Computational Imaging and Star-Targeting Spectroscopy – Media-Archaeological Perspective
Description
This dataset accompanies and expands upon the article "The Rise of Computational Images: The Role of Star-Targeting Photospectroscopy", offering a systematic reorganization of the key concepts, sources, and research questions emerging from a historical-epistemological investigation of nineteenth-century spectroscopy, interpreted through the lens of computational imaging and media archaeology. From a media-archaeological perspective, the dataset reconstructs the complex interplay of visual practices and technical-scientific apparatuses that, throughout the nineteenth century, contributed to the emergence of a regime of visibility grounded in automatic registration, the minimization of subjective interpretation, and the rise of "operative invisuality". Particular focus is placed on spectral maps and optical instruments as tools of standardization, codification, and pattern recognition, thus highlighting the transition from visual observation to diagrammatic computation. The dataset includes: - Diagram_ (.jpg): A visual rendering of the core conceptual relations articulated in the paper, useful to trace continuities, discontinuities, and critical transitions from spectroscopic images to algorithmic vision. - Nodes_ (.pdf): A structured vocabulary of epistemic concepts drawn from the article, each accompanied by a short definition. This conceptual mapping outlines the visual and technical genealogy of spectroscopy as a precursor to computational imaging. - QA_ (.pdf): A document collecting theoretical annotations, open questions, and epistemological reflections on image standards, algorithmic visibility, and computational mediation, within a broader historical framework. - Quotations Tags_ (.pdf): A curated selection of excerpts from primary and secondary sources used in the article, annotated and tagged according to visual-semiotic and media categories (e.g., representation, instrumentation, printing techniques, standardization, visibility), in line with a media-archaeological methodology. This dataset is intended for scholars and researchers in the fields of scientific visualization, history of optics and spectroscopy, computational imaging, and visual epistemology. It provides a conceptual and archival foundation for further studies on the operational logics, representational infrastructures, and epistemic functions of scientific images across the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.
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Additional Metadata for UCSC Datasets
| Campus | Milan |
| Scientific Disciplinary Area (after 2024) | PEMM-01/B - Cinema, Photography, Radio, Television and Digital Media |