, and a short biography of 100 words by 1 November 2017 at the 
following address: (g.decuir /at/ aup.nl) <mailto:(g.decuir /at/ aup.nl)>. On the 
basis of selected abstracts, writers will be invited to submit full 
manuscripts (5,000-7,000 words, revised abstract, 4-5 keywords) which 
will subsequently go through a double-blind peer review process.

NECSUS also accepts abstract submissions on a rolling basis throughout 
the year for a wide variety of articles on a number of themes related to 
media studies but not necessarily connected to a special section topic, 
in addition to proposals for festival, exhibition, and book reviews, as 
well as audiovisual essays. Please note that we do not accept full 
manuscripts for consideration without an invitation. Access our 
submission guidelines at 
http://www.necsus-ejms.org/guidelines-for-submission/.

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