How Reality interferes

Images published are distibuted accross networks, physical spaces and printed reproductions. The image sits with a window back to another time, environment and poitic. But should it? The distributed image should be complete in any environment, unfettered by realistic reference.
Every pattern, set of pixels ought to be additional to the environment where it resides rather than being a document refering to another time and place. 

The documentary digital image is journalism, fine in its own right, but a restrictive form of image invention. Objects may be introduced into the new digital environment, but it must be done carefully to avoid the mistaken reference create by fragmentation, see Rauschenberg. This freeing of the image will give the digital image the presence and weight seen in Rothko and his contemporaries work. The turn taken made by Johns and the new Realists was heading into the correct direction until Pop grabbed it and once again returned image making to referential performance, re-recording. In the digital this can be overcome with software, object insertion and words. See Laruelle.