Tag: CS A2

CS A2: Rewritten following feedback

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

Added here 01/09/2020

Adjustments made to citations and referencing and a couple of sentences rewritten – submitted for assessment.

2019-cs-a2-can-i-be-dead-and-alive-a-the-same-time-.edited.docx-1Download

December 2019:

Following feedback from various sources including Matt, and while continuing to work on CA A3, attached is an updated version of the Portfolio Review assignment.

(Things to do – double check captions beneath mages.)

December 2019 CS A2 Can I be dead and alive a the same time .edited

BOW A3: Planning notes

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 4 Comments

I wasn’t beginning to panic exactly but about two weeks ago I was wondering if I was ever going to settle on something that felt tangible and a little more focused, something to really begin digging down into.

I’ve been concentrating on the ideas and theories that I’m trying to understand and not really making much in the way of work – although have continued looking/searching for footage and relooking at my own recent work to see what’s emerging.

There are some films I think may be useful. If they haven’t got any actual material in them which I’d like to use, then perhaps phrases or titles inspire me.

I had the following disparate entities along with ideas/responses so far:

  • A string of seemingly unrelated snippets of text  – some in the ongoing stream of Random Notes for a Short Story ##, and some other things that might be called poems – although I want to avoid that word and looking back over these, I think I will find a way of typesetting to avoid them looking like traditional poems and rather like prose perhaps using / between each line. This not only negates the sense of fixed poetry, but it also echoes Barad’s explanation of intra/relatedness. 
  • I looked at images I’d made in Italy (and not used in A2 but in another sequence). The themes are related but the images made me yawn even though they are quite nice photographs. (Hover mouse over image for explanatory captions written for the sake of this post)
    Stopping the ‘natural’ simulation with high speed shutter
    Giving the impression of solidness with high shutter speed – waves made to look in the photograph like a wall
    again walls- held up with structures
    A convention of used footage (appropriated) downloaded from the internet to make new films, and also still images by simply screenshotting or else literally photographing my computer and the images on the screen – less frequently. My commitment to using digital habits/techniques is deliberate  – see DI&C A3. I have a very serious problem with the common notion in the arts and photography that digital media and techniques are less valuable or less interesting than analogue and historical processes. This trend strikes me as being mired in middle-class, excluding values. I am also echoing a non-Western tradition of valuing things we in the West dismiss – an animist worldview. This was referenced in the Barbican’s recent Digital exhibition AI: More than Human (2019), Nam June Paik retrospective, Tate 2019, and in Lupton’s Data Selves (2019) (citing Bennett’s Vibrant Matter (2009), Thing Power & Enchantment etc… and counters exceptionalism and binary thinking). I will continue in this vein because I think it’s really important to defy the ‘insidious unconscious reinforcers’ (Small, 1999)* that limit us. Artists, in particular, can be as backward-looking as the populists they claim to know better than who come across as if they want to go back to an imagined time that was ‘better’ – by rolling around in nostalgic practices while dismissing newer ones which give creative access to many, many more people.  This strategy of mine is not a wholehearted endorsement of all things digital. It is not a niave embracing of the new and rejection of the old. tech media is not immaterial as many think. It ‘is not clean’ – see CCA talk below. It is certainly not without its negative impact and connotations. As mentioned in a previous blog – this ‘is also explored in Vilém Flusser’s Towards a Philosophy of Photography (2012). The ideology is in the apparatus and photographers (all except experimental ones!) are flunkies or to use his word, functionaries – they ‘are inside their apparatus and bound up with it’ (loc 2086).’ (Field, 2019). (One of the people I worked with via Pic London is doing a talk in Glasgow which I can’t make called ‘Our best machines are made of sunshine’. CCA)
  • When I present work to a cohort of students who I meet regularly there is always a question about the form: ‘but is this acceptable? it’s moving image / or it’s about moving image and this is a photography course?’ It happens every time despite the fact I have sought reassurance from Wendy McMurdo (who suggested using moving image herself, just as I was discovering my long-term interest on the impact of cinema and its related activities on my developing sense of self), and Andrea Norrington (DI&C tutor); and reassurances have been verified by the fact both the tutors I now have are connected to and use moving image as well as other media. I do pass all of this on but yet, each time I’m once again questioned about my use of /reference to moving image. In terms of the recent essay, this questioning tells me I need to make a particular concept much clearer and will discuss when writing up feedback, but other than that, this constant questioning reveals a common confusion over what photography is and how still/moving differ and are the same. What’s more – it reveals the ‘Cartesian habit of mind’ (Barad, 2011) which I am at pains to deconstruct. It highlights the lines we modern Western humans are so desperate to impose. But – even my tutor asked, ‘are you going to concentrate on still or moving?’He has not been following my work for a while though so it’s somewhat forgivable. My cohort, if not avidly following my progress might have least have noticed constant freezing of moving images  – making a single frame out of several, focusing on the cut from one scene to another – where there is a blend of frames on view. They might have seen the reverse action – i.e. instead of adding many frames together to make them move, I have taken single frames and stopped the animation.  Then reintroduced animation while maintaining the stillness. Had they been looking they might have picked up on the desire to stop the ongoing simulation with its ‘insidious unconscious reinforcers’ (Small, 1999) and seen me step inside of it and take a look around.
  • I have explored the difference between film and still image – they are both the same at the centre. We humans either look at a single frame or we add many frames together to create the impression of reality. It is, however, an impression, we do not move at 24 fps and some filmmakers are experimenting with higher fps but we are so used to having an impressionistic view that we don’t always much like it in cinema. But video games, ‘today are developed with the goal of hitting a frame rate of 60 fps but anywhere between 30 fps to 60 fps is considered acceptable. That’s not to say that games cannot exceed 60 fps, in fact, many do, but anything below 30 fps, animations may start to become choppy and show a lack of fluid motion.’ (Klappenbach, 2019)
  • To reiterate – I am stopping the simulation when I take a screenshot or focus on the glitchy frames that show two scenes chopped together.
  • I am making work in the reverse order that is usually made/and chopping up the order.
  • I am looking at the capturing of light  – the core activity of still and moving photography. What happens afterward re the temporality we impose on our captured light (life) is also of interest because it relates to the constructive nature of existence  – which according to some visual scientists is what we ourselves do in any case even when we’re not making films.
  • See ancient mythology and compare to modern mythology (advertising whether honest or subversive in the cinema).
  • The following may be a useful paper for me –
    A New/Old Ontology of Film Rafe McGregor (2013)
    The purpose of this article is to examine the ontological effects of digital technology, and determine whether digital films, traditional films, and pre- traditional motion pictures belong to the same category.
    https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/film.2013.0015 
  • Not wishing to introduce spoilers – but McGregor concludes ‘At this point in the second decade of the twenty-first century, however, digital film remains – like traditional film and its predecessors – the art of moving pictures’ and I suspect I will find that at the core of both film and still, regardless of digital or analouge  – the capture of light is the same thing. However, various processes enable different social outcomes due to access, cost, and social biases that are linked to ideologies feeding into them.
  • But – moving image (digital or analogue – once it’s on the internet, there is no difference) gives the appearance of being more like a wave than a particle and therefore, perhaps a useful means of conveying some of the ideas that come along with the particular weird phenomenon where particles behave like waves when measured under certain conditions – and related phenomena.
  • This resolute determination to exist with a Cartesian habit of mind in our institutions and society means two things for me:1. I have found a way forward for this project. I have ordered a Super 8 home movie made in 1971 from E-bay. I was looking for two things – a moving image format that I could cut up (made still) and it should have been made in the year I was born. I will use this alongside fragments of text and make a book (a3) and film (thereafter) with it. I will need to digitise it before cutting it up into what I will need and playing with it which might delay me slightly – but knowing it’s on its way means I am free to carry on writing in the meantime.
  • 2. But it also infuriates me because it’s about pigeon-holing. The need to categorise everything into arbitrary manmade labeled domains limits us exponentially. It stops us from seeing and accepting complexity and nuance. It filters out difference – see Barad ‘indeterminacy is an undoing of identity that unsettles the very nature of being and non being’. You can see this in England right now as it grapples with its identity crisis – what am I? British, European, Labour, Conservative, Liberal or none of them  – oh my god – how can I be all these things and none of them…’ aaargh!!!!’ goes the collective wail. It is reductive and insulting to keep pigeon-holing. It’s also rude and belittling. It is the antithesis of superpositions.

Summary:

  • My work is an attempt to visit a non-cartesian world and see what it looks like
  • It is a response to Cartesian reductiveness and habitual narrowing of meaning
  • It hopefully will do this via many intra/related mico-narratives
  • The themes are human temporality – both biological and mechanical, consumerism (the modern religion) and the relationship between narrative and the evolving worldview we are revisiting (we weren’t always in this place)
  • The process in CS is informing the potential outcomes in BOW for the momentOverall – I think the work could be called PLEASE for mercy’s sake stop with the arbitrary categorising, stop with the Cartesian habit of mind!! But it’s not very catchy, is it?
  • I am not decided yet but I may simply call the work CUT  (perhaps with a subheading about fragments for the modern consumer but I will decide later) linked to the fact I will cut up the film I’ve ordered, edits in filmmaking and meaning (see BBCs latest accepted ‘mistake’ re-editing different answers to questions to imply a new meaning) and links to Barad’s agential cut.

‘Kember and Zylinska (2012) use the concept of the agenital cut to argue that 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 represent photography as a specific cut in meaning, a way of delimiting from all the choices available that can be recorded and displayed, and therefore, how meaning can be generated. It is the means by which things are brought into being by humans and non-humans (e.g. cameras) 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 Zylinska 2012:84) They do not differentiate here between moving and still photography (I would need to investigate further  but it makes no sense to in these terms.)

‘To see one must actively intervene’ (Barad, 2007:51 – citing Hacking)

*Quote taken from an anthropology book about the formation and feedback of culture and self in relation to cost/benefit ratios and social-economic needs. Although the book focuses on childcare practice cross-culturally, the premise is relevant. By looking at photography through the prism of child anthropology (along with the other intra/related disciplines I visit), perhaps I am engaging in a diffractive practice.

Refs:

Barad, K. M. (2007) Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.

Flusser, V. (2012) Towards a philosophy of photography. London: Reaktion Books.

Klappenbach, M. (2019) Understanding and Optimizing Video Game Frame Rates. [Gaming Magazine Online] At: https://www.lifewire.com/optimizing-video-game-frame-rates-811784 (Accessed 02/12/2019).

Lupton, D. (2019) Data selves: more-than-human perspectives. Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA: Polity.

Small, M. F. (1999) Our babies, ourselves: how biology and culture shape the way we parent. New York; London: Bantam ; Kuperard.

CS A2: A new draft with peer feedback

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 5 Comments

This is now much more focused on a specific line of inquiry.  I feel like this has put me in a better place to begin putting words down for A3. (I hope!)

rewrite- CS Assignment 2 Can you be dead and alive at the same time_ Draft 6

Comments and some reflection to be added later.

Adding 5/12/2019 (although they arrived prior to that nad presented here in the order they arrived  – my responses in Orange)

  • Read your Lit Review and have the following comments: Firstly – an excellent review of the position you are taking.
    • In some ways it feels like being close to a completed essay, much like John did, and could see you fleshing it out to provide a final essay.  I feel the shape is just about where it needs to be too and I can use the progression/layout here as a starting point for A3/4 etc. 
    • Maybe needs a link to your work, but that could come in the final essay,
    • To be really picky, there is some inconsistency in your citations in the text. (I did not check the bibliography)
    • The use of italics for emphasis is maybe superfluous – I did not highlight all of them, – thank you
    • UCA Harvard refers to Figures not Images, so OK in body but should have List of Figures , not ‘Images’ OK
  • Something I picked up from the UCA (site links below) was that the list of illustrations goes before the bibliography. I’ve followed these for mine. I wasn’t sure about the sentences under the images. Should they be in the text? (yes, I am really pushing boundaries here – something to look into. – I wrote in an email discussion
    I expect if it repeats what’s in the body it’s fine, if it echoes what’s in the body one is flirting with danger, if it adds info – it’s probably not such a good idea. )

    The intimates using text examples e.g (see fig 1).
    Like Doug, I thought you had to refer it back to your BOW. (God there are so many opposing suggestions re. this point from students and staff. My BOW and CS work is clearly very much connected but BOW is as it should be right now, an unfolding emergent thing – at the moment the CS work is informing the BOW ideas but there is nothing to see except for experiments of A1 and A2 which might feel completely unrelated, an email from eBay confirming a purchase of some Super 8 film shot in the US in 1971 (my year of birth) and a bunch of disparate bits of text. I suspect for any students reading this – that in each case it will be different. It will depend on your work and your process. I suspect there are no hard and fast rules, rather tendencies. The tendency would be to include some reference to one’s own work but it is not necessary especially if not relevant (although how one makes work and then writes about something that isn’t related is puzzling) – or if it doesn’t further your argument. 

    https://www.uca.ac.uk/library/academic-support/harvard-referencing/

    https://xerte.ucreative.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=93

    The formatting is obviously something one wants to get right  – good habits are great to get into and I will revisit. I am confused (as I think many others are too) about what is expected of us if we have already mentioned citation info in the body – which we might do if relevant  – then thereafter we need only put the page number or ibid if continuing. I am not sure if this convention is acceptable or if it is what my peer is referring too but I have been looking at and taking on board what academic writers do and noticing when they seem to be following Harvard guidelines (as far as I understand them). If one need only put (date) or (pagenumber) after a quote or reference rather than (name, date, page number) because the information has already been established, that should suffice – surely. Even if that is not what we do every time. Is this comment is referring to, I wonder. I will need to clarify in case it is about something else which I’ve not cottoned on to.

     

    example

     

  • I’m going to put these here & have included an annotated doc with more suggestions.
    • There are two main topics of conversation in the introduction: Why is the narrative of quantum theory relevant to representing our sense of reality today? & Is digital or analogue more suited to this type of representation? I am not sure I see this as a problem – but will re-look at my phrasing. The main issue I have and which I am working against all the time is how entanglement functions, is seen by modern Westerners and effects academic practice, and how the separation of related topics is discussed. I am also coming round to the idea that the issue is not about the difference between analogue and/or digital although that is a relevant issue – but rather than the difference between fixedness and dynamism. Still analogue speaks to a world in which things are fixed. Moving image, regardless of media conveys less fixedness. Digital media has dynamic movement and possibility built into it – regardless of what happens thereafter, i.e. whether we focus on a single frame or many (giving the illusion of movement) and speaks to and conveys a world that is not fixed but dynamic.  Fluidity is not some kind of Nirvana for me – it has its problems as we see, but it is what we are dealing with in the world today. 
    • I think you then go on to talk more about the perception of reality as it has been moulded by the invention of photography, and I’m not sure that the digital/analogue debate is as relevant as the question of technology. Gosh!! – this is what all my work is ALL about – I must have completely failed to convey the crux of my entire inquiry – the anatomy of the media we use emerges from and feeds back into culture/perception : see notes which I dropped from DI&C essay re Victorian mechanics (Early draft example of DI&C essay (draft 3)The author of the article explains film cameras are like vinyl records amongst millennials, which suggests analogue and film are a curiosity from a foreign land, the past, amongst people who were ‘born digital’; perhaps in a similar way to how the aesthetics of Victoriana are adopted by a popular sub-genre, Steampunk. Steampunk references Victorian technology and mixes it with futuristic, (which might be seen as a reversal of Derrida’s Hauntology where the past acts as a spectre within the present.) Within the Steampunk astheatic, the future haunts the past, as narratives are often set in alternative histories, where our future fantasies become embedded. Such fantasies might be interpreted as fascination in its truest sense, as our fear of transforming from human to post-human, and then on to non-human expresses itself.
      ) – The digital/analogue debate is critical within multi-layered, entangled, issues related to representation ∴ representationalism. Digital is the media (for now) of the masses which allows people from all walks of life to express themselves – it is also the language of control and manipulation used by advertisers (of all kinds, inc. political ones). It has led to the proliferation of ‘voice’ across the whole spectrum of society. It has also allowed propaganda to be spread much faster than and further than previously. We should not/cannot separate social media or digital photography and how it is used from data in general:
    • See Self & Other A5 text  – “Photography (still and moving) attracts plenty of attention as the possible culprit for “destabilising truth and reality. The bombardment of images makes valuing them a challenge. In an article querying their reliability LA Times journalists, Carolina Miranda and Jeffery Fleishman, tell us “…in our social media-frenetic world, images careen at hyper-speed across a politically divisive and dangerous landscape, where they are celebrated, manipulated and often degraded. A picture can be altered and a video edited with such alarming swiftness and precision that it is difficult to scroll back to its unadulterated original…Alternate realities have become hobgoblins of our time.” (2018)
      Just under two decades ago, Andy Grundy for the New York Times wrote, “In the future, it seems almost certain, photographs will appear less like facts and more like factoids – as a kind of unsettled and unsettling hybrid imagery based not so much on observable reality and actual events as on the imagination”. He continues, “This shift, which to a large extent has already occurred within the rarefied precincts of the art world, will fundamentally alter not only conventional ideas about the nature of photography but also many cherished conceptions about reality itself.” (1990) One might justifiably argue conceptions of reality are changing dramatically in light of digitisation. However, they’ve done so frequently in the past, throughout our relatively brief history and often due to previous technological advances. They will undoubtedly continue to evolve. To borrow Mr Peachum’s excellent words: ‘that is all there is to it’. And beyond that, humanity may indeed be ‘shit’. However important and destructive and godlike we think we are as individuals, however collectively critical we might be about NOW, we have long been full of it.” (Field 2018 – extract) 
    • See: “I think it’s an oversimplification [social media being to blame for a distrust of science]. We know from history that you don’t need social media to spread disinformation, you can do it with old-fashioned media. However, I do think social media has made it worse because it’s now possible to get disinformation out to incredibly large audiences rapidly at very low cost. A bunch of guys in a basement can now do a lot of damage and do it pretty quickly” (Lawton/Oreskes 2019)Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432580-600-naomi-oreskes-turn-your-anger-at-science-denial-into-political-action/#ixzz67EaekWF6Analogue is limiting. Although women and non-male, non-white people, non-dominant ideology subjects, of course, have made work with older tech, the space, money, time one needs to use analogue materials prevents many from doing so. This impacts heavily on the perception of reality – so much media made privileged and arguably quote myopic people who have limited experience of life, literally never had to think about being black or poor or uneducated –  and my DI&C essay is all about that issue. Within an entangled discussion about an entangled subject – this is key. 
    • The ‘Flexible Unlearning’ section is too dense and summarising the ideas in the quotations will also focus your thoughts. I am looking for places to cut words but I am not sure this is the place – although I will relook. I was encouraged by Andrea (previous tutor) about comments regarding my ‘sophisticated use of quotes’  used to ‘drive arguments forward’. Something to speak with Matt about
    • The two bits on moving image and consciousness don’t seem to fit here (p7-8)
    • I agree that the examples are too long and that there are examples within Photography that might be worth looking at (see below). Have noted that this section is where I can make cuts but I very clear that the first two examples are absolutely right  – although I need to set up a dialectic in the second example which I can do, having seen tutor feedback to other student’s work which clarified things a little for me about images being a phenomenon and or object/memori mento. Another peer’s comments made me realise I need to really underline and heavily signpost why I have used these two examples – this comment underlines that need. The final example can be replaced by another  – and I think I may have found one I’m happier with. 
    • I like the ‘Another Life’ example but can’t see the link to the Haraway and Lupton in the last couple of paragraphs. Condensing this section will, again, focus your ideas. Hopefully, this will be more obvious once I’ve spelled things out but just to reiterate, William is a Cyborg. He is also the future of a photograph. He is also an obvious human Other – see many, many, many texts relating to Cyborgs to Otherness. See page 183 – Fred Ritchin quotes Harraway–cyborhharrowayritchin007.jpg
    • You mention Elkins saying that photography is boring but don’t actually reference this in your main section on him (p6). Useful point
    • The last paragraph feels very much what the focus of the review should be and I kept looking at your extended essay question which I think is much more precise.
    • Suggestions for examples section:
      • Noriko Yamaguchi – performance artist http://www.mem-inc.jp/keitaigirl/artist.htm
      • Juno Calypso ‘The Salon’ https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/england/london/articles/see-this-fantasy-beauty-salon-by-juno-calypso/
        I know this work is very popular – I am not convinced by it despite the fact it is striking and obviously very effective. 
      • Armin Linke – for photography as intra-related
      • Sohrab Hura ‘The lost head & the bird’ – for contemporary reality – ThinkI will be including this artist but not this work and came across it via 
      • Vincent Morisset – for game / interactive / installation / performance – merging of media & technology
      • Possibly (I couldn’t get them to download onto my v old iPad) see BJP April 2016 ‘Weird Science’ & April 2017 ‘Scratching the surface’. Should be in the UCA library.
  • I found this mostly engaging, but found the Examples in Popular Culture and Art section problematic for two reasons:
      • A lot of words per example – feels like two much detail for this length of essay Agreed. -it’s the section that isn;t working for me tight now. 
      • That the examples are all moving image See previous blog – this also tell to I need to spell things out more – I know you address this in the essay but your question (about whether still photography is embedded in a dying ideology) risks undermining the premise that this subject is worthy of an extended written project on a *photography* degree

 

There is some useful feedback here. Mainly because it shows me where I need to make things much more explicit – since I use the process of writing to think, to inquire, to figure things out, it is through reading and re-reading what I write, and then seeing how others receive it that I begin to understand the complex ideas I’m exploring in others’ writing and how that fits with my overall inquiry. However, the conservatism mentioned by Daniel C Blight (see below) on Twitter or the ‘Cartesian habit of mind’ Karen Barad discusses is strong in photography – and in academic photography training – and I feel like (even if I were the clearest simplest writer in the world) one is constantly working against that trend.

It is also very important for me to see that others have not been on my journey – my inquiry is long and expansive. My inquiry ‘explores debates beyond a simple education course forum’ (DI&C feedback 2019). It dates back to my time as a child watching grownups behave weirdly and noticing moments getting lost forever, people copying each other. To when I first began reading child/baby anthropology books because the usual baby fodder was boring, reductive, ideologically-informed and at times, quite, quite mad. i.e. ‘Don’t look your baby in the eyes’ !!!!!!

I also think when sharing these ideas with other photography students I will need to tread carefully – I am not saying their work is ‘boring’ (it isn’t). I am saying still photography is limited and limiting and ‘such and such’ may be the structural reasons why.

https://twitter.com/DanielCBlight/status/1199286943533731840?s=20

 

 

CS: A2 Tutor Feedback

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

Scroll to the bottom for PDF link or read additional notes first:

I had an extremely useful and relatively long tutorial with a new CS tutor after my previous tutor resigned from the OCA. As is usual with me, I submitted knowing there was still much to do but I reach a point where it’s helpful to get it the work off my hands and receive constructive, meaningful feedback even though I know things are still quite murky.

I have read significantly more since finishing the draft I handed in and am continuing to do so, refining and zoning in on the one hand, but also delving further into such a rich and fantastically difficult/confusing vein of knowledge on the other – that I am still in a thinking place.

I think I mentioned elsewhere that Matt advised me to write my plan/research question (A3) then return to A2 to strip out the unnecessary stuff and focus more on the key topic, not that I know yet what that is, but I am getting a clearer idea. For a while, I thought it was performativity which I have been busy investigating and how that relates to representation and ultimately photography/moving image. I still think that is the case but I keep thinking about boundaries and the collapse of them – also representation,  – a lot of the creative writing I am doing over on Sketchbook is tackling the issues I’m thinking about but in a more instinctive way than one might do so academically. I think that is a better way of working for me. I write, then read what I have and out of that I begin to see what my concerns are.

As far as performativity goes, it seems to have two paths leading to it (Lloyd, 2015) – one theatrical and the other sociological (Austin). One is about acting – playing the role of being a person in the scheme of things, and one is about reaching potential or expectations (or not) i.e. this hoover is not performing as well as advertised; to be a female non-subject one must live up to certain expectations – the  performativity of being a ‘girl’ / ‘women’ = e.g. taking care of one’s looks/physique, acquiescing (don’t be too bolshy or difficult  – that is underperforming  – think Kate in The Taming of the Shrew), having a certain a maternal aura, kind, gentle, quiet when necessary etc. Some women perform ‘well’ (like a hoover – they match up to requirements) others, myself included, ‘fail’ to. I think that is the very basic difference between the two versions of performativity and that needs to go into my Lit Review. Then there is theatricality – dismissed by the modernists and many more besides (Fried, 2008/1967) – especially nowadays when it’s de rigueur to be slapdash or else anti-commodified, or to give the impression of being so even when not.

I need to figure out how to tie (or if I must) this in with photography being ‘boring’ (Elkins, 2011 – and many more, including me.) Incidentally, I don’t necessarily dislike any of those anti -things, and really like them at times. However, I have noticed I can be far more ‘mundane and every day -ish in my writing than I can be in my photography.

I have yet to really get anywhere near to grips with Barad’s use of performativity at the quantum level but I have just ordered her Meeting the Universe Half Way, and I think there will be plenty of direct passages that can help me with my research there.

I am also wondering if I should have a glossary – is that allowed? There are some tricky words that I don’t want to spend too long explaining  – or waste too many words explaining unless it is necessary – I need to find out if this is considered acceptable or not.

Here is the feedback which I wrote up following the tutorial. A2 CS Feedback Form

 

CS: Assignment 2 – Literature review

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments

Write a 2,000-word literature review that identifies, summarises and critically discusses the most relevant texts that currently explore the subject area of your practice (i.e. the subject area you are exploring in Body of Work). Try to contrast differing points of view and indicate how you will expand your research into your extended written project.

Your essay should include a bibliography, be fully illustrated and reference citations appropriately throughout. See the extended written project submission requirements at the end of Part Three for more information about how to format your literature review.

 

I have sent the following draft to my new tutor Matt White. This PDF does not include (c) images. The offline version does. Web CS Assignment 2 Can you be dead and alive at the same time_ Draft 4

He sent the following link a couple of weeks ago which I found useful.

The structure of a literature review

Here is my reflection:

Demonstration of subject-based knowledge and understanding:

I didn’t set out to write about Brecht but once I realised that Fried had relied on his theory to prop up his own writing I was able to draw on previous knowledge. As an A level student in 1989 or so I was barely literate but I managed to get top marks for my Brecht essay. I just loved learning about his plays and methods. I am also interested in reality so pulling these strands together was enjoyable although I feel I have only scratched the surface. I will need to read Fried more carefully as I’m pretty sure I’ve made some mistakes based on assumptions.

Demonstration of research skills:

As I say above I need to dig deeper and make sure I’m not assuming things. Having written this, I feel I can now go on to do the real research. I have just about finished the Lupton book and once that’s done I can get to grips with Fried and Object Ontology.

Demonstration of critical and evaluation skills:

I have shown that I am able to question established views and even if others don’t agree with me, I hope I have given reasons which go some way towards supporting my arguments.

Communication:

It’s always tricky getting the balance tight – overly academic writing isn’t fun to write or read. Before she left, Ruth suggested experimenting with the form and I would enjoy that – not sure the OCA assessors would agree though. I love Chris Kraus’s ability to intertwine critical theory and autobiography and novel into one.

Writing a literature review was new to me – should we include our thoughts? Some fo the advice I got from fellow students was contradictory and confusing to say the least!

Please note: I will need to go through it with a very fine-tooth comb before printing for assessment, and there will be typos and repetitiveness, however, I am likely to revisit it and hone it in the run-up to sending it in.

CS 2: Reflection feedback

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

After sharing the previous blog where I reflect on topics and subjects I aim to explore in my extended essay, and looking at the references I will discuss in A2: Literature Review, I have had some useful comments from other students which include helpful sites as well as suggestions of writers and practitioners. I will add to this page as more arrive.

  • A guide to writing a critical review (as opposed to a literature review):

https://xerte.ucreative.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=93#item0_PG1549360927916

  • Another note that fellow students have reminded me of:  The literature review is not an essay. (Yet, it should still be written as well it can be.)

Work I might find useful

  • I mention in my blog that I want to begin to tackle Deleuze. A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari has been recommended as a good start. I have looked at a couple of videos in the meantime. And immediately thought, Oh! this is related to Systems; and to how a linear Cartesian understanding of existence is being usurped by a picture of a networked reality, and the end of the Triangle of Being, replaced by a less hierarchical system. Therefore it will inform knowledge already embedded most notably from a System’s View of Life, Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi, 2014 (Kindle)
  • Charlotte Cotton’s Photography is Magic 2015/16 Exhibtion and essays, which I have downloaded. There is an optimism in this show and, I believe the essays, which might act as a counter to Elkins’ darkness. Cotton also talks about ‘post-disciplinary art’ which sounds very much like ‘multidisciplinary’ as discussed by Capra.
  • Comments via email:
    A few thoughts in response to a quick read …
    I wonder whether Michael Fried’s “Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before” might be a work worth looking at for a ‘counter view’. He’s a good old modernist (though you yourself say, in passing, that “intention is key” Emoji).
    You also say …
    So the poor old still photograph has a great deal to compete with.
    I might, if being contrary, argue that we still get an enormous amount of our information (and, perhaps, unconsciously, our perception of reality) from still visual images – even if they’re sometimes flashing by us momentarily. I’m not sure – are you looking to argue that the moving image has a closer relationship with reality; or that we humans regard it as more ‘real’; or that there’s more of it so it’s more influential on our perception of ‘reality’; or possibly something else or a combination (Emoji)? Are you, maybe, looking to understand (justify Emoji) your own focus on the moving image?
    Maybe (just ‘maybe’, not definitely) you will need to focus your attention somewhere? Be it still or moving image, the contextual scope – selfie/holiday video/online newsreel/archive photo/celebrity publicity/Jeff Wall artwork/feature film/indie documentary/magazine ad shot – is huge, and that list could go on and on and on.
    Hope that’s useful – fascinating stuff, as always.

    I replied (edited):

    …. really useful. These discussions help me to see what holes I’m leaving and there are as usual many! Fried has been suggested to me before although I think in … 50 key writers on Photography. I shall take another look.

    Do be contrary – it helps. I like how you have differentiated what I might be arguing (I must be honest, I do not know yet!)

    I agree – I may need to focus my attention – it is such a very big topic and thank you for your suggestions. Super useful.

    Here I add:

    Am I looking to justify my own focus is a very good question and if so, I think I need to avoid doing so – I don’t need to justify it, do I? But I am more interested in using whatever form works to make the point – whatever the point might be. At the moment, I think I am trying to suggest that the momentous revolution we are living through now, moving from analogue to digital, is part of and exists in a feedback loop that is about something far more fundamental, a complete overthrow of logocentrism which dates back really far; and is probably well-served by fewer fixed boundaries between forms because the boundaries across reality are currently disintegrating while at the same time being redrawn. This view of mine is taken from far away and is not about the current decade or generation although this is a pivotal moment.

  • Some great feedback which includes potentially relevant quotes for me to look up and consider:

Something pops out at me which is that photography has been seen as this special medium, better and more real than what came before. And we have since realised that it has its limitations to capturing reality which has released an explosion of creativity that undermines its original intent. Does a loss of faith in the mediums initially perceived presentation of truth ultimately liberate it or condemn it?

Similarly the accessibility of photography through smartphones etc has democratised the medium which creates new causalities. Photography may become artisan again (analogue already is) when it is replaced by another medium. Is it a familiar cycle in all mediums?  (Yes, so agree with this which is why the current obsession with alternative processes irritates me. It’s so predictable.)

Quotes (google the bits below)

  1. Richard Serra – “Art is not democratic”
  2. John Tagg – “More significantly, perhaps, if a piece of equipment was made available, then the necessary knowledges were not.” (Tagg, 1988, p.17).
  3. Nicholas Bourriaud – “An artwork is a dot on a line.” (Bourriaud, 2002, p.21). In reference to linear art history. Do we repeat history
  4. “Otherwise put, the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities. but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist.” (Bourriaud, 2002, p.13). Have we chosen to live in a constructed reality?

Overall I think you have a lot of interesting enquiries. Try to narrow down a central idea or interest, not too many because I know the word count fills up fast. It doesn’t have to be a direct relation to your BoW. My tutor said you can’t resolve everything in 5,000 words. (Good point!) So you want to leave room to enquire in other tangents potentially in the future.

 

CS: Literature​ Review A2 Notes

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

To be clear; here I discuss the topic I am aiming for as I plan for the extended essay. I mention several key texts that I think will be helpful and which I will include in my A2 Literature Review. A previous blog also links to several important texts but there is minimal reflection in that one:

I need to get on with writing the literature review element of my extended essay. I am still thinking and gathering  – but wanted to just put something down in writing to help me clarify where I’m at at the moment.

I’ve identified a key problem so far – how do I relate my inquiry which I think is about ‘the loss/destruction of reality (as it has been construed)’ to photography? After all, the degree has photography in its title and I need to link the central theme to that discussion. Photography has played its part in that destruction – although there are plenty of other factors/actors.

NB Destruction might also be seen as transformation. I believe this is what my BOW A1.2 is expressing.

Photography’s role in mythmaking

  1. As I said in parenthesis in A1, “photography may have been a very brief interlude in the journey that begun with cave drawing, developed to become printing, followed by the invention of mechanisation, and moving towards a total simulated reality” (2019; 6) In response, Roberta suggested, “Although this has not diminished the demand for those other media – indeed it has given them a new lease of life.”

Printing is in trouble – we do still buy books but it is in a terrible competition with digital text. Painting, not mentioned above, which played such a big role in expressing religious propaganda existed in a feedback loop of development for that purpose.  Although people still paint, I wonder if it is fair to say it is no longer used for what it was originally developed for – and that is a relic like still photography is perhaps becoming. People will continue to revel in it but they are making ghosts – sorry to all painters and still photographers. I do not intend to be dismissive – I understand lots of people still gain pleasure from these media.

2. I am also aware that my first essay could be read as a justification for moving away from photography ‘proper’ and focusing instead on moving image.

3. It seems like a key question in that essay and previous ones, along with the way my work is going is: Why is it more useful/fun/relevant/interesting to look at how images are used rather than the making of them? This is where Postmodernism is relevant.

But I’m not sure that’s really what I believe or what I want to ask.

If the construction of reality is a continuous re-invention of the moment we’re in (which I think is a simplistic way of describing current scientific understanding), the conscious self relies on…

i. memory – an intangible remnant of consciousness which we sometimes exteriorise using various forms/materials;

ii. our hyperdyadic* existence – perhaps represented by collage made with appropriated material;

iii. and mechanical construction (which includes language as a technology – see Andy Clark)  – perhaps represented by the output of machinery we have invented, and which to greater or lesser extent becomes prosthetic – i.e. phones.

*dyadic  – interconnection between two things. Hyerdyadic – interconnection between many  – lots of people but also the environment

4. Whatever route I take, James Elkins book What Photography Is (2011) is an entire book which isn’t really about photography, even though its title suggests that’s all it is about. It’s a response to Barthes’ Camera Lucida (1980), another book which suggests photography is its main topic but it might also be read as an elderly man coming to terms with his mother’s – and so his own impending – death. I need to learn from them.

How do I keep this related to photography?

  1. I think I need to state early on – that I am looking at the moving image as well as still and come up with a generic term to encompass both. I might use ‘image’ and then qualify that. Image, therefore, might refer to drawing /painting/film. In which case, is there space or a need to address the arguments made about differences between each of these forms and attempt to lay them to rest for the sake of the discussion? (See Barthes – indexicality of photography and also Elkins’).
  2. Perhaps I need to also talk about why moving image is key nowadays, and perhaps more so than still – as the masses embrace technology which makes video recording so easy, and advertisers use it more and more as it can potentially grab our attention with its movements and flickers more successfully than still. Or at least suggest we can make that assumption with some certainty.  This feels a bit like a justification again and might take up too many words, but it feels crucial.
  3. Although it may seem like I am dismissing still photography, I am not. In amongst the plethora of photographic projects and bodies of work which all seem very similar and flaccid, there are a number of photographers making potent and striking work, such as (but not exclusively) Thomas Ruff and  Zanele Muholi.
    (Intention is key)
  4. Elkin says, “beyond that, talking about the surround as I did for the photograph of the greyhound reveals that the surround is boring, and possibly also that photography as a whole is, in the end, also a bit boring.” (loc 1706) Perhaps, I will suggest that if this is true it is because we as a society are desensitised to photography, now that its initial magic qualities have faded. Seeing a photograph in 1845 must have been incredible and exciting and perhaps awe-inspiring. To capture a person and then have them rendered as delicately as those older processes were capable of would have seemed extraordinary. But now it is mundane and every day. Now our representations move, can be built by anyone – even children as young as two, and offer adventure and flexible narratives. They are engrossing and enticing and overstimulating. So the poor old still photograph has a great deal to compete with. While some, perhaps people with time on their hands, may revel in the luxury of contemplating an image of a leaf or a fragment of a person or people, or the emptiness of a blank page, others are fed a diet of shiny, fast-paced, noisy and enticing media. Most of us have this latter fodder in our lives and perhaps that is where the mythology I am interested in exists. If still photography (academic art) is to remain relevant, then perhaps it can a useful tool for deconstructing the myth I’m exploring.
  5. Art photography is often inherently elitist. Not always, but so much of it can’t help being so – refs from Elkins:
    “It is easy to agree that photography’s apparent realism has been formed by the middle-class hope that the photographs give us reality itself (as Bourdieu says).” (loc 762)“‘photography is most frequently nothing but the reproduction of the image that a group produces of its own integration’. (Bordieu, Un Art moyen, 48)” (loc 707)“For Bourdieu, photography is bourgeois to its bones, and it even includes its own futile anti-bourgeois gestures, like my own attraction to things that aren’t family photographs.” (loc 716)
  6. Still photography is one fragment of a re-enactment of our biological processes – by focusing on it alone we persist with a Cartesian construction/understanding of reality. But it might be more relevant nowadays to explore these topics more holistically. Intro/preface?

Mythmaking

Hoffman’s book below references advertising and images extensively. Held within these images are myths.

I have become really interested in mythology – and the relationship between science and religion. It seems to me that both do the same things, i.e. put difficult concepts into narratives we can try to manage.

The following is from the author, Jonathan Raban’s biography A Passage to Juneau.

“Within the last 9,000 to 12,000 years, when people were present to witness such events, they would have seen the sea close over islands as earthquakes rearranged topography. You couldn’t look at the delicate compromise made here between land and sea without imagining the Flood: and you couldn’t imagine the flood without inventing a Noah or a Gilgamesh” (1999) (Perhaps this quote will be on the cover page or at the top of the essay).

Books

Return of the Real Hal Foster 1996

The Case Against Reality Donald D Hoffman 2019 (see below) (He mentions Plato’s Cave his description may be useful to quote.)

How we Became Posthuman Kathryn Hayles 1999 (in particular Chapter 7, Turning Reality Inside Out and Right Side Out: Boundary Work in the Mid Sixties of Philip K. Dick)

What Photography Is James Elkins 2011 (see identified quotes here – https://sjflevel3.photo.blog/2019/09/08/a2-useful-links/)

Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes, 1980

Essays

Myth Today Roland Bart’s 1957 https://uvcsjf.wordpress.com/2016/06/28/notes-on-myth-today-by-roland-barthes-1957/

Baudrillard (Disneyfication): From Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), pp.166-184. https://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html

Originality_in_Postmodern_Appropriation – JULIE C. VAN CAMP (Academia.edu)

I need to look at Deleuze but I do not know his work and have no idea where to start.

Popular Culture, films, TV

The AO (Netflix) 2016-19 TV – Series One explores a kind of inverted Plato’s Cave which becomes a metaphor for digital culture. As part of my research, I have been watching plenty of reality-bending films and TV, this being one of them.

Total Recall, 1990 and 2012 Film

Inception, 2010 Film (this leads to Memento – also directed by Christopher Nolan but I am trying to avoid clinging to memory as a key theme, even though that is an important topic.)

Added 2/10/2019 45 Years, 2015 Film

Specific Artists’ work

  1. Mark Lecky’s O’ Magic Power of Bleakness 

(In the link above, I talk about several influencing works which had fed into my own practice but which may also be useful for the essay.

I will need to revisit this at Tate Britain as there is much to link to, moving image, youth culture, myth, everydayness.

2. Katinka Schuett, Cosmic Drive – I have only just come across this work and will look at it as a possible example of still photography looking at similar themes. ““Cosmic Drive primarily explores the way humans handle ignorance,” says Katinka Schuett of her Female in Focus winning series, which examines the contradictory spheres of fantasy and hard science. “I am interested in our perceptions of space, and the question of whether or not life can be found in the universe.” Schuett is as concerned with fantasy as she is with facts, merging the two to consider the illusions we create when there is a void of information. ” (Roberts, 2019)

https://www.bjp-online.com/2019/09/female-in-focus-cosmic-drive/

I probably need to have a few more references here.

Blog Conclusion (not essay) – is there a question/title here yet? 

I’m not sure … perhaps:

Should we re-evaluate our relationship to myth/humanity’s need to create myth? (And what role does the image play?)

I feel it will be necessary to use the word image in the extended essay rather than photography – because photography is such a nebulous term and describes a range of activities –  and perhaps I need to explain in a preface. Does a preface count towards word count? Something to ask when submitting the review.

Something I’ve not addressed here which I think fits but which may be too far outside the inquiry – the body/blood/softness/boundaries/flesh. Hayle’s looks at this and references Donna Harraway several times  – I don’t think I fully comprehend what’s going on here yet and need to read these sections again, as well as Haraway’s Cyborg essay which I’ve only read once so far (and found it a little bewildering – perhaps I was tired/distracted).

I know I am interested in the fractal nature of reality and our conscious understanding of it. So, we function (construct reality) in a certain way and the patterns of that construction are evident in our expressions (media –  films/adverts.any narratives, the way we produce them.)

I still think I’m focusing too much on why photography is becoming irrelevant and need to look more at boundaries/flesh/death – life/self-other; I suppose these things to tie into myth and the breaking down of self as a definitive object as technology and science evolve. Therefore perhaps we might say, “it is a myth that you and I exist at all”  – however, this myth is all we have and so we need to take it seriously even though we understand it is a myth.”

Added 2/10/2019 – https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-ai-will-forever-change-create-find-truth-images

“Sometime in the not-too-distant future, anyone will be able to take a picture without a camera. Instead, we will be able to generate photographs, indistinguishable from those made by a camera, using artificial intelligence (AI) software. You will be able to create an image by simply typing out a description of the scene, or describing it to (presumably) Siri. “Siri,” you’ll say. “I’d like an image of a red-haired woman walking through a park in autumn, the breeze blowing red, orange, and yellow leaves around her.” And—though it may require more detail than that—presto! Your phone will provide various options on the screen to choose from.” (Palumbo 2018)

 

Other refs:

Raban, J. 1999 A Passage to Juneau, Picador, Basingstoke and Oxford

 

 

BOW 1.2: Peer feedback

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

Peer feedback (to be added to as and when it arrives)

MA student, not OCA

Ok, watched it a couple of times and – sort of – in the spirit of your word suggestions:
erotic,
sensual,
creation,
procreation,
recreation,
fragility of the personal,
timelessness/cyclicalness
I think this is the best ending you’ve made so far, I loved it.
I was interested (and happy) to be confused by certain juxtapositions, the narrative structuring that built in my mind. And those confusions are quite important at the length of the piece.

OCA Student

I watched both the Village work and also your Collaborative (music) work and remain in awe of your creativity – well done.
As so often in the past I struggle to understand and this is maybe because I don’t let myself ‘feel’ rather than trying to interpret.  So bearing this in mind the video made me think of the microspores around us all the time and the beginnings of life.  Some of the images are intact quite sensual.  I found that I needed to watch to the end and was not tempted to cut it short.  Overall, thought-provoking and creative.
In terms of showing it, I suspect that if it cannot be projected you are stuck with a screen of some form.  How about embedding the screen in some form of ‘box’ or ‘lightroom.  This could be large or small depending on how you want the viewer to see the screen.  It could be looking at it through peep-holes or fully immersed in the ‘room’  Thinking randomly, the room could be made of some form of black drapes with a few places for people to look in.  Alternatively a form of tunnel with viewers looking in.  Difficult but I am sure somewhere an idea will gel.
OCA Student
I felt that there were elements of: texture, ambiguity, alien, biological, and possibly sexual. Micro to Macro overlays.  I found the appearance of the woman in the red dress very sudden. The colour of your own images is jarring, as is the sudden audio. I liked the overlay of the images and juxtaposition between them. There is a theme of flowers opening – sexual reproduction, particularly when overlain with the cell movement? I felt that towards the end there was an overlay of control / eugenics and possibly abortion? The final feeling for me was tragedy.
Reading your poem reminded me of a book I read a few years ago – Mitchell, D (2014) The Bone Clocks London: Sceptre – there is a quote that I used for a documentary project:

‘Then all those little pale lights,’ whispers Holly, ‘crossing the sand, they’re souls?’

‘Yes. Thousands and thousands, at any given time.’ We walk over to the eastern window, where an inexact distance of Dunes rolls down through darkening twilight to the Last Sea. ‘And that’s where they’re bound.’ We watch the little lights enter the starless extremity and go out, one by one by one.

 I, like Doug, found I needed to watch the film to the end. But if you decided to make it shorter it wouldn’t matter either. Probably the first half felt ‘slower’ to me than the second half.
I think Doug has made some excellent suggestions regarding presentation. You could either project on a wall and go large, or have an ipad or small phone as the screen and make people look up close, with some headphones. Both could work. With the idea of an iMac, it may distract from the piece itself?
2 October Hangout
  1. Version with Game Boy music: Really felt taken back to the 80s and enjoyed it. Imagined it being watched on a small screen reminding her of Nintendo Gameboy further. Enjoyed the sexual angst present in the film. Was confused by the presence of the men – but didn’t mind feeling that confusion. Felt the film worked as a conveyor of a specific feeling.
  2. Felt the film was still in early development and imagined it would be refined further but enjoyed it on the second watching. Felt too confused by it the first time around though.

    There was a discussion about moving image and still photography and how/why moving image is accepted on the course.  I stressed that all tutors have been very encouraging about using moving image and indeed, I’ve seen some of them encouraging others to experiment with it more.