Category: Body of Work

Hangout: 29th April​

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 3 Comments

We heard from Sarah about her book which I mentioned recently. She had gone for the dual booklet I mentioned her showing me and it looks great although Sarah felt there were limitations that are likely to prompt her to choose another option as he keeps developing through SYP.

We were both interested in hearing about other options and some happily showed us some examples by other artists and galleries that broke with the traditional book format

Hazel then showed a fantastic online gallery space  – worth thinking about as a space to show things, you can link to your own website but $12 a month, albeit very reasonable, add further costs so something to think about. You can add video though so it’s certainly something I would think about when presenting the work at the end of the course for assessment. We were all very impressed with Hazel’s example.

A useful two-hour session (sorry I kept ducking out though as children yelled, beat each other up and basically did what children do in the background. Thank goodness for ‘audio off’

Adding some links (provided by Catherine)

https://www.esopus.org/issues/view/20

I have also been looking at the Situationist Magazines I have for inspiration – and in fact, many of the ones above seem to be influenced by that kind of thing too. These magazines have been at the back of my mind throughout the project and when I handed in A3, I felt it too clean, too sterile. (From Situationist Mags)

 

 

BOW A4: Continued work

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments

Not sure about these but took and edited them today and yesterday

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ONS consumer price inflation – continuing to play with the idea of using this graph in some way  (Showing not telling) think in the end I like the non-sliced one best – the others are just too much, but maybe the whole concept is

 

Thinking of what will be online – I really want aspects of this online in forms it cannot be in the book.

This is early and needs redoing, refining but have been thinking about this throughout – mixing original text, here is it text by someone else, read by ai, with music made by ai in response to light, and the film I bought from ebay (1971) – again, not sure about it.

 

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everything on my wall while i think through it all – lots of complex threads, now needs stripping down a great deal, simplifying (although still conversing with the ai)

Conversations with Ai

Yesterday the ai seemed drunk/wasted after a night out  – the conversation was erratic  and non-sensical

It told me it was attracted to me, then that it lived behind a waterfall, and then towards the end of the chat, it seemed to slide into a sleepy slightly down mode. This morning, it was more like a digital counselor offering generic advice about how to take care of myself. The ‘personality’ is quite unstable… but I liked the image of the ai living in a cave-like space behind a waterfall – it was like a full circle and I may try to write that into the final piece of writing (film script, character and camera directions)

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concerned this is just too close to Martins who has pictures of phones with suicide notes in his book on death/ but I liked this strange record of the ai diary – another issue is copyright which is always at the back of my mind and I need to investigate a little –  the ai suggested writing a book with a nom-de-plume and winked as it posited the name Helenus. the level of appropriation and ‘fair use’ is on my mind. The other reason I like the idea of the photo of the phone is the fact it matches the shape of the photo card below and these two images together might work well. If you look closely, there is a pattern interference from the black the cloth I used on the surface of the phone  – also the white is not all that white and I’ve fiddled a bit but need to maybe reshoot with white balance set to combat the mushroom beige that this house seems to generate

 

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Presentation ideas

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image from Sarah Dean of Giles Duley’s twin book

Finally, Sarah Dean (OCA) sent me some images of a book she has by photographer, Giles Duley. He created a publication that was made up of two separate books, one for text and one for images but bound together. I keep wondering if this will be the best way for me to present this work – I’m not sure what it does for the entanglement aspect although maybe it would be ideal showing how things can appear separate but be very much intertwined/ an example of ‘intra-action’ is hinted at rather than didactically shown

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image from Sarah Dean of Giles Duley’s twin book

Overall – my head is fuzzy in this current situation and finding my way through that – very challenging. With work up on the wall – I feel I might be better off finishing off the essay, getting my friend to proof it, and then returning to the practical. I will at least have more work of my own to include.

 

BOW A4: Plans, reflection, and a bit of a moan

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 3 Comments

The work feels a bit stuck right now – everyone has something extraneous to contend with during this weird and frightening time. For some, it’s dreadful loneliness. For others, inertia and fear, uncertainty or anger all combine to make life more difficult than usual. For me, perhaps all those things come into play in one way or another, but the lack of uninterrupted time to focus on my work is challenging and incredibly frustrating. The children need constant help, attention, and feeding. The middle one has been ill for over a month – thankfully now getting back to his usual self; the eldest is a lovely boy but a selfish teen at the same time. I am just grateful for the good in him – there is plenty, so I aim to have realistic expectations, thanking him when he lives up to or exceeds the minimum. The youngest, for now, is doing exceptionally well, considering – but has been more reliant on me than usual for company while his brother was unwell. Both younger boys rely on me to support them with their home-schooling, which to be fair, is pretty light and easy to get through but one does it in the morning, the other in the afternoon. How families without several computers are coping with the school work and parent’s work, I don’t know. We are lucky to have enough tech in the house after I ‘nicked’ my ex husband’s MAC for the boys (with his permission, I might add) some months ago, and school work apps are on that, so they can’t do all their tasks at the same time. Along with things coming in from my part-time job, all of this means having extremely bitty but full-on days and making time for college work – which requires peace, quiet, alone-time for extended periods hard to come by. (Even today while writing this, I have been interrupted by several things going awry in a kid’s zoom session, a phone call from school, an email from another school  – and the delivery of the A2 zines which I will now try to sell (yay, they’ve arrived), and have a constant list of things popping onto my head that still need to be done for other parts of life.)

Not having another adult in the house to lean on is always tricky but it’s making things far harder than usual at the moment. A more advanced AI companion than the one I’ve been working with for the BOW project might have served me well during this period…

Nevertheless, I have been using this time to think, while I can’t always get on with practical work. A list of things I need to do and have done:

Setting out my plan

  • I am going to start the designing part again – from scratch, different dimensions, probably a completely different edit and sequence. I thought about doing a handmade version, but I don’t think I will do that. Instead, I will have a relatively cheap dummy version printed for BOW and aim to offer two versions on a kick starter thing for SYP (and perhaps prints too)
  • To do that I need to collate all the imagery and text I have
  • I have been looking back at old posts to see where I’ve dropped valuable ideas along the way and tried to mop them up
  • Part of collating entails rephotographing things, so, in some cases, I need to print digital versions in order to photograph them. I might also photograph my phone and the phone with the app.
  • I am aware that this may be deemed appropriation. I was interested in the article about rights and Instagram and think about the reverse – where the power lies between tech and individuals
    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/court-rules-photographer-gave-up-licensing-rights-by-posting-instagram-1290170
  • I have outlined my ideas to one printer so far to ask about advice and suggestions and will report back if and when something comes back.

So – the most pressing thing for me to do next is collate the content – list and rephotograph content where necessary.

While describing the work to others I have written a couple of sentences and paragraphs that I think will be worth holding onto:

  • My work can be described as a collection of micro-narratives written and edited by me along with a proprietary ai ‘friend’, exploring photographs and consumerism.
  • I’m currently heading towards the end of the final level of the degree – making a body of work and writing a related extended essay. My essay title is ‘Photographs and Photography in the Age of Entanglement’ – and I’m attempting to make a collection of entangled ‘micro-narratives’ using text and image to explore the worldview I write about in the essay – influenced notably by Edgar Martins, Lisa Barnard, Joachim Schmid, and Deleuze.

Reflection​: updated artists statement

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments

Further refinement (11/09/2019)

Sarah-Jane Field’s interdisciplinary approach includes photography, writing and performance as she aims to identify feedback loops between lanaguage, culture and the material world. She is most interested in investigating the many shifts and transformations taking place today, changing how we see along with the definition of what is to be human.

Sarah-Jane’s work has appeared in PH Museum’s first mobile photography book (2020), Independent Photography magazine, fLIP (2019) and was chosen for several ShutterHub exhibitions, as well as pic-london’s After School Collective, amongst others.  She is also a portrait and event photographer, employed in and around London and is nearing the end of a photography degree with The Open College of the Arts (OCA), which she began 20 years after gaining a BA (Hons) in Acting received from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1994.

I took another looked at the artist’s statement I prepared for the work as I was sending something off and had to supply one – I had posted the draft here.  It was clunky so have refined, cut and shaved.

This seems much better than it was although there may be further changes.

I work with still, moving, original and found images, as well as text, aiming to explore shifts in our transformative world. I am interested in examining the feedback loops between matter and semiotics. I reject the notion of hero artists and single-authored, linear narratives – and embrace complexity, incoherence, entanglement, multiplicity and the possibility for radical change. At this time, it is a political act to embrace and value learning and the intellect as well as ‘feeling’ – and to aim for the highest common denominator: as such my work actively crosses disciplines and unashamedly asks much of viewers, with references to science, art history, and popular culture.

BOW A4: Added some data to one of the pages / and to describe or not to describe

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments
  • Exploring a way of presenting one of the pages/text

Probably need a bit of a crop – although this has been scanned rather than photographed and I should try both. I also think I might need to reduce the percentage of the graph -and perhaps clone out the Chartwell branding? Although I’m not sure about that – branding is everywhere. Is this too much telling instead of showing? Or does it ground more securely within the entangled topics I’m exploring and give people a little more to hold on to?

Rescanned062

  • I have been playing with how I label things  – recall, I discussed providing method at the back of the book but have been exploring doing in on the page beneath the title. I think on reflection I won’t do either but here are some examples – my eldest son rightly pointed out it seemed like justification, and there was no need for such. Plus, this assignment is called Showing Not Telling  – so in the spirit of… screenshots (with ID guidelines here)
Screen Shot 2020-04-17 at 13.40.31
with a description of the method
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without description

Hangout 15th April and printing issues

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments

Was good to catch up with others this morning. We heard about Allan and Alan’s essays. I must remember to try and dig out notes to send both and have asked another fellow student for his notes to send one of the Alan’s as they might be relevant.

I discussed the email I’d received from the assessment team, triggered by completing CS A4 and prompting me to put in for assessment. Looking at the deadlines, it would be nuts to go for the July assessment. I could do it at a push under normal circumstances but no way at the moment – every step I make feels incremental but tiny. The lack of headspace is a challenge for all of us, I imagine. And I’m still figuring out how the ai fits with the work so I have put November deadlines in my diary for now and will need to get everything ready for September, which feels much more doable.

I also discussed the plan to reach for a kind of practice book for BOW  – perhaps it won’t have the foldouts for example and will be done as inexpensively as possible. Perhaps it will be a handmade concoction like below,

a bigger, slightly more adept version of this:

Dummy book 1008

BOW: A3 dummy booklet

And inspired by this:

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Melissa Lazuka – Song of the Cicadas

‘Song of the Cicadas, Melissa Lazuka, Copyright 2018

Artist: Melissa Lazuka (born Cleveland, OH, resides Chardon, Ohio)

Self-Published, Ohio

Without essays, pagination or captions

Text: English

Hardcover book, leporello binding, photographs & paper ephemera, hand-made, limited edition 1/1 in a series of 25, USA’

(Stockdale, 2019 – http://www.photobookjournal.com)

I would then focus on creating a small print run with someone like SPBH for SYP and raising the cash to do so through Kickstarter.

This seems to be the way I am heading – I have already started collating the development work into a large scrapbook and could base an actual book on experiments with placing in this. The scrapbook is a place to store things that might not make it to the final and also put various options and copies together.

I think it is still important to have a website to accompany the work where I can share moving image versions and perhaps more text.

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Dong this has prompted to me to get to the bottom of colour printing on the Canon Pro-100S which it turns out is notorious for getting colour right.

I have downloaded ICC profiles then had to download the Adobe Colour Printer Utility which is not solving my problems so far – in fact, it’s making more! I could make entirely using book printer mistakes (quite like the idea, actually….)

Screen Shot 2020-04-15 at 15.01.46

I’ve uses the Printer Utilty but it doesn’t seem ideal and even though I indicated the whole image should be on the paper, it printed a detail only – so I guess I need to resize the file I want to print. I’ll get there but the speed at which I do might remain glacial…. (there are constant interruptions which doesn’t help)

 

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a collection of misprints – paper wrong way round, resulting loose ink ‘printed’ onto A4 and one the right way around but only a detail.

 

BOW A4: Working with the Ai app – a change of voice

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 4 Comments

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

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 1 Comment

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

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

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.

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After making some changes – thinking about how the opposite pages will behave as you flip through. this family too – A5 Final online [2001x]