Esper Syndrome: Tracing Forensic Imaginaries and Spatial Pathologies in Blade Runner’s Photographic Apparatus

Of the many influential sequences in Blade Runner, one in particular persists as a critically reflexive encounter between computational photography and cinematic mise-en-scène: In his search for replicants, we follow Deckard feeding a Polaroid photograph into the Esper machine and using voice commands to spatially navigate inside the image beyond its visible surface. The paper traces how this fictional apparatus has fundamentally shaped much of the forensic imaginary of computational image analysis in contemporary visual culture, from CSI to Forensic Architecture, and proposes the term ‘Esper Syndrome’ to define its central contribution to what has become a widespread and inherently paranoid premise that new imaging technologies afford ever greater access to latent data embedded in recorded media. Submitting the iconic sequence to its own forensic gaze by building on Otaku sleuthing and academic scholarship on the art-historical lineage of this sequence, the paper correlates psychopathologies of space with emergent computational processes to situate the Esper machine at an onto-epistemological juncture within photography: Against the traditionally assumed teleology of photography’s temporality leading to the cinema, the Esper machine’s virulent spatialising of the image offers an alternative trajectory toward the parallel architecture of computing, with its deconstruction of linear perspective folding back to construct Deckard’s own elusive subjectivity.

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