Throughout history we have found numerous ways to record and represent the ‘truth’ about the ‘actuality’ of our existence in different forms of media – print, images, and videos. The advent of technology has made it possible to capture the ‘reality’ of things, places, and people, alongside creating a means to manipulate the ‘reality’ we see. The ‘truth’ is no longer distinguishable from the ‘actuality’ and the ‘imaginary.’
Our culture is heavily embedded with digital manipulation and the belief in fantasy, which has blurred our concept of ‘reality.’ We no longer seek the ‘truth’ but what we want the ‘truth’ to be. Our desire to want and create perfection has caused us to manipulate the ‘actuality’ of the ‘reality’ we live in. Therefore the belief in the ‘imaginary’ seems far more effective than capturing ‘reality’ because we are accustomed to believing in a world that does not exist.
Digital manipulation of photos and videos has altered our notion of ‘reality’ and made the world of fantasy more desirable and believable. The idea of photo manipulation has existed since the invention of photography in- spirit photography, and continues to exist because society has always been in awe of the ‘imaginary’ becoming ‘reality.’
Throughout this course I want to explore how digital manipulation of images and videos effects society’s notion of ‘reality,’ and why it take the ‘imaginary’ to help us discover or believe the ‘truth’ about the ‘actuality’ of the world. It is not as if we do not know that what we see is being manipulated but why we continue to ignore the fact that manipulation is taking place. Why do we accept these images as ‘reality’? And does it matter?
“The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.”
--Walter Benjamin
