Dr. Yanai Toister, the head of Shenkar’s Unit for the History and Philosophy of Art, Design, and Technology, was a guest on Rona Gershon Talmi’s podcast, “The Laboratory.” In four new podcast episodes, he talks about his book, “Photography from the Turin Shroud to the Turing Machine.”

Listen to the podcast

Dr. Toister’s book introduces two conceptual models of photography: the Turin Shroud and the universal Turing machine. The Turin Shroud inspires a discussion on photography’s frequently acclaimed “ontological privilege,” which has conditioned an understanding of photographs as a sui-generis breed of images wherein pictorial representation is coextensive with human vision. This is then contrasted with the discussion on the universal Turing machine, which integrates photography into a framework of media philosophy and algorithmic art. Here, photography becomes more than just the present-day sum of its depiction traditions, devices, and dissemination networks. Rather, it is archetypical of multiple systems of abstraction and classification, and various other symbolic processes of transformation.

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