After the artefact: Post-digital photography in our post-media era

ABSTRACT

For the past decade or so there has been some talk about the end of the digital as we know it. So soon? we might be inclined to respond. Have not we only just gotten used to these newfangled devices with their distinct space-age terminologies? The concept of a post-digital offers the possibility of a profound, critical reflexivity that disrupts the myth of uninterrupted teleological progress and the slick, impenetrable digital surface. But what does this mean for photography, already consigned to the dustbin of history by theorists such as Lev Manovich who insist that, thanks to digital technology, we live in a post-media era? This article searches for the soul of photography in the murky world that lies just beneath the shiny facade of the digital.

KEYWORDS:

• digital
• post-digital
• post-media
• Fluxus
• Warhol
• photography
• photomedia
• glitch
• media arts
• new media