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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19 May 2011
the city of oedipus
[as published in matzine #08]
like clockwork, étienne + i would spend two long days a month in studio monoculeure. always, the first studio day was the first friday of the month; the second, the second saturday
in turns, one would fall asleep, or employ chloroform. meanwhile the other, thirty three minutes later, would shake his friend awake, whereupon the dreamer would take his dream and put them on a page; the dimensions of their studio wall.
friday, my turn, i inhaled fully and closed my eye. a moment passed before i opened again. absurdly, both étienne and the fresh, wall-sized page were nowhere to be seen.
eight days following, in studio monoculeure, étienne and i met again, rather upset with one another. an emphatic, erratic explosion of airborne blame ensued. étienne defended that the previous friday it had been his turn to capture his dream on the page. only, when he opened his eye the room was empty of both partner and page.
disturbed and irreconcilable, we could agree on only one thing; to meet again twenty days later.
friday, the first day of the month, with little trust or patience surviving, we hung the page along the centre beam of the studio, ready to take a dream on both surfaces. we entered our respective unconsciousnesses simultaneously.
i was in a heavily-dark place; a vast and dense chamber. there was a sense of minutes passing, then hours. i navigated every permutation of turn and stride [ if one could call indeterminate movements navigation; my residual self-image was unrestrained, yet unable to move to anywhere ]. a numb intuition said my partner shared this space with me, just as the excited thought skimmed across the void; we had found it!
although consciously imperceptible at the time, an afterimage of the dream persisted - whole and familiar - though strictly unknowable. a double, a mirror, the eye that can view itself directly.
now awake, days later, stylus and knife in hands, both sides of the page were black with lead scratchings. there was no page left unwarped, only two un-placable, unfathomable maps; uncanny in dissymmetries; the city of oedipus
[this is a fictional foray originally presented in matzine #08 in response to the idea 'domestic exotic'. i really enjoyed writing this - and exposing my retina's to the matzine readers was an added delight]
Labels: borges, dreams, light, matzine, mythology, shadow
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8 November 2010
strike the arc
and the emitting apparition
and the emitting apparition
"all together, these elements articulate the conceptual ambition of the project: to produce a blinding, over lit object whose geometric finiteness is undermined by the tremendous glare and seemingly infinite falloff of light." - neil denari
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| this circuit diagram represents my modest exploration into the workings of fluorescent tubes; it is an 'electric-language' - symbol, glyph and line describe the voltaic relationships between components and their demanding potential differences. the circuit reminds me of a plan and its own unfolded sections, the circuit has a definite 'parti diagram' - imagine if architecture had one as simple/concise as this... mapping human movements, object proportions, air flow .... [thinking] |
there are a rapid series of events that takes place when you turn on a typical fluorescent light. the following takes an instant to occur, close to the speed of light, so in order to understand this sequence, and because we can't read fast enough, assume time is stretched out.
- push the button
- cathode element heats, then emits electrons
- electrons collide with the low density noble gas, ionizing its atoms
- gas immediately around cathode turns into plasma and starts avalanche ionization [which is comparable to what allows lightning to occur] [note to self, get tesla into the discussion]
- everything inside the tube becomes great at conducting electricity
- a high current flows between the opposite cathodes [completing the circuit]
- light on
the emitting apparition
there is a ghost filament in a fluorescent light, unknown to the incandescent bulb. the bulb has her tungsten filament whereas the tube boasts nearly nothing inside, certainly no wire connecting the two cathodes. the emitting plasmatic stuff exists in a vastly different atmosphere to us, at just 0.3% the pressure of our air at sea level. [304Pa inside the tube, 101,325Pa of open air]
fluoroscape 2006
" all 224 lights are used as a field (the organizational) of stiffening members (structural) and dashed white lines (the graphic). these are held within seven laser cut, powder coated 3/16" thick steel formers (commonly known as ribs) that produce a series of different closed curves, all of which are filled and skinned with the f.s.l. elements."
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the above exhibition project "fluoroscape" by neil denari architects is a 'light object'-object - it certainly celebrates the module of the standard fsl tube. i like the intended ethereal description of this piece in the quote near the beginning of this post - "seemingly infinite fall-off of light". yet while obviously ambitious and imaginative and i'm excited by the idea of this kind of object, i'm not very much inspired by how it is represented on denari's website nor the accompanying text. maybe i'll ask him in person as neil the dude will be giving a lecture at the bartlett school of architecture soon - 16th november
Labels: fluorescence, light, tesla
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25 October 2010
there is an uncertain moment when you complete the circuit and your fluorescent tube stutters to life. it's a violent event, made all the more startling if at this moment you have the tube in your hands. this is to 'strike the arc'; when the ionised mercury atoms are jolted into a plasma of excitement [think of accelerating from almost stationary to nearly the speed of light in what is effectively, an instant].
it is only now that the electrons meet a small enough resistance between the filaments that the ultraviolet blaze takes hold. over the last few weeks i have, shock horror, begun to admire the technical complexity of these begrudgingly over-used [and often harsh] emitters.
Labels: eliasson, flavin, fluorescence, light, london, photography
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15 September 2010
more to follow
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4 July 2009
Labels: collaboration, fire, installation, light, sound
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