Algorithmic Images as Visual Evidence

Forensic Architecture’s Methodology

Abstract

This paper attempts to trace a trajectory that links algorithmic images and visual evidence by taking into consideration forensic investigations s uch as those conducted by Forensic Architecture. Drawing from Eugeni’s (Eugeni, 2021) assumption that algorithms hybridize abstracts 193 the economy of light with the economy of information, forensic practices create evidence out of hybrid models of photography and computer-generated imaging (CGI). Despite its use of cutting-edge technologies, this new regime is in continuity with the precedent one, for algorithms inherit photography’ and cinema’s arché to produce automatically ordered translations of the world. Nevertheless, in the case of the evidence, a closer look at its photographic genealogy can raise many theoretical challenges. In the history of mechanical images, the classical definition of photography in terms of an inscription of a luminous trace has engendered the idea that, at least under certain circumstances, the image could serve as a truthful representation of facts. Such a link between the veridic status of the image and its technical genesis was with no surprise criticized with the advent of digital technologies. Theoreticians of the so-called ‘post-photography’ saw in digital imaging a practice that would undermine the relationship of trust we entertain with photography, precisely because of the ‘datification’ of the image. Therefore, the photograph would lose for evermore its close connection to its referent to become a mouldable and potentially manipulated entity. In this sceptic scenario, the photorealistic appearance of the image could no longer be regarded as a warranty for the existence of the depicted object. Even though the proto-algorithmic “input value” (Mitchell 1992) of the digital image was already known, the possibility for the digital image to instantiate veridic claims was regarded with defiance. Algorithmic imagery, on the other hand, proposes a new epistemic regime which could respond to the crisis of photographic evidence by shifting the credibility from image to data.