Dummy booklet – have created a dummy to demonstrate what I’m aiming for tomorrow when I attend a study visit run by my BOW tutor. I will make a little video and upload in the morning when there is some daylight to do it with.
Shadow puppets and Processing Managed to shoot the puppets and put them through one Processing thing I learnt while on the course. I like the fact of making shadow puppets – an original moving image narrative device, far older than photography, but requires light – into still images, then animating the stills. Playing with time, back and forth. I suspect I will make a little very slow stop motion with them at some point – it won’t be very long. But it might be good for one of the texts I wrote. Or all of them? Who knows…
The following is all very rough, as playing. I will obviously need to make sure the dimensions of the sketch match the image in future. Below is a rough screen-recording of the Processing sketch and a screenshot of it at the end plus original image.
Front room trashed – wish I had studio space. Ah well…
Just bought some new printing materials to play with, will venture further afield to find more tomorrow
Plan today
Reshoot film cutting into flesh – Dawned on me I don’t need to shoot myself for this. It’s just too difficult. Will work with a friend Monday morning.
Reshoot shadow puppets – Have done this morning, but only with one lamp and window light. See below. Think I might need a bit more light and no daylight on the white paper. Bit of tinkering in LR – needs tidying up in PS. But took several poses. Will use these to make a page for the dummy and think about lighting a bit more.
Reshoot gold leaf squares – proper exposure – Spent ages looking for a very bright pink silk dress I am sure I still own to put the leaf squares on but couldn’t find it so stuck with black cloth. But better exposed. Barely touched in LR. (First image cropped only and a small amount of vibrance increased)
Ditto photographic plate – Can’t get this one right at all. Tried scanning on my Epson scanner, which isn’t terribly pretty – makes it look quite weird, waves of light bouncing off the silver surface not ideal for the poor scanner
Screenshot of my own scanner preview – back of the plate, not terribly pretty, but it coped very well with the other side which has an image and is coated with developing chemicals, fixer etc. but a not very good picture of me is not what I’m after – so will keep trying with the blank side.
Shoot gold fringe curtain in woods (if not raining) – didn’t get time to do this
Print, cut, slice, glue – create dummy booklet with what I have so far – I’ve put things in place but not glued as still have things to shoot and photograph
Order gold face/body paint – done
Find old film about gold mining in SA, print screenshot if appropriate image can be found possibly for dummy book – something to do over the weekend
Make circle, print and cut out for cover – still to do, not sure if I want it now, maybe
Tonight reshoot lightbox like cinema screen slow shutter speed to make light glow around box – I will do this tomorrow as have just completed cutting, printing, etc. exhausted!
Have postponed taking camera to Fixation to fix hot-shoe till Monday – too much to do.
Contact sheet from earlier today – some strange random ordering for some reason.. (not asked for it!)
Wanted to photograph this strip of film I have although not sure how, but borrowed a macro lens and a small lightbox. Never worked with a lightbox before and am sure there must be a range of different qualities and light types which one can acquire. This one is like the continuous lights I used years ago when first starting out. It was suggested that I switch to fluorescent in WB but it was way too blue so I tried every setting and in the end, Auto was best although every frame is different even though I shot in the dark to avoid mixing sources.
The most interesting image for me was when I used my own 50mm, and included the various signs of age and wear and tear. The reason I like this one is it looks like a cinema screen. I suspect it would be better if I manipulated the lines so it’s more accurately square on (I tried my best in-camera – maybe I’ll ignore the other pics which don’t excite me at all and give this another try tomorrow evening.) I will include some of the others but I can’t see myself taking them any further. I also shot a blade on the lightbox but I will try other ways of shooting it, I think. There’s a great passage in the Barad book where she uses the shadow of a blade to explain how diffraction works and does weird things. So it’s not only a good signifier of slicing, potential pain, a reference to Un Chien Andalou – it’s also a prop for Barad.
Talking of ‘the Cut’, Emma suggested Berger’s Understanding a Photograph and I’ve found some super references for the essay and context for this work. As for this BOW, I’m still not feeling it though (will write more about that another time).
Putting the contact sheet here – I may relook at a couple but mostly they don’t interest me. Some have had a bit of fiddling in LR/some have been left as shot with all the WB issues laid bare.
After writing last night, I thought about where I am.
Why am I making a book with attempts at still life when I’ve been finding my way with moving image of one sort or another?
I definitely want to include some sort of moving image element any installation
I wondered if this move away from moving image was promoted by a comment which I felt came with a little jab about the course being a ‘photography degree’.
That comment was good though because it consolidated the direction I was going in, and suddenly things started to make sense – a doorway – exploring the boundaries we place around categories of various forms of image-making
This reconfiguring of boundaries is exactly what my essay is about, an examination of the ‘cut’. Where do we place boundaries and differentiation? Given the changes to our world, we should not assume anything and so I am looking specifically at the making of images before the broad spectrum of different disciplines emerge. (See my post – Life After New Media)
When I was an actor I would sometimes stick my script in a book especially if it was a photocopy and then make notes and draw in the booklet. The script would end up being covered in all sorts of doodles.
And so, I decided the word manifesto on the cover should be replaced with ‘script’ and the subheading is now scaled right back (see below)
This suggests I might/should create the script of ‘cuttings’ and then make some sort of film/performance based on it thereafter (A4/A5)
I spent tonight printing what I have so far (although dismissed some of the texts for now) and ordered a handful of images last night too.
I have printed on different materials – paper, newsprint, transparency, tracing paper etc.
I have a tiny 13.5 x 9.5 book and printed everything to fit on these tiny pages so that I can make a mini-book mock-up, including texts that will fold out. (I guess at least one image should do that too.) See incoherence – page 118 Edgar Martins book, essay by Roger Luckhurst – ‘work to derail the over-coherence any series or display … inevitably imposes’
By using different materials I hope I am beginning to ‘artistically’ emulate the Standard Model of Reality. This does feel ‘ridiculous’ and any scientist would probably laugh but by using different materials, different media, layers of meaning and symbolism rather than focusing on one single isolated/discrete object, I hope I somehow addressing the ‘Cartesian habit’.Below: Standard model flow cart, one image of my efforts this evening – a photograph printed on graph paper and a cover currently printed on newsprint and will stick with a found portrait. Will upload a video and shots of the little booklet when it’s made.
Finally, the little booklet is a small precious thing. Gold has emerged as a key theme along with brown paper and second-hand objects. Like the themes in the text query and challenge reductionism and commodification.
I may have secured a way to create an image of film stock (or at any rate a tiny bit of the silver halide crystals) at extremely high magnification on a scanning electron microscope (SEM). This is not as high/deep as a scanning tunnelling microscope but nevertheless exciting. See the difference here. Quoted from the linked article – ‘The scanning tunneling microscope (STM) differs significantly from the SEM. It is capable of imaging objects at ten times the lateral resolution, to 0.1 nanometer. This is well down into the quantum realm.’ I am excited about this and will keep looking to see if it would be possible to look at the atomic level too. If this does happen the images will be for a later iteration as I must wait until half-term to get it sorted.
I keep trying to make time to take more images (with my usual bashed up old canon) and really need to – I may well have a bit of time tomorrow but I don’t yet have the objects I have been trying to gather, so I will use the time to reshoot some of the things I shot the other day (see notes in PDF below – but needs opening up in Adobe, so see screenshot).
I played around a bit with the images I took last week and the text. There are notes beside images, but basically, I need to reshoot, shoot more, work on the writing, make the Processing files I’ve been considering and pull an edit together in the next ten days or so – plus print something because I can take it along to a study visit this weekend. And finish off the Part 3 coursework (which won’t take long but needs doing) What a lot to do. Cuttings 1
Oh yes, for now, a working title but perhaps it will stick – not sure of the subtitle but the main one seems to encapsulate the project and has a multitude of relevant meanings. Cuttings: manifesto for a digitised life
Some screenshots of combinations I liked when playing around with versions last night.
Have not included these but will look again at a later stage
Following on from the previous post, After Photography (Ritchin, 2009) explores non-camera ‘photography’. I have been playing with scans over the last year or so.
Today I scanned the following and in a couple of cases used the ‘wrong’ settings: (Click on image to see view)
I spent some time today working with the idea of the agential cut and photography. Tomorrow I will look at Processing/film/making the image move.
Just to remind people –
‘An agential cut, therefore, can be viewed as making and giving meaning to human-data assemblages.’ (Lupton, 2019: 30)
“…any attempt to impose meaning and order is an intervention (a cut) that produces specific effects, and is inevitably part of the matter it seeks to observe or document. They [Kember and Zylinska (2012)] represent photography as a specific cut in meaning, a way of delimiting from all the choices availabe what can be recorded and displayed, and therefore, how meaning can be generated. It is the medium by which things are brought into being by humans and non-humans (e.g) cameras [phone, scanners, etc.] working together. Photography makes agential cuts that produce life forms rather than simply documenting them. ‘It is a way of giving form to matter’ (Kember and Zylinksa 2012: 84)’ (Lupton, 2019: 29)
‘Images or representations are not snapshots or depictions of what awaits is but rather condensations or traces of multiple practices of engagement’ (Barad, 2007: 53)
Potential images to accompany writings
Today’s Contact Sheet (ones that stand out immediatelyadjusted in LT but none in PS):
I have spent the evening rewriting some of the texts and placing them into a book form – I’ve rejected the first ten or eleven I wrote but after that, they started to improve. -although still needed attention.
No doubt I will continue to write and make changes and add other writings. (Plus there are likely to be typos – editing straight into ID is not really ideal for me – I’ll have to transform to word and spell check later.)
I have not identified images to include but now that I can see an arc, I feel what is necessary will begin to emerge. I am interested in the Processing exercise I experimented with the other day using Tom’s First Film. (Not included any writing prompted by that in the collection below yet – will do later and then will see if it fits.) The possibility of corrupted, machine-informed collages might be just what is needed. Having put these texts into a format, I feel I can get on with that – I feel I have time and space ahead now (although received feedback from Matt for CSA3 which I need to write up and post too.). It would certainly fit the remit of ‘Chance’ to do things that way.
The theme of selfies seems to have emerged as significant which is hilarious given I stated quite clearly I was not interested in making a project about selfies in an earlier reflection.
This way of working feels completely counter to all I’ve been advised and learned the last few years… but it’s the way that’s led to something so I need to keep going. Saying that – it does feel emergent and informed and organic.
I have left space for images in the book as laid out – I think space will be very important. But the order is not fixed, nor is the layout, or the texts included, or the size – and there are no images (yes, I know, it’s a photography degree…) except for the ones I experimented with earlier. But I don’t think they are right at all.
And there is a bit of writing yet to be done – I have entered a heading on that page to show where it would go.
Tom’s first film (1971), which I bought from eBay is a bit of a shallow pool which I’ve been thinking about and looking at for some days now… How am I going to make work with the actual imagery? – I can, however, think of several possible ways to play with the object. Once the kids are back at school I will have space and time to take some photographs of the actual film which I wanted to do but goodness knows what to do with the footage…
The film has, alongside other activities, helped to further consolidate directions. And I wonder if the film will part be of the journey rather than anything final.
So far I have made two experiments, here’s one of them. If shown in a live setting, it would be preferable to have the processing running live rather than a screen recording like this. This video is generated by code in Processing – by randomly relaying screenshots from the film (i.e ‘agential cuts’ into Tom’s amorphous and unformed recording). The film reminded a friend of a Goerges Braque image in tone and structure, which was encouraging as I stared at it wondering whether it was anything or not (see below). Braque’s is called Violin and Candlestick (1910) and I guess I might call this Processing experiment Camera and Food Processor. I need to ask Simon C. who did the Processing course at the TPG with me how to stop the random placements from all heading in the same direction. I wish I could do the course again to augment some of what we learnt as I am currently picking through old files from the tutors very slowly as I try to figure out how to do things. I might also get the code to record the iterations and then handpick still combinations that are most striking. When its running live, I particularly like the frames where the food processor appears many times at once – with black holes all over the screen.
I recalled seeing this work in a Foam magazine #51 (the previous post is also from that edition) and being really struck by the way it was put together, and incorporated a range of images, styles, as well as text. On the website there are still images, text, a bit of processing and a freedom that one doesn’t see in more ‘conservative’ examples of photographic work. I did not recall the name of the work and had to flick through old copies, and now see a similarity to one of my own texts – Orpheus in Homebase. The linking again of old myth to today’s world. What I take mostly from this work is freedom to play. (Which is interesting given my sense that there is an ever decreasing sense of play related to online forums where the conservatism of Flusser’s apparatus appears to dominate and rule.)
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