Dynamic Visual Updates in digital systems

Abstract

This article presents and proposes the concept of Dynamic Visual Updates as a tool to study visual entities produced and visualized in digital systems. It also analyzes several creative works that produce different images by means of digital systems. Using a graphic example, the text identifies three features of digital images that enable to examine structural and language differences compared to those created with non-digital processes.

The presentation of a basic computer structure as well as the definition of differential vectors and an action framework enable to devise a structural model that provides an analysis tool to boost its differentiating characteristics, as opposed to the concept of digital image and its inevitable dependence on predigital languages. Said model is articulated with a materialistic approach to systems, according to which software can be used as expressive material.

This work explores the differences between material images and visual updating processes. Subsequently, it adopts the model to review an archive of digital photographs, its structure, variability, and a series of possible visual upgrades. In conclusion, computer structures supporting digital images are common to multiple levels of access to information and different sensual updates, which enables to propose a field of creative experimentation where code is the material and the image is the process.