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Reading 5

In Defense of the Poor Image

“Only digital technology could produce such a dilapidated image in the first place.”

Since the poor image is a byproduct of digital technology, in some sense, it could also be considered to be part of the web’s characteristics. Then why would people express frustration whenever they encounter “the poor image”? Why aren’t we able to adapt and demand high-quality images which seemingly go against the Web's nature? Resolution is important, but within the Web the is an invisible limitation in an image’s resolution. One of the deciding factors of the 21st Century’s web is speed. However, the condition for this is that in order to be fast, one needs to lose the resolution or size, therefore, becoming “the poor image”. Then what is more important, quality of the image or the quality of speed? And if not the web, where can we attain the “high-quality images”?

Why do people want high-quality images? As was mentioned in the reading, indeed the capitalistic society could have made an influence, but there must be other reasons as well. Though I cannot look into every person’s mind, however, from the perspective of an art student creating projects with the images found on the internet, we want high-quality images because it gives us liberty in creating something. Of course, in some circumstances one would need low-res poor images, however, there is a difference in the poor images created without one’s choice and the poor images created by one’s will. The former would be creating art that is dictated by the medium, and the latter would be an independent artwork. And even if one is not an artist, there must be a reason why Google Image was developed to enable people to find different variations of the same image, enabling one to find better quality images.