ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies unique aspects of the digital image-making process that radically challenge the traditional relationship established between the viewer and the representation of the physical world. It draws upon contemporary image commentators to isolate and assess the digital image's geometrical properties and correspondence with earlier image-making techniques, specifically those produced by linear perspective. It also reveals how the digital image composition has a direct yet imperfect correspondence with the physiological and phenomenological response pathways underpinning the human visual system. Finally, the chapter draws upon key image theorists to identify further unique attributes of digital image geometry and technology. It argues that, by releasing the viewer from the constraints of linear perspectival viewing positions, these attributes instigate a profoundly new type of relationship between the viewer and their spatial context.
