Week 3: An Ode to the Un-Digititzed

 

In the first week of lectures, Prof. Galey said that the course is not meant to persuade any one on whether digitized objects are better than the non-digitized version (and vice versa), and the course is actually a focus on choices and issues that one has to make when it comes to transferring a text (or image, etc.) to a digitized form. That being said, when it comes to images - I am a strong believer that the object being photographed is always better in real life (or IRL as people on the Internet say) as many of the aspects of the physical form are taken for granted and can often not be captured within the constraints of an image.

A classic example of this is vacation pictures: having seen the Taj Mahal IRL several times, not once have I been able to catch its actual beauty through a picture (the digital representation of it). Since I can't capture its essence through a picture, whenever I show someone the pictures I have taken, I always preface it with "It looks so much better in person!" Of course due to modern day technologies, I have the ability to edit a photograph by adjusting aspects of it such as brightness, saturation, angles, size, etc. to make it seem more visually appealing (or how one would think it would look more appealing). However once I do that, it is then a representation of how I think one would find the picture more appealing and/or what I think the Taj Mahal looks - not what it actually looks like.

What is taken for granted is the ambiance of standing around such a marvelous wonder, the perfect temperature during the evenings, talking a walk around the physical structure to see the many angles of the structure, being able to touch the cold marble on a warm day, the smell of the many marigolds planted around, and learning about the history of it from locals - these are aspects that just cannot be translated into a picture no matter how far technology advances. It also comes down to what choices a person personally makes. For example, on the left hand side is an image of the Taj Mahal I found on Pinterest. This is a beautiful image of the structure, however it is very obvious that it has been heavily edited to appear this way; although the structure and its surroundings still appear beautiful, it is missing to account for several of the aspects I had previously mentioned (like smell, touch, etc.)

Popular social media platform, Instagram, demonstrates this all the time. There are many pictures on the platform of people's vacations where they have made the colour of water more blue, the light of the sun more warm, or sharpened the angles of a tree, thus changing the image completely as they believe their edited version is more appealing. However, no matter how visually appealing a photograph is, there is just something about being there physically IRL to experience and witness the moment for yourself - one that no photograph can accurately capture...but you never know maybe one day with the advances in technology, it can be possible?


Street, Kenneth. (n.d.) Taj Mahal [Pinterest post]. Retrieved on Jan 26, 2016 from https://www.pinterest.com
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