MVCR 5 (2) pp.

163–175 Intellect Limited 2015

Metaverse Creativity
Volume 5 Number 2
© 2015 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/mvcr.5.2.163_1

MUHITTIN EREN SULAMACI

Sabancı University

t: Thinking at the crossroads

of photography and digital art

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article wishes to explore the interactivity of photographic images through the photography
author’s installation t, which combines traditional photographic processes along digital art
with interactive digital artwork. For this purpose, various works of visual art, such interactivity
as painting, sculpture, performance art, etc., will be studied in order to reveal their audience
creators’ intentions towards interactivity of visuals. This research aims to serve as a interface
comparative framework for the further investigation of interactivity within the digi- representation
tal art realm. Methods of interaction will be examined in order to reveal the changes
in photographic representation that digital art has brought about. Acquired knowl-
edge will be the base for examining t in terms of its interface design, production
process, and its relationship with the audience. Thus, this article hopes to promote
thinking at the crossroads of photography and digital art to discover possibilities of
photographic representation in its correlation with the audience.

1. INTRODUCTION: TECHNICAL IMAGE IN THE DIGITAL ERA

In his seminal book, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, in 1984, Vilem
Flusser (2013: 14–21) defined technical image thus: ‘It is an image created
and distributed by photographic apparatus according to a program, an
image whose ostensible function is to inform’. According to Flusser,
photography was the first form of technical image, which later lay the
ground for cinema and video. At that time, the photographic apparatus
included a series of analogue physicochemical processes. Such processes

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demanded heavy human intervention, knowledge of chemistry and phys-

ics, and a series of decision-making processes, all of which were mastered
by artists through their artistic journey, such as Ansel Adams, William
Eggleston, etc. Yet, it was an automated process compared to the tradi-
tional ways of image-making. Flusser argued that the automated nature
of technical image led to a paradoxical situation by means of production
and distribution. By emphasizing the abilities of the photographic appara-
tus, he argued that the apparatus provided a freedom to conceptualize and
represent metaphors and events of the world; however, it was limited by
its program.
Today, the program of the photographic apparatus, by its technological
nature, has evolved into digital data. The program has been preserved and
enhanced with the aid of digital tools such as digital cameras, printers, image
editing software, etc. As well as ease of production and distribution, the digi-
tal program of the apparatus has enriched the photographic process. As Jeff
Wall once said in an interview:

Digital photography provided certain obvious technical advantages and

allowed you the freedom to do photography either as it has always
been done or to do it in rather different ways, and to still be practic-
ing photography. It’s expanded the technical horizon of photography,
allowing construction in ways that were impossible previously.
(Estep 2003)

A photograph that has a physical entity has now transformed into an immate-
rial state, which is represented by bits instead of by silver grains. This trans-
formation allows the alteration, projection and distribution of images by using
mathematical functions, meaning computer codes. Thus, the program of the
apparatus has become modifiable, which expands the limits of freedom. This
becomes visible when we look at works of contemporary artists like Joseph
Schultz, Thomas Ruff, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, etc. Digital photography
explores the limits of freedom mentioned by Flusser and ‘appears to compli-
cate and even to mock the desire for immediacy that traditional photography
promises to satisfy’ (Bolter and Grusin 2000: 111).
The present entity of images, as visual representations of computer codes,
allows artists to interpret and depict their creations with greater painterly
ambitions. In addition to the core elements of photographic production,
such as taking, editing and printing a photograph, now artists can use a vast
amount of digital tools, motion sensors, webcams, projectors and custom soft-
ware that record or alter images. In this regard, digital art, with its interac-
tive frameworks, explores photographic depiction, and the relation between
artwork and audience, as never before.
According to Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, a medium never oper-
ates in isolation; ‘it must enter into relationships of respect and rivalry with
other media [… W]e cannot even recognize the representational power of
a medium except with reference to other media’ (Bolter and Grusin in van
Gelder and Westgeest 2011). In this regard, departing from historical traces of
interactivity, this article wishes to explore the crossroads of photography and
interactive digital art through the works of artists who focus on lens-based
imagery and later on the author’s installation t, in the light of previous find-
ings. By doing so, we wish to reveal the current limits of photographic repre-
sentational freedom and its relation to the viewer.

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2. INTERACTIVITY OF VISUALS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The experience of art is always active, and in a fundamental sense interactive,
consisting of the interplay of environment, perception and the generation of
meaning in the mind of the audience (Muller and Edmonds 2006). Traditional
art forms influenced viewers in different ways. For instance, a painter influ-
enced the sense-making process of the audience with texture, colour, shades,
etc. in order to express his or her message. As Lev Manovich (2001: 55) stated,
theatre and cinema also relied on the techniques of staging, composition and
cinematography to orchestrate the viewer’s attention over time, requiring him
or her to focus on different parts of the display. Marcel Duchamp (1994) sees
the relationship between an artwork and audience as an indispensable part of
creative act, by saying, ‘The creative act is not performed by the artist alone;
the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by decipher-
ing and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to
the creative act’.
Apart from mental interaction, many artists and scholars have been
exploring the interaction between artwork and audience, which goes beyond
mental interaction. In visual arts, discovery of perspective made a huge impact
on the interactivity of visuals. According to Mark Meadows (2002), there are
two kinds of perspective in an interactive narrative: emotional and dimen-
sional. The dimensional perspective can be defined as being similar to our
vision in front of a giant building. The top of the building collapses into the
horizon and appears as a triangular form. Emotional perspective is a cogni-
tive process that is interdependent on the visual perspective. By looking at a
tall building, we experience the physicality of the building, and at the same
time we feel small and fragile. That is why most government buildings have
huge infrastructures and big entrance doors, in order to impress upon you the
authority and power within.
In the late thirteenth century, Italian painter Giotto di Bondone depicted
historical and religious scenes by using a visual perspective, in order to create
a sense of location for the viewer. He created his best work at the Church
of San Francesco in Italy. These site-specific paintings, at first glance, look
like oddly angled lines and deformed images. But when you position your-
self at the exact location that you need to be, the narrative becomes visible
and immersive. He believed the visual and emotional perspective could feed
and enrich each other. Giotto uses an interactive framework that forces the
viewer to take action: to stand in the right place. By doing so, he converges
the emotional and dimensional perspectives in order to reveal the religious
story in an impressive way.
Similarly, German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider in 1490 created
his masterpiece, Holy Blood Altar, in which we can find traces of Giotto’s
perspectivist approach. He was commissioned by the Church to depict a reli-
gious moment: the last supper of Christ. The altar is used during the eucharist
ritual. If you are a believer, you will approach the altar from the right-hand
side. When you are on your knees, to participate in the ritual, you will notice
that only one figure in the scenery looks back at you, and points at the holy
bread and wine.
Giotto and Riemenschneider provided an interactivity that demands phys-
ical movement of the audience. Interactivity of representations (or tools) can
affect the amount of cognitive effort users put into making sense of the inher-
ent features and meanings of the representations, how their different thought

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and reasoning processes are supported, how deeply they learn, how engaged
they become with the tool, and the interchange between them and the tool
(Liang et al. 2010). By influencing the audience towards the centre of the story
and the piece, their tendencies were to promote better comprehension of reli-
gious stories. But still the narrative of these pieces was a sort of monologue
that leaves no room for the viewer to explore the story.
As we move further towards the twentieth century, we can observe an
increasing demand of the audience’s physical interaction. In the 1960s, contin-
uing from where Futurism and Dada left off, new forms of art such as perfor-
mance and installation turned art explicitly participational (Manovich 2001:
56). Not the same but similarly, positioning and interaction of the viewer is
also important in Happenings. In this case, different from the previous exam-
ples of interactivity, the narrative becomes non-linear and sometimes unex-
pected. Yet, certain elements of Happenings decided by the artists, narration
of the pieces is open to improvisation and can be formed and directed by the
audience. This time the audience may become the narrator, yet he or she does
not know the end of the narration.
In this regard, we can say that both classical and modern artists seek inter-
activity as a communicative tool so that they can deliver their agenda over a
much more impactful audience engagement.

3. INTERACTIVITY OF PHOTOGRAPHS
Concerning photography, interactivity persists through a mental interac-
tion. As a key artwork, we may look at Alfred Stieglitz’s Equivalents, which
consists of a series of photographs taken from 1924 to 1934. This is the time
that photography’s indexical abilities were glorified by different sources,
artists, newspapers, scientific publications, etc. He describes the whole series
as an equivalent of his world-view and mastery on photography. There
was no apparent meaning, which you can tell immediately. There are only
well-crafted ambiguous representations of cloud formations. He demanded
viewers’ mental interaction in order to create the meaning. The follow-
ing conversation between Stieglitz and a reporter explains the impact of the
photographs:

Man (looking at a Stieglitz’s Equivalent): Is this a photograph of water?

Stieglitz: What difference does it make of what it is a photograph?
Man: But is it a photograph of water?
Stieglitz: I tell you it does not matter.
Man: Well, then, is it a picture of the sky?
Stieglitz: It happens to be a picture of the sky. But I cannot understand
why that is of any importance.
(Norman 1984)

One can say, what is the difference between looking at and interpreting a
photograph that carries indexical compositional elements and a photograph
that has no definitive elements and merely consists of abstract figures? By
looking at a photograph that has indexical features, we observe physical
qualities of compositional elements; yet they are open to connotations. But
in abstract photography, like Equivalents, we are looking at not only, but far
beyond, the physical qualities of the subject. At least, the artist’s main inten-
tion is not showing or informing the audience, but evoking connotations

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through shapes and forms – in other words, demanding the mental interac-
tion of the viewer.
Another example can be Bernd and Hilla Becher’s typological series in
which they focused on industrial buildings, such as water towers, silos and
factories. They photographed these structures in such a neutral way that the
viewer could observe their visual qualities without being influenced by the
photographer’s point of view on the subject. The photographer’s interven-
tion on the scene is almost invisible. Subjects were depicted similarly, under
similar weather conditions and proportions. By doing so, they excluded the
emotional perspective, and deployed a narrative that demands the audience’s
mental interaction towards mere physical qualities of their subjects.
Similar to Stieglitz’s approach to producing images as sequences, Minor
White also produced photographic sequences. He laboured to create a narra-
tive structure that was not merely anecdotal; his sequences describe a cycle
of visual events cued to what White referred to as ‘feeling states’ but not
storytelling (Modrak and Anthes 2011: 333). According to him, the ‘feeling
state’ was created by both the photographer and the audience. He wanted his
sequences to be subjective interpretations, and as such he wanted viewers to
gain insights into themselves by allowing them to contemplate his work as
they saw fit (Bunnel 1998).
Ed Ruscha was also interested in creating photo sequences. For his artist’s
book Every Building on the Sunset Strip (Ruscha 1966), he aimed to produce a
comprehensive geographical sequence by mounting a camera on a moving car
(Modrak and Anthes 2011: 332). In appearance, they look like long panoramic
photographs that, at the same time, provide a narrative that depicts different
passages of time. On the other hand, they can be considered as cinema stills
that are stitched together in the direct order of recording. In this sense, the
audience is allowed to travel through the frames of the sequence, as if he or
she is running the video tape back and forth.
It seems that in photography, as it is in every image, interactivity is a
mental process, and also in abstract photography demand of mental interac-
tion of the viewer appears as a fundamental concept.

4. CROSSROADS OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL ART

According to Susan Sontag, a photograph produces a privileged moment,
which one can observe as long as one desires: ‘Photographs may be more
memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a
flow. Television is a stream of under-selected images, each of which cancels
its predecessor. Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a
slim object that one can keep and look at again’ (Sontag 1977). What if you
look at a stream of selected images through an interface that allows you to
explore them in many different ways, by zooming in and out, fast forwarding,
erasing, etc.?
For instance, Muybridge also studied the representation of motion and
time, in different contexts. One of his famous pieces, Galloping Horse (1878–
1879), was captured by 24 still cameras that were installed by Muybridge at
21-inch intervals in order to reveal the movements of the horse. He then rean-
imated these 24 images with the use of his invention zoopraxiscope, which
is an early motion-picture device. The zoopraxiscope allowed the viewer to
explore discrete moments of the movement; at the same time, one could view
them at such speed that an illusion of motion was produced.

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For Manovich (2001), ‘a digital art object can be described as one or more
interfaces to a database of multimedia material’. In this sense, the zoop-
raxiscope was an interface that provided a dynamic interactive system that
allowed the viewer to navigate through selected images. One could observe
any ‘privileged moment’ as long as he or she desired, but also observe the
motion of the horse back and forth.
Muybridge invented his interface, the zoopraxiscope, based on his knowl-
edge of motion, optics, mechanics and photography. A similar situation, the
need of expertise in various fields, shifts notions about production of artworks.
Artists frequently collaborate with programmers, scientists, engineers and
designers.
In this regard, interactive digital artworks innovate and explore borders of
interface design that allow the audience to interact with images in many ways.
In digital art, audience engagement will not be seen in terms of just how long
they look; instead it will be in terms of what they do, how they develop inter-
actions with the piece and so on (Edmonds 2010). Digital art borrows strate-
gies of interactivity between audience and an artwork that has been explored
in art forms such as performance art, happenings, and video art, and shifts
the experience of art. Ultimately, any experience of an artwork is interactive,
relying on a complex interplay between contexts and productions of meaning
at the recipient’s end. With regard to digital art, however, interactivity allows
different forms of navigating, assembling, or contributing to an artwork that
go beyond this purely mental event (Paul 2003: 67).
The following case studies aim to reveal the changing photographic repre-
sentational mode within the digital art realm. Also, their methods and effects
of interaction and production processes will be the focus points of the study.

4.1 Khronos Projektor

Khronos Projektor is an interactive art installation that was developed by Alvaro
Cassinelli who is an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo. By touch-
ing and pushing a flexible screen, the audience is invited to navigate back
and forth within a pre-recorded video sequence. According to Cassinelli, the
Khronos Projektor can be seen as an exploratory interface that transforms a
movie sequence into a spatio-temporal sculpture for the audience to explore
at their own pace (n.d.).
In the artist’s library many footages are used for the sake of experimenta-
tion with the interface. One of them, the time-lapse footage of central Tokyo,
is more appropriate for the context of the article. Time-lapse photographic
sequences are usually created by taking a series of photographs at certain time
intervals than projected with certain frames per second. The time-lapse tech-
nique manipulates the representation of time. For instance, a time-lapse foot-
age of the sunset depicts various aspects of the phenomena: one can observe
rays of light that fall onto the windows of a skyscraper in Tokyo. Thus, the
time-lapse technique expands the camera’s program, which is supposed to be
an instantaneous record of a moment. With the Khronos Projektor the camera’s
program is enhanced once more, by providing advanced ways of interpreting
time.
By watching a video sequence, the audience is constrained by the cinemat-
ographic inputs that were deployed by the director. According to Cassinelli
(n.d.), the audience is ‘forced to adopt a point of view’. An interaction system
based on video-tracking enables the viewer to intervene in the chronology,

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moving backwards in time within a chosen picture area, or within space,

while the rest of the film runs on chronologically (Jaschko 2002). The relation-
ship between different compositional elements unfolds and is reconnected
under the control of the audience, which allows exploration of the conven-
tional video footage.

4.2 Cursor Carressor Eraser

Cursor Caressor Eraser coexists in two forms: an installation that has a touch-
sensitive interface, and a net artwork that uses the movement of a mouse.
The piece is a good example of the collaborative process of digital artworks.
The Cursor Carressor Eraser was created by a collaboration between artists
Michael Filimmowicz (photography), Andres Wanner (interaction) and
Melanie Cassidy (sculpture). In the installation, interactors touch and caress
a sculptural, sensitive interface that has been derived from body moulds –
casts of the body arranged as a landscape to be explored by the interactor
(Filimowicz 2010). Every gesture of the interactor results in different manip-
ulations on the image. Gentle and soft gestures create large-scale dissolve
with soft-edged erase action, while a faster-paced touch results in less effec-
tive area, a harder edge and strongly contrasted erase action. The interface of
the Cursor Caressor Eraser challenges the perception process of the viewer at
many levels. First, ambiguous and enigmatic compositions of the human body
demands the viewers’ mental interaction, evoking questions such as which
part of the body is this? Is it an arm? Shoulder? Torso? Second, while the
viewer touches the interface that is constructed by body parts, the image is
manipulated and erased according to the gestures of the viewer. As a result
of these two conflicting senses, touch and vision, the viewers’ questions are
now multiplexed and much more individual, because everybody will interact
with the interface differently. Another level is created by the net version of
the piece. This time, the viewer has a chance to compare their experiences.
The piece promotes a sense of intimacy and sensuality both with the unique
interface and with the photographs; further, it lays a ground for an exploration
of these concepts.
Cursor Caressor Eraser stands at the crossroads of photographic process
and digital art. While the piece provides traditional photographic imagery, it
also questions and challenges the conception of these images that have been
built by nude and abstract photography, across its interface.

4.3 A Bar at the Folie Bergere, by Crudeoils

Crudeoils consists of a videographer/photographer, Wafa Bilal, and a digital
media artist/programmer, Shawn Lawson. The duo appropriates historical
artworks and recontextualizes them within a dynamic interactive system. By
doing so, they tend to ‘extend the meaning of original masterpieces by incor-
porating current day issues and triggers a viewer’s imagination and opens
new interpretations’ (Lawson and Bilal n.d.).
A Bar at the Folie Bergere is an appropriation of one of the most debated
paintings in art history, Monet’s painting with the same name. The artwork
is installed on a wall in a wooden frame as if it is a traditional painting. While
the image is projected from the back of the surface, a camera reflects the view-
ers’ image in a mirror on the original image. A custom software interprets
the existence of the viewer, and starts the interactive flow. After a while, the
barmaid comes to life and seemingly refuses to serve the visitor. Sometimes,

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the barmaid leaves her spot, leaving the viewer alone with the image; she
then returns when everybody has left. Even though some part of the artwork
reflects the viewers’ image, another part refuses to interact with the viewer.
The viewer experiences different passages of time. First, the stillness of the
original image along with surrounding debates on the viewer; second, the
viewer finds himself or herself reflected in the image; finally, the image
morphs into a moving image deploying another timeline.

5. TOWARDS THE INSTALLATION ENTITLED t

In 2013, I was invited by the Istanbul Modern Photography Advisory Board
consisting of Merih Akoğul, Orhan Cem Çetin, Murat Germen and Sıtkı
Kösemen to be a participant at the exhibition Close Quarters. The exhibition
consisted of works of eighteen artists whose focus was personal narratives,
about their life, close circles and memories. As the concept text of the exhibi-
tion suggests:

Far from documentary photography’s claim to neutrality and from the

contractedness of stage photography, the works in the exhibition trace
personal narratives [...] By opening the doors to different interpreta-
tions, the images use the power of their equivocacy and not an authori-
tative voice that imposes their meaning. Among the details of everyday
life emerges the charm of the ordinary, and these images, which seem
familiar, reach significance in other people’s stories.
(Cakirkaya 2013)

Thus, in this context, I dived into my personal archive of photographs,

videos and diaries, concerning the theme of the exhibition. I noticed a
project that I produced during my study at Istanbul Bilgi University, at the
Photography and Video Department. The project is a series of photographs
that deploy typological portraits of fifteen different individuals. While
recognition of face and mimics is fundamental to know and interact with
a person, looking at someone from his or her back is a far more mystical
concept. For me, looking at someone from his or her back both physically
and/or metaphorically is a moment when imagination and creativity flour-
ish. Thus, by depicting the back of their neck on a plain grey background
with a dead-pan perspective, I was made to evoke feelings such as intimacy,
curiosity, tension and trial/error. At the end of the journey to my personal
history, I noticed that notions and intentions that were behind the typologi-
cal photography project were spread all across to my world-view and prac-
tice in one way or another.
I decided to produce an installation that focused on these ideas and feel-
ings. Thus, I created an installation (Figure 1) consisting of straight photog-
raphy practices alongside an experimental self-portrait, and an appropriation
work as well. Also, I presented a photo-based digital artwork that changed
its perspective according to the standpoint of the viewer, in the centre of the
installation, with the intention of expanding ideas that I garnered through-
out the journey to my personal history, especially ideas on the project that
I mentioned in the previous paragraph. While the surrounding still images
depict curious perspective choices, close-up and ambiguous compositions of
nature, or a wide-angle view of cityscapes, the photo-based digital artwork
hopes to evoke individual perspectives that are created in conjunction with

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Figure 1: Exhibition view of installation t, at Istanbul Modern Photography Gallery.

Figure 2: Still image from the installation t, at Istanbul Modern Photography Gallery.

the audience. Therefore, the concept text of t is as follows: Each fragment

bears the mark of continuity. It is not itself. In order to grasp the whole, each
fragment must be interpreted both in itself and in terms of its surroundings.
The top, right, left and bottom of reality may differ. The whole is the time that
elapses between assessment and the attempt to better understand. t: means to
try out lack, error, things and their changeability at their actual time and over
larger stretches of time.
For the purpose of this article, I will focus on the photo-based digital
artwork that I produced as a part of the installation t (Figure 2), in terms of its

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interface, its correlation with surrounding still images, its interactivity with the
audience, and the production process.

5.1 Interface
The interface serves as a navigational device and as translator between two
parties, making each of them perceptible to the other (Paul 2003: 70). The
photo-based digital artwork seeks for a communication, and hopes to create
a mutual relationship with its audience. In order to achieve this goal, a digi-
tal screen is mounted on the wall, right along with the Kinect device as a
motion sensor that analyses the position of the audience continuously. As the
audience enters the field of vision of the video-tracking system, the custom
software interprets and projects related images on the screen. Let’s say the
audience stands in the middle of the piece; then, the image shot from the
same perspective is projected onto the screen. The audience then moves
towards the right, and the image shot from the same angle is projected onto
the screen. Also, if the audience decides to move on the horizontal axis, the
piece gives a zoom-in or zoom-out effect. Thus, movement of the audience is
translated into computer code with the aid of the system, and is also reflected
back as photographic images to the viewer.
An interactive system can be about learning and utilizing the inter-
face, and also as Shawn Lawson and Wafa Bilal suggested the interface
can become transparent so that the artist’s other intentions come forward
(Lawson and Bilal n.d.). According to their views, a transparent interface
supports the participant’s suspension of disbelief or living the experience
(Lawson and Bilal n.d.). I agree with them, and in that sense the Kinect
device and the digital screen are hidden underneath a frame that fits visually
with the rest of the installation. Also, when nobody is interacting with the
piece, a still image is projected onto the screen for a transparent encounter
with the piece.
With that kind of interaction, the matching perspective of the image and
the movement of the audience creates a sense of location for the viewer. This
also serves my intention to create an experience of looking at a person from
his or her back as though they were standing behind him or her in real life.
Mark Hansen (2006: 47) states, ‘As the virtual space of the image is trans-
formed from an impersonal cognitive idea into an immediately graspable,
profoundly personal experience, one that centrally features your body […] as
interface’.
Featuring the viewer’s body as an interface challenges photography’s
capabilities of space representation, and also enriches time representation.
A traditional photograph carries visual information of real-life phenomena
through two dimensions: the x-axis (horizontal) and the y-axis (vertical). The
third dimension, the z-axis, is only a suggested or mock entity that can be
formed by compositional and optical decisions of the photographer, such as
aligning vertical and horizontal lines or using aperture to create a sense of
depth. Another suggested dimension is the time dimension that can be also
formed in accordance with the agenda of the photographer. For instance,
one can create a photograph that depicts a suspended moment by using
fast shutter speed; likewise, one can also create another photograph of the
same scene that depicts a sense of motion by using slower shutter speed. In a
dynamic interactive system, representation of time partially or totally becomes
an individual experience. The audience may choose to stay in a particular

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position and interpret the image from that perspective and/or may interact
with the piece as fast or slow as she or he desires.
The dynamic interactive system of the piece also allows various points of
entry into the rest of the installation. For instance, when the audience comes
closer to the interactive piece, the photograph that is next to it also enters
the field of vision of the audience, facilitating it to be viewed from a close
distance. Then, the audience may step back in order to see the whole photo-
graph. Because the closest photograph that is next to the interactive piece is
also the biggest image in the installation. Of course, this kind of interaction is
a scenario that we predicted; in other words it is an attempt to influence the
viewer to explore the installation.

5.2 Interactivity
According to Polish American artist Miroslaw Rogala, movement through
space involves a physical aspect, while movement through perspective is a
mental construct (Van Gelder and Westgeest 2011). The aim of the mental
construct of this digital artwork was to create a mutual relationship between
the artwork and the audience with the aid of matching the perspectives of
both parties. The audience becomes aware of their body, because their move-
ments are reflected through a transparent motion, as if they are looking at a
person from her back in real life. Also, the audience is able to move in the
field of interaction towards various directions. For instance, since every move-
ment of the audience is reflected as natural as possible on the screen, the
audience who moves to the far right edge of the artwork starts to see the
part of the model’s face, but yet he or she will never see the model’s face.
This promotes an unfinished, incomplete task that psychologically provides a
much more memorable experience for the audience.

5.3 Production
Although I have a background in programming and the digital realm, thanks
to the knowledge that I acquired both because my personal interest and
during my study at Istanbul Marmara University, at the Industrial Electronics
Department, I decided to collaborate with a computer engineer, Ibrahim
Savas Mumyakmaz. Instead of being both the programmer and the content
producer for the work, this decision, I believe, established a healthier process,
and gave both of us enough space and time to focus on different aspects of
the piece.
At the beginning of the process, I explained my ideas and intentions about
the photo-based digital artwork, as well as the whole installation. During the
process of creation, we met once or twice a month to give and take ideas,
and discussed methods of interaction within the relevant context. While
Mumyakmaz tests the custom software that is developed for the purpose
of this piece, I planned a photography session. For the photographic narra-
tive that we desire, I searched for a model and the location. On the day of
the shoot, I installed the camera on a rail that was stabilized by two tripods,
and shot 53 photographs that depicted slightly different perspectives. Later,
the photographs were edited in Adobe Photoshop and implemented to the
custom software that was developed by Mumyakmaz.
My intention about the piece was very clear. This, at some point of
the process, blocked Mumyakmaz’s ideas about the piece. In this sense,
perhaps ‘collaboration’ is not the correct word to explain the process. But

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Muhittin Eren Sulamacı

I can’t deny his contribution to the artwork both physically and mentally.
From my experience, both the artistic and the scientific discussions that
we had during the creation process aided me to realize different aspects of
the piece.

6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

Invention of photographic image was the result of discoveries in different
fields of science, such as chemistry, physics, optics, etc. In this context, when
we look at the crossroads of photography and digital art, we find that various
areas of science contribute to the artistic process, such as computer engineer-
ing, material engineering, etc. This enables re-construction of the camera’s
program.
Also, when we look at the digital artworks analysed in this article, we can
say that the experience of viewing a photographic image demands physi-
cal interaction of the audience, as well as their mental interaction. Although
the audience seems trapped in the interactive systems of the artworks, such
interactive systems also allow various points of interpretation of photo-
graphic images and enhance the cognitive efforts that the audience put in
the sense-making process. Within these artworks, especially space and time
representation of photographic images totally is under the control of the
audience.
Reconstructing the camera’s program, t was an attempt to discover the
possibilities of interaction between photographic images and the audience.
I plan to continue this exploration. In that sense, the canvas of photographic
images seems open to experimentation, thanks to the immateriality of the
digital image. Thinking at the crossroads of photography and digital art is a
promising, open area to research and develop strategies of interactivity and
photographic representation as technology evolves.

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with a tangible deformable screen’, http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/
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SUGGESTED CITATION
Sulamacı, M. E. (2015), ‘t: Thinking at the crossroads of photography and digi-
tal art’, Metaverse Creativity, 5: 2, pp. 163–175, doi: 10.1386/mecr.5.2.163_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Muhittin Eren Sulamacı is an Istanbul-based artist and a member of the UZ
Collective. He graduated from Istanbul Bilgi University, Photography and
Video Department, with high honours. During his education, he participated
as a junior lecturer in the courses of Orhan Cem Çetin. He also advanced and
shared his knowledge by lecturing on experimental photography and basic
photography workshops at Santral Istanbul and continues to organize and
give workshops at Galata Fotografhanesi. In 2013, he contributed to the group
exhibition Close Quarters in Istanbul Modern. In 2016, the project that he
produced together with Didem Erbas˛ won the ‘Borders Orbits 18’ competi-
tion organized by Siemens Sanat. He is currently working towards a Master’s
degree in the Visual Arts and Visual Communication programme at Sabancı
University.
.
Contact: Sabancı University, Orta Mahalle, Tuzla 34956, I stanbul/Turkey.
E-mail: erensulamaci@gmail.com

Muhittin Eren Sulamacı has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format
that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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