Anamorphic Atmospheres: The New Autonomy of the Digital Image

The principles of linear perspective geometry were applied to both the representation and the form of the Renaissance city to reflect the collective proprietorial ambitions of church and state. Anamorphosis was developed by intellectual dissidents as a drawing mechanism and as a counter to the previous representational constraints imposed by linear perspective. The contemporary city image relies upon on an array of pixels mediated by technology to foster existing relationships between power and place. The paper argues that digital technologies initiate anamorphic viewing conditions that correspond to previous attempts to destabilise the covert ambitions of linear perspective. By presenting digital anamorphic representations of contemporary urban space, it shows how the temporal nature of the image and the pixel-based geometry of the digital array not only contest the promotional city view but multiply the opportunity to understand previously unexplored qualitative, atmospheric properties of urban space.