From Ben Craven
Stu Witner asks “where do we stop?” when it comes to marking video or pictures as simulated rather than real (29 January, p 27). I agree that things like Hubble images can be subject to a graded spectrum of manipulations, such as false colour, and that there is no obvious place to draw a line. But for every Hubble image, no matter how radically processed, there is a corresponding real event or circumstance “out there”, without which that image could not have been created. The image is a record of something that really happened. This is qualitatively different from a simulated image, which although it might draw broadly from a general class of real events, doesn’t depend upon any particular real event, apart from the execution of a computer program.
On this basis, I suggest a criterion: given suitable transport, life-support and sensory apparatus, could I have witnessed this scene with my own eyes? If not, I want to be told.
Menstrie, Clackmannanshire, UK
