Today, Wired's science news blog posted an article about paleoartist Viktor Deak, who provided the reconstructions for the PBS documentary Becoming Human. Deak sculpts models of early hominids and imports a series of pictures of the sculptures into Photoshop, where he makes composite images and tweaks them to make their appearance more "realistic." The blog post suggests that Deak thinks the digital medium is useful for conveying more accurate ideas about the past (or at least, the people of the past). For instance, he gushes,
"I’m excited about it, because it means you’re not just dealing with static appearance,” he said. “One of the great challenges of science communication is taking dead, dusty things we find in the ground, and helping people understand that these were part of a living world. Our ancestors were living and dying, just as we do. Bringing things to life in the digital world can really help.”
Much of the article implies that because these digital reconstructions are mobile (or animated), they seem to be alive, and are therefore best to illustrate a form of past life. Mobility probably doesn't make an image more lifelike: we can look at static pictures of modern humans or animals, and understand that they are living. Equating animation with life is not only not useful, it may be harmful. Animating Deak's reconstructions brings into question the ways our ancestors moved, and creating new problems for representing the past.
My reaction to the Wired article reminded me of Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan would remind us to consider the "effects" of the medium, not just its content. Specifically, he might want us to employ his tetrad of media effects to analyze the sort of meaning that the digital medium creates. He would encourage us to determine
- What the medium enhances
- What the medium makes obsolete
- What the medium retrieves that has been obsolesced earlier
- What the medium flips into when pushed to extremes
I've already begun to answer these questions (1. mobility, 2. stillness) with regard to Deak's work, and I will certainly consider them as I prepare my ethnographic account of our class, and analyze our construction of knowledge about Inca culture.
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