Theoretical Background

Some significant recent studies, such as Batchelor (2000) and Dalle Vacche and Price (2006), have indicated the poverty of the existing literature on colour. The same criticism is even more true of the literature on light. Most technical manuals in the media which we are investigating include an address to the handling of light, but few scholarly studies have followed their lead. The study of light in the history of the arts has been dominated by 1. histories of perspective (Panofsky 1991, Damisch 1994, Kemp 1990); 2. normative practices in cinematography and photography (Jacobson 1988, Salt 1992, Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson 1985); 3. the achievement of verisimilitude in digital media (Darley 2000); 4. the metaphor of light in Western philosophy (Jay 1993, Vasseleu 1998). Our work expands on the scholarship on perspective to look at other aspects of light; does not presume that either realism or the formation of norms is the goal of professional practice; and extends from metaphorical to material analysis of light technologies.

Social historians of media (Winston 1998, Briggs and Burke 2002) suggest, in tune with Marshall McLuhan's theses, that media history proceeds by breaks with the past and sudden leaps into the future. More considered work (Flusser 2000, Mattelart 2000, Debray 1991) suggests that while complex regimes of media forms are indeed characteristic of succeeding epochs, the discontinuities can easily be exaggerated. New technologies rarely if ever displace older ones. Instead, they are layered, providing contexts of use for one another. The notion of 'remediation' (Bolter and Grusin, 1999) is only partially successful in understanding the innovation and application of new media technologies. The historical studies we will draw on for an alternative model include the work of Stoichita (1997), for his extension of the study of light to include that of shadow; (Kember (1998) and Coe (1976, 1981), who provide fundamental tools for photographic and cinema history; on Zielinski (1998) and Grau (2007), who provide tools for understanding the interwoven nature of the histories of what are too often perceived as discrete media, and on Galloway (2004), for a preliminary theorisation of the affordances and constraints of digital code. The work is also informed by critical readings in the history and philosophy of technology, notably the works of Mumford (1934), Giedion (1948) and Ellul (1964) and Bijker (1997), who extend the definitions of technology to include its users; Feenberg (1995, 2005) and Mazlish (1993), who relate ontological and social understandings of technology; and Virilio (2007) and Stiegler (1994, 1996, 2003).

We will investigate material practices and their significance as statements concerning the nature, value and meaning of light. The normative theses of much art and media historiography risk constructing stable norms to facilitate periodisation. Teleological models focus on the goals of verisimilitude, authenticity, standardisation and, in the case of digital media, of warmth, texture and depth. By stripping back the presumption that all innovation is either normative or goal-oriented, we seek a clearer view of the day-to-day practice of technical innovation in such areas as the light-responsiveness of various materials, the colour palettes and gamuts of specific technologies, and the impacts these have had on the evolution of style and form.