In exploring the phenomenon of digitalisation of society I’m first of all reflecting on the nature of the digital world.
Thought experiments on Schrodinger’s unfortunate cat and developments in quantum computing aside, today’s digital world comprises of a series of zeroes and ones.
Within this digital hierarchy I’m naturally drawn to explore – for the first time in my photographic practice, other than a short undergraduate project using a Rollieflex SL66 medium format camera – images in a square format: the square format lending the photographic surface an essence of the digital DNA.
And even if the real world is not black and white, at least to our human eyes, perhaps the digital world is. So I’m also naturally drawn to explore seriously – again for the first time in a personal project – the use of black and white, or at least monotone, photographic imagery.
These are two fundamental departures from my current photographic practice, and enough to be getting on with for the time being.
Taking the square format and monotone as my creative limitations, or boundaries within which I choose to express myself, I pulled together a short series of images for informing the steps towards my Final Degree Project.
Fig. 1: Agora Simone Veil – Esplanade Solidarność 1980, European Parliament, Brussels (Image © Gordon Sutherland 2018)
Taken over one morning in and around the halls of power of the European Parliament in Brussels and the institutional district surrounding it, I feel that these locations are ideal for reflecting on power and control within the expanding datasphere. They subtly start to reveal how data flows, transmissions and surveillance are becoming omnipresent in the so-called digital transformation and start to shape the way society behaves.
Fig. 2: Esplanade Solidarność 1980, European Parliament, Brussels (Image © Gordon Sutherland 2018)
The images presented here are representative of a series of around 21 images that emerged from location scouting session and –to my mind- reveal that the square format and, in this case, monotone infrared images using a 720nm IR filter as opposed to black and white, demonstrate the futuristic feeling that I’d like to instill in the images.
Fig. 3: A short portfolio of images informing the development of a proposal for the Final Degree Project, Brussels, Saturday 13 October 2018 (Image © Gordon Sutherland 2018)
What is our digital future? What shape does it take? Is it a habitable space? – these are perhaps the emerging questions I’d like to raise in the mind of the viewer of my images.
Looking at these images, although they form part of a development process, they sit as a finished portfolio, a portfolio of developmental sketches for an emerging project.
Fig. 4: Parc de Bruxelles – Brussels Park, Brussels (Image © Gordon Sutherland 2018)
As with my previous projects they may frame and accompany the final project until its completion.
The questions thrown up by these images revolve around inclusion, or not, of people in the final set of images. And if so, how to include people, other than the viewer, within the image? Staged, or random street photography?
On the other hand, I’m wondering if people actually live in the digital world, so perhaps their complete absence from the images would magnify that enquiry?
Gordon Sutherland - Photography Research Journal 