By Christina Catherine Martinez
‘COMPUTER, ENHANCE!’ We’ve heard the line. The battle-scarred hero leans over the meek computer nerd, surveying swiped surveillance footage, a redacted government photo or some other imagistic pelf. A clacking of keys, and then – gasp!
The villain is thus identified, the suspect confirmed, et cetera, et cetera. Our disbelief is suspended not at the clockwork neatness of the plot, but at the idea that a zoomed-in, low-resolution, pixelated image would burst into clarity on command. Images do no such thing. ‘Computer, enhance!’ is shorthand romanticizing the bureaucratic violence of the surveilled and extracted life. And the images of this realm, with all its shadowy machinations, are the substrate of the pictures of John Sparagana.