Images, Evidence, and the Arts of Attention

• In Event: 1555 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 8. Toward a Sociology of Visibility

Abstract

This paper investigates the development of new imaging technologies in order to understand the circumstances under which we allow ourselves to accept claims made using constructed, synthesized, and ML-generated images. When do we believe the truths that fictions can offer? By what processes can we be made ready to accept those truths when they conflict with our own sensory experience? Using an ethnographic study of a team of archaeologists developing new digital tools and their collaboration with the national forensic science laboratory to develop new methods for crime scene investigation and analysis, I show how an orientation to scientific discovery, a disciplinary tradition of manual craft, and a commitment to justice each contribute to the production and experience of visual veracity, and how diverse arts of attention are used in the construction of proof.

Author

• Alison Gerber, Lund University