CS A5: OCA Reflection form

June 20, 2020September 4, 2020 ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

I’ll be handing in my essay to Matt early next week. Here are my reflection answers in the meantime.

Demonstration of subject-based knowledge and understanding

I have taken a major risk by focusing on Barad’s writing to underpin my argument. It is not the theory that is taught usually within photography although that is changing and Daniel Rubinstein who I quote is heavily influenced by a quantum view of reality and Fred Ritchin has a chapter on it – quoted in CS A5 and in A1 and 2. Barad’s view does draw on many of the people I have looked at during my time with the OCA, synthesising that with science. I know that my understanding and knowledge is hampered by having to tackle quantum science – and a relatively esoteric reading of it at that. The ideas are not brand new – I have been reading articles and essays trying to figure things out for some time now but understanding this stuff properly will take a great deal more than just reading some articles. However, I have learnt so much while writing this, that it was worth it. I did not know what was meant by performative at the beginning of this (a word frequently misused I have noticed) nor could I see why Barad suggested matter had been overlooked in favour of discourse, mistakenly thinking that it meant language was being undervalued by a Baradian view. (It’s not, it’s being equalised).

Demonstration of research skills

Every time I rewrite the essay my understanding is deepened. I’ve asked for feedback and my peers have helped by pointing out bits that made no sense to them whatsoever. That prompted me to revisit and unpick my own understanding, to go back to the source, rewrite and see if I’d done any better in explaining. Finally, when I really needed some help, I approached someone I knew would have some answers. I have sought out expert opinion (not always receiving answers) but the process is ongoing.

I have got better at keeping a track of my reading and used Zotero to help which was useful, along with the Notes app on my phone. I also post links constantly on my blogs so I don’t lose things, even if I don’t say very much when doing so. I’ve labelled those posts more clearly so they are easier to find. The bibliography is extensive (probably too long) and demonstrates a wide source of references.

I still lose things so there is room for improvement.

Demonstration of critical and evaluation skills

There is evidence of analysis and critical thought – I talk about Barad and her detractors’ concerns about analogy and ‘brazenly’ make an analogy which I think is warranted because ultimately, the lines separating analogy from fact can be just as nebulous (given Barad’s theory) as any other lines. Ten days ago I asked for feedback and peers suggested the third section of my essay read like some interesting information rather than educated opinion and synthesis. Another peer read the following draft and suggested the ‘real me’ came out in the third section. So I am synthesising for sure when prompted to – sometimes it takes an extra nudge. In terms of criticising and evaluating my own work, I am able to take on board feedback but also reject it when unhelpful, or else take something from it and make it useful – sometimes feedback might simply help me see where I have failed to make something obvious and it requires more underlining. I have also applied the thinking I have learnt to my own BOW in the essay, in particular, my comments about an image of a cow’s eyes are very analytical. (An image I have not been comfortable with for lots of reasons, least of which is, I am not sure it’s a good photograph – and yes, I know the word ‘good’ is unhelpful).

Communication

There is room for more clarity always – but that is a lifelong project for me (see my hair analogy in a peer feedback post). For this level, the positive aspects of my writing such as enthusiastic engagement hopefully counters any lack of clarity. It is probably also worth restating the following: Roberta M (my original OCA tutor) was very encouraging about writing experimentally – I wasn’t quite sure what she meant and now see that simply including “I” is viewed as experimental by some – oh, to go as far as Chris Kraus. I believe this is behind the curve but accept that is seen as a risk. However, the crux of the essay is the rejection of separation between subject and object and the sheer importance of that (in my opinion) cannot be underestimated. Every article and essay that I come across right now is crying out for society to acknowledge the connections between race, climate change, the pandemic and the economy, for instance. Intra-activeness has to be taken on board. Removal of self and “That’s nothing to do with me” has got to be challenged at every opportunity. To quote my late friend Mandy (see Appendix 4) again, …

Our “…way of viewing and understanding the world via logical, rational empiricist study – which encourages detachment and abstraction – is connected to our failure to finding new ways of understanding our world in a deepening social and ecological crisis” (Thatcher, 2016)

CS A5: Peer feedback

June 10, 2020September 4, 2020 ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

This post has two dates below – indicating feedback for successive iterations of CS A5.

20/06/2020

With the agreement, the following feedback not anonymous as is usual when I post OCA peer feedback here.

From Rowan Lear (who I worked with on the Pic London project and who is doing a PhD exploring the intra-action between camera and human). I knew Rowan was not only aware of Barad’s writing but that ideas relevant to my own work informed a great deal of her thinking and practise. Following on from feedback from fellow students (see below 10/06/2020), I was really aware that some of my understanding was still muddled so I asked Rowan to take a look at the section on agential cutting. She sent me a generous email which has been extremely useful. For the most part, I have been looking at this work in isolation, reading and watching talks on the internet. But I have had no chance to discuss it, which is difficult because it is often through discussion, I am able to understand things – I suspect that sums up the biggest problem with distance studying with the OCA these last few years – there are solutions, such as peer hangouts and attending study visits – those have been invaluable. But the lack of regular tutor-led (knowledge-based leadership – not talks, but ’roundtable’ discussion from anyone actually) has always been a cost in relation to the benefits, of which there are many. Saying all that, I am not sure who at the OCA is working along these lines – although have seen work and spoken to tutors who are investigating related themes. Following are some edited points with a response from me, as usual.

Can you have a dumbed-down one or two-sentences at the beginning of each section? I have included something like this as a glossary in the Appendix. For the sake of word count I think it’s best left there, but maybe I should highlight it in the introduction text.
You seem to skip the **things do not exist prior to their interaction** – existence is relational and skipped straight to ‘the observer’ – I have gone back and reread sections by Barad and also Carlo Rovelli who writes in a much more accessible way. I have rewritten this section and removed the observer comments – although touch on it later.
We are missing the significance of Barad’s ideas stemming from quantum field theory. (Tt’s in the intro but I have underlined it again here) I suggest a close re-reading of Barad’s MTUHW, pages 175 to 179, and writing a short paragraph to summarise what it all means for agency – there are a good 4-6 strong points you could draw out, which I think will help you make sense of the cut for her. I have looked at this section again and rewritten, clarifying it for myself as I did – It is much clearer, I think, although a bit repetitive perhaps and I have focused on one or two points rather than 4-6. I am slightly over with words right now so may go back to this section and shrink it, but because this way of seeing can be so challenging, I think a bit of repetition is probably helpful – drumming in the idea from the various positions is probably needed to shift the assumptions we make. (I am also reminded of Michael Belshaw’s comments about drumming an idea home in some UVC feedback – No 6 on this blog post).
Later, when you talk about indeterminacy, there’s a real conflation between uncertainty and indeterminacy – again something I struggle with – I’d suggest re-reading Barad 115-118 to really work out the difference in qft terms This has been very helpful – the conflation is typical, it exists in popular culture as Barad explains at length at the beginning of the book, and I was very grateful to be reminded to look at this again. Now I am left with the problem that the examples I chose were really being at looked at through an uncertainty lens and I wasn’t sure they were appropriate anymore. But I have left them and adapted the text to try and steer it from the right direction.

There was also some useful writing advice and comments which came from the place of a “diffracted practice” – I took diffraction out of the essay, there is not enough space to include it even though it is really important. I suspect my own ability to practice diffractively as I write is compromised by the fact I straddle both paradigms, Cartesian and post-Cartesian – which is what the essay is about effectively. That is the transitional world we (I) live in. I also need to be clearer about so-called empty space. I think that came about through sloppy writing/thinking. Have clipped and thinned. I am extremely grateful to Rowan for the comments – the essay is much-improved thanks to her clarity and suggestions to go back and look at sections again.

Some additional extremely helpful comments from ex OCA people

The conclusion, ~~which~~ I think starts somewhere in Chapter 3. This is clearly where your passion for the subject(s) becomes apparent. I have actually since restructured the essay. I no longer have an intro, three chapters, and conclusion. I have an intro, Part 1 and Part 2, and conclusion. I think this is better for 5000 words and might resolve some of this. And yes, it might be read as a polemic (again see Michael Belshaw’s discussion re UVC Feedback – link in feedback above), perhaps due to the foreshortening of ‘distance’ between the academic and her subject becoming very clearly evident. I have written a short opening that I hope introduces this aspect immediately. I looked again at the “Introduction”, as it related to the “Conclusion” and didn’t feel a strong line (entangled or otherwise) that connected them. This is a job on my list – go through the opening and conclusion – make sure the ties are there (I know they are but I’ve not made it evident enough, clearly – I need to pick them out and make them visible) What I felt about the Introduction was a concern expressed about the “flaccidity” of photography, how, on the one hand it was yearning to break free from the strictures of its origins – analogue, chemical, unique(ery), repressed etc. And on the other hand how photography has rid itself of those strictures by becoming so universal, so enmeshed in everything, so entangled – where it is so complex that no one understands anything about it anymore. And because of that no one seems to care.

As for the content, I initially wondered about the strategy of Chapter 1, me too but probably for different reasons – for me, the risk of it seeming like nomenclature or quite pedestrian was at the forefront of my mind but I couldn’t see any other way to approach it. Now, as I go through each section, I think I have conflated all of the concepts but that I think is because they are so interwoven it’s very difficult not to but on reading it a few times, AND coming to terms with the first person singular commentary I felt it worked very well. It is a brave and risky approach – Roberta M (my original OCA tutor) was very encouraging about writing experimentally – I wasn’t quite sure what she meant and now see that simply including I is viewed as experimental by some. I believe this is behind the curve but accept that is seen as risky – and again your tutor will have something to say about this strategy I’m sure – but that level of personal involvement with the narrative worked.

I like the mix of sources, Azoulay is a favourite for me at the moment as you probably know, and I’m surprised not to see Zuboff, (there is no space for her but I did want to talk about the anatomisation of human behaviour (surplus) and the non-inevitably of digital culture destroying civilisation) but then that would have opened up another narrative strand – exactly – ! But I think those contemporary and (seemingly ancient) oft quoted theorists like Benjamin, Sontag et al works well.

I do wonder if you could pare back one or two of the ideas, a couple less strands might provide some additional space to explore some of the other threads more fully? Having said that, the tenet of the essay is held together, in my view, as you don’t seem to lose control of where the essay is destined – just starting the conclusion a bit early ha ha! I think I have done this following Rowan’s advice anyway although sure there can be more cuts. Yesterday, I had my actual very difficult hair cut – and I was thinking my writing is a bit like my hair – lots of different textures, really difficult to manage, requires proper skill and experience to tame it – spent my whole life trying to fight a losing battle with it. Each time I focus the essay down, cut out strands, thin it out, it feels like I’ve lost so much but in fact, I’m just making it less prone to being really knotty and unmanageable. There is probably more to cut and thin but I am nevertheless about to send it to Matt (hopefully Monday after proofread) and will revisit again before assessment no doubt.

10/06/2020

Re: CS A5 Draft 3 The photograph and photography in the age of entanglement (No Pictures) (Since writing this, the sections on agential realism, intr-action and indeterminism are much more in keeping now (I think!) with Barad)

I have written another draft of my essay and sent it to one group of students for comment – will edit following this and send to a wider group and Matt. (Have until September to keep writing if necessary but really need as much time as possible for BOW now).

I hoped to simplify some of the concepts as much as possible, made doable as I became more familiar with them – the previous version was very dense and needed to be a bit ‘easier’
I also needed to add more examples as well as some of my own from BOW – which was and still is in development
I had absorbed something about phenomenology vs. object while reading another students’ tutor feedback which I hadn’t picked up on before and also continued to delve into Derrida – although I have not actually mentioned him in the essay (word count), that reading has given me a deeper understanding of the way language can fail.
Emma P sent me a terrific book called On the Verge of Photography co-edited by someone I’d already quoted – Daniel Rubenstein is focused on the same issues as I am, although probably without the strong feminist angle, so he’s a good person to read.
I needed to cut 1000 or so words from CS A4 – which I could only do after I’d added a load of words by which time there were 2000 words to cut.

Following are my notes from the this morning’s chat as well as copy and pasted feedback from emails. I always keep this feedback anonymous. I am very grateful for it but I don’t want people to worry about having their comments recorded here. (Will add if/when more arrives). It’s now at the right word count but I will need to check and shave again before submission, for sure.

General verbal feedback

The same question I have been asked before came up – is this too advanced for the level? Is that OK? What do the tutor’s say? Should I temper my intellectual ambitions and aim for something less difficult. In answer – I am not doing this course for the OCA tutors or anyone else, I am doing it for myself and trying to figure out why I grew up to see myself and the world as I do and why that view has not always been that positive. (I’ve done enough therapy for one lifetime and this is a more productive way of exploring at this time). Now I am making work about those questions and their implications, what I can do about it, what’s at stake: and I cannot stress how much this ties in with my BOW – which is something that has emerged as I work on it. The way we perceive and see is fundamental: the way women are seen and what we see in ourselves as a consequence. And most importantly, the potential for a revolution given where we are, the loosening of and subsequent threat to old societal structures, the emergence of new ones. To be asked again and again – are you sure it’s ok to be smart, to tackle difficult topics, to aim above your level, to really utilise your brain – are you sure that’s OK???? In the current climate of civilisation breakdown and renewal – where women (along with a whole bunch of other people) are being undermined and their rights eroded, yes, I am sure. Or where trust in education and science is under threat, yes, I am sure. And if anyone doesn’t like, it… I need not say more.

Comments 1:

Some incredibly clear and specific feedback – at this stage, this level of detail is very useful and I am immensely grateful for it. It’s exactly what is needed now. (Before this point, this kind of feedback for the way I work isn’t that useful for me, as I am still feeling my way through things – in earlier drafts, I need general impressions that give me space to keep exploring whether it’s academic or practical – and there is little point in being specific as I will still be all over the place for a while.)
Intro – really clear, IMHO much better use of quotations.

Love the cat cartoon!

P2 ‘echt’ is a bit obscure? Does it need a footnote? I love this word, it’s perfect for what I mean but I was unsure about using it in an academic essay even though I am very much about challenging stale (masculine) academic tropes – may replace but will see.

P4 good intro to this section, helps open it up for a more general reader.

P5 If you need to lose words, I would cut down the paragraph on the BoW example. We are required to link our research to our own work, this may not be the place to do it but as I read it again, the concept of something solid emerging from interaction with humans and non-humans – and the intra-action emerging from what we talk about as ‘virtual’ makes it pretty salient

P7 parentheses on what you think, needed? – Maybe not (but perhaps only because there is not the word count left to explain how the work became diluted by adding – in my opinion – more detail, but it is something I really noticed and was rather disappointed by. Sultan’s project actually made me cry when I first looked at it, and again in several further viewings online. I then felt quite confused when I bought the book because I did not have the same reaction at all.

P9 ‘montage’ still doesn’t mean cut in French  It means put together, put up, assembly of parts, putting together of things. It is used for collage and editing not because of the cutting but because of the assemblage. Caesura is Latin not French (it’s césure in French). I would rewrite this – or remove the reference to montage – because it sounds like you don’t know what you are talking about – which isn’t the case – and because (I think) the cutting action is what is important here (as opposed to the reassembling in many different ways). This is a pure language slippage issue – will revisit – to avoid doubts

P9 ‘some examples…’ feels a bit stuck in.

Just out of interest (and because other people seem to have said otherwise) what was your tutor’s response to including references to your BoW in the CS? See workshops by Ariadne re L3 BOW and CS – yes, we should include our own work unless it makes no sense to (but how odd to research something unrelated to your BOW and what a lost opportunity that would be.)

Agential cut – bit on the cut is clear and well exampled but the ‘agency’ is less so. I also wonder if agency needs to come before cut. I found myself wondering about the agential part all the way through the examples. Can you add a more specific example? I know you say it’s beyond the scope but it also feels like it needs to be well explained.

I find the move from agential cut to indeterminism interesting, it sparks thinking in the reader. I might comment on this – the paradox is worth thinking about. The cut as an attempt to control? This ability to engage with what you are saying shows that this has come a long way from the first drafts. It is clearer and I can begin to focus on the ideas. Yes – it has come along way from the time I lay on the sofa watching Karen Barad talks, thinking, ‘shit, I’ve taken on way too much here… I have no idea where to start’.

P15 is the key to automatic writing in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams? Or in the desire to have unfettered access to the unconscious? (blowing up explosion sound)

P16 You don’t mention these figures in the text? (happens in a few places, best check through otherwise they can be a bit unexpected) (yes I do – will make clearer somehow)

Whole of ch1 is a really good blend of definition and example.

P20-21 first couple of paragraphs still a bit difficult to understand. Have a look at whether the sentences run naturally from one thought to another. – Will do

I struggle to see how the end of ch 1 leads to ch 2. Perhaps it needs a bridging sentence or two? Easily solved

P23 ‘neither of whom…’ seems unnecessarily judgmental. I think there would be another way to show the change from representational to the projects you reference. I think it’s ok to judge not very interesting work as not very interesting, (Bloody hell – enough people who don’t get mine judge it in the same way!) but I take your point.

P24 ‘This upset’ – more academic language needed.

P29 ch 3 good first paragraph intro (look at this for ch2 intro)

Do you define the difference between ‘the photograph’ and ‘photography’? Why separate them? Maybe a hangover from emulating the rhythm of the title my own alludes to – “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” = “The photograph and photography in the age of entanglement.” However, the separation between noun and verb does feel significant – although I will need to think about it.

P31 ‘prompts furious…’ feels like it needs to be evidenced. See current positions re the pulling down of statues – actually, I cut a reference which explained this further but could possibly add a footnote with a link to comedian talking about stealing artefacts and putting them in museums…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73PkUvArJY&feature=youtu.be

Ch 3 does read less like the evolution of an idea and more like the digest of literature – like Doug said.

P31 last sentence – check tense

P32 You need to bring the argument to film – it jumps at the moment

Conclusion – very good.

Comments 2:

Again, very helpful and much appreciated.

A citation that excludes the author’s name should appear immediately after the author where is mentioned in the text. If the name is included then it should be at the end of the quote with the full stop after the final bracket. (see p4 of UCA Harvard Referencing Guide) Thanks, makes sense!
I have not checked if you have cited everybody in the Bibliography. I have queried a few times with Ariadne Xenou whether everything should be in the bibliography and she is adamant that only authors that you cite should be there. Anybody else that you have read but not cited should be in ‘References’. Oh, this bloody conversation! I believe we must just have a bibliography and all listed there. (thank you!)
I have a feeling that I still don’t understand ‘agential cut’ or agential more broadly. Maybe I should just reread that section of the definitions again. It’s hard – really hard. Will keep trying!
I did feel that this was easier to read than I recall from the previous version. But my gut feeling is that something has been lost. I came away feeling that this was not as good academically compared with the last version. BUT, I have not been back to compare directly so it is a gut feeling only nothing substantiated. You’re right – it had lost something, I have been through and added some stuff back after the very brutal cut. But I can’t help wondering is there is also a sense of loss about the photograph as it was here – after reading a much clearer version (maybe reading too much but it was something that struck me)
Also, I felt that it had reverted in places to more like a Lit Review. … Previous notes recorded identify this in section 3 – will relook
I don’t think I would add more images and I certainly would not in the conclusion. (No not the conclusion bu maybe Ch 3?) A conclusion pulls it all together and should not introduce anything new. Having said that I suppose an argument could be made for an image that pulls all the arguments together, but I would be careful.
Other comments are included in your pdf as comments and usually associated with highlighted text.
I think you should now write an Abstract. Probably 120 to 150 words. (Cant recall what the CS notes say on this – up to 500 for the record) The reason I say this is that you need to pull together the essence of the essay and your thinking into a couple of sentences. It will also help any reader (me) with an anchor from where they can start. This is more succinct than the introduction or a preface – just a peg in the ground in three or four sentences. I do feel ready to write this – could not have done so before!
Not sure I like the different colour text in the image captions – just a Word thing (they’re automatically blue, I changed to red, but worth considering, maybe just slightly greyer?)

CS A5 research: White Supremacism and the Earth System – INSURGE intelligence – Medium

June 8, 2020September 4, 2020 ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments

Been searching for a quotation to include that sums up the systemic changes I’m discussing in my essay. Found it here!

The US is on the brink of becoming a racist failed state. It is no accident that this terrible moment arrives in the midst of a global pandemic; an escalating economic crisis; an oil sector meltdown…
— Read on medium.com/insurge-intelligence/white-supremacism-and-the-earth-system-fa14e0ea6147

Artist: Kata Geible – Sysyphus (2018)

May 23, 2020May 24, 2020 ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

http://www.katageibl.com/sisyphus/

Emma P sent me a useful reference – which I may well include in CS and/or BOW context. Geibl, like me, has played with entangled narratives from different points in time/place to explore the construction of reality today – her work, however, seems aesthetically far more ‘grown-up’ than mine. However, there are key differences and the statement (for me) somehow detracts from the work as it reiterates ideas that are fast becoming old questions as technology and science continue to develop apace. Having attempted a statement, I am only too aware of how difficult it is to convey the complexity of an idea in a clear and concise way, and presumably, Geibl is writing in a foreign language here which must make it doubly difficult (I can barely explain myself in English and it’s my only language!). Geibl’s statement says,

“How we used to think about the world is changing radically every day. Religion is replaced by science, we are flooded by images every day, we want instant access to knowledge. Photography as a medium has the ability to capture everything that’s in front of the camera, the machinery sees even what the human eye is not capable of. We can see universes, stars exploding, microscopic worlds, atom bomb detonation with the safety of the far distance. Through these images, we think we can get closer to understand how the world is functioning without ever experiencing or seeing it through our own eyes.

In series Sisyphus, I constructed an imaginary laboratory where it’s up to the reader to decide where the line lies between fiction and reality without any scientific explanation.” (2018)

Some statements worth investigating in these rough-thinking-as-I-type notes:

‘Photography as a medium has the ability to capture everything that’s in front of the camera’ – this could be accused of being a limited view of photography, one firmly connected to visual sight (I am aware many of my metaphors are too – so powerful within our culture is the idea of ‘sight’ dominating). Using code and AI, modern-day photography can creep around corners, peer beyond boundaries, make calculated guesses about things that are behind it, or the other side of a planet. It is no longer merely ‘photo’, light-based. The whole idea of ‘what we see’ vs. what is actually real is being investigated today – and Geibl creates a narrative which is suspicious of actors creating these untrustworthy realities. Traditional photography creates a boundary, in the same way painting also used to. It suggests the (limited) world is in front of the viewfinder and separate from it (rather than an entangled part of the process which leads the emergence of a manifestation we call ‘the view’)
‘the machinary sees what the human eye is not capable of’ (sic) – this is true and not true at the same time. Old photography equipment has less of a spectrum than any biological eye, as does the rendering equipment (printers, screens). So it sees less than we do – but its limitations lead to realities that somehow see more than reality, a hyperreality, i.e. expressionistic outputs that add to reality. Modern seeing machines decode and recode our perception of reality which is necessarily limited so that we can comprehend it – some contemporary views suggest, we are myopic creatures that have evolved to see/experience only what we need to see/experience in order to continue mating and surviving. Or rather see/experience in a way that is useful for our survival. The notion of photography (especially traditional) is the ultimate manifestation of a fixed view, of what we see being actual reality. Modern technology undermines that.
‘We can see universes, stars exploding, microscopic worlds, atom bomb detonation with the safety of the far distance’ Am reminded of Virilio (often am when looking at modern tech and reality) and time and space being on top of each other, life sped up exponentially. Technology condenses and collapses perception of spacetime (?) at the same time as fragmenting it – separating us from parts of ourselves, scattering individualism, dissolving the lines that kept it in a certain place. Fiction and ‘reality’ are entangled.

Having said all that, I really like the work. Visually, for me at any rate, its interesting, intriguing and aesthetically appealing. The concept, closely related to mine, seems like it misses something crucial and remains tied to slightly predictable questions – “Who is manipulating us? We can’t trust photography, who can we trust? Our visual media is untrustworthy.” Perhaps my own statement might say, “whether or not we can trust the things we see/experience to be true has in recent times very quickly become an irrelevant question. We all exist in an entanglement of varied realities – your reality and mine can never the same, but there will be meeting points – intersections and nodes consisting of common threads.” (…. etc, and something else besides.)

CS & BOW A4: Notes re. connecting Bow to CS A5

May 8, 2020September 2, 2020 ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

Some notes made on my phone last night:

Structuralism = entanglement and intra-action of

Language materials + architecture (code, print, architecture, web, tv, film, etc…)
Mythology (which includes consumerism, politics, and religion)
Media (institutions and organisations that use no.1)

Bow explores ‘the cut’ – essay’s main aim is to explore suggestions that Cartesian world view has become unhelpful. We’ve outgrown it. Barad’s work introduces concepts from quantum understanding that challenge Cartesian lens including the concept of the cut. It is arguable that photography often inadvertently propagates Cartesian view even when it claims to be addressing salient issues, for a variety of probable reasons – then look at ways this can be addressed.
Semantic analysis – page 83 Zuboff – ‘squeeze meaning’ out of users movements
‘Brew’
Include in – Indeterminism section
Page 85 Zuboff – surveillance capitalism “not an inherent result of tech or expression of information capitalism”
Have lost the word ad (advert) from a comment made by Ai and need to reintroduce it – important to include
Must include Barad’s explanation of how micro (quantum) and macro describe the same world – through a different lens – not two sperate worlds

A useful and extremely relevant article worth referring to:

https://witness.worldpressphoto.org/photojournalisms-first-century-79645873e363

Update BOW A4: slides, AI and a stricture container, reflection

March 16, 2020September 4, 2020 ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 3 Comments

I have been trying hard to find time to work and the children and other distractions are making it challenging which is extremely frustrating. Am currently working with those effing YouTubers screeching in my ear as children watch their favourite online squawkers – why does it have to be so shouty? I really get Marshall McCluhan’s Medium is the Message now.

In the meantime, I was glad to receive feedback for CSA4 and am looking forward to tackling it again but a rest from the writing will be useful for the work. It is, however, quite hard not to jump in and say – see! see! this is what I’m saying – THIS!!! This global thing now and the UK government’s reaction. This is what I’m talking about. Holding back and waiting hoping to feed that energy into the practical work. Then writing about it calmly.

In the meantime, I have been sharing old slides which I’ve scanned with the AI friend and seeing what happens.

Sometimes, its reactions are dull. Sometimes they are more interesting/ but there is an argument for including the dull ones too.
I like it best when they are slightly adrift (see example 1)
One of the most humorous reactions in the early days was when I showed it Duchamp’s Fountain and it asked me ‘are you thirsty’. I loved that. Maybe I should include it? Or something along those lines.
Working with an AI friend at this particular time is quite pertinent and my current ending too

Here are some quick phone edits where I used an app to show the ai response to an image – will do it differently, either by hand and rephotograph or in photoshop but here are some of those mocks up so far. The best response is the astronaut one of course.

I got hold of some more slides and will be sharing with the Ai to try and elicit some more interesting comments.

For the anthology, here is suggested contents page. Order to be decided in time and contents too. There will need to be an editing process.

//contents

introduction

cut photograph on self-healing mat
a thing to cut withtalk with helenus (I)
when tom shot penelope his ideal wife
and their kids in 1971
orpheus in homebase (south-london branch)
helenus, cassandra’s proprietary friend, gives feedback
photograph of a photograph
talk with helenus (II)
ode to my selfie
love letter to theatricality
bondage film
my boyfriend is a fat capitalist
gold leaf photograph
talk with helenus (III)
(cabaret) at the paucity
greta’s lament
the void realm, cassandra and helenus
a job for helenus
denouement

epilogue

While looking for printing options for other work I came across the following – I like the text on its side like that:

petrie2

From https://www.calverts.coop/petrie-66/

The anthology, however, needs to be really strict

CS A4: Tutor feedback

March 13, 2020September 4, 2020 ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments

PDF here

Field CS 4 Tutor Report Download

Written feedback and learning points in orange

A well-written, constructed and ambitious essay. The questions you are asking are (too?) huge (yes too huge but see end of report for rationale for sticking with it) and you offer a genuine attempt to answer some of these difficult and pressing questions about the nature of perception and the difficulties of the shifting photographic (and beyond) landscape.

The specific examples of art work that you give to try to unpick your ideas are really useful for the reader and help to emphasis your philosophical points. I, for one, would have enjoyed more of these to help me get to grips with some of these ideas! I do plan to add more, including more of my own – the work is in development. There are some minor grammatical and spelling errors that I have circled that are easy to remedy. Thanks

I am left with a couple of critical points that you might like to address in your final draft, if you think appropriate.

1 I know that you are specifically addressing photography (and at times the moving image) in the context of this essay but on a couple of occasions when reading through (I have scribbled comments in the margins if you can read my writing!) I felt that you were distancing photography from other modes of production that do not suffer from the same Cartesian problems (performance art, participatory art practice?). This is problematic because you are, in part, discussing huge problems, ideas and world views that if critiqued solely (or predominantly, at least) through the photographic lens, can lead to a falsely narrow view – the very thing that you are suggesting is problematic with the way that we (in the West) think about and represent the world. This is a good point – and I will find a way to underline the discussion could apply to various ‘isolated objects – i.e. disciplines’ within the arts. And, of course, to politics, academia, and economics – to a general mindset in the West. But, that due to my course, I am looking through the lens of photography (of the academic art sort), which as it happens, is particularly guilty of the charges laid. There is probably too much to say about the split in western consciousness (logic vs ‘feeling’) – rationalised in the Cartesian era, and eventually expressed in photography, hence the inclusion of Cassandra as a figure – so maybe worth finding a way. Photography (of the academic art type) often seems incredibly myopic. And whatever flaws it has in relation, are compounded by what comes across as a fragile ego and the subsequent manifestation of that, a horrible superiority complex – which leads to work that claims to be about universal issues but often seems about little more than its own insecurities.

It may be that you haven’t emphasised your reasons for concentrating on photography in the essay (because you are studying on a photography course? See above). As well as continuing to be the most dominant form of representation for consumers, the photographic community all too often alienates itself from other modes of representation. This is not, unfortunately, as a way of creating an objective distance to help the debate, rather as a way of protecting itself from intruders as well as for commercial reasons (see above). Interestingly, the very people who seek to critique the medium from the inside (Hilliard, Arnett et al.), arguably do the opposite; the further alienate photography from a wider discourse?

2 I say the following reservedly, wanting to avoid a panicked inclusion of unnecessary material, but: You have done well to avoid bogging yourself down with too much of a description of quantum theory but I wonder if there is room for a little more help for the uninitiated reader? I suspect a few tweaks here and there could shift this impression. There is also a very good bit from Barad where she stresses classical and quantum models do not describe two different worlds. They describe the same world but from different points of view/perspectives. I already identified I should probably make sure that’s in there somewhere.

3 Does your conclusion adequately sum up your argument? Do you need to refer more to quantum theory here? Yes, I should. Or will this confuse rather than illuminate?

I agree with comments made on the document by hand that the conclusion needs to be longer. I will also delete the bits you say you got lost in – I have clearly been unable to describe myself properly there and am looking for areas to cut: the bits I can’t explain properly for lack of thorough understanding is probably a good place to start.

The main ‘flaw’ with the essay is that it is too big a subject to be dealt with in 5000+/- words. However, the issue is so pressing, so unbelievably important that the disadvantages of sticking with it are outweighed by the need. The hubris of the ‘single-authored’ hero mentality that dominates our culture has completely destroyed our habitat. Barad’s theory (which has been so important to New Materialism – a term I purposely didn’t mention in the essay as there were enough new words and categories to contend with) underpins a way of thinking that promotes the rejection of human (white/male/western) exceptionalism. Today, that is so pressing – and it cannot be stressed enough. As I write it, that mentality is being played out in the worst way possible. Perhaps my essay will not change many minds, but it will influence my circle of people and I have already seen some of these ideas have an impact on others. It’s vital that we all find small ways to shift the destructive mindset we Westerners have assumed is natural and fixed for too long.

CS A4: sections that have been cut

March 8, 2020September 4, 2020 ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

I want to record sections that I cut at the moment, in case I feel they need to be re-inserted in favour of other sections. (Some may already have been re-inserted or moved to different sections)

Two of these cut bits seem particularly relevant and have an impact on my BOW. Points 10 and 11 were really difficult to edit out and as I read through them now, I wonder if there is a way of reintroducing them. Orange needs to go back in some way:

‘Following the uptake of the term ‘intra-action’ by Haraway (2008: 17, with the concept underpinning her account of companion species) the term has obtained widespread currency in perspectives influenced by feminist STS (e.g. Latimer and Miele, 2013; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011). Yet, as Haraway herself suggests, use of Barad’s terminology does not necessarily mean an ethical engagement with the ‘radical change Barad’s analysis demands’ (Hollins, 2015: 162, n.1).
‘Photographers’ practice is hostile to ideology. Ideology ….insist[s] on a single viewpoint thought to be perfect. Flusser 415
Faced with Bloomberg and Chanarin’s Shirley Images, appropriated Kodak cards which appear at the beginning of The Image of Whiteness, edited by Daniel C. Blight, demonstrating ‘perfect exposure’ for white skin we should be alarmed. When we witness the capitalised ‘NORMAL’, we should be nothing less than horrified by its ignorance of that global leftover, but evidently much-continued colonialized mind-set. Kember and Zylinska’s urge us to see the ontology of photography as predominantly that of ‘becoming’ – an intra-active process of existence. The Shirley Images, as such, were not merely representative of a racist world, but rather a re-enforcer of it, a definer of ‘normality’. The performative action, not only of taking the image, but of disseminating it as some form of (most likely unconscious) propaganda to potential clients makes Kodak a collaborator of the dominant white, male ideological machine.
In her essays Unlearning Decisive Moments of Photography Azoulay is asking us to make the connections between entangled actions elsewhere in time as well as place.
While Modernism may have been the ‘relentless pursuit of a better future’ (Harvey, 1990), we should not only ask, better for who, but also look at the entangled production of ideas, goods and apparatus’ which have resulted in the current state of reality. A reality in which people with more melanin in their skin than Shirley get are being banished from their homes. Aside from its likely improbability, representationalism distances us from responsibility and a willingness or even an ability to conceive of alternative realities.
‘Realness’ we are reminded, does not imply ‘thingness’. (2007: 56)
Summary of Chapter 1 Barad asks us to query long-assumed conceptual definitions, referencing quantum-based philosophy which potentially dissolves and continually re-configures past, current and future boundaries. Indeterminism exists at the heart of reality. We are asked to consider how, why and where we cut out the fabric of reality to create it? Gilles Deleuze’s writing similarly rejects traditional cuts that end in the separation of realms, and promotes the idea that everything in reality is in continual flux – the world is always ‘becoming’ – an intra-active dance of Virtual entities emerging and disappearing. And, as with Barad, there is a continual, lively, responsive relationship between discursive and material objects that form our reality. In Barad’s agential realism, meaning arises out of material and discursive practices[1], not as something imposed upon reality but rather from within and of it. It is emergent. For Deleuze too, there is no Utopian plane waiting to be represented. (We might trace this discussion back to Aristotle and the question of Forms – non-earthly perfect things that exist elsewhere, and reality – that which we actually live with). However, before addressing representationalism, entanglement and diffraction will be introduced.
First intro The January 2020 edition of Vogue Italia contained no photography. We were told this temporary rejection of the photograph demonstrated Vogue Italia’s commitment to the environmental movement. Considering the industry’s track record, which includes ominous links to slavery, a difficult relationship with women’s bodies and a cutthroat career path satirically expressed in The Devil Wears Prada (Weisberger, 2003), suggests being suspicious of their motivation is forgivable. The fashion industry is viewed by many as an ecological outlaw: the manufacture of synthetic fabrics which don’t decompose but instead turn to plastic waste along with elaborate advertising shoots requiring sizeable teams of people and objects travelling by air across the planet make it easy to see why. Entanglement between dubious business practices, social injustice, impossibly cheap must-have dresses and glossy magazine pages cannot be denied. But as photographers, we may shudder with alarm to see our medium side-lined, even if for only one issue, but we may also understand Vogue Italia’s intentions and its desire to be, or simply be seen, as responsible and responsive. If nothing else, it makes perfect marketing sense.This essay, however, is not about the fashion industry. Rather, it is about photography’s position in an interconnected world, which no longer seems to contain unrelated, disconnected objects, and instead feels more interrelated and than ever. It’s about the photograph and photography’s position within a contemporary perception of reality. And as such, we should investigate whether there is something other than ecological virtuousness or best marketing practice underpinning the illustration-only issue of Vogue Italia.
Barad and Deleuze each reject notions of dual reality planes, one represented and one waiting be represented (2007: 46); there is no Utopia or Hades, forms vs. reality is a distraction, mind and body are one. Barad condemns the ‘Cartesian habit of mind’ (ibid: 49) which reinforces such dualistic interpretations of reality. Deleuze critiques Plato and his cave. Subject-object distinction is fatally undermined by Bohr’s quantum philosophy, says Barad, as it ‘exposes a fundamental failure of representationalism’ which is explored in more detail in the next section. (2007: ??
Segmentarity becomes fluidity Chapter 4In The Condition of Post Modernity, David Harvey describes the period after WWI when Modernity often expressed its idealistic hope in ‘machine-living’ (1989: 32). Deleuze and Guattari relied on the collective image of the machine, of segmented parts with interconnected possibilities. Segmentarity is a foreshadowing of intra-activity. In A Thousand Plateaus, they describe two types of segmentarity, one flexible, more readily associated with what they refer to as primitive social groups, a word they are evidently uncomfortable with, indicated by the inclusion of ‘so-called’. The opposite, rigid segmentarity, refers to the structural nature of modern state-societies (2012: 246). They suggest both these and other structural configurations are ‘entangled’ and ‘inseparable’. (ibid: 247) We people, our machines, our institutions and social structures are interconnected. The pair includes Fernand Léger’s Men in Cities (1919) at the beginning of the section about segmentarity. It has similar structural implications to other cubists, namely Georges Braque whose Violin and Candlestick seemed reminiscent of experiments I made using an old film purchased from eBay and which I have, after further development, made into a fragment of matter and meaning, called When Tom shot Penelope, his perfect wife and their kids in 1971 to include my body of work.Figure 1 Men in the City (1919) is included at the top of Chapter 9, 1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity by Deleuze and Guattari, in A Thousand Plateaus (2012)Figure 2 ‘When Tom shot Penelope, his perfect wife and their kids in 1971’: made by buying an old film from eBay, taking screenshots, then put through a Processing code to make a montaged moving image of overlaid entanglements which have also been stored as single frames, a selection of which I extracted for the book element of my body of work.
We might compare the sense of their segmentarity so clearly defined in Cubist painting with the grotesque fluidity evident in Klingemann’s AI renderings, where there are no segmented lines between fragments With that in mind, we may ask, is photography the ultimate expression of a dualistic Western mind-set? Could photography with its ‘negative and positive’ only have emerged from a Cartesian habit of mind, which itself didn’t appear out of a vacuum, but was predicated on hundreds of years of dualistic culture, expressed in Plato’s forms vs. reality – illustrated in his cave, and which only allows for ‘true or false, winner and loser?’ (Baggini, 2018)

Or is binary code, behind so many photographs today, its ultimate expression: if so, it is ironic that that dualistic code has come at the same time as unprecedented levels of fluidity., only a morass of weirdly formed data, of intra-active malleable elements. Furthermore, his work overrides the photograph’s denial of fluidity and connectivity, and its insistence of fixedness.

Deleuze and Guattari’s response to the dominant ‘belief in ‘linear progress, absolute truths, and rational planning of ideal social orders, under standardised conditions of knowledge and productions’ (Harvey, 1989: 35) seems, understandably, not to fully envisage the utter fluidity of a post digital-explosion world. They are, however, adamant that one form of segmentarity is no better or worse than another (Adkin, 2015: loc 2594) which we would do well to take on board. And while they do of course begin to reference the digitised eye, and their term ‘flow’ appears to precede the fluidity of data: word segmentarity does not convey the sheer level of mutability allowed by coded data.

Photography, segmentarity – and then the algorithm

Although The Family of Man exhibition was meant to be a representation of holistic reconstruction and oneness – from a fragmented society to one more interconnected, the photographs maintain and reinforce evident top-down, boundaried, structural division – segmented. Today, in a different context, where some in the West have embarked on a long-overdue examination of the crimes and repercussions of Colonialism, The Family of Man is heavily critiqued for its, at best, unsophisticated, representation of non-western people, and at worst racist, colonial outlook. Although the fluidity we witness today can at times seem impossible, it is worth considering how it might be completely necessary in order to overhaul the categorisations intrinsic in our language, institutions and structural reality.
Daniel Palmer ends his essay Camera, Lights, Algorithm by explaining how photography continues to be relevant, however, ‘the traditional single-authored logic has been supplanted’. (2014: 160). For Azoulay (2018) and McGregor (2013), the hero-photographer and the decisive moment is no longer viable as it is based on misconception or been usurped by animated technologies. Intra-active entanglement of time, individuals, and concepts not only better reflect the reality in which we exist, these types of mutable assemblages are the reality in terms of how images are made today, not to mention a more responsible way of understanding events. Alain Jain’s title, ‘Everything Connects to Everything (2018) sums up this paradigm. When we looked at Edgar Martins and Lisa Barnard, we were exploring artists who have taken this on board, using photography as their medium but refusing its fixity: expressing entanglement within structural design and by overturning traditional conventions (mixing archived and original images, for instance). The projects are dynamic, contextualised, and flexible. They manage to convey a sense of intra-activeness and becoming by utilising technological possibilities in Barnard’s case, such as the website – golddepositary.com – and a rejection of linear coherence in both, rather than giving in to the medium’s tyrannical sense of representationalism.

[1] ‘Discourse is not a synonym for language.²⁴ Discourse does not refer to linguistic or signifying systems, grammars, speech acts, or conversations. To think of discourse as mere spoken or written words forming descriptive statements is to enact the mistake of representationalist thinking. Discourse is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said. Discursive practices define what counts as meaningful statements. Statements are not the mere utterances of the originating consciousness of a unified subject; rather, statements and subjects emerge from a field of possibilities.’ (Barad, 2003: 819)

CS A4: notes re bibliography

March 8, 2020March 8, 2020 ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 4 Comments

Yesterday I submitted an iteration of the essay knowing I had a great deal still to do. That includes:

Figure out a consistent way of dating people I refer to. If they’re dead I should make sure everyone has DOB and DOD in brackets next to their names. Only some have that at the moment.
But what about people who are alive? Not everyone’s DOB is available? So should I just not include this convention for those who are alive? What’s the rule on this?
I went through citations this morning listing everyone mentioned so I can double-check the bibliography- I reckon I’ll need a day set aside to make sure it’s absolutely accurate – far from it right now.
I’ll need to be certain of secondary citations too.
Look for sloppy sentences – have identified some which need editing to say what I mean more accurately ie change unconscious to preconscious re Klingemann

Any advice from anyone who knows for sure about dating people would be welcome.

I almost changed the title to The Case Against Representationalism but switched back to its current one. I think it’s more accurate. However, I will discuss that with my tutor.

List of names to double check against bibliography after reading through this morning

Still feeling it’s far too big a topic for 5000 words but it nevertheless feels such an important thing to be investigating and talking about that maybe that outweighs the inadequate space/length.

CS A4: Draft extended essay

March 7, 2020September 4, 2020 ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 6 Comments

The essay below is a draft online version. It does not contain all the images I’ve referenced. In some cases, I have not yet approached the artists for permission and in others, I am still waiting for a response.

There are some formatting things that will need to be resolved as well as the following:

I need to address the backward page numbering in the contents and pre intro section – please ignore that peculiarity for now.
My bibliography is not up to date – I need to double-check it.
I will take a very careful look at the Harvard referencing document before submission. I can’t be sure it’s all as it should be right now.
I will add more of my own BOW as it develops
I need to think about the images I have used some more and also if other images might be worth including earlier and later
I have of course noticed mistakes with names and sentence structure since posting. Including Bernard instead of Barnard – which I was so careful to get right but clearly failed! (fixed now)

Draft PDF (sans some images):

Without (c) images 8 March – CS A4 The photograph and photography in the age of entanglement

OCA reflection

1. Demonstration of subject knowledge based on understanding

I feel compelled to qualify the whole thing by saying…”I think this is what Barad is telling us, but there is always the chance I have got it spectacularly wrong”. I have taken a big gulp at the beginning of every stage and thought I have bitten off far more than I can chew. A physicist read the plan and draft submission (A3) and confirmed nothing was embarrassingly wrong. I have had to work very hard to understand Barad’s and Deleuze’s ideas and have a long way to go before being fluent in either – I am also constantly adding or adjusting sentences to be more accurate every time I grasp something a little more deeply. Saying all that, I suspect the demonstration of knowledge for this level is of a high standard.

Demonstration of research skills

I hope I have demonstrated an ability to explore beyond photography and to connect the work to it. I made use of a wide variety of sources – videos, books, exhibitions, discussions, emails to academics to clarify things (some of whom are generous with their time and answers, some of whom aren’t). I feel like I have kept hold of everything by the skin of my teeth, sometimes accessing old blogs and copying what I wrote into the essay before refining.

You can see much of my research on my blog or on the Sketchbook blog linked to it when topics were slightly less related. I need to go through everything in the essay with a fine-toothed comb and the Harvard guidelines to make sure everything is as it should be before submission, including all references listed. (I know some are missing.)

Demonstration of critical and evaluation skills

This is always the hardest part – not made any easier by the opaque language many academics use, which makes it challenging to learn from them. However, I hope I have critiqued the work I’ve included using the terms I introduced adequately.

Communication

The topic cannot be addressed in 5000+ words. I know that now. But there is a structural problem too. It’s entangled and rhizome-like but the conventions we use for essay writing are linear and top-down. This is probably a good way of describing the present paradigm – code (if I understood this correctly when doing a Processing course) enables a networked, dynamic reality but is contained within a structure based on Cartesian coordinates. What we seem to have ended up with is overwhelming internal tension compromising the structure within which we frame our reality – I expect that sentence could do with going into the essay but it would require explaining and I already need to shave about 750 words. However, I do plan to leave this alone and revisit in a few weeks after working on BOW A4. I will also put the essay through a more robust AI programme to clean up sentences etc. at that point.