Unit 2 Essay

From the beginning of my project my aim has been to capture some of what remains of the architecture of the industrial era in an attempt to represent this period of time through modern digital technology and in this way make a connection between our current digital revolution and the industrial revolution of the 19^th & 20^th century.

This essay is a reflection on my two year journey into the project, on my learning, development and contextualization of ‘Industrialism brought forward’.

This is the link to the PDF file of my essay

Chronophotography footage

These are the different sequences of footage composed in Final Cut Pro. The average number of photographs per footage is 800, the frame rate is 8fps.

Dark Canal Water

Blue Canal Water

Close-up Reflection of gasometer

Reflection of gasometers

The next one is a composite of two sequences overlayed, as I said in the symposium, to mirror the process used on the valve images where I merged two different exposures I am exploring the merging of two different footages into one. This presents to the viewer a double set of information of exactly the same location captured at different times, bringing the concept of time capture closer to mind.
The sequence shown below is just the basis for the final piece where the pace of the sequence will slow down at random intervals reminding us of the static nature of the footage and bringing back the pensive quality of photography.

The following are two rough sketches for the proposed installation of the screens that will show the final footage. The idea is to show the same footage on three screens sequentially so the water movement is emphasized, traveling from one screen to the next one (past-present-future), showing the time line and narrative by using the vertical spatial display. I  think that the formalism of this display ties in with the formality of the valve typology displayed on a frame. It makes a connection in between the two pieces of work strengthening  their viewing context.

Front view

Back view

A previous idea was to have it in a low rectangular box, with the monitors looking up, simulating the way I took the footage of the water.

and this was a former idea of having 3 plasma screens on a corner set, it has an inclusive feeling but it is very different from the way in which I am displaying my valve piece, if I were to have a room just for the displaying of this piece, this shape could have been a good proposal but with large x large scale screens instead.

Memor mens reputo pariter (great minds think alike)

I had a productive talk with Finlay Taylor (MA Print Making Tutor) about my work. When I asked him about contextualization he mentioned the work of Mike and Dough Starn as they work with digital photography and experiment with their output, transforming it into a mixed media work. He recommended that I read ‘ The personalised surface: new approaches to digital printmaking’ by FADE.  I already got this book from an earlier visit to FADE at Chelsea.

Looking at these two references made me think about the importance of surface. Artists have been preoccupied with surfaces for hundreds of years. Our response to surfaces changes and evolves with time. Digital imagery can have many different outputs, this is very inspiring. By choosing a traditional printing surface output for my valves I am expressing my intention of creating a parallel between the time of the industrial revolution and our time and also making a reference to the encapsulation of time.

Blot Out the Sun, Archival inkjet prints with encaustic and wax

He also mentioned the work of digital artist Susan Collins as she recently had an exhibition involving water. Her work, titled Seascape, consisted of a live transmission of the landscape from 5 webcams located along the the south coast of England, relayed on individual screens at the De La Warr Pavillion. This work references my water chronophotography; in the sense that having a live transmission connects with the documentary field, although her time references are to present events, to the notion of modern webcam surveillance and the instantaneity of communication. Still, the peaceful nature of the images bring us to reflection and connects with the pensive quality of photography.

Seascape, 2009

But most importantly he mentioned Roni Horn.

Roni Horn is an American artist that has been making work since the sixties. The theme of water is recurrent on her work. One of her most recent works consist of an installation in Iceland (2007). It is based in Stykkishólmur, a small town near Reykjavík. VATNASAFN / LIBRARY OF WATER is a community centre that houses two installations on a long-term basis: the bilingual rubber floor You are the Weather (Iceland) and the sculpture Water, Selected. Water, Selected is an archive of water from 24 glacial sources across Iceland, housed in floor-to-ceiling glass columns (approximately 1ft in diameter by 10ft high). This is an active archive collecting Icelanders’ stories of their weather, intended as an ongoing, an ever-resolving work. The archiving purpose of this work really interest me as it has resonances with my own project as it also does another of her famous pieces, Still Water (1999).

Still Water (The River Thames, for Example) is a series of fifteen large photographs of water, printed on white paper. Each of the images focuses on a small area of the surface of the river Thames. Every print differs in colour and texture. On close inspection of the images we can see tiny numbers in typeface are dotted over the water’s surface. These numbers refer to footnotes printed along the lower edge of each image’s white border. The footnotes present a series of musings and quotations on the significance of the river and the moods and narratives it evokes.

I find that the combination of Still Water imagery and the archival intention of Water, Selected comes very near to my own work, although my archival intention is not to do with folklore and weather and my water images are not just stills, the output form of my work is a chronophotography movie. Chronophotography allows for a metaphorical archival sense, an accumulation of visual representations of water that remind us of the influence that the still image has on moving image documentary; the use of freeze frame emphasizes the ’pastness’ of the ‘still’ and creates a signifier of the memorable.

I guess that the old Latin phrase “nihil sub sole novum”(There is nothing new under the sun) still applies…but saying that,  “Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est” (Knowledge is power). So now that I have discovered her work I can look at mine and contemplate the differences that will assert my own practice.

Tutorial III

Due to the lack of response from my request to photograph my chosen industrial interiors I discussed some changes in my project with Andy.

The overall idea for my project is to capture some of what remains from the functional architecture of the industrial era in an attempt to represent this period of time trough modern digital technology and in this way make a connection between our current digital revolution and the 19th-20th centuries industrial revolution.

My visualization of the project was to document functional architecture from the inside out; documenting the machines and the spaces where the machines are housed, as well as making a connection not only to the outside but also to an element with which all these inventions/technological advances depend upon: water.

I have documented machinery, water and some industrial interiors, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to gain permission to access THE interiors that I really wanted to show for the exhibition. I have written numerous letters, but I haven’t had any positive feedback. Most of the buildings I was hoping to gain access to belong to Thames Water and they are very difficult to reach.

So, the nature of my exhibition prototype has changed slightly. I will be concentrating on the valves piece and the time lapse piece. In some ways this has its positive side as I’ll be able to dedicate more time to the intaglio printing and the video compositing. Of course in an ideal world I would have liked to go into these places and document the architectural space. This still may happen although I don’t think it will be within the duration of this course.

I also discussed the digital nature of my project. The typology composition fits in with the archival desire of my project and at the same time, approaching typologies from a digital art perspective, I could see how it would fit within the concept of bringing industrialism forward as my intention is to create a parallel between the typology concept and the way that information is sought and presented in digital environments, for instance on a Google search. I could also extend this concept of typology to the chronophotography footage as it consists of image after image of water where you can see the development of the image through time.

I think that to make a further connection to the digital and to give a stronger contextualization I will name my pieces using meta-words.

Tutorial report form here

Documenting Water

Canal water-DV.( First attempt that has made me think about changing my method to lapse photography).

As part of my project I am including a piece of moving image made out of time lapse photography. I am not very happy with the outcome of the above video, which was filmed with a DV camera.  It is a good starting point but I think that time lapse photography as an output for my methodology may provide a closer result to what I intend to portray and it will be more coherent with the rest of my project.

As well as documenting the machines and the spaces where the machines are housed I wanted to make a connection not only to the outside but also to an element with which all these inventions/technological advances depend upon: water. My project in this way will document three different elements, looking from the inside out.  The valves are an essential artifact for the machine to function, they are a direct referent to the human/machine relationship and dependency. The architectural spaces are a testimony to the people that worked there and the engineers that constructed them. The water unifies everything making a connection with environment and the vital force that made this new technology possible.

The way I want to represent the water is through moving image. I am exploring the possibility of making a lapse photography video which will provide continuity on my methodology, using photography as the base of my practice and allowing me to continue developing my skills on that discipline. It will also provide  a better quality image than standard digital video footage and will allow me to work with a bit more flexibility in post production (work yet to be done).  I am considering presenting this work as a masked projection that fits into a light-box. The concept would be to have three light boxes, the two on the sides will have a still photographic images and the one in the center will have the projected moving image.

By using moving image constructed out of photographic stills I am also making a reference to the old relationship that exists in between photography and film. If we look at film, in a traditional sense, we see that it was composed out of still images that would go one on top of another constructing continuity and creating movement. Lapse photography allows the subversion of real time to a different pace, it creates a juxtaposition of technologies, photography representing a pensive moment and film representing the present. It also touches the dichotomy of configuration/de-configuration. Photographs when showed one after the other give us the illusion of motion whilst presenting individually captured moments, static images that allow us to contemplate the subtleties of an element in motion.

There is an interesting quote from Anton Bragaglia (1913), Italian futurist photographer who developed Fotodinamismo:

“We are not interested in the precise reconstruction of movement, which has already been broken up and analysed. We are involved only in the area of movement which produces sensation”.

Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Uomo che suona il contrabbasso

Anton Bragaglia used multiple exposure photography to capture motion. The intention of capturing movement with his experimental photography is related to lapse photography although in its base it is quite a different methodology. Personally I find this quote interesting because it talks about the vibration and the essence of a movement captured in the surface of the photograph, these qualities can also be applied to lapse photography where movement is explored and meditated, sometimes giving it a hypnotic quality that allows the triggering of our memory function.