19 February 2012
above : "The high speed flash head was tested for 700 shots, one every 5 seconds, to detect irregularities in Flash power and light characteristics" from vimeo page description of the fascinating digital mediators factum arte
"the idea that i might already have gone blind struck me with sudden terror.... i might only be using people's words and voices to reconstruct the lost world of reality, just as our mind, at the moment we fall asleep, forms images resembling those of real life from the phosphenes that dance before our closing eyes. i stood on the threshold of reality and imagination, and i began to doubt which was which"
Figyes Karinthy [2008] Journey Round My skull. New york: nyrb classicsas quoted in oliver sacks [2010] The Mind's Eye, Picador, London, p180
"How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events — that I am here in my dressing gown, sitting by the fire —when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet at the moment my eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so deliberately, and I know what I am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep. Indeed! As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep."
Rene Descartes [1641] Meditations on First Philosophy
as quoted in christopher grau's short essay dream skepticism
right : "Simulation of panoramic heads position and movement during recording: camera head and follow-on high speed flash head" from vimeo page descriptions of factum arte
Labels: conservation, descartes, dreams, experiment, history, light, oliversacks, photography, quote, vision
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hoarding hyperdetritus,
datamining dirty digital debris,
my sticky sockets soaked in sumptuous stimuli. indeed!
the peripheral versus the decentralised,
inspect inspiring ignored ignitions with
one extract, one reference and, one word;
anomalous visuals
proprioception
tenderpixel + squidsoup
phosphenes
the matrix
dreammachine
pie architecture
kodakclosure
Isidro Blasco
visualfield
seismanarrative
laura oldfield ford
savageredevelopment
Erik Desmazières
etch
olly moss
draw
words
virginia woolfmomentomomentum
francois morellet
neon
http://inbflat.net/
Darren Solomonconductor
Labels: conservation, descartes, dreams, history, light, london, oliversacks, periphery, photography, poetry, quote, vision
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3 November 2011
stephen and i embarked on an archaeological voyage last night, with the holborn viaduct gatehouses centred in our spyglass. these images and captions are courtesy of the city of london planning department. i'm really excited by the prospect of a project here, so let this post act as a lite introduction to something much greater
Labels: archaeology, drawing, history, introduction, london, mythology
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22 October 2011
jorge louis borges speaks in 1966 while josef albers speaks in 1968. but here they speak to each other today, based on a loosely arranged script machine.
the bezold effect is an optical phenomena which albers used in his teaching. it describes how one colour appears to change lightness or hue intensity when adjacent to a contrasting colour.
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i have found no evidence that these great minds ever met in person. like some sort of
necro-networking nitwit i’m strangely star-struck by bringing these voices into close proximity. i mean, these dead-guys really seem to be talking, arguing and believably ignoring each other! imagine the bizarre weaves of conversation that other script machines could conjure
the script machine
- interview with jorge louis borges
- interview with josef albers
- 7 comments from each interview, in alternating fashion
- the artist to begin will be judged by a flipping of a 1p coin; heads = borges, tails = albers. [coin flipped 11:50am 5th sept 2011]
- each comment can be one or more sentences long, though the final sentence must end with a question mark [?] for it to be considered usable.
- prime numbers dictate the number of entry used to compile script
* this post is a replicate of my submission to matzine#10
Labels: albers, borges, collage, history, illusion, interview, matzine, script, words
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1 November 2010
shadow catchers
and the photogram
" the question is, and this possible with photograms, how to get away from the purely documentary aspect and make a picture of the window about the window. "
- floris neususs
there is a rich and potent discourse occurring at the victoria and albert museum; the exhibition 'shadow catchers'. five mature photographers recount their inventive and often poetic manipulations of light and representation. through technique, timing, medium and subject this exhibition promises to overwhelm me.
a common appreciation of the 'photogram' knits between these five exhibiteurs. while this is interesting in itself, what i find particularly intriguing are the recurring subjects and metaphors of life ± death, internal ± external, thing ± thought, as if working with the photogram and the inherent processes involved predisposes a meta-subject, only found in a dark room.
below i have selected quotes from the interviews of [4 of] these artists, which might give a sense of each own's interests + relation to the exhibition
floris neusüss
" an important aspect of my work was more conditioned by the medium itself: I carried the photogram out of the laboratory, that is out of the studio, and took it to the objects... I use this technique because I find it to be a medium that is suitable for purpose, and because, and this is the important thing, I am interested in what they used to do with this technique before my time. "
" a very important aspect of a photogram is this contact, how do I put it…a photogram is not a reproduced print, it is a contact picture. You sense that the object was originally in contact with the picture. "
susan derges
" maybe the underlying desire to make images in the first place was to talk about what underlies the visible rather than to just show the visible "
" photography is kind of tied up with death in many respects in terms of you're looking at absent moments; they're no longer there. So it is quite a lot I think to do with loss as well as holding and showing "
" my interest in light and time is the accumulation of days... the meaning comes from an engagement with everyday and then making sense of all the days. so
"
mething happens which is incommunicable, and it can happen in a work of art or it can happen in a moment... and something occurs, a certain kind of light touches the landscape... and something else seems to be in the room with you, and you feel it.
" in recent work I'm bringing two colours together, and where two colours meet they make a third colour and also a kind of floating transitory space and that kind of edge, that is a kind of place of disappearing or emerging. really what my work is about is to try and create a thinking space, but also a kind of place one can slide into, and disappear into and perhaps not come back from. "
adam fuss
" the way I discovered the photogram was through accidentally finding within the pinhole camera process that it would be possible to make pictures without needing the outside world as a subject. a photogram, which has much less information, has much more intimacy and feeling than a normal photograph. "
" metaphorically I stepped into the camera... bringing images, manifesting images, that bringing out and externalising has been therapeutic for me... you don't create, you die. "
Labels: exhibition, history, london, photography, shadow
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12 October 2010
the great wen
London, 1802
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
- willian wordsworth
which suits better? londonium vs the great wen
a note for further reading : william cobbett - a radical pamphleteer
Labels: history, london, quote
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