Mia/Captain's Log

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29. 10. 2018 - Javi's tutorial

• sound (Arduino) - Editions Volumiques: Le livre qui voulait être un jeu vidéo
• John Baldessari - humorous, playful approach
• Tacita Dean
• links to References
• (downloading yt video/channel/playlist)

29. 10. 2018 - David's tutorial

• think about the subject that points out the relationships your camera is discussing (photo - drawing - layering)
• how can the subject (what is in the picture you make) emphasize this "conflict" of image and text or photo and drawing
• objective vs. subjective/poetic
• photography vs. (handwritten) text
• basics of semiotics: Charles Sanders Pierce
• fundaments of the medium - Wilem Flusser: Towards a Philosophy of Photography

26. 11. 2018 - Javi's tutorial

1. PHOTOBOOK - BRUSHSTROKES (working title):

• juxtaposition with paintings would be too straight forward, too flat, a single layer
• think about CHANCE and ACCIDENT (as fragments of reality)
• reading on the topic: George Brecht - Chance Imagery
• artists: Bruce Nauman - Coffee Spilled;
• references on traces/fragments dealing with time and past, accidents etc. Pierre Huyghe - Gallery Wall
• chance - gesture
• the selection (photographs) of found drips, stains, strokes is interesting enough to work with it
• important phase of trying out, printing, matching, replacing in physical form to make decisions
• interaction with the user: first intention is that user can add drawings, brushstrokes, that the object is between the photobook and a sketchbook - BUT! - how to not make it with instructions, to not make it obvious but natural, spontaneous (just as chance and accidents that are represented in the book!)?
• potential answers: to make a binding that can be changed (with screws), paper that is thicker, resembles sketchbook features, TITLE
• balance between open and fixed structure
• text included in the book? probably not (just as an explanation besides the project)

2. FOCAL CAMERA - DRAWING CAMERA

• for presentation is interesting to also see the camera as an object, a methodology
• seeing pictures all together is different than observing them separately
• from mere experiments try to focus on one aspect of the research and develop it in detail (either abstraction, text as a comment on the image, etc.)
• relation between the drawing layer and photograph is important!

27. 11. 2018 Barend's Tutorial

• performance with transparent layer with gestures
• photography with transparencies
• references of artistic practices above also include photographing (or seeing) through transparent materials (glass, plastic, water, steam etc.)
• how can this transparency be used to tell something about the subject (could be hiding, veiling, obscuring the truth/someone's true self, emotions etc.?)
• importance of gesture
• focal camera and photobook project feel related to each other
• continuous process of researching is encouraged

5. 12. 2018 Steve's tutorial (below Steve's notes)

[What kind of writer do you want to be?]

• I like analysing art work and exhibitions. I think notes are impotent in this process. Analysis might take different forms: it may be very personal. To me analyses is a way of organising thoughts. I try to write something about every exhibition I see, which I store on my wiki. It is often the case that I need to go back and remind myself. I have found the synopsis exercise useful. I would like to finish the text I am working on by the xmas break.

[About your own work:]

• For image analysis I just typed out people’s work and I did the interview and the descriptions. It was also good to work together with Cem on the same text today
• [Steve suggests: Try to take the different sessions where you discuss your work and make one text out of it. By wich I mean: Use the texts as notes and make a new text which describes your work and identifies underlying motivations in your work]
• The relation between, drawing, painting, and printmaking – the last makes a link or crossover with photography.
• Cameraless photography. One section is a photogram, which seems closer than other things to printmaking, camigram which only uses chemicals and photo-paper and does not use light.
• [shows photographs]
• The relation between drawing and photo.
• The next stage, to go to the studio and make a photo of a figure and play with that. I want to do tests with the depth of field. The studio gives me a more controlled environment. The human figure provides more of a challenge. I don’t often work with figures. If you have a portrait it triggers a feeling or narrative. It might also be more obvious the difference between a photo and a drawing of a person. I imagine a female subject.

10. 12. 2018 - David's tutorial

(Mia asks for feedback on the (photo)book without first explaining it)

• David's keywords:
  • SURFACE
  • texture-structure
  • abstract-figurative
  • chance - not chance (graffiti)
  • mark making
  • left behind
  • implied image
  • ink drawings of landscape (>>but soon we realise that is not it<<)
  • specific choices of paper
  • feeling of the paper
  • photographed or printed?
  • MARK MAKING in all forms

• the discussion:
  • it still seems as a precious object/book, >>I would not feel comfortable make interventions in it<<
  • the means of presentation could achieve that the intervention is inevitable
  • shallow box with charcoal dust where the book is placed (viewers touch the pages with dusty fingers - mark making, chance or conscious marks)
  • the presentation would help the object generate its own content
  • you could extend the performative aspect (make 3 books, document the process, compare their development into 3 different end results...)

• you are dealing with very fundamental formalist questions - a lot of potential derives from them
• questions like: why we make images? How (deliberately, by chance)? What does it mean to leave a mark?
• Photocopy is basically dust on paper - echoes the idea of marks left by leafing through the book with dusty fingers
• INDEXICALITY

11. 12. 2018 Ine's tutorial

• the book is like three books in one (makes a bit of confusion)
• three categories of pictures: archeological (documenting specific - urban - place and time), abstract (like fragments of drawings), tests (like cleaning a brush or test on the negative)
• interested more in the process and not yet in end result (being a photographer-anthropologist/archeologist)
• Lothar Baumgarten
• very gentle approach, delicate
• the project could go in many ways
• the book seems precious
• another type of binding? (spiral, wooden newspaper holder - might go with archeologist pictures, >>I do not see that screws can be taken apart to change the pages<<)
• whichever path you choose, be radical in it
• FOCAL CAMERA reference: William Kentridge

12. 12. 2018 Group Crit

on the photobook:

• textures, marks
• touching, walls
• still too vague
• project could lead in few directions, decide for one and bring it to the maximum
• seems precious
• format, binding (to resemble more the notebook)
• means of presentation, possible audience (how many copies, is it on sale, if yes, what is the price - expensive vs. notebook price)
• no title? maybe title could be a label for the price (or barcode)
• papers also folded
• what if you made marks yourself too
• is it about chance/intentional marks/drawings
• user might need some guidance, what do you want from him?
• if you had all pictures first and then half of the book empty
• Czar Kristoff: New Refuge (2018)