Searching for traces of the indexical within synthetically rendered imagery

In this article I discuss the attribution of photographic indexicality to synthetic photorealistically rendered images. For some traditionalists the idea of photographic indexicality being associated with a synthetically produced digital image is heresy, while others who are more comfortable with the attribution will look to the underlying computational methods that lie behind this insight. An examination of the underpinnings of the software algorithms that produce these synthetic images points to a class of statistical methods based on Monte Carlo simulation, which employs nondeterministic randomness as a strategy to overcome the overwhelming complexity of the simulations. Expanding on a practice that uses the instrumental nature of these probabilistic algorithms as a means to examine the aesthetic qualities of simulated light, I suggest that these mathematically incomplete simulations capture a referential linkage between subject and image – equivalent to a form of indexicality.