Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film

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Over the last four decades, image-editing software has radically transformed our visual world.  The ease with which images and text can be digitally generated and altered has enabled new forms of creative experimentation, while also sparking philosophical debates about the very nature of representation. Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film examines the impact of digital manipulation tools from the 1980s to the present, for the first time assessing simultaneous developments and debates in the fields of photography, graphic design, and visual effects. Featuring over 100 works, the exhibition traces the emergence of distinctive digital aesthetic strategies, relationships to realism, and storytelling modes. 

Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, advances in computer science and engineering made it possible to design, build and run raster graphics programs, while developments in graphical user interfaces allowed artists and designers to directly create and edit images. At the same time, these nascent technologies led to concerns about authorship, automation and the viability of the businesses that supported various creative industries. During the 1990s, following the release of Photoshop, image-editing software rose to widespread use in multiple fields. As digitally altered imagery has permeated popular culture, aesthetic and ethical debates have played out in mass media, politics, advertising and even the judicial system.

Whether using early paint programs, commercially packaged and open-source software, individually programmed tools, or AI image generators, the artists in Digital Witness illuminate the visual culture we now inhabit, in which “Photoshop” is not only a product but also a verb.

This substantial, image-packed catalogue includes Q&As with noted visual artists, filmmakers and designers such as Copper Frances Giloth, Raqi Syed and April Greiman.

Foreword by Michael Govan.

Edited with text by Britt Salvesen, Staci Steinberger. 

Text by Kim Beil, Hye Jean Chung, Carolyn L. Kane, Briar Levit,
Anuradha Vikram.

- Hardcover
- 275 pages, 9 x 12 x .5 inch
- Published 2024