“Fluidity of the digital” refers to the result of a change in photography culture. This phrase means that photography has progressed to a point where digital photos can be easily manipulated, which contradicts the way that photographs were supposed to depict the truth in reality. An example of this is the image shown below. Clearly there is not an animal that exists currently that is a hybrid between a butterfly and an elephant. However, digital technology has advanced enough to be able to combine those two animals together and still make it look like the creature was photographed.
Compared to other media, I would say photography is more capable of capturing reality. This is because although it is pretty easy to edit a photograph, it does still have to be changed on an image that was photographed in the first place. I feel that text is the most unreliable way of capturing reality because it is very easy to manipulate and text can also be used to describe the same thing in very different ways. Photography can be framed in a way that makes something look unreal, but there is an element of reality in there. And because video is a combination of multiple photos, one would have to apply that change many times for it to work through a video. Virtual reality is capable of capturing reality, since it allows the person to be in an immersive experience, but I feel that technology would have to advance more to be able to recreate our current realities.
Leave a Reply