Mariko Mori, Subway, 1994 1 Introduction.Todays lecture is entitled, Blinding Us With Science.With this title, I appropriate and reworked a song by a new wave musician from the 1980s named Thomas Dolby whose song was called: She Blinded Me with Science.What does it mean to be blinded with science?It means that we live in a world where science and technology have achieved a level of unquestioned authority and power. We do not question science, we often do not really understand it.How many of us know the exact workings of an atomic bomb or even of a personal computer? Science has become mysterious and mystified and only an elite group of scientists, engineers, and technicians (who can be viewed as post-modern magicians) know how and why it works.We (the laypeople) merely have faith in it accepting the wonders and achievements of science and technology. Given this mind set, we assume that scientific imagery represents objective knowledge. In putting on a futuristic space suit on the Tokyo subway, conceptual photographer Mariko Mori makes herself fashionably scientific and invests herself with its mystery and authority. Guillame Duchenne (Dr. Duchenne), Figure 58 of Illustrations forMechanisme de la physionomie humaine, 1854 Chapter 8 Scientific Looking, Looking at Science attempts to deal with the blindness that science casts over our eyes.But it does not attempt to do this by teaching us scientific formulas or by conducting laboratory experiments.No.Chapter 8 rather illustrates how visual cultural analysis can help us to understand the SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION of much that is called scientific knowledge.This is the idea that science can not be understood outside of social and cultural contexts in which such knowledge is produced.As Sturken and Cartwright insist Scientific looking is as culturally dependent as the other practices of looking we have examined.Our view of scientific images must take into account the culture and experience of looking at art and popular media and the way in which we look at advertising images, because scientific looking does not occur in isolation from these other contexts. (p. 279) ATTEMPT TO RECORD HUMAN EMOTIONS with early use ELECTRODES. Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, Chronocyclegraph of Woman Staking Buttons, 1917
From this perspective, the pure objectivity of scientific knowledge begins to falter and we begin to think about the particular ideological and cultural interests that are invested in science and its visual representation.We have already touched upon the questioning of scientific authority in Chapter 3 when we studied the work of Michel Foucault and his ideas regarding the interconnection between power (which is invested in institutional authorities) and the production of knowledge and the way that this interconnectedness of power and knowledge challenges the neutrality of scientific truth. In this chapter, we will return to these dynamics by investigating a number of studies that deal with scientific looking specifically. WHAT ARE THE INTERESTS of the GILBRETHs PROJECT? Carl David Anderson, The Discovery of the Positive Electron or positron, 1932
2. IMAGES AS EVIDENCE.Since the beginning of photography, claims have been made about machine-made images with the capacity to exceed the power of the naked eye and, with such extended powers of vision, to offer us new truths about the body and about the universe.This has been one of the ruling assumptions of the discourse of SCIENTIFIC PHOTOGRAPHY with its claims to see both the very near and the very far.In the first category, MICROSCOPIC PHOTOGRAPHY has captured and magnified images that are too miniscule for the naked eye.For example, here you see C.D. Andersons micro-photographic image of a positron, a sub-atomic particle that can only be seen through a high-powered microscope. William Anders, Earthrise, December 24, 1968
In the latter category, TELESCOPIC photography has allowed us to see distant galaxies or when combined with space travel to look back and to contemplate spaceship Earth as accomplished by the Apollo astronauts of the 1960s and 70s. THE VIEW FROM SPACE has now reached MARS in its latest NASA installment. Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, X-Ray of Frau Rontgens Hand with Ring, c 1895-96
The power to see into the beyond has also been coupled with the power to see through things.This recalls the magic of X-RAYS a mode of scientific photography that was discovered by the German scientist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen in the 1890s (1895-6) and which produced interior images of the body that revealed bone structure and density. Unknown Artist, Ballyhoos Candid X-Ray Cameraman, 1934
The idea of X-ray vision entered into popular culture and it has been a source of erotic voyeuristic and superhero fantasies (e.g., Superman) as seen in Ballyhoos Candid X-Ray Cameraman (1934).Whatever the type of imagemaking - x-ray, micro-photography, or tele-photography, every one of them has been viewed as providing visual evidence of the how the universe really looks and works.These visual images are valued and invested with authority offering scientific proof for such disciplinary practices as biology, astronomy, and biomedicine. Francis Galton, Frontispiece from Inquiries into Human Faculties, 1883
However, in its looking at science, Chapter 8 looks at a number of cases of images as evidence that do not appear to be so innocent and where the scientific looking has been conditioned by racist ideologies. For one, there is the use of photography in the questionable science of EUGENICS. Eugenics emerged in the mid- to late- nineteenth century through the work of the British statistician, Francis GALTON who authored such books as the Inquiries into Human Faculties (1883).Eugenics was devoted to the study and control of human reproduction as a means to improve the human race. It made use of composite photography to classify and categorize human beings, to represent general types of people as visual evidence of norms and ideals on the one hand or of deviance and pathology on the other.This was clearly a case of categorical photography where people were classified into us and them on the basis of racial and other presumed heredity traits. Francis Galton, Galtonian Composite Criminal (from Havlock Ellis The Criminal) ca 1880
Eugenics proposed that intellectual and moral qualities were hereditary and that some races were therefore superior to others.As well as conveniently providing a justification for European colonialism, eugenics represented class differences as biological, viewing the inclination of the lower social classes towards deviance as a result of a lack of hereditary good qualities. Thus Galton made composite images of the criminal type believing that photography could offer a visual archive of pathology that could read disease off the surface of the body.(p. 282) Francis Galton, Criminal Composites from the Life, Letters and Labours of France, 1878
In his important essay The Body and the Archive, Allan Sekula reviews Galtons search for a biological determined criminal type in the following manner.Through one of his several applications of composite portraiture, Galton attempted to construct a purely optical apparition of the CRIMINAL TYPE.This photographic impression of an abstract, statistically defined, and empirically non-existent criminal face was both the most bizarre and the most sophisticated of many concurrent attempts to marshall photographic evidence in the search for the essence of crime.(p. 353) Francis Galton, The Jewish Type, Plate 35, 1883
Even more problematic is the fact that eugenics was later embraced by the Nazis to serve their racist ideology and their goal to eliminate certain racial types whom Nazi science claimed were degenerate in contrast to the ideal Aryan race.Thus, Galtons composite photographs of the Jewish type (1883) used as scientific evidence of an inferior racial type appear quite eerie in light of the Holocaust sixty years later. George Halliday, Rodney King Video Still in colour, 1991
3. RODNEY KING VIDEO. When Rodney King was beaten by the Los Angeles police in 1990, the event was recorded by amateur cameraman George Halliday.With such visual evidence in hand, a conviction on the charge of police brutality seemed to be just a matter of course.But, as counter-intuitive as it might sound, the defense turned to that very same visual evidence to undermine the prosecution.By slowing down the tape and analyzing it frame by frame the lawyers managed to make a case that King had presented a threat to the police.Your textbooks reviews the technical tricks that were used by the defense on p. 287:slowed projection, freeze framing, blowups of portions of the full frame, digitized markings on the frame directing viewers where to look and computerized stills (frame grabs) excerpted from the tape. George Halliday, Rodney King Video Still in black and white, 1991
Rather than a video recording being understood to provide self-evident PROOFS of certain facts in line with a positivist model of photographic truth, the truth of reproduction is up for grabs. In the Rodney King trial, the video footage was subject to reframing, manipulation, and editing in line with the particular agendas of both the prosecution and the defense. The traditional notion of the objective eyewitness has now become a VIRTUAL WITNESS mobilized to support a range of differing interpretations. Court TV, LAPD Defense with Rodney King Video Still, 1992.
Does the tape show Rodney King as a passive victim getting the crap beat out of him by the aggressive policemen?Or does the tape show Rodney King making threatening moves towards the officers and provoking the beating through his own behavior? The latter argument on the part of the defense attorney was sufficiently credible for an all-white jury who were no doubt predisposed to acquit the policemen of any wrongdoing. Anonymous, Portrait of Rodney King, 1996.
What your textbook does not mention is that the Rodney King verdict led to riots and outrage on the streets of the black ghettos of Los Angeles and raised the specter of racism that plagues American society.Rodney King pleaded for sanity and community when he said at the time: Can we all just get along? But unfortunately, the way in which the Rodney King video had been used at the trial illustrates that the use of video footage as legal evidence in the service of SCIENTIFIC LOOKING (now in scarequotes) raises the question -- whose evidence? and whose interpretation? Portrait of Muybridge, ca 1885
4. ANIMAL LOCOMOTION AND THE PERFORMANCE OF GENDER.In Chapter 4, we were introduced to the work of Eadweard Muybridge and how his time-motion studies of animal and human locomotion (the so-called photography of movement) lead to the discovery of the cinema. Eadweard Muybridge, Man Hurling a Discus, ca 1887
Muybridge set up batteries of camera (12 or 24) and from different angles that enabled him to observe human physiology and to analyze movement to the 1/1000 of a second.Therefore, the camera was turned to as an objective eyewitness that could see beyond the powers of the naked eye in this earlier case study of frame by frame analysis.This means that the camera and the photography of movement were both invested with scientific authority and placed in the service of PHYSIOLOGICAL SCIENCE. John Lamprey, Anthropometric Study, 1868
Like the photo-colonialist photographers and their anthropometric studies (of whom the time-motion studies were contemporaries), Muybridge made it a point to set up his subjects (most of who are naked in these experiments) in relation to the Cartesian grid the x and y coordinates that nvoke and reinforce the codes of science. Eadweard Muybridge, Man Throwing a Heavy Rock, ca 1887
However, before one gets carried away with the scientificity of these images, it is important to take a step back and think about how these visual representations are culturally constructed and to do so in ways that challenges their neutrality and their objectivity.For one, there are the GENDER ISSUES that are raised by these images.As your book reviews on page 290, men are cast in macho roles and perform tasks with bats and balls and other athletic activities Eadweard Muybridge, Woman Kicking a Hat, 1887
while women are confined to domestic and frivolous tasks like sweeping, pouring a jug a water, or the very bizarre NUDE KICKING A HAT.One might ask what is the scientific meaning of such a gesture or of another performative action where a nude woman is shown climbing into bed.Indeed, such actions and the codes of gender upon which they depend appear to say a lot more about SCIENTIFIC DESIRE than they do about SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE.From this perspective, Muybridge enacts his erotic fantasies in staging these mini-performances that are far from objective and rational and that mark them as a cultural construction. Keeping this in mind, let us look at this videotape produced by James Shelton which animates Muybridges TIME-MOTION STUDIES and that allows us to see such GENDER-CODING in action. Portrait of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, ca 1870
THE CASE OF DR. CHARCOT.The same type of critical analysis is applicable to the photographs of the French neurologist and clinical psychologist, Jean Martin CHARCOT at his Saltpetriere asylum in France in the late 19th century Jean Martin Charcot. Attitudes passionnelles: menac from his Iconographie photographique de la Salptrire ( ). Charcot used photography (both stills and series) to observe and extract knowledge from female patients who were classified as hysterical and therefore as insane. As in the case of Dr. Diamond, the camera was turned to as a scientific instrument to record the symptoms of HYSTERIA and produce scientific knowledge.Butthis visual evidence of hysteria also indexes power relations and the inscription of institutional authority.In other words, it is important to apply a Foucauldian lens of power/knowledge to these images. Andre Brouillet, A Clinical Lesson given by Charcot at his Clinic, 1883
From this perspective, Charcots photography is to be viewed as an exercise of power and authority by male scientists over female subjects who produce knowledge that further reinforces their institutional power.Functioning as scientific evidence, these images only serve to reinforce gender stereotypes that suppress the voices of their patients and that blinds us to the underlying social fabric and cultural forces that created the FEMALE HYSTERIA in the first place i.e., the repressive gender roles that confined (and contained) women in Western cultures in the nineteenth century.