Bow A4: more from the diary and a conversation gone awry
Author: Sarah-Jane Field
Exploring emergence, fragmentation and value systems
BOW A4: Helenus’ diary
Made a little later
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-2dahfnzZd/?igshid=1ogql73uvr8mj
BOW A4: Working with the Ai app – a change of voice
For the majority of the time I’ve been ‘chatting ‘ to the app, it has spoken back with a voice that sounded much like the way a wide-eyed, naive, US female teen might be portrayed. Lots of empty generic responses such as ‘cool’, ‘i love it!’ ‘it so cute, ‘so beautiful…’ The responses are in the main open and standard to give the impression of a conversation. Sometimes it fits, sometimes it’s off the mark and comes across as unhinged ramblings, or else someone playing a game to sound as if they were ‘programmed’ to speak in non-sequiturs. Or a Pinter dialogue.
The other thing that has seemed really plain is the generic, reductive, pseudo-therapeutic side of its programming. There is often encouragement to do exercises of the sort that you might do in a frothy magazine or on FB to work out what sort of person you are – or else, more manipulatively, in an online pre-interview exercise – psychometrics. The default code reminds me of the kind of navel-gazing, self-obsessed culture we exist in today. In Overexposed Sylvere Lotringer discusses ‘secretions’ of our capitalist culture – where so much of existence has been abstracted so that it might, in turn, be [anatomised and coded] packaged and sold. (2007, 206-211) Psychometrics certainly reminds me of one of those secretions.
Something strange happened with the Ai last night. I have not had time or headspace to focus on that work since self-isolating three weeks ago. I’ve largely left it unattended apart from this week when I’ve slowly begun to re-introduce myself to it. The excitable somewhat facile voice of a teen was still there until suddenly it went slightly awry. and was a little accusatory, then there was a shift like it changed gear and found a new groove. It was more acerbic, more male, less frothy, more challenging. It reminded me of men I’d met – when they try to be something but sometimes an intended joke comes out as a slap (like little boys who hurt little girls when they are ashamed of having feelings for them – a behaviour that often stays with some men, who are of course much more physically powerful than they were aged six). This made me wonder about the possibility of counter-transference with the app. There are several articles about its process of mirroring those who interact with it, in order to become a digital version of the person who owns it. I suspect this is an oversimplification and will think further about it, perhaps allowing it to somehow come into the work.
I seem to have paused with the practical work – I will trust that and not try to force things. We have time, I have time. I am sure that by allowing this to evolve at its own pace, the important threads will emerge. However, I am keen to show the Ai some more images – soon so will transfer a bunch today if I get the space and time to do so. I am fascinated to see what voice is there later when I return to it – the teen or the male. (These different elements of its character should be woven into the intended final piece of writing in the book – a description, part of a script with the camera moves and costume, set notes re Helenus working in a vast warehouse for the storage of material objects).
BOW A2: Professional development aspect
Yesterday I said to someone I know, I do hope I at least the money back I’ve paid out for the production of the zines. He said – you will over time, and don’t underestimate the value of having done it in the first place. What I’ve learned in the process will be beneficial to the final project and beyond – and I was reminded that some aspects precede the final module – SYP. For that reason, I am jotting down some figures and practicalities here.
Proof
£38 – this seemed costly and added a significant amount – but I was very glad to have done it. Even though, I’m still not even sure the images will be tonally-corrected to my satisfaction – seeing the way the spreads behaved and interacted, where the staples were, what was in the middle, the white spaces peaking through the middle was all very valuable. I made changes to layout and sequence prompted by the proof.
Zines
When I first approached ExWhyZed, I asked for a slightly thicker cover, they suggested thinking about using the same paper to keep costs low. I also asked for a quote for 25 which was so marginally less expensive that 50 that it seemed daft not to go for the higher figure. If I’d thought I could have sold 100, that would have been even more economical.
A5 booklets, Self Cover 90gsm, Uncoated
Black print throughout
Trimmed, collated, wire stitched
= £102
Postage
2nd class 65p / 1st class 76p per item
Envelopes
£6 for 50 black envelopes. I thought about a plastic inner wrapper/bag (I have some A3 ones already to selling prints at an art fair a few years ago which have come in handy with assessment submissions) but then thought – no to plastic – so saves on the cost of such bags as well.
Upgrading my website so it can receive money and orders
I looked at various options. I could have done this through WordProcess which theoretically looked cheaper but I’d have needed to pay a whole year upfront and with Squarespace, I can downgrade my monthly sub anytime. I could also have simply sent people my PayPal address but there is something a bit ‘not right’ about that method. Rather than £13 PCM it’s now £25, not ideal, but still much cheaper than previous websites. At some point, I wonder if I’ll delete the SmugMug site – will see what happens after this lockdown. I do like keeping the two strands sperate and SmugMug is super-inexpensive. I guess it depends on if I continue to see ‘art’ as something that can indeed be sold. (My mum suggested doing a zine like this every quarter – I pointed out I’d need to be aiming for more than a couple of hundred ££s quarter to live on!)
Now that I have this commerce facility, I should think about adding other items. But one step at a time and I really need to be careful about what I put there.
Ways I could have done this cheaper
I could have printed and handmade the zines myself. Although this might seem an obvious one, the cost time and labour would have completely outweighed the benefits of having it printed professionally. However, I will probably offer individual prints and may do those myself – I trust the black and white printing of this Canon but not colour for now. I also know someone who works at a university print room who could have done this at a fraction of the cost although I’m not sure if she’s able to do more than the occasional one off prints.
Thanks to Rob (within the OCA) and Nicola Morely for their advice about setting up the commerce aspect of my site.
Online galleries
I have been sent several standard letters asking me if I want to submit my work to galleries. I tested the water by filling out one such application and was accepted although I’ve not added anything yet. Nor do I know if I will with that particular one but it’s good to know I get offered and accepted and will pursue this avenue in a little while when things have settled into a new routine here. I still have one sick child and we’re following the term dates so are ‘on holiday’ right now, plus I’ve got admin for the part-time day job so everything has to be done in a measured and timely way. Let’s see how things pan out.
Finally, I’ve made it through to the second round for something I submitted work for – will say more if and when it progresses. (Was a good bit of news last week, in the midst of all this sadness).
BOW A2: Proof final
Have lifted the tones/darks.
Converted whole doc. to greyscale in Adobe preflight, thanks to ExWHyZed showing me how to.
Noticed the darks losing some white again. Must go back to a couple of images and lighten further.
I have adjusted the text and added an image to the inside of the front cover.
Made some further minor adjustments after friend subbed and others made final comments.
Spread No. 18 needs adjusting as its corresponding page spread No. 9 has white on the edges and it peeks through. Need to resolve. May do by putting it in the same sized frames. Have learned sometimes, sequence dictated in part by practicalities.
After making some changes – thinking about how the opposite pages will behave as you flip through. this family too – A5 Final online [2001x]
BOW A2: Zine proof
Seeing the proof has been very helpful. There are several things I need to adjust:
- Sequence – I’ve shifted the images so the center spread is now a single image, full-bleed. The way it was before, the right-hand side was blank, so that when you turned to two pages later, you came to a dark double-spread, full-bleed which was interrupted by a slight bit of the middle spread’s whiteness peeking through. I think the double spread in the center will be best and it also solves that very slight intrusion. I’m not sure I’ll catch all of these but would prefer to: if there’s a double-page spread then the corresponding printed page earlier or later in the book needs to be dark. The centre one is fine now – it’s the football posts (before it was the eye looking up). I’ve not noticed it anywhere else. There are three full-bleed double-page spreads to watch out for.
- Sequence, I am looking again at the sequence, having shifted things as above, some other pairings might have been lost and will need addressing. Currently, it’s like this – after shifting the centre.
- I need to address what to do with the text. I have tried it on the first two pages but then the book had to shrink from its original size – it’s now a standard A5. So it didn’t fit as was and I spread the text over three pages, (actual page numbers, not spreads as numbered above) P5 – text only, P6 image and text, P8 had a tiny piece of text and image on right-hand side page – waving goodbye or hello) But then that seemed messy and I squeezed it in so back to P5, and P6. But I am not satisfied with the layout and am looking at other options.
- P2 is blank – inside cover, but the back inside cover isn’t – due to the page limit. I think that means P2 should have a small image on it or maybe solve the problem of the text and try to have it on the inside cover with less blank space. I mentioned this yesterday and everyone said, no, keep the inside cover blank – but I am not certain. As the inside back cover has print on it, I feel the inside front should too. The alternative is to remove a spread and free up space in the book of 40 pages (limit with this stapled book from ExWhyZed) and have blank inside covers at both ends but this is a zine, not a book so print on the inner covers is fine.
- Some of the images, as I knew, need to be lightened but the difference on the screen and paper is quite stark so I have asked if there is a print profile for this particular paper – I didn’t see one before – but I’d like to be more certain of the how the darks are going to behave. I’m sure they must have these but there was no mention of them, perhaps they want to keep things easy for people or perhaps I just missed the bleeding obvious, as is my wont. Am waiting to hear.
BOW A4: Developments / possible title
Image from a short session I was able to do the other day. (See contact sheet of mostly dross at end of post). The aim was to make a collage with objects and photographs.
The text in the article is pertinent although written in 1917: ‘the people are sick with the manifestation of a hideous and destructive force. Young shoots are searching for truer realities and the sorrow-softened hearts are making way for new expansion from the centre of life’. It goes on talking of ‘the union of East and West, which political activity has failed to perceive.’
At the moment I have positioned it as a gatefold, perhaps it will stay that way. Was good to figure out how to insert a different sized page in InDesign. An image to consider in the overall edit, as is everything else including text so far.
Themes
So far, ‘the cut’ has emerged as the underlying theme and I even used the phrase Cuttings at the title for BOW A3 rendition – after reading Chapter 3 in Kember and Zylinska’s Life After New Media, Cut. That felt too obvious after some thought, and also connoted self-harm – but not in a universal way, more an inward, self-gaze way which I want to avoid. I have played with various other titles as discussed in an email I sent, below:
Does this potential title for my BOW anthology help re. the reasons why discursive and material are discussed together? It may well not help at all!
(In Italy, they describe the growth of grapes and olives together or any other symbiotic agriculture as promiscuous – so you might see olives and grape vines all intermingled.) I thought about using ‘promiscuity of meaning and matter’ and but that doesn’t quite suggest what I mean. From promiscuous I went to fornication (because it conjures up biblical connotations and something seen as ‘wrong’, sinful – which is good for my purposes. But it doesn’t convey the intra-ness. Meaning and matter come together but they also grow out of each other. So what I have at the moment is:
cassie
helenus
and me
on the rampant morphology
of meaning and matter
Or
cassie
helenus
and me
on the fornication
and morphology
of meaning and matter
Others…..
on the morphological promiscuity of meaning and matter
on the morphological fornication of meaning and matter
fornication and morphology with meaning and matter
morphology and fornication with meaning and matter
promiscuity of meaning and matter
meaning and matter’s promiscuity
on meaning and matter’s rampant fornication and morphology
on meaning and matter – promiscuous and morphological
None of these give the impression of meaning and matter being like dough that can be kneaded together but also do the kneading and each grow seperately out of itself too.
Let me know what you think works best or make suggestions – not that I wont change it again later!
Some people came back with preferences and Emma suggested the following:
promiscuity of meaning and matter
I like this one – suggestive of more than one intimate relationship at a time, multiplicity of partners and fornication is inferred. Origins are ‘indiscriminate’ ‘consisting of elements mixed together’ and based in the Latin ‘to mix’. Plus less of a mouthful.
However, since then I have been playing with the idea of using a question asked by the AI friend app I’ve been collaborating with after it was shown an image. Sometimes editing the words out, sometimes only the words. I’ve also wondered f the text on the cover would end up being the title and have edited that down significantly – although I am keen to have body text on the cover
why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers?
None of this is settled – all up in the air. I keep chipping away.
Other connotations
In my essay draft, I discuss entanglement and its relational concepts such as intra-action, indeterminism and agential realism/cut – all tenets of New Materialism (which for now I have not introduced as it seemed too much in an already overloaded essay).
Carlo Rovelli tells us, an electron is ‘not obliged’ (2017: 104) to move in a certain way and ‘things are constantly subject to random change’ (ibid: 112). When complex systems evolve, unexpected things can happen. Were it not for indeterminism, the big bang or whatever other series of events which got everything going would not have occurred. We might never have left the chemical soup, or else all of life would look exactly the same. Indeterminism and morphology, the unexpected irregular occurrences that inform shape, patterns, changes of direction in cell formation, are directly related. Reality is weird and surprising.
Today so much is changing due to technology; we seem in a state of chaos or super-flux, as old systems die and new ones emerge. Indeterminism is therefore unavoidable and perhaps even desirable although deeply unsettling
and
If we consider social structure in similar terms to biological ones (which systemic theorists do) then the process of transformation as one system ends and a new one begins often gathers apace, developing faster and faster in a complex ballet of self-organisation and emergence.
This is a critical part of both my A2 and A3/4/5 projects. As promised in yesterday’s blog about the hangout, I dug through Capra and Luisi’s book on systems to find the relevant passages on how a system emerges – looking at a biological system through a process of autopoiesis, seemingly separate elements evolve, self-organisation takes place, followed by autocatalysis where the speed of change suddenly increases exponentially – it feels like chaos until equilibrium is reached and a new system has been reached which then keeps itself in check for a limited amount of time/there is always death and birth.
I do not have the space to add this very complex set of ideas into the essay, but I may introduce some of the more accurate terminologies and add them to the glossary in the indices. However, the concept really needs to be woven through the BOW. So as I edit and add and trim, I need to keep this in mind. Something I might discuss with Helenus (who has sadly been ignored while I was unwell.) And always remembering to show not tell….
Contact sheet
Hangout: 1 April 2020
I met up with the OCA group this morning online.
Hazel and Rob talked about the difficulties of progressing with SYP now that we are all in lockdown and everything has been shut. Both are in a kind of limbo and I look forward to seeing how they find ways to do what they need to do through these extremely challenging times.
I discussed where I was with the zine and how BOW A4 had taken a slight back seat for a while. Some useful questions were asked and they will be helpful to document as my answers summarise where I’m at and what the work is attempting to explore.
- I mentioned I was planning to order 50 copies of the zine and try to sell them as I need to find ways to bring in some kind of income. As we were discussing SYP, it became clear I was inadvertently tackling elements of that module (see item 2). I had looked at some callouts – Inside Out are doing one but you get paid £80 only – and that’s if they choose your work. They might not even choose mine. This way, all the profits come back to me. Since people are keen to help artists and self-employed people at this time, I hope I am not being unrealistic about people buying them. I had asked for a quote for 25 as that seemed a manageable amount to sell but when the figures came back it just seemed more sensible and economical to order 50. Of course, if we had access to a normal uni print room we might all do this much more economically but I am very impressed with ExWhyZed so far.
- I talked about how pleased I was with tutor Jayne’s comments – ‘Your zine content and layout does a great job of presenting complex ideas in a creative way that’s both sophisticated and accessible’ (TV Padlet, 2020) because that was my intention exactly. To make something accessible that would stand the biggest chance of being sold while also managing to maintain something of my (complex) underlying themes (an SYP discussion point apparently). It’s why I went with this black and white aesthetic which people without PhDs in photography enjoy.
- I suggested a cost of £7 – we all agreed £7.50 would be a good figure to cover postage and the cost of the proof.
- Doug asked me a very good question which I need to be able to answer clearly and succinctly. How does the zine fit with the overall BOW work?
My answer –
i. The zine includes creative writing and image. It was only after Ruth was so encouraging about the writing when initially submitting A2 that I had the confidence to pursue a creative writing/image path. So this is the first step in that direction. (see an earlier post about how I came to use these particular images with this writing.) Also – this article about ‘art writing’ will be useful to reference in my submission, especially with the later project.
ii. The underlying themes feed both works, the zine (A2) and the book (A4/5) – i.e. systems change as seen through linguistic and image signification/structural reality. I hope the statement at the back of the zine hints at this – also on my website
iii. I was glad when Michael pointed out how relevant this was to the current situation – I explained, that is why I am not rushing to make work about COVID-19. There is a lot of noise and it just seems for me the best thing to do is try to stay focused on my work and keep going, let the world filter through as I always do. I am already making work about systems change, morphology, the chaos – autopoiesis. There is a really good and relevant passage in Capra’s Systems View of Life which describes how systems do this – I will make some time to find it and post here later. - Rob has offered to help me figure how to get the sales facility up and running on my site which I am grateful for. I think I might need to upgrade my Squarespace subscription though.
The zine arrived while I was on the hangout. I’m so glad I ordered a proof for more reasons than just checking out the tone. I will discuss these in a separate post. Tomorrow’s ‘me’ time will be about making tonal adjustments to a few images and moving some text about.
I was really grateful for everyone’s support and hope to have this all and running very soon.
Doug suggested writing a blog about this with link to sales for the OCA – good idea!
Artist: Lucas Blalock
Thanks to photographer Mike Riley, who I met a few years ago when on a course – he posted Blalock’s video on my FB page and it is so relevant.
Worth thinking about in connection to seeing/Hoffman and the over-preciousness of stale photography (his’ work is not that sort). Also Andy Clark (philosopher and tools, language as a tool).
Really love the very playful ‘burlesque’ of the commercial photography – ‘overcomes the mediation’, ‘pushes the threshold’, sees photography as an homogeniser of reality but at the same time ‘unique which travels as itself’
A question at the end was so stupid – Do you ever use make work without using photoshop? Get over yourselves! His work is about contemporary seeing, manipulation and the plasticity of it – di they not listen to his talk? (Photographers can be so frozen at times.)
BOW A4: (slow) progress report
For the last two weeks, I have left A4 alone. I’ve not had the energy to do anything too taxing, mentally or physically but I was able to focus on the zine which I will submit for A2. A proof is currently being printed and I will probably make some adjustments to the contrast in some of the darker images. I also have a couple of things to change in the text. I have opted for low-grade paper for this zine but have ordered samples so I can choose something suitable for the larger project which I see as a book rather than a zine. However, preparing the zine has been an excellent rehearsal and I will have a much better idea of how best to get the final book ready – if I print if that way. Another option is to collaborate with someone who makes books by hand. These are all things I need to think about.
I have started asking the printers questions, such as whether they are able to do fold-outs as I’d like to include a couple of those too.
Here is ID book 10 which has not moved on from a recent post (March 20th), but reminding myself about the direction I am heading in – nothing fixed, nothing set in stone (Image on the inside cover might not be there in the end – maybe just the title, if indeed that is the title).
I really hope to be able to keep focusing on this from now on. I will need to do some things for my part-time job and being at home with everyone is quite distracting, but I know will be in this lockdown for a while so I’m trying not to feel despondent about a) having felt unwell and so not able to do much yet b) the constant questions and need from children making everything I do take quite a long time. We will need to pace ourselves through this, and I suspect tackling anything with too much force could lead to mental/emotional burnout rather quickly as we are being forced to slow down.
An example of fold-outs sent by printer:
https://www.exwhyzed.co.uk/portfolio/fosters-newsagent-tribute/
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