"The development of photography, for instance, is inseparable from the history of spiritualism; it was the ambition to capture supernatural imprints which refined and perfected the earliest forms of photographic technology. By chasing each other within and beyond the shadows of the séance rooms, ghosts and media have pushed each other closer and closer to the limit of the imperceptible; they have co-evolved as reciprocal parasites, engaging in an arms race to become increasingly undetectable and ethereal. Michel Serres has defined the parasite as a process of epistemic interference: whenever we try to access, know or represent reality, something other than the object we were looking for always gets in the way. Parasites are glitches, noises, errors, interruptions that often remain unseen, but constantly disturb our relationship with the world. According to Serres, the interference of the parasite constitutes an ineradicable aspect of every process of communication and knowledge; any attempt to get rid of it will only result in its increased proliferation. “A new obscurity accumulates in unexpected locations, spots that had tended toward clarity,” he writes, “we want to dislodge it but can only do so at ever-increasing prices and at the price of a new obscurity, blacker yet, with a deeper, darker shadow.”
"The development of photography, for instance, is inseparable from the history of spiritualism; it was the ambition to capture supernatural imprints which refined and perfected the earliest forms of photographic technology. By chasing each other within and beyond the shadows of the séance rooms, ghosts and media have pushed each other closer and closer to the limit of the imperceptible; they have co-evolved as reciprocal parasites, engaging in an arms race to become increasingly undetectable and ethereal. Michel Serres has defined the parasite as a process of epistemic interference: whenever we try to access, know or represent reality, something other than the object we were looking for always gets in the way. Parasites are glitches, noises, errors, interruptions that often remain unseen, but constantly disturb our relationship with the world. According to Serres, the interference of the parasite constitutes an ineradicable aspect of every process of communication and knowledge; any attempt to get rid of it will only result in its increased proliferation. “A new obscurity accumulates in unexpected locations, spots that had tended toward clarity,” he writes, “we want to dislodge it but can only do so at ever-increasing prices and at the price of a new obscurity, blacker yet, with a deeper, darker shadow.”
