Visual Artist, Doctoral Candidate Yiu Sheung

Hyperimage Atlas – An Online Database for a Critical Posthuman Image Theory on Algorithmic Image Culture

Tieteellinen tutkimus ja taiteellinen työ / niihin pohjautuva työ | Kolmivuotinen

Hyperimage Atlas is an online database of literature, artworks, and visual materials for a posthuman photography theory in the algorithmic age. The advent of AI and big data, combined with photography, spawns a new genre of images—images that are not created by humans nor for the human eye. Focusing on three evolving imaging disciplines sitting at the intersection of computation and photography: remote sensing, 3D computer graphics, and computer vision, the research adopts a posthuman perspective that examines image as an informational object massively distributed in time and space beyond the human scale rather than a simple representational mirror of reality. The Atlas curates a cognitive map highlighting contemporary thinking on network and scale in contemporary post-digital visual culture. The research takes the form of an online collaboratively-annotated database of literature and visual materials. Inspired by Aby Warburg's approach to image studies in the Mnemosyne Atlas, Hyperimage Atlas maps out the discourse on algorithmic image systems through literature view, artwork curations, expert conversations, and invited contributions. The Atlas exposes interdisciplinary connections and identifies patterns in the discourse of algorithmic image systems by mapping out posthuman thinking across time and disciplines into a networked database, thus beginning to outline these larger-than-human image systems that are otherwise impossible from any individualistic perspective. The Atlas builds a new set of vocabularies to better address the changing nature of image-making in the algorithmic age. The online Atlas makes academic discourse more publicly accessible and inspires new conversations surrounding visuality, knowledge-making, and power in contemporary image culture. The project expands the discourse on photography beyond representation and anthropocentric views by developing a transdisciplinary knowledge database focusing on network and scale.