Category: Artists

Talk: Decolonising the Gaze, Arpita Shaha, Maryam Wahid, Nilupa Yasmin

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

Arpita Shaha

http://www.arpitashah.com

Woman, portraits inspired by traditional paintings, reference to heritage, shots in time, blending past and present, celebration of history, history of the painted backdrop, familiar with a range of communities, her work represents the richness of South Asian women, layered with different varied narratives and what there is in common. Sees social media as a positive – women able to express themselves in ways that were not possible when she was younger. Aware of the way images shape the narrative and believes its important to give voice to the women. Committed to producing work that allows people to go into a gallery and see women “like us” rather than the usual (white, male).

Maryam Wahid

http://www.maryamwahid.com

Explores race and representation, inspired by her mother and identity, always inspired by migration story, addresses lack of representation, interested in why women wore traditional dress in family archive but men wore Western clothes, inquiry into self as a Pakistani British women.

Nilupa Yasmin

https://www.nilupayasmin.com

Latest inquiry through self portraits, rift between Bangladeshi and British identities, uses photography to make installations, (making her, for me, the most interesting artist) – uses photographic material to weave objects into the space (not necessarily straight photography). There is a purposeful and deliberate weaving of herself into the fabric of reality as well as creating feedback loops by including the weave in the background of her print. I will certainly be following Nilupa Yasmin’s work carefully.

Hosted by Grain and Caroline Molloy

We were also provided with a fantastic reading list which I don’t want to lose so posting here:

Campt, T. (2012) Image Matters. Durham London: Duke University Press

Gilroy, P. (2000) Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race. London.New York: Routledge

Hall, S. (2006) ‘New ethnicities,’ in The Post-Studies Reader. 2nd Ed. ed. by. Ashcroft,B., Griffiths, G., Tiffin, H. London New York: Taylor & Francis, 223-227

Jay, M., Ramaswamy, S. (ed) (2014) Empires of Vision: A Reader. USA: DukeUniversity Press

Procter, A. (2020) The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums & why we need to talk about it. Great Britain: Hachette.co.uk

Sealy, M. (2019) Decolonising the camera: Photography in Racial Time. London:Lawrence and Wishart Limited


BOW Research: Magenta’s Music Neural Network

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https://youtu.be/RdoLcgxvf98

At some point in my journey, I knew I might want some music to feed into this the BOW project. I think it was after developing the film element and editing it to Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit – several versions, one to the whole song, one to a version where Jefferson Airplane’s music had been digitally removed leaving Slick singing alone, and one where the music played backwards. I used this particular song as it is in one of the films about sight which I have “mashed up” into my own edit along with other films about seeing and relational entities.

I so admire Pippiloti Rist’s use of the Beatles’ ‘I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much’ (1986) – it’s one of the most incredible pieces of work so I am not averse to the idea of using a well-known song. However, using Slick’s music did not feel right for the work I’m making. (And who could ever even begin to live up to what Rist did with that song?)

(BTW – Great interview – https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/pipilotti-rist-positive-exorcism)

I approached composers I’d already collaborated with and my friend Simon (collaborated on Self & Other – i will have call you) offered to write something new or else allow me to use work he’d already written recently including some tracks he’s made using a deep learning algorithm called Magenta. Of course, the final option suited this work best. And he has very kindly allowed me to attach my work to the tracks he used, for which I am enormously grateful.

https://magenta.tensorflow.org/

So – before handing the work in, I thought I better just say what Magenta is. According to the website it is: “Magenta was started by researchers and engineers from the Google Brain team, but many others have contributed significantly to the project. We develop new deep learning and reinforcement learning algorithms for generating songs, images, drawings, and other materials. But it’s also an exploration in building smart tools and interfaces that allow artists and musicians to extend their processes using these models. We use TensorFlow and release our models and tools in open source on our GitHub.” (Google Research)

Google Research (2020) Magenta Available at: https://research.google/teams/brain/magenta/ (accessed 04/09/2020)

or

“Making music with Magenta

Magenta is a Python library that helps you generate art and music. In this tutorial, we’ll talk about the music generation bits in note_seq — how to make your browser sing, and in particular, how to make your browser sing like you!

As a library, note_seq can help you:

  • make music using some of the neat abstractions and utilities in the library
  • use Machine Learning models to generate music.”

Hello Magenta (s.d) Available at: https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/magenta/hello_magenta/hello_magenta.ipynb#scrollTo=dPkdg9jTjkTd (Accessed 04/09/2020)

Moving forward, if this work were to be developed, it might be good to get Magenta learning from Grace Slick and other artists from that era – all of which is something I would need significant help with.

I am very grateful to Simon for his generosity. I have linked his Soundcloud to the project on my website and you can also visit from here: https://soundcloud.com/user-286732734/sets/part-2

Gallery Visit: Aubrey Beardsley Tate 31/07/2020

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 1 Comment

It’s easy to focus on the scandal, early death and Beardsley’s grotesques, but what struck me as I wandered through Tate Britain’s Beardsley show was the transitional aspect of his technique and subject matter- since it chimes loudly with my interests in technology, meaning and matter; the blurring of concepts/lines – and how that becomes manifested physically. Not only was Beardsley blurring lines relating to gender and sex, but he also has access to new technology, blending drawing and photography with contemporary printing methods which allowed his drawings to be reproduced so beautifully. The Tate blurb (2020) tells us Beardsley was “one of the first artists whose fame came through the easy dissemination of images” and so his story is relevant to me, as I explore imagery more than a century later along with their current transitional outcomes – the ease with which people can make films, post GIFs, create dynamic visual, code-supported content. For me, that is what makes Beardsley’s work salient and long-lived – the combination of subject and technological apparatus, the intra-action between each element.

Before settling on ‘why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers’ as a title for my own BOW (thanks to OCA Catherine Banks for the nudge), I played with the idea of calling the work something along the lines of ‘promiscuity of meaning and matter‘ (2020). Other contenders were, 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 – you get the picture – promiscuity and morphology. A threat to the old order is often seen as grotesque and morally dangerous – and it seems to me this is what Beardsley has captured and expressed – the affront to an old older – and the terror such an affront is capable of inducing, and the fun he had in the midst of awful illness as he did so.

My mum’s Beardsley book was one of my favourites when younger – and I don’t think it was just the salacious pictures of people farting or the giant genitalia. There is something so enigmatic and evocative about those drawings, reminding me of the way I also loved a cartoon shadow puppet programme I watched. When marks can communicate such a powerful sense of something, I am often captivated.

Worth the wait – and very pleased I got to go in the end after the COVID-delay. My MANGA obsessed son loved the show too and recognised the Japanese influence.

A couple of my favourite plates below:

IMG_5782.jpg
Beardsley, A c. 1893 (image taken on my phone)

IMG_5780.jpg
Beardsley, A c. 1890 – the +/- 3-inch drawing on the bottom right is the cover of my mother’s book which I looked at a great deal as a child – see below. (Image taken on my phone)

9780517104279-us-300
Beardsley, A c. 1890  – Audrey Beardsley image use on Brian Read’s book At: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/isbn/051710427x/ (15/08/2020)

 

 

Field, SJ, 2020. BOW: A4 Developments [blog] Available at: https://sjflevel3.photo.blog/2020/04/02/bow-a4-developments/ Accessed: 15/08/2020

Tate, 2020. Aubrey Beardsley, London, Tate

Artist and CS/BOW thoughts: Alba Zari The Y Project

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I stored this while doing Digital Image and Culture and was struck by some similarities. Although Zari is focusing on genetics, I am focusing on fragments of language (text, visual, cultural, personal) and looking at how that creates a dynamic self – and then looking at the contemporary issue of including digital entities in the lively, intra-active entanglement out of which ‘self’ emerges. There are questions in my work about the narcissistic nature of the contemporary ‘I’, as the AI I work with is sold as a friend but in fact, becomes a version of oneself through its training programme, which isn’t questioned as a problem – in fact, it’s marketed as a good thing.

There are similarities in presentation between Zari and my own work so far with layering and positioning – and that feels like something I should develop a further especially int the second half of the publication.

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/alba-zari-the-y

Having mentioned the self  – it is interesting to revisit Julian Baggini’s The Ego Trick. Here is a useful Ted Talk where he spoke to teens/students (I showed it to my son) and so it is really accessible as Baggini explains the idea that a core object such as the soul (or anything else – he refers to a watch) is never an object that pre-existed but rather an outcome – pre-and post-Cartesian view of the world. https://youtu.be/GFIyhseYTWg. It may be worth including some reference to this in my essay (if not the student talk, simply Baggini’s arguments, whom I had quoted in an earlier iteration with reference to different cultural ways of seeing reality around the world). If nothing else, his take on the self is another example of how we have moved beyond a certain place  – how the Cartesian reality is no longer tenable.

I think most people I’ve read in the last few years is in agreement with this rejection of ‘the core pre-determined object’

e.g. Christakis in Blueprint, Lupton in Data Selves, Jasanoff in The Biological Mind

– although there are exceptions such as Iain McGilchrist who says in a talk “of course there are objects!” with an air of frustration that anyone should suggest there aren’t – but I do wonder if this is just a semantic issue. Also object-orientated ontology – excuse the Wikipedia quote but for the sake of speed in these notes: “Object-oriented ontology maintains that objects exist independently (as Kantian noumena) of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects.[4]

Research: (repost) Bit by Bit, Mikhael Subotzky’s Destructive Collage Process Dismantles Depictions of White “Founding Fathers” | Magnum Photos

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

This work could/should be referenced in the essay and when I do any last minute changes, it is worth including (I’d have to get rid of something quite significant to make room though). Subotzky’s words are so familiar to me – the need to confront his own privilege and complicity, the recognition that his inquiry is so relevant and current – and to keep going with his work, as well as the deescalated position of the camera in his process.

“The photographer discusses his creative process and the importance of breaking historical cycles of racism, violence, and oppression”
— Read on www.magnumphotos.com/theory-and-practice/bit-by-bit-mikhael-subotzkys-destructive-collage-process-dismantles-depictions-of-white-founding-fathers/

Artist: Kata Geible – Sysyphus (2018)

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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.)

 

 

Artist: Mayumi Hosokura ‘New Skin’

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 3 Comments

As I continue to think about the online/moving element I was grateful to Catherine for sending me a link to this film by Mayumi Hosokura which is also accompanied by a book published by Mack. It has a very similar theme to mine – although I don’t specifically talk about feminism, it is clear the gaze and feminity are very much part of it my own work. I am also more focused on semiotics and the quirky things the Ai says which can be humorous – but flesh and scanning and the differences between materials are all there. Mine could be called New Eyes  – but I’m sticking with the current title for now, although may shorten it.

I also took photos of the inside of the scanner, like Hosokura does here although hers are moving  – which I’ve not used but I do keep thinking about those earlier images of film, negatives, and the scanner, so maybe something I should return to. (Really annoying I can’t photograph the SEM tools after lockdown happened). It’s useful to see this rendering: the repetition, layering, disruption, and cuts.

Thanks again to Catherine for sending me the link.

Director: Claire Denis

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 1 Comment

I have started watching decent films and looking for innovative filmmakers after a break of actively doing so – recall, I began L3 watching as much sci-fi as possible. However, I have now reached a point where I’ve got something that could act as a kind of loose script to begin making related work to live online in the form of moving images, perhaps gifs or short films. I am not sure yet what they will be or look like – but as I said in the Assignment, I feel quite strongly the work needs that – at the moment, perhaps it is like a plan/script/blueprint. I don’t think it should be a sub-element. I do think it should be a partner to act in tandem.  Whether I use SYP or BOW A5 to work on it (perhaps both) is something to be seen.

I watched Claire Denis’ High Life (2018) on Friday and have spent the rest of the weekend watching and reading all I can about her.

 

High Life is visually incredible and all the way through I kept being reminded of contemporary photography I have seen recently – especially Valentine Bo, Your next step would be to do the transmission. (Interestingly, this work has stayed with me although I was not sure of it when I saw it at Foam’s Talent Exhibition in Vauxhall last year). Denis’s work is darker, less deliberately kitsch, and for me – perhaps unfairly, in a different realm by far. I wondered who had done the set design as its very distinctive. Somewhere on the internet, it claimed that Olafur Eliasson had designed the space-ship, but Denis says in an interview his contribution is only the yellow light (unsurprisingly) at the end. Of course, there is a team of art, set, and production designers, and together, with Denis, they create a tangible, distinctive and stunning although grotesque landscape perhaps as Peter Greenaway or Andrei Tarkovsky can. I plan to watch the film again as there is so much to see.

But I am most interested in the way Denis eschews Hollywood conventions and narrative structures. I had recently also watched Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015) which ends with typical Hollywood heroism. Denis’s films never end that way. Both films are about an abandoned human far from earth (home) but Denis’s is profound in ways that the Hollywood film (very exciting and well-executed) could never be.

In Beau Travail (1999) I was reminded of Richard Wrangham’s Goodness Paradox where we are told how humans are the only mammals that plan their violence. There is something so psychopathic about the way the Foreign Legion soldiers are required to iron and make their beds to absolute perfection. The violence is made more terrifying as the film is at times like a ballet or an opera exploring ritual and distancing  – which we use to remove ourselves from the destruction and violence we commit.

Like Denis, I grew up in a colonial country and knowing something of the inherent violence and ongoing trauma for people and land meant White Material (2010) would always be a profound watch for me.

Denis never glamourises violence. She often doesn’t show it directly. We more usually see the outcome or obstructed views. She also directs the camera unusually at times, we see nothing but the back of someone’s head for far longer than in other films. In High Life, she mixes ultra HD and special effects of the present which is really the future with Super 16 for the past. The colours are beautiful and alluring in both cases.

There are no linear narratives. She is very sparing with dialogue and uses layers of sounds, music, abstract visuals. She is an incredible filmmaker.  I really like that she has always been determined to do things her way, that she refuses to give in to normal conventions of film. She says in an interview, yes, perhaps she is like that because although European, she did not grow up in Europe. I often wonder the same thing about myself – this sense of being an outsider informs a great deal across all aspects of my life. I wish I had the same presence and certainty about that difference throughout my own life. Instead – I realised just a few years ago. I will watch her first film Chocolat (1988) and then watch High Life again for inspiration  – paying careful attention to the editing choices she makes. I also read, she shoots quickly but makes the film in the editing suite – which is clear. Each element is given value. Nothing is tagged on.

Denis’s sets up her shots like photographs too. And the camera stays, settles, waits before moving on or a cut is made so we can take what is being seen in. The end of Beau Trevail is truly great.

I like this from Slant Magazine, “Denis isn’t interested in Hollywood-style verisimilitude, as High Life is only interested in using the space-outlaw template to talk about Earth. The film asks down-and-dirty questions about what really resides beneath thousands of years of human progress, a savage and haunting antidote to the high-minded idealism of movies like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and Ridley Scott’s The Martian.” (MacFarlane, 2018). It reminds me of Wrangham’s arguments about our complex nature.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/10/high-life-review-robert-pattinson-claire-denis-sci-fi-drama-astronauts

https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/high-life-claire-denis-director-interview-sex-space.html

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/high-life-claire-denis-robert-pattinson-space-sci-fi-human-taboos

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/high-life

Wrangham, R. W. (2019) The goodness paradox: how evolution made us more and less violent. At: https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=AE32C3DC-AEC2-4F10-A264-1CE2A6603C09 (Accessed 27/10/2019).

Artist: Lucas Blalock

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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.)

Artist: Cristiano Volk (again!)

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Am in the middle of my essay (hard work and difficult!)  – therefore, very quickly with this – another photographer breaking out of photography’s restrictive conventions. Clausing writes: ‘Volk uses found photographs and newly photographed work to take us from the particular to the universal. In this visual journey we see views of body cells, natural scenes, spacescapes, and everything in between.’ (2019) I could use this as an example in the final chapter of the said essay but am already referring to Lisa Barnard and Edgar Martins who expansive works really demonstrate the point well – and I have many words to cut yet. But we’ll see.

 

3-volk2a
Image from Clausing’s review (Photobook Journal)

 

See Gerhard Clausing’s latest review:

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/94577361/posts/2606657308