Reading 3: Hito Steyerl Reading

       Hito Steyerl discusses on the topics of the media saturation and image overflow in the Internet age. In her article “In Defense of the Poor Image”, she explains that poor image is a copy in motion, has a bad quality and substandard resolution. The poor image is widely used in today’s society. Steyerl states that the circulation of poor images creates a circuit, which fulfills the original ambitions of militant and essayistic and experimental cinema—to create an alternative economy of images, an imperfect cinema existing inside as well as beyond and under commercial media streams. For example, the poor resolution images are very common in people’s life. They can use cell phone to make some low quality images or videos and publish them to the Internet.
       Hito Steyerl concerns how network affect the image and asks how the image is constantly spread, recycle, and re-create in this day and age. She uses a complicated image combination to explore the political image. At the same time, her emphasis on the “Poor Image” which is the poor resolution image can be more flexibility to shuttle between the social media and social networking in order to affect the relationship between human and image. The poor image sacrifices its quality for accessibility. Steyerl believes that the speed of communication as an important aspect for the value of an image. The poor image helps people broaden their horizons and it is their window into a global network. It has a solid position and plays an important role in people’ daily work and life. For instance, although a lot of classic movies with low image quality, it is still popular among the people.