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| Nicole Hametner, outline for praxis based thesis | | Nicole Hametner, outline for praxis based thesis |
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| = Abstract = 250 words = | | =ABSTRACT= |
| (copy and paste from project proposal TM04)<br>
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| The research I began in [http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/wiki/User:Nicole_Hametner/Trimester2<font color="black">the second trimester</font>] is what I want to deepen for the graduation project. In that trimester my field of interest lay in a comparison of photography and video, from stillness towards the moving image, shifting from analog to digital. The construction of the image itself was looked at in a rather metaphorical way and expressed some philosophical and poetic aspects of its media specificity. In this final year I will investigate technical aspects of the digital moving image during the shooting, the postproduction and the final presentation. I will also reflect on the form of the video installation, the role of the observer and read some theory of cinema.<br>
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| = Intro = 500 words =
| | The following essay is an attempt to disclose my artistic research over the last two years. Parallel to my visual working process, some theoretical aspects will be discussed, coming full circle with my practice. The main part of this text contains a description of the intended outcome in constant dialogue with theoretical issues arising. This text can be seen as an insight into the process as well as a documentation of the final graduation project. Within this linear order there will be four main fields approached. 1) I want to focus on photography's main concepts insofar as they relate to my work. 2) The video image in relation to the concepts previously discussed to the mechanisms of the electronic moving image. 3) The cinematographic image and its relation with time. 4) The technical image in the 19th century and the contemporary perception of time. My conclusion will investigate how the above issues are reflected in my graduation project. |
| (copy and paste from project proposal TM04)<br>
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| The shift from stillness to the moving image is based on my interest in the threshold as something that is in constant movement, and thereby articulates the theme of presence/absence and disappearance. In addition to this, the juxtaposition of the analog photographic image and the digital moving image evokes the question of indexicality and its materiality. My essay [http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/emo/BlackBox<font color="black">''Black Box''</font>] written in the second trimester explores what is being transformed or "lost" in the analog digital conversion. For the thesis I would like to key into this point and question the construction of the image itself. Is the image dissolved during the process of conversion? And when it is argued that the digital moving image is under constant construction, in constant flow, and therefore never there as a whole, where lies its origin and what or who is then responsible for the finally perceived image?<br> | |
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| = Chapter 1 = | | =INTRODUCTION= |
| == 1.1 Project description and aims = 250 words ==
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| (copy and paste from project proposal TM04)<br>
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| * In the final presentation the spectator will find herself in a delimited space surrounded by large, hung projection screens. Perception lies at the center of my investigation and this will be challenged by an initially slight disorientation due to the darkness of the room, where the eye has to adapt to the low light condition. The night shots will be projected onto the screens, but instead of being a blinding light the dominant part will be the dark zones of the image. Because of the slight underexposure of the video there will be temporal moving noise created by the flickering of pixels, which provokes a vibration in the shadows. The aim is a composition of different low light areas, resulting in more or less abstract images. <br>
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| * Next to these outside scenes there will be vertical projections of portraits, evoking the theme of the gaze back to the beholder, another line of research that I have started in [http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/wiki/User:Nicole_Hametner/Trimester2<font color="black">the second trimester</font>] mentioned above. I was influenced by the topic of the gaze through my research into cinema theory, psychoanalysis and the uncanny. Furthermore, my interest in perception leads to the role of the observer. Her implication while looking at an artwork become important, especially when considering Henri Bergson's idea that the image is an artificial product of mind. The filmed portraits will all be recorded with an additional counter zoom, creating a vertigo effect. The induced changing of perspective provokes a subtle movement. The portraits gaze back at the audience, and the slight deformation of the faces leave the spectator with an uncertainty about who is the one that is shifting. The current tentative title ''Oscillating Shadows'' speaks to the night-shots as well as to the portraits, while referring to the threshold of stillness and barely recognizable movement explored in both pieces.
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| * The created environment of the multi-screen installation challenges the viewer's perception. The viewer finds herself in a transitory moment; her glance simultaneously seeking orientation through the revealed image, she shifts between a perceived outside and her own inner world. I would like to create a psychological space that is situated between fascination and repulsion. On the one hand, the blackness and vibrations in the dark zones attract like a light, on the other hand, the observer might have an anticipation linked to the idea of disappearance and loss. The feeling of an undefined menace could come up, like in Kafka's universe with its obscure fear of getting lost. My attention is to evoke through the installation an experience situated between a nervous, anxious feeling and pure contemplation.<br>
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| == 1.2 Past work and contextualisation = 1000 ==
| | Having a background in photography, I now work with the intersection of the analog still image and the electronic moving image. Within that constellation my interest focuses on their media specificity. An initial observation between stillness and movement indicates a different behaviour in time and ends with the question about their materiality and thereby inherent constitution. I want to approach the notion of photography's "thereness" and what the coexistence of an absent presence in relation to its indexical imprint could imply. While the photograph fluctuates between two temporalities, past and present, its apparent stillness seems to dissolve and consequently evokes the uncanny that occurs between the frozen and animate. Under these aspects it is interesting to look at the video image and to see how far away it actually stands in opposition to the photographic image. While digitally split, its fragments are in constant movement, the image always lies between becoming and fading and is therefore never present as a whole. With this text I do not intend to make in-depth technical insights into these two technical images, but rather, I use their mechanisms as a conceptual framework to reflect about the image in relation to time. In addition to this, the confrontation of the analog photographic image and the digital moving image introduces the question of materiality and thus its character of indexicality. The chapter Black Box explores what is being transformed or "lost" in the analog-digital conversion. I key into this point and investigate the construction and dissolution of the image itself. Through the deepened confrontation with my research a repeated topic became evident and seemed somehow to summarize most of the aspects I am dealing with: The ungraspable and fragile moment, the threshold of an image's existence that oscillates between presence and absence. |
| (copy and paste from project proposal TM04)<br>
| | One of my aims has been to achieve a better understanding and to strenghten my methodology. My work is strongly based on intuition and tended toward introspection. During the working process it is not always easy to translate those rather unconscious mechanism in words. Furthermore come the often quiet abstract themes, that are difficult to get to the heart of, what challenges a clear articulation of my own work. This thesis aim is to translate my practice based research into words. I use this rather methodology based essay to achieve a clarification for myself. Nevertheless my intention is to end up with an artist statement that addresses the audience. |
| * [http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/wiki/User:Nicole_Hametner/Graduate_Research_Seminar_2013-TM4.02<font color="black">Relation to previous practice</font>]
| | While reflecting on the different temporalities in photography and the video image, the intangibility of time somehow stands here as analogy for the conflict of translating my research into words. As Laura Mulvey points out in Death 24x a Second, Stillness and the Moving Image: There is a difficulty articulating the mediums relation to time, that lies "beyond the verbal language" and description. That even becomes clearer while thinking of the general struggle to understand the passing of time itself and "the conceptual space of uncertainty: that is, the difficulty of understanding time and the presence of death in life". This is probably one of the main reasons why I work with photography and trust - sometimes more sometimes less - its ability to communicate my thoughts. |
| * [http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/wiki/User:Nicole_Hametner/Reading,_Writing_%26_Research_Methodologies_2013-TM3.02 <font color="black">Self directed research essay</font>]
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| For a better understanding of how I got to this point, it is useful to look back at the origin of my investigations with photography and its time-based image.
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| Several interests and points of research have built a background that serves as constant reference that flows into the concrete creation of a new work. For example, my current research on the construction of the image and the behaviour of the medium can be found in previous photographic works, which was once again activated by a curiosity in the digital moving image, which seemed to me to be the counterpart of the stillness in analogue photography. Furthermore, my exploration of the gaze in the portrait works treats, with its subtle movement, the idea of presence and absence that constitutes the whole construction of the time-based image and links to my previous work [http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/wiki/User:Nicole_Hametner/Reading,_Writing_%26_Research_Methodologies_2012-TM1.01 <font color="black"> ''Black Light'', 2010</font>].
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| The theme of the night always allowed me to talk about the process, the latent image and to reveal the unseen. To sum up, my initial period of research into the theme of disappearance in photography together with the theme of the „nocturne“ from the romantics, links to my current interest in the subject of the limits of perception.<br>
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| The crucial unique instant while triggering the photograph turned into duration while using long exposures, which I used a lot in my previous works. Now, through thinking about the construction of the digital moving image time again plays an important role and presents the idea that the image as such is never present as a whole (''Videophilosophie'', Maurizio Lazzarato). This intriguing insight links to the role of the observer, her perception and the question of where the actual image is created, and what it means if it never exists all at once? These reflections increased my curiosity in the origin of the image, which can be understood as the foundation that drives me in my current research. I am heading towards the construction and dissolution of the image, which moves between materiality and pure signal, between duration and instant; searching for the missing link and the space and time in between, at the threshold of abstraction.<br>
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| = Chapter 2 =
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| == Continuation of past work and contextualisation: 1000 ==
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| = Chapter 3 =
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| == Genesis of current project = 1000 ==
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| (copy and paste from project proposal TM04)<br>
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| * I will record night-shots using a digital camera to explore how low-light zones in an image can be rendered and received. The presentation will take the form of a multi-screen installation using projections within a darkened room. Each screen will be big enough to give the viewer the impression of being surrounded by the images. The reduced visibility in the night-shots necessitates the concentrated gaze of the viewer. The seeking gaze encounters through the temporal moving noise in the images underexposure the revealed object lying behind. One by one, filmed using a fixed frame, urban constructions followed by views of the harbour will lead up to a vast scene of the dark sea. Given that the subject matter of the work is the act of seeing itself, and thereby the constructed image, the scenes presented show archetypes that the viewer can use as an anchor point before the image dissolves back into the dark.
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| * In juxtaposition to these outside views will be projections of portraits. For this second part of the graduation project, I will create a sequence of photographic portraits recorded using an additional counter zoom. Here a digital stills camera moves backwards while zooming in and vice versa. Afterwards a looped sequence presents one image after the other with an interpolation between each one to ensure the illusion of continuous movement. I use this effect with a black background to focus only on the alteration of the faces. This modification of perspective creates an illusive movement, barely recognizable. Both the outside views and the accompanying portraits stand at the threshold between presence and absence. They present a constant becoming and fading at the limits of perception.<br>
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| = Chapter 4 =
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| == Current project and contextualisation = 2000 ==
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| (copy and paste from project proposal TM04)<br>
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| Using a background in photography, I am exploring the electronic moving image towards the presentation of work in a video installation.<br>
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| * [http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/wiki/User:Nicole_Hametner/Graduate_Research_Seminar_2013-TM4.03<font color="black">Relation to larger context</font>]<br>
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| = Chapter 5 =
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| == Presentation/ Exhibition = 1000 words ==
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| = Conclusion = 500 words =
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| Word count 7500 words
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Nicole Hametner, outline for praxis based thesis
ABSTRACT
The following essay is an attempt to disclose my artistic research over the last two years. Parallel to my visual working process, some theoretical aspects will be discussed, coming full circle with my practice. The main part of this text contains a description of the intended outcome in constant dialogue with theoretical issues arising. This text can be seen as an insight into the process as well as a documentation of the final graduation project. Within this linear order there will be four main fields approached. 1) I want to focus on photography's main concepts insofar as they relate to my work. 2) The video image in relation to the concepts previously discussed to the mechanisms of the electronic moving image. 3) The cinematographic image and its relation with time. 4) The technical image in the 19th century and the contemporary perception of time. My conclusion will investigate how the above issues are reflected in my graduation project.
INTRODUCTION
Having a background in photography, I now work with the intersection of the analog still image and the electronic moving image. Within that constellation my interest focuses on their media specificity. An initial observation between stillness and movement indicates a different behaviour in time and ends with the question about their materiality and thereby inherent constitution. I want to approach the notion of photography's "thereness" and what the coexistence of an absent presence in relation to its indexical imprint could imply. While the photograph fluctuates between two temporalities, past and present, its apparent stillness seems to dissolve and consequently evokes the uncanny that occurs between the frozen and animate. Under these aspects it is interesting to look at the video image and to see how far away it actually stands in opposition to the photographic image. While digitally split, its fragments are in constant movement, the image always lies between becoming and fading and is therefore never present as a whole. With this text I do not intend to make in-depth technical insights into these two technical images, but rather, I use their mechanisms as a conceptual framework to reflect about the image in relation to time. In addition to this, the confrontation of the analog photographic image and the digital moving image introduces the question of materiality and thus its character of indexicality. The chapter Black Box explores what is being transformed or "lost" in the analog-digital conversion. I key into this point and investigate the construction and dissolution of the image itself. Through the deepened confrontation with my research a repeated topic became evident and seemed somehow to summarize most of the aspects I am dealing with: The ungraspable and fragile moment, the threshold of an image's existence that oscillates between presence and absence.
One of my aims has been to achieve a better understanding and to strenghten my methodology. My work is strongly based on intuition and tended toward introspection. During the working process it is not always easy to translate those rather unconscious mechanism in words. Furthermore come the often quiet abstract themes, that are difficult to get to the heart of, what challenges a clear articulation of my own work. This thesis aim is to translate my practice based research into words. I use this rather methodology based essay to achieve a clarification for myself. Nevertheless my intention is to end up with an artist statement that addresses the audience.
While reflecting on the different temporalities in photography and the video image, the intangibility of time somehow stands here as analogy for the conflict of translating my research into words. As Laura Mulvey points out in Death 24x a Second, Stillness and the Moving Image: There is a difficulty articulating the mediums relation to time, that lies "beyond the verbal language" and description. That even becomes clearer while thinking of the general struggle to understand the passing of time itself and "the conceptual space of uncertainty: that is, the difficulty of understanding time and the presence of death in life". This is probably one of the main reasons why I work with photography and trust - sometimes more sometimes less - its ability to communicate my thoughts.
