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Practices of Looking: Understanding Visual Culture in Scientific Imaging

Delve into the world of scientific imaging, exploring how images shape our understanding of truth and reality. Discover the powerful impact of visual culture on perception and knowledge through the lens of photography and video recordings. Uncover the societal implications and cultural significance of imaging practices in science.

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Practices of Looking: Understanding Visual Culture in Scientific Imaging

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  1. ”Scientific Looking, Looking at Science” Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright Practices of Looking: An Introduction of Visual Culture

  2. Characteristics of scientific imaging/images • it comes with confident authority behind (279, 292) • assumption of objective knowledge (279) • provides the capacity to see the ”truths” otherwise not available to the human eye (281) ~ X-ray invented in the 1890s ~ medical gaze to see the hidden truth • new frontiers of vision (281) → categorization/classification (!) • they are held to present accurate/self-evident proof of certain facts (286) • it can blur the border between the medical and the personal (293)→ non-medical cultural function • encourage emotional bonding (e.g. between the mother and the foetus) ~ more effective than the text (293)

  3. What is the basis for the assumption of photographic truth? • camera as an objective device for capturing reality (280) • no intentionality ~ the truth is told without mediation or subjective distortion • it is an all-seeing instrument (281)

  4. Video recordings and their effects • Video conveying a high-degree of authenticity/sense of realism (287) → Why? Due to what? Formal conventions: • low-tech • consumer grade video/film • grainy black and white • hand-held camera • long takes • unscripted action • no selective framing

  5. Video recordings and their effectsThe Rodney King case • Rodney King video producing its counter-effect by employing the scientific imaging techniques: • breaking the flow of the filmic narrative to stills/frames (288) • eliminating its time aspect → discrete elements of the visual text will tell a separate story/narrative (289-290) • sharpening • enhancement • off-focus elements brought into focus • use of interpretative language → undermined the authenticity of the video, the officers were acquitted

  6. Anthropometric/clinical imaging&Genetic mapping of the body • makes distinctions of the races • creation of the images of the Other in the name of scientific inquiry (284) • Objectification of the human being (285) → they become racialized subjects • effacing subjectivity • Clinical regime of knowledge (299) • Vision as primary avenue of knowledge → sight takes precedence over the other senses (discredits ”felt evidence”) → camera as a foreign body (306) • biological and cultural differences marked by genetics (301) → the body as an accessible digital map → the body as a communication centre (302)

  7. Conclusion • PRACTICES OF LOOKING: central to discriminatory systems (303) • Stereotypes are constructed through them SCIENCE IS NEVER SEPARATE FROM SOCIAL MEANING OR CULTURAL ISSUES (294) • What science signifies depends on social, political, cultural meanings. • The nature of science practiced in a culture is a political issue. (294) → new subject positions created (295)

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