PICTURING THE DARK SVALBARD. TECHNOLOGY AND THE INVISIBLE LANDSCAPE
PICTURING THE DARK SVALBARD. TECHNOLOGY AND THE INVISIBLE LANDSCAPE

Summary/Abstract: This article considers the ways in which visual landscape imagery is a result of nonvisual social, cultural and technological processes. In particular, it focuses on the way in which landscape aesthetic has traditionally hidden its non-visual foundations by examining a series of images taken near the town of Longyearbyen, Svalbard, during the polar night in January 2017 and January 2019. During the winter months, between November and February, the sun remains below the horizon in this far-Arctic location, which means that in early January there isn’t enough light for the naked human eye to discern the exact contours of the wider surrounding terrain, even at midday. The images through which the invisible foundations of visual landscape aesthetics are explored are approached with the help of applications and devices that render visible, or highlight, the technologies and conventions of machine-enhanced visual perception: Snapchat filters, Theodolite app images, and digital night mode photography. The resulting pictures are examined to raise questions on the role of human agency in situations where we are entirely reliant on machinic forms of perception to make sense of our material environment.

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