CRITICAL CORPUS // MASTER'S THESIS REPO

Annotated Bibliography

An indexed catalogue of foundational literature, theoretical texts, and critical essays supporting this master's exegesis. Each record includes a formal bibliographic citation, theoretical classification, and detailed annotations articulating its direct application to our studio methodology.

Displaying indexed entries

THEORETICAL AXIS:

Steyerl, Hito (2009).

In Defense of the Poor Image

[STEYERL-2009]

Core Concept: Steyerl champions the 'poor image'—a copy in motion, compressed, ripped, degraded, and transformed through circulation, challenging the bourgeois fetishization of pristine high-resolution spectacle.

STUDIO APPLICATION & EXEGESIS RELEVANCE

Informs the theoretical tension between high-resolution museum prints (Diasec, Hahnemühle Rag) and compressed web representations in this workbook. The degradation of pixel streams becomes a political critique of photographic hyper-fidelity.

Rosner, Daniela K. (2018).

Critical Fabulations: Reworking the Methods of Digital Design

[ROSNER-2018]

Core Concept: Rosner advocates for investigative creative practices that combine traditional handicraft, corporeal labor, and technical hardware to unearth silenced histories and resist frictionless digital design paradigms.

STUDIO APPLICATION & EXEGESIS RELEVANCE

Directly relates to the physical choreographies of flatbed scanning (Plates 02 & 06), where bodily tremor and manual friction resist the smooth, automated operation of the digital carriage.

Derrida, Jacques (1995).

Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression

[DERRIDA-1995]

Core Concept: Derrida examines the dual compulsion of the archive: the archival drive to consign, preserve, and institutionalize memory against the death drive that threatens all recorded substrate with extinction.

STUDIO APPLICATION & EXEGESIS RELEVANCE

Frames this workbook's function as both an active repository and a site of intentional material decay. By subjecting archival papers and high-resolution digital scans to chemical and algorithmic degradation, the work enacts the archival paradox Derrida describes.

Elkins, James (2011).

What Photography Is

[ELKINS-2011]

Core Concept: Elkins reconsiders photography not as semiotic text or cultural document, but through its intractable chemical weirdness—silver halides, gelatin emulsions, heavy metals, and physical degradation that resist easy human interpretation.

STUDIO APPLICATION & EXEGESIS RELEVANCE

A profound influence on the chemical protocols used for Plates 01 and 05. Elkins provides the philosophical authorization to treat developer, fixer, and ferricyanide bleach as autonomous agents in a chemical performance rather than subservient servants to optical reproduction.

Barthes, Roland (1980).

Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

[BARTHES-1980]

Core Concept: Barthes investigates the photographic signifier through the dichotomy of studium (cultural, polite interest) and punctum (the visceral, unintended prick that pierces the viewer). He asserts an unbreakable connection between referent and light-sensitive paper: 'That-has-been'.

STUDIO APPLICATION & EXEGESIS RELEVANCE

In an abstract studio practice, Barthes' punctum is challenged and inverted. Where Barthes found the punctum in an incidental detail of a depicted body, my work locates it in the emulsion tear, the bleached grain, or the desynchronized color sensor line. The punctum becomes an index not of a past scene, but of the print's own violent material becoming.

Menkman, Rosa (2011).

The Glitch Moment(um)

[MENKMAN-2011]

Core Concept: Menkman articulates a critical taxonomy of glitch artifacts, defining the glitch not as an accidental error or technical failure, but as a hyper-visible revelation of the machine's inner architecture and political ideology.

STUDIO APPLICATION & EXEGESIS RELEVANCE

Directly applied to my scanographic experiments (Plate 06) and raw binary drifts (Plate 03). Menkman allows me to differentiate between gratuitous decorative distortion and authentic systemic failure. Her concepts guide the analysis in Exegesis Chapter 02.

Batchen, Geoffrey (2000).

Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History

[BATCHEN-2000]

Core Concept: Batchen redirects photographic history away from disembodied opticality towards the tactile materiality of photographic objects—emphasizing emulsions, metal casings, paper weights, and tactile modifications that insist on the photograph as a thing in the world.

STUDIO APPLICATION & EXEGESIS RELEVANCE

Crucial for contextualizing my chemigram experiments (Plates 01 & 03). Rather than viewing the photograph as a window into a depicted scene, Batchen allows me to defend the artwork as an opaque, reactive skin. His writing provides the historical lineage connecting my work with early experimentalists (Fox Talbot, Anna Atkins) while positioning modern chemical abrasion as a contemporary sculptural gesture.

Flusser, Vilém (1983).

Towards a Philosophy of Photography

[FLUSSER-1983]

Core Concept: Flusser deconstructs the photographic camera not as a neutral tool, but as an automated 'apparatus' pre-programmed to produce predictable images. The photographer’s only path to authentic freedom is to play against the apparatus—to force it to create images that were never intended by its program.

STUDIO APPLICATION & EXEGESIS RELEVANCE

This text serves as the philosophical backbone of my entire studio methodology. By manually disrupting the scanner head velocity or introducing foreign chemical agents to photographic paper, I am intentionally violating the industrial program of imaging devices. Flusser's concept of the 'magical image' informs my analysis of Plate 01 and Plate 02, where optical fidelity is surrendered in favor of exposing the machinic infrastructure of the scanner itself.