ABSTRACT

Digital imaging techniques have been rapidly adopted within archaeology and cultural heritage practice for the accurate documentation of cultural artefacts. But what is a digital image, and how does it relate to digital photography? The authors of this book take a critical look at the practice and techniques of digital imaging from the stance of digital archaeologists, cultural heritage practitioners and digital artists.

Borrowing from the feminist scholar Karen Barad, the authors ask what happens when we diffract the formal techniques of archaeological digital imaging through a different set of disciplinary concerns and practices. Diffracting exposes the differences between archaeologists, heritage practitioners and artists, and foregrounds how their differing practices and approaches enrich and inform each other. How might the digital imaging techniques used by archaeologists be adopted by digital artists, and what are the potentials associated with this adoption? Under the gaze of fine artists, what happens to the fidelity of the digital images made by archaeologists, and what new questions do we ask of the digital image? How can the critical approaches and practices of fine artists inform the future practice of digital imaging in archaeology and cultural heritage?

Diffracting Digital Images will be of interest to students and scholars in archaeology, cultural heritage studies, anthropology, fine art, digital humanities, and media theory.

chapter 1|14 pages

What is a diffractive digital image?

ByIan Dawson, Andrew Meirion Jones, Louisa Minkin, Paul Reilly

chapter 2|21 pages

Interstitial images

ByIan Dawson, Louisa Minkin

chapter 3|14 pages

Engaging audiences with digital Blackfoot objects online and in the art gallery

ByChristine Clark, Danielle Heavy Head, Josephine Mills, Melissa Shouting

chapter 4|15 pages

Structure from motion

The movement and digital modelling of an artefact from the Blackfoot collections, British Museum
ByLouisa Minkin, Thomas Allison, Andrew Meirion Jones

chapter 6|22 pages

The work of the miniature in the age of digital reproduction

ByStuart Jeffrey

chapter 7|23 pages

Temporal ripples in art/archaeology images

BySimon Callery, Ian Dawson, Paul Reilly

chapter 8|23 pages

The inhabited frame

Examining the archaeological iimage in the era of interactive media
ByNicole Smith, Gareth Beale, Rachel Opitz

chapter 9|22 pages

Digitalising ephemerality

Preserving and utilising the transient trace in Athens' urban landscape through digital approaches in the field of fine art
ByPanagiotis Ferentinos

chapter 10|16 pages

Four-dimensional and multidimensional images

Diffracting archaeological and computational images
ByAndrew Meirion Jones

chapter 11|12 pages

Commentary

ByMarcus Jack Dostie