News/Research

Nabeel Siddiqui Reviews Image Objects

08 Mar, 2022

Nabeel Siddiqui Reviews Image Objects

Jacob Gaboury's Image Objects was reviewed in Information & Culture by Nabeel Siddiqui. In Image Objects: An Archeology of Computer Graphics, Jacob Gaboury remedies this by tracing the development of computer graphics during the thirty years before the technology's proliferation in popular visual culture. Drawing on media archeology, he chronologically inspects five “image objects:” an algorithm, an interface, an object standard, a programming paradigm, and a hardware platform. Gaboury's amalgamation of images with objects attempts to direct attention to the ways that materials constrain computer visualizations and also how the digital informs the physical.

Nabeel Siddiqui summarizes Gaboury's contents and logic in the book at first. For instance, he summarizes that "Gaboury begins by inspecting the neglected "secondary" sites of research in the history of computing—notably the University of Utah—and disentangling the teleological narratives of new media's relationship with the old", "Gaboury continues by assessing how graphical researchers made distinct ontological claims about the material world by decoupling physical objects from their properties", and "The book concludes by highlighting the GPU's development as a distinct object and its implications for modern computing".

From the review:

"Overall, Image Objects is a nuanced account into the history of computer graphics that researchers have often ignored. Gaboury's blend of philosophical inquiry with media archeology exemplifies a unique methodology for those seeking new ways to understand the entanglement of the digital with the material world. Ultimately, Image Objects shows that the ubiquity of digital images in our current computing environment did not emerge spontaneously but was the result of a decades-long process of transforming the computer as a visual medium."

To read the full review, please visit here.