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| Nicole Hametner, outline for praxis based thesis | | Nicole Hametner, outline for praxis based thesis |
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| (the titles of the chapters might vary, for now they just serve for orientation/structure
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| the references inserted in the text are not yet in their final form)<br>
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| Contents<br>
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| ==Abstract==
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| ==Introduction==
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| 1. The attraction to photography<br>
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| 1.1 background/ methodology<br>
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| 1.2 previous works<br>
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| 1.3 long exposures and darkness - from instant to duration<br>
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| 2. From stillness to constant movement<br>
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| 2.1 towards the video image<br>
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| 2.2 black box<br>
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| 2.3 oscillating shadows<br>
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| 3. Graduation Project<br>
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| 3.1 the gaze<br>
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| 3.2 watertank<br>
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| 3.3 the sea<br>
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| 4. The Observer<br>
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| 4.1 technical image and perception of time<br>
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| 4.2 counterposition<br>
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| 4.3 artist statement<br>
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| 4.4 final graduation work<br>
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| Conclusion<br>
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| Bibliography<br>
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| Images<br>
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| =ABSTRACT= | | =ABSTRACT= |
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| 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. | | 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. |
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| =INTRODUCTION= | | =INTRODUCTION= |
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| 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. | | 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. | | 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 (p.182). 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" (p.53). 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. | | 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. |
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| =1. The attraction to photography=
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| ==1.1 BACKGROUND/ METHODOLOGY==
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| Before exploring my current research, I will look back at the origin of my investigations with photography and how I came to where I am now in my work with the time-based image. Several repeating concepts are in themselves rather complex and would deserve one whole chapter on its own. But for now the focus is spinning a coarse net with these different inputs, that serve as a background and reference for my on-going work. I will begin with an initial retrospect, followed by my present working process up to the point of the graduation.
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| In my first year in artschool I wanted to find out what personal value photography had for me in order to develop my own visual language within. I started to write down in journals a collection of thoughts about it. The following lines are reflecting the writings in these booklets, where everything somehow started:
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| At that time I printed a work in the darkroom without using photographic fixer, with the result that the images slowly faded away under the exposure of daylight in the exhibition space. I encountered the work of Christian Boltanski and was inspired by the theme of disappearance that are prominent in his work. Simultaniously influenced by Roland Barthes’ writings about his mother, his idea of being present in a photograph without being actually (t)here. I quickly realized that photography raises fundamental existential questions – it speaks a lot about life and death. This was probably the moment where the essence of the medium started to intrigue me.
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| Today I see this initial impulse to use this medium as a search for something that has already passed. I was touched by the ephemeral character and struck that photography throughout its history refers to a disappearance and is thereby linked with a loss. I remember my wish to stop the fading of the images in my mind. I wanted to halt time and the photographic act seemed to enable that, while seemingly cut the course of time by pressing the trigger. I am aware of this transfigured viewpoint I once held on to, the idea to conserve time and thereby preserve the past. But the awareness that every moment exists without return provided a shock that somehow might justify the desire to believe those deceptive promises of photography. In addition comes its inherent characteristic that always inspired me to work with this technical image. Namely that the film captures the light radiating from the portrayed. The subsequent chemical reaction with the silver salts inevitably leaves a trace from the model. Although afterwards physically ungraspable, the connection between the subject and the photograph cannot be denied. Barthes well known thought only underlines this relevant relation by saying that "photography is literally an emanation of the referent."(p90) I think it is its inherent past-absence that reinforces the strong presence of any photograph. Especially the long exposures of early portraits, around the advent of the medium, have that quality, where time almost becomes visible and seems to engulf the figures in a pending state.
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| Another relevant aspect in my former work was that I saw photography somehow linked with anxiety, an ambiguous feeling arouse from a fascination and repulsion. The topic of the sublime that I encountered while reading Edmund Burke relied very well to the process of photography. I might have applied photography mainly to overcome those fears, almost as to delve into grief to give it a certain value and to understand it. This might explain my interest in the night as a descent in the unknown. Its blackness can be so intense and charged that it attracts almost as a light does. I remember how I saw the night as origin and therefore tried to find answers in it. At that time I was clearly influenced by the époque of romanticism, mainly the German black romanticism and the writings of E.T.A. Hoffmann with its human madness and irrational atmosphere. I recognized related ideas in this époque, an approach that is rather connected to our inner-self than to the outside world, where artists searched besides their contemporary culture inside the nature and giving the night a special value, as a moment to hide from the illuminated and enlightened cities. Anxiety also worked as a muse for me. It was like a presentiment which often can be found in the oppressive universe of Kafka: an undefined compulsion and pursuit paired with a constant vibration of a negative presence. This is why I am still so fascinated by the idea of subliminal perception of the ungraspable. Through photography I wanted to explore what attracted me to the idea of death and darkness.
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| I often used photographs as drafts of my ideas. In an early work I reproduced a serie of family portraits, all shot completely out of focus. The abstraction of the blur then created an uncertainty about the actual content of the images. A small piece that emerged from a personal history, but had the aim to keep enough freedom for the audience to create their own imaginary world around it. I realize today that since the beginning I was rather interested in the relation between the viewer and the photograph than in the specific representation in each picture. Furthermore came the topic of oblivion, that seemed to introduce my reflections about photography's relation to transcience, two important aspects that reappear constantly in my work.
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| The difference between the picture and the depicted might be obvious, but can still create confusion. It is probably exactly this effect of reality that enables illusions and evokes uncertainty about the truth of a photograph. This ambiguity was another aspect that interested me. I used the technical image to create my own imaginary world, constructed false realities and sought situations where only a small amount of light allowed things to exist in the image.
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| I wanted to learn a precise observation of the visible world and achieve through the distance of the photographic image a better understanding. Photography provided order, a seemingly control. It is close to our own perception but still seems to touch a different universe. I wanted to reach through an exterior perception an inner view. This dialogue between inwardness and exteriority is maybe also what summarizes the best my initial access to this medium.
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| With the latter juxtaposition in mind I will introduce the metaphor of the window, which has a prominent role in photography, with ist idea of transparecy, as direct view to the visible world but also as an opaque, closed frame figuring as projection screen. I remember how I once photographed the same window from the inside with diverse exposures and different positions of the curtain. Maybe it is also not a coincidence that the first photograph of Niepce was a window, fixed on bitumen after hours of recording. Another striking example comes from Henri Fox Talbot, a photograph from 1843, depicting a view out of a closed window with curtains covering half of the sight. What is especially interesting, as Anne McCauly points out, is a threshold arising in the picture, where the gaze fluctuates between inside and outside with each time a halt on the crossbar of the frame. (www.kritik-der-fotografie.at/ Anne McCauley) As well as the instant of the exposure is only a transitory moment where the world connects with the photographic film, as well can be the feeling while contemplating the picture afterwards, a transition between here and there. In a photograph this exchange is clearly given and I think an obscure view out of a window engenders an even stronger impression. This may also be from where the imaginary of the beholder takes its strength. His gaze then becomes central and arises the question if it is not the viewer itself who in the end creates the image. I will close this first retrospect into the beginnings of my work, with three concrete series, deal with the issues discussed and afford a clarification of my access to photography.
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| 1.2 PREVIOUS WORKS
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| Aster, 2008 - darkness and the unseen<br>
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| Aster (lat. astrum “star”) is the name of a long-living flower, that stands up to winter and is in the expressionist poetry often used as a symbol of decay and inner torment. The work is a mixture of portraits, still lives and outdoor nightscapes. All of the twenty-five photographs show images where nothing is moving, everything seems to be halted in a state of waiting or as Sylvie Henguely points out: „In these photographs reigns a disturbing silence, only interrupted by the blowing of the wind passing through the empty scenes, by a buzzing light of the neontube or by the little-noticed fall of the flower when it detaches from her dried out plant. With an overall atmosphere of the night, the work invites to meditate, as the opening picture indicates. This photograph of a figure with closed eyes and head downwards functions as allegory of introspection. It leads towards a descent in the depths of the night, into the unconscious. There are two different kinds of images with two distinct temporalities. On the one side there are night shots of urban landscapes in black and white. Related to duration they are long exposures of several minutes. They show places of empty passages engulfed by a diffuse light in a mute atmosphere. The images slowly engrave on the film and thereby acces their visibility little by little. Rich in shades of grey, these photographs contrast sharply with the other group of images. This time in color, they assemble objects, shot with a flash in the studio in front of a black background. Only in a fraction of a second the objects are registered with all their formal and material qualities. Taken out of their original environment they are now pending in an unknown space and even though they appear almost tangible, their sudden appearance is on the cusp of a return into darkness. The confrontation of the nightshots and photographic objects creates a tension between the images, even more through the different scale of the subjects. The series surprises with this juxtaposition, but in the same time creates an overall picture. Aster explains nothing, its images rather work as catalysts, they only suggest a starting point for a reflection. Normally photography allows us to see the visible, but in these images the opposite predominates, it is the unseen that constitutes the veritable referent. These photographs are haunted by the absence.“ (translation from extract out of a speech of Sylvie Henguely, Bern, 28 of mai 2009)
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| The pictures are intended to express an uncertain sensation of anxiety, a diffuse affliction of our self in the repressed and the forgotten. They refer beyond the visible into the darkness and to the secrets hidden in it. The outside spaces, classified between portraits and still lives, likewise become inner images. This serie displays an evocative universe rather than a concrete narrative. A psychological space is transmitted through the photographs. This inner condition moves in a setting linked with fear, with an idea which is more ompressive than the knowledge of a real fear.
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| Le Sapin, 2010 - mediaspecificity, time and materiality<br>
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| For this work I was invited to create a series for the retrospective of the woodcut artist Pierre Aubert, in Lausanne 2010. In the exhibition with the title Promenons-nous dans les bois (Let's walk through the woods) his prints were presented next to the sculptures of Vincent Kohler and my photographs, which created an interesting dialogue between the different media. During the first visit in the archive of Pierre Aubert I was intrigued by the deep black and dark shimmering surface of the original matrix. While moving them they appeared almost like Daguerreotypes oscillating between negativ and positiv. Also the prints of the woodcuts with scenes of the forest moved in an uncertain atmosphere between day and night. Due to this experience and my initial interest in the night I wanted to work again with long exposures. I photographed on sheet film, which referred together with the slow engraving of the light even more to the production time of a wooden matrix. This work allowed me to deepen my interest in the photographic process itself, its behaviour in time as well as its materiality.
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| In the center stands a silver painted fir, framed in a vertical format, as if it would like to portray the tree. Its enigmatic presence is solidified in paint and simultaneously by the means of the photographic silver salts. The dark forest surrounds the firs and evokes the world of fairy tales. The placement in a clearance only underlines the enchanted dimension of the location. The presented print in a superior measure of 2.5 x 2 meters figures as portal in the nightly univers of the series. The scene looks like a theater decor framed by the silence of the darkness. In an article about this series the journalist writes: „Is it a photograph or a painting? The photograph shows a dark forest, from whose snow covered ground a silver fir grows. Like a full moon it shines in the dark and radiates light on the surrounding trees, which barely differentiate from the black background with their feeble shades of grey. Is it day or still night? The photographs of this work seem to stand somewhere in between.“ (translation Stefanie Christ, article in Berner Zeitung, 25 of march 2011) The choice for the silver reinforces the topic of the mediaspecificity in the exhibition and introduces the metallic surfaces in the opposite picture to the fir: a large scene of a still live showing a composition of beetles. Printed in a large format of 1.5 x 1.5 meters it looks like a view under the branches of the trees through a magnifying glass. It is a frozen scene, but still seems to present activity inside, a dialogue between the insects grouped around a big stag beetle lying on its back. The situation shifts between admiration, curiosity and repulsion of the dead body, almost like an image of a wake. A wooden frame underlines the reference to a baroque painting and the idea of vanitas. A sequence of three horizontal dark night shots of the forest were installed high above the relatively small and fragile woodcut prints. The play with the dimension then created an additional interesting tension between the works. In every of them time seemed to be petrified - a feeling provoked by the long exposure of the nightshots and the changelessness of the forest. However the peaceful appearance of the trees figures only as fassade, a screen on which the audience then starts to imagine what could lie behind the vegetation. The series ends with a portrait of an old dying larch opposed to a self-portrait. The latter is shot on polaroid and takes in the process of printing with woodcut, referring to the moment when the negative side of the polaroid is pulled off to reveal the final picture. In addition comes its chemical emulsion which left traces and thereby created a veil over the figures face. This rather soft surface stands in strong contrast with the porous texture of the larch. The curator Philippe Känel comments this juxtaposition as followed: Some would think that it is about a question for resemblance to finally end up in a statement of the uncanny.(extract of exhibition catalogue)
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| Schwarzes Licht, 2010 - threshold<br>
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| Having a closer look at the method for my work Schwarzes Licht from 2010 allows to detect a pattern that can be applied to former works of mine. My interest lies in themes of perception, psychoanalysis and the night, which holds an important place, as a subject and also establishing an essential condition for the main part of my works. This example might reveal how I approach a subject and how several abstract ideas lead to an artistic outcome:
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| In 2010 I was invited to create a work for a gallery that was situated close by to a bridge, that had on the one side a botanical garden and on the other a center for drug addicts. This occurrence links together with former works, contact with drug addicts and my interest for the photographic stillife constructed in the studio. In parallel came my interest in Freud's theories (which I encountered while writing an essay about the representation of fear). While working on the project about the drug addicts and the plants I was reading his essay about the Theme of the Three Caskets. The legend of the option between three possibilities shows in an analogy with three women, that it is throughout the third one that is choosen. According to Freud's analysis man chose subconsciously his own dead (***needs explanation), what leads subsequently to a core idea of the sublime: repulsion and attraction. Furthermore Freud mentions the three fates, who spin (Clotho), measure (Lachesis) and cut (Atropos) the thread of life. In psychoanalysis, the long thread of the life force is structured by a series of situations produced by ruptures. In the manner of Atropos, also name giver of the deadly nightshade Atropa belladonna, the nature of the light source structures the cycle of appearance/disappearance, life/death of the images in Schwarzes Licht. This combination finally constructs the framework, for which I tried to create a visual outcome, that can be seen as a metaphorical representation of the whole subject.
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| After the abstract idea became clear, formal questions arose: how to juxtapose the drug addicts with the nightshades from the botanic garden. I wanted to make use of the big window front of the gallery to include somehow the incident light during the day and night and to allow an insight for the pedestrian during twenty-four hours. Over a period of day and night the changing of the light becomes a repeating cyclical phenomenon. In addition came the wish to work with big white sheets of paper in the white gallery space, an inversion of my former focus on darkness into bright light. I wanted to produce silkscreens with fluorescent liquid that only appears under black light tubes, in order to complete the installation.
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| The following description clarifies the installation: „Large leaves of immaculate whiteness are suspended on white walls. Neons emitting a black light buzz on the roof. As the hours pass and the darkness intensifies, the light from the tubes begins to dominate and to gradually reveal serigraphs. Portraits of drug addicts begin to appear opposite the solanaceous plants. The images in Schwarzes Licht fluctuate between presence and absence. The cycle of appearance and disappearance varies according to the nature and intensity of the light source. The spectator’s visual experience is therefore subject to time, both its duration and in a meteorological sense. While visible at night, these human and vegetal bodies vanish in the daylight. This inversion of visibility/invisibility and day/night refers directly to the opposition of life/death. These latent images reveal themselves to those patient enough to wait for them – or they surprise those who aren’t expecting to see them.“(Bieler Fototage)
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| The project succeeded in terms of appealing the visitor and leaving him with an impulse about the subject. Being inside the gallery under the black light created an uncanny feeling and the juxtaposition of the toxic plants and the drug addicts reinforced that impression. The special illumination almost caused a kind of a dust, which filled the room and made the atmosphere even more displeasing. In this sense the situation inside the installation produced an affect. Also the view through the windows from outside into the exhibition space worked out well, especially for people passing several times a day in front of the gallery. They perceived different situations of the silk screens. In the morning they still might had wondered what is on the sheets and when they had passed again in the evening they saw the changing of the light and the full appearance of the images. Some visitors had seen a social aspect in the work, which is true, but it was not really the purpose. Therefore I should have increased the degree of abstraction. What interested me more was the idea of beauty and death and questions about perception. Representing drug addicts and toxic plants could have been reduced formally even more. There were several portraits and different plants showed on the walls. Finally, one portrait and one plant would have been enough, less didactic and probably had enforced the meaning. Furthermore I could have deepened more the idea of installation. The black light, which filled out the room as well as the almost three-dimensional appearance of the silk screens included already the space, but I still could have tried working more with the notion of space beside the notion of time and perception.
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| 1.3 LONG EXPOSURES AND DARKNESS - FROM INSTANT TO DURATION
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| This subchapter takes in the core concepts that crystallized while writing about my previous works. It closes thereby the first chapter and builts a bridge to my graduation project. I realized through the practice working process parallel to these writings, that the following ideas are all the more central for my current research and therefore deserve a closer look.
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| In my former works I often used long exposure. Initially I was fascinated by the idea of moving at the border of visibility and discover what is left unseen. I used the photographic camera as a possibility to reveal what the naked eye was not able to perceive. I wanted to challenge the darkness, which represents the negation of photography itself. The waiting time in the dark next to my tripod was not only the time for the camera capturing the light, but also my own time imagine the recorded scene. Through adaption of the eye the surrounding became more and more clear and involved an anticipation of how the final constructed scene could look like. I experienced by using that decelerate, delayed way of creating an image, which is obviously connected to stillness, a simultaneous contemplation of silence, which allowed me to reflect about the passing of time. I see in the process of photography a clear analogy to life and death. This is probably where my strong interest for that medium is based on and might explain my fascination dealing with the darkness. The process of long exposure links to psychoanalysis, where the alleged invisible constitutes the main part. Furthermore comes the layering due to the slow engraving of the light which then refers to the unconscious. I think this is an important aspect of my work and might clarify my interest in the incapacity to see clearly and the thereby arised uncertainty. The threshold of visibility creates doubt about the existence of the unseen. And it is exactly this point where darkness underlines what is inherent in each photograph: the ungraspable shift between presence and absence.
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| Blackness can be seen closer to nothingness, but in the same time it evokes the presentiment to contain the whole univers, as in the greek mythology where the night (lat.nyx) refers to the origin of everything. At this point I would like to shortly deviate to an important influence for my work: The black paintings of Mark Rothko. With his progression through his work towards darkness, the paintings of his last working period serve to consolidate the above mentioned thoughts. While looking at the abstract black surfaces, the spectator is confronted with its incapacity to see. Therefore he is all the more asked to make an effort to understand and to focus, what throws him back on himself. Next to the lost point of reference in the darkness, I am intrigued by the fact that "it needs time to perceive a Rothko" as Daniel Arasse writes about the artist. Arasse mentions that Rothkos paintings propose a different perception and as Dore Ashton adds: they "place a wait"(Daniel Arasse, Anachroniques, p.84). The terme of contemplation reappears her very clearly. Arasse introduces the latin word templum by saying: "Rothkos paintings are temples waiting for our gaze"(Daniel Arasse, Anachroniques, p.84). Although the almost complete abstraction in his black paintings, purified from form and color, Rothko points out a clear difference between him and Ad Reinhardt: "The difference between me and Reinhardt, he is a mystique. His paintings are immaterial. Mine are here. Physically. The surfaces, the work with the brush, etc. His are untouchable."(Daniel Arasse, Anachroniques, p.90). Next to the physical presence of his paintings, it is the immediacy of the experience while standing close to them. I will come back in chapter three to that point and to the importance of materiality, when I introduce the installation of my graduation project, one part of it will be a very dark almost unreadable portrait, which is projected on a wall covered with sand. But for now I would like to come back to the irepresentable that seems to be present in his paintings. Arasse writes about Rothko what I somehow tried to express before. "His paintings present an absence, that is present somewhere else."(Daniel Arasse, Anachroniques, p.93) This reference to an elsewhere is what makes full circle to the above mentioned essence of a photograph and what can be find maybe in its purest form in the darkness of the black paintings.
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| I will now specify some thoughts about time intervals. A long exposure not only reveals the unseen, but also underlines that two different temporalities interfere here with eachother, when instant turns into duration. After ten minutes or more of exposure the image gradually emerges out of the dark, it is an accumulation of time that is now somehow conserved, I always imagine this as a sedimentation of light engraved on the surface of the film. The production of the image leads then to the time of its perception. The present instant of the recording immediately falls into the past, but becomes present again in front of the spectator. This process already indicates a strange continuity of something that actually belongs to the past. In other words a photograph has the capacity to animate a passed moment and can be revitalized in the beholders memory. This is also how the instant in photography turns into duration. The instant, right before the following, seems to be frozen in between, like a pendulum in its dead point. Or as Platon said: "the transition from one state into the other, between standstill and movement, without being in time."(Platon, „Parmenides“, in: ders., Spätdialoge II, Übertragen von Rudolf Rufener, Zürich und München: Artemis, 1974 (Sämtliche Werke, Bd. VI), S. 105-189, hier S. 167 f. /http://www.kritik-der-fotografie.at/01-Augenblick.htm) Does that imply that photography, with its cut into the flow of time, means standstill and is based on Platons thought pending out of time?
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| While writing about extended time I would like to introduce here another important influence for my work: Hiroshi Sugimoto. He says: "The human eye, devoid of the shutter, is by necessity characterized by long exposure. The exposure of the human eye is one long process - it starts as soon as the newborn opens its eyes, and ends when the eyes are closed at the end of life."(Hiroshi Sugimoto, "The Virtual Image", in Theaters (New York:Sonnabend Sundell Editions, 2000), p.17) I have described before some of my night shots, where the uniform light created a diffuse atmosphere, the photographs had a very soft appearance due to the low contrast and an almost grey veil superimposed to the image, nearly as if time itself became visible. In his photographs duration also plays an essential role and the feeling of timelessness comes up, especially with his series of the seascapes. I specifically use this example to underline my thoughts about photography in relation to duration. His work inspires me with his focus on the absence, the emptiness, its standstill and its atemporal nature. It seems to evoke that time has no beginning and ending and is rather a cyclical element with no linear structure. A photograph moves between recorded time and perceived time and blurs the boundaries between the different states. Like in Sugimotos seascapes, the long exposure eliminates every movement of the waves and blurs thereby the passing of time. The photographs show views out into the sea, each time with the horizon in the middle cutting the image in two halves. Kerry Brougher writes: "In emphasizing these natural elements, Sugimoto drapes like a veil the decidedly intangible over the specific, the concept over the concrete, returning all seas to their fundamental state as water and air. (…) Sugimoto's seascapes are not photographs of the sea…"(Kerry Brougher, "Impossible Photography", in Hiroshi Sugimoto (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006), p.23) Everything seems to be reduced and thereby emphasized through the times presence. In her article about time in the photographic image Mirjam Wittmann writes: "In revealing time also as growing time the artist undermines the notion of the photograph as a frozen moment of time and transcends the dialectic form of relatedness to the world.(p.178) Wittmann continues: "I would underline here what Hans Belting said in his reflections on this series, that the artist “undermines our belief in the indexicality of time” (Belting 2005, p. 160) Although a photograph captures a single moment of time and fixes it on paper, Sugimoto reinforces time as duration and and makes you feel as if time stands still and moves on at the same time. (…) Instantaneity has being changed into a stream of time as if Sugimoto had infiltrated Henri Bergson's idea of duration as existential form of our life who would become significant for Deleuze's conception of the time-image." (Mirjam Wittmann, "Time, extended: Hiroshi Sugimoto with Gilles Deleuze", in Image&Narrative, (Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative, Vol 10, No 1, 2009), p.186)This latter thought will be retaken in the next chapter, where the photographic image will be juxtaposed to the the digital video image. (Another interesting work of Sugimoto in the context of long exposure is his series Theaters, where he photographed over the length of a whole film the interior of a movie theater. With this act he reduces cinema and photography to its essence: the light. An overexposed pure white screen stands in the middle of each of these photographs and illuminates the rest of the room. The immaterial projection of the cinema is transformed back into a still image.)
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| With this last paragraph I wanted to emphasize how the topic the night led to the long exposure and connected thereby two main aspects in my previous work: darkness and duration, which were briefly looked at in the example of the black paintings of Rothko and the seascapes of Sugimoto. In 2012 the Pace gallery exhibited the two works together, which underlines even more the relevant connection between them. What is inherent in both, is that they move at the border of human perception, once with darkness, once with duration to focus on the viewers attention. I find this juxtaposition all the more evident as it perfectly reinforces my above written thoughts about the photographic image that constantly moves at the threshold between visible/ invisible, presence/absence.
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| 2. FROM STILLNESS TO CONSTANT MOVEMENT
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| 2.1 TOWARDS THE VIDEO IMAGE
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| The theme of disappearance in photography led together with the topics of darkness and duration to the subject of the limit of perception. For the two academic years in the master programme I wanted to built on these main aspects of my previous work. My intention was to access them with the digital moving image and observe how the image behaves at the border of visibility, not only with the focus between darkness and light, but this time also between stillness and movement. The step towards the video image in the second trimester allowed me to reflect about photography from a different perspective. I was interested in the construction of the image in a rather metaphorical way and I wanted to approach some philosophical and poetic aspects of it in comparision with the still image. One of my first drafts was a video of a tree shot in a fixed frame at night. The limitation of the cameras sensor then provoked a lot of noise in the underexposed zones. It reminded me at night while waking up and open the eyes. During this moment the adaption to the initial darkness is slow and provokes noise due to the overcharged photoreceptors. I always experienced this rather nervous sensation as frightening, but was fascinated at the same time. A simple observation of an artefact, but probably the initialization for my ongoing research.
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| The crucial unique instant while triggering the photograph turned into duration while using long time exposure. Now through thinking about the construction of the electronic image the factor of time again plays an important role. A short annotation of Philippe Dubois might clarify that point. He compares the grain as matter of analogue photography with the electronic raster of the video image. “Every point lights only after its antecedent and before its subsequent, which means there is only one point that shines in time” he goes on by saying that, "this alternating illumination and termination imply that the video image as such never exists in space, only in time. A synthesis of time, that relies on succession, on endlessly spatial discontinuity. Whereas in photography the image exists entirely in space as in time." (Philippe Dubois, in Der Fotografische Akt (Dresden:Verlag der Kunst, 1998), p.106) The concept of an image that is in constant movement and never present as a whole while digitally split immediately aroused my interest. First because it seems to stand apparently on the complete opposite to the analog photographic image and second because it allowed me just because of that distance to gain some new viewpoints at the latter. One was the notion of instant and duration, which both seems to be inherent in the electonic moving image. During the recording the sensor in the camera is exposed to the light, what charges the photoreceptors with electrons. In the following very short instant the receptors are emptied and the electonical charge transformed into a digital signal. I will come back later to the process of analog-digital conversion. For now I just want to mention the concept of instantaneity in the digital process, that happens not only during the capture of the light, but also right after its tranformation. Another aspect in the comparison of the analog still with the video image is their materiality. If the essential characteristic of the index shifts in the digitalization, what are the fragments made of that then constitute the actual image and where is it created? What does it mean if it never exists all at once? These reflections about the conception of the moving image increased my interest for the origin of the image, the role of the observer and his perception. Next to the theoretical study on the topic, that I deepened in the second trimester, I did a practical based research, shown briefly in the following two drafts. It is useful to have them in mind when looking back at a later state. These initial tests and the reflections about the construction of the image can be seen as foundation for my whole graduation project.
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| Filmed and photographed nightscapes - construction of the image and praise of the shadows
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| I started with an observation of underexposed videos of nightly landscapes filmed in a fixed frame. Therefore I recorded during one minute an outside scene. Right after I replaced the videocamera with a photocamera and exposed for the same amount of time the exact same scene. Obviously the parameters were not set for a scientific approach, which was never my intention, but the juxtaposition allowed me further reflections about how the image behaves. While the second shoot was an accumulation of different layers of light in one single frame, the video is constructed continuously in time and space. I wanted to know what do we recognize while zoom in closer in the video or on the other hand blow up the photograph. Therefore I printed in the dark room the black and white negative on baryt paper in a small format of 7x10.5cm and scanned them afterwards in a high resolution. This allowed me to look at the papers surface as well as at the photographic grain, as if I would look at it under a magnifying glass. The self-referential language raised the question about dematerialization during the analog-digital conversion and what do we actually see through the different interfaces. The short video sequences filmed in color were all covered with noise, which added almost a pictural element to the digital file. I was attracted to the thought if one could consider noise due to a low level of external information as the autonomy of the image and what that would mean compared to photographys media specificity. With the filmed and photographed image of nightscapes I wanted to invite the spectator to a precise contemplation on the images surface and beyond. At the same time I started to investigate In Praise of Shadows, an essay of Junichiro Tanizaki about Asian culture and western enlightenment. This served as a research point for a better understanding of my own position towards new media and the omnipresence of new technology in our contemporary world. What interested me furthermore in that context was Paul Virilio's essay L'art à pert de vue (Art as far as the eye can see), where he writes about the loss of the capacity to see due to the constant perception through interfaces and how the ubiquitous presence of light and images leads to overexposure and blindness. The emergence of photography, that had its origin in the 19th century, right next to the industrialization with all its impact on society, links inevitably to the current media environment we live in. In addition to these aspects came my unbroken fascination for the unseen in the darkness. Based on this and the initial research of the construction of the video image at the limit of the perceptible, the idea came up to create a space with five large projection screens. All of them would show big buildings in a modern city filmed at night, each time in a static frame. Though instead of having the blinding lights in the center, the dominant part would be the dark zones in the picture. The aim would be a graphical composition of the different low light zones with the result of more or less abstract images of an urban landscapes. Through the slight underexposure of the video, there would be noise, which provoked a vibration in the shadow and a buzzing feeling all over the exhibition space. Although this proposal was never realized, it helped me to define my research and might take shape in any future projects.
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| Filmed portrait - the theme of the gaze<br>
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| The theme of perception always had a prominent part in my work and led subsequently to the role of the spectator. I was influenced by Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer, his presentation of different devices in the 19th century and the shifting in perception. Additionally I started to delve into theory of cinema, such as Laura Mulvey's Death 24 times a Second and Kaja Silverman's The Threshold of the Visible World. Both are linked to concepts of psychoanalysis and the uncanny, topics that reappear constantly in my work. The uncanny (in German das Unheimliche) is a term used by Sigmund Freud, he defines it as something familiar that suddenly turns into something terrifying, often connected with the hidden in the subconscious. For this third area of investigation in the second trimester I started a series with filmed portrait. For this project the aim was to reflect about the form of a video installation with three projection screens. They would have shown portraits of three women filmed in a fixed frame with an additional counter-zoom also called vertigo effect known from Alfred Hitchcock. The result is a change in the perspective and thereby a shifting between back- and foreground. Concretely the camera moves backwards while zooming in or the other way around. I used this effect with a black background to focus only on the alteration on the faces. The modification of the perspective provoked an illusive movement, barely recognizable. The look in the camera, back to the audience and the slight deformation of the faces had the goal to leave the spectator with an uncertainty about who is the one that is shifting. In this project the petrifying act of photography is examined in the animated portraits, where subtle agitations interrupt the stillness of the model and thereby the spectator. The implication of the audience and its part while looking at an artwork become all the more important and thereby introduces the theme of the gaze.
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| These short descriptions show that the development of the two works functions according to similar principles. For example the project of the construction of the image with its on the behaviour of the medium is based on older photographic works and was then once more animated by curiosity in the digital moving image, what seemed for me to be the counterpart of the stillness in analogue photography. Furthermore the project with the gaze treats with its subtle movement again the idea of presence and absence what constitutes the whole construction of the time-based image.
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| 2.2 BLACK BOX
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| The following essay stands in parallel to my visual research and allowed me to reflect about the juxtaposition of photography and video and the analog-digital conversion. It was initiated by the look of an old folded up viewcamera that reminded the shape of an alien box. The theme of the black box was the subsequent thought, brought with the fascination for the unknown within, where only input and output is known, but the transition between remains ambiguous. When photography was invented, the technical image was born and has evolved through the last century an enormous complexity. So far that we might consider today’s media itself as an impenetrable black box. One important construct connected with the inside is the interface. Today we stand among all different kinds of interfaces, mostly without recognizing them. Its output always requires interpretation. The German filmmaker Harun Farocki talks in his video Interface about the process of film editing. Translated into German interface means both Schnittstelle and Schnittplatz, which names the cut in between as well as the editing place itself. Farocki compares the interface with the Enigma typewriter, used by the British Empire during the Second World War for coding and decoding information. He says: "it is all about decoding a secret or keeping it".[05] Vilém Flusser writes about photography compared to the traditional images, which are as he argues: "abstractions in the first degree", whereas the technical image is "an abstraction in the third degree". The last part in a causal chain that requests decoding. He continues his text by arguing that what can be seen on a photograph are not symbols like in the digital image. Photographs are much more "symptoms of the world", because they are in a direct reference to it. From there the misinterpretation has its seeds, while looking at the photograph it seduces with its illusion of a window to the world and confirms the trust in the objectivity of the technical image. The construct of device and user sees Flusser as a black box: "The coding happens inside this black box and therefore every critic of the technical image has to be based on that, to reveal the inner life. As long as we are not in possess of this critical view, we remain, what concerns the technical image, analphabets." (translation from Vilém Flusser, "Das technische Bild", in Für eine Philosophie der Fotografie (Berlin:Edition Flusser, 2011), p.13ff)
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| Built on this general vision about the technical image, this text will apply now the concept of the black box to the specific example of the analog-digital conversion. An analysis of a process that allows linking the beginning of the technical image, the analogue still image with the electronic moving image. Almost every gadget of the modern communication and consumer electronics uses the technology of an analog-digital converter, that lies in the core of the device. Inside a scanner or a digital camera the light hits the photosensitive CCD (charge-coupled device) sensor, which then translate the light into electronic charge. The converter furthermore transforms the continuous variations into levels attributed with digital binary values. The number of bits determines the resolution, which means the exactitude of the reproduction.(Thierry Fumey, Technologie de la Photographie) The exact process can be examined into very much detail, but what stands more in the interest here, is the meaning of the conversion. Under the aspect of a translation from one material into another, the question comes up if there is any loss during the process and if so, what is then being lost? To develop a better understanding for that question, it is crucial to examine with a closer look first the construction of the digital video as well as the analogue photographic image, before continue with conclusions about the so-called loss of materiality.
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| The digital video image<br>
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| In New media and the Forensic Imagination the author Matthew G. Kirschenbaum embraces the essential during the process of digitizing. He refers to Nicholas Negroponte, who compares a bit to an atom which has certain physical attributes: "a bit has no color, size, or weight, it is a state of being: on or off, true or false, a 0 or a 1."(Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, in Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008), p.6) Another citation from Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design: "Rather than manipulating matter, the computer manipulates symbols". Kirschenbaum adds: they are "symbols to be set and reset, over and over again. (…) A digital environment is an abstract projection supported and sustained by its capacity to propagate the illusion of immaterial behavior."(Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, in Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008), p.11)
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| In another text that treats the issue, The digital event, the author Norman David Rodowick sees time as the main difference between analogue and digital. He pursues his text under Babette Mangolte's question "Why is it difficult for the digital image to communicate duration?" and focus his analysis on Alexandr Sokurov's film Russian Ark, whose shooting was executed in continuous duration. According to Rodowick there are three principal creative operations in digital cinema: the digital capture, the synthesis and composing. During the digital capture, the image is never recorded as a whole, because "the light recorded on the charged coupled devices is already fragmented into a discrete mosaic of picture elements, which are then read off as distinct mathematical values. The process of conversion or transcoding separates the image into discrete and mathematically modular elements (…)." He goes on and argues that therefore "the image is always a "montage", in the sense of singular combination of discrete elements. Even an unaltered digital still is already a work of montage(…)."(Rodowick, D.N., "The Digital Event", in The Virtual Life of Film (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 2007), p.166) What is inherent in the digital and a central distinction to the analogue image is what Rodowick clearly demonstrates at this point: "Digital synthesis produces an image of what never occurred in reality (…)."(Ibid., p.169) He continues: "Through digital conversion the direct contact to the world is interrupted, "what looked photographically "real" has actually shed its indexical or causal qualities."(Ibid., p.170) Rodowick ends the chapter in referring back to Sokurov's film: "(…)Russian Ark is a "montage" film as are all expressions of digital cinema. But here montage is no longer an expression of time and duration; it is rather a manipulation of the layers of the modularized image subject to a variety of algorithmic transformations. This is what I call the digital event."(Ibid., p.173) What specifically strikes me is that the digital image seems to float between construction and dissolution through the constant transformation of its elements - thus its character turns into something almost ungraspable.
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| To deepen this thought about the volatility of the digital video image, I would like to introduce the writings of Maurizio Lazzarato in his book Videophilosophy. In the chapter Video, Flows and Real Time, he discuss the movement of the light. Lazzarato argues that compared to the immobile single frame in analog cinema, video captures the "pure vibrations" of light. Its image "painted through an electonical brush" is therefore constantly moving and transforming.(p.65f) Later in his text Lazzarato refers to Bill Viola who underlines that "in the video technology there is no solid image" because it stands in "continuous flow of electronical impulses". Viola states: "That way the image is a lively and dynamic field of energie, a vibration, that only appears solid, because it exceeds our capacity to perceive such little units of time." (p.72)
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| Next to the constant movement Lazzarato compares the optical model of an image production with the time-based model. Lazzarato relates to Emond Couchot who points out that the traditional technical image, based on a mark of light, reveals what exists already before. Opposite stand the "informational machines" that break according to Couchot with the optical representation. The image of synthesis do not visualize an optical mark anymore. Couchots says: "What exists before the image, is not the object (…), it is the model (…) a formal description made of pure symbols." Lazzarato adds that the real is not testified through direct inscription of light anymore, but through "an interpretation of the real".93
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| Lazzarato relates the process of the video image with Henri Bergson's conception, which understands the image as "artificial product of the mind". According to Bergson, the role of the light is only a mechanical condition. What is more central in the production of an image is the activity of the memory and the "intellectual work". Referred to him the impact of the light provokes not a single image, but excitations that effects our brain. It then needs the intervention of the memory to compose these millions of vibrations. That is what he calls "intellectual work" and Lazzarato completes, only through that "we see and perceive". (my translation, Lazzarato, M. "Video, Ströme und reale Zeit, in Videophilosophie, Zeitwahrnehmung im Postfordismus (Berlin:b_books Verlag, 2002), p.94) This last point strongly refers to the observer and his implication while contemplating an image. In the installation of my graduation project, his role is retaken into account, with a wall filling projection of a dark almost unreadable portrait. Through the incapacity to see clearly the spectator's vision is challenged, while he tries to recognize the ungraspable appearance on the wall.
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| The analogue photographic image<br>
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| After that glimpse into the construction of the video image, this text shortly deviates to the photographic image before returning again to the moving image. The Photographic Act from Philippe Dubois serves here as a main background. Dubois refers to the myth of Orpheus who turns into stone while looking back, like the photographic model petrifies while being seen through the camera. Compared to the constantly moving digital image, the petrification of the object as an essential point in the photographic act, now stands at the other side. Another essential characteristic of photography is its inherent indexicality through the physical contact of the light. Dubois refers to Pierce's trichotomie of signs, where painting and drawing use the icon, the linguistic systems the symbols and photography uses the index. Whereas the other two systems have no physical connection to their referent, photography always has. (Dubois, 1998, p.63) Based on that Dubois completes that the uniqueness of the referent leads to the principe of singularity of the index. (Dubois, 1998, p.74) Although a photograph can be reproduced a houndreds of time, its negative always stays a unique imprint. This peculiarity opposes strongly to the infinite possibilities of combinations with the symbols in the digital image.
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| Dubois mentions the capture of the light during a fraction of a second, "only in this tiny moment, in this space between,(…) the photo is the pure mark of the act, only in this moment it has a relation to its referent in the complete simultaneity, in the real co-presence and the physical contiguity." (Dubois, 1998, p. 89) By imaging this inner life of the camera, this leads us back to the fascination of the black box, what is hidden, what we do not see and whose we can not be a part of. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes also mentions photography's intangibility: "I can not get to the bottom of the photograph, I can not penetrate it. I only may wander my glance over its still surface." (my translation, Roland Barthes, in Die Helle Kammer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), p.117) He refers to Maurice Blanchot that sees "the essence of the photograph lying completely exterior (…) and yet inaccessible and mysterious as the inner imagination; (…) hidden, but still apparent, it is about this presence-absence what creates the fascination(…)." (Barthes, 1985, p.117)
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| Later in his text Dubois introduces the theme of the materiality, the silver salt crystals that are hit by the light and how the transformation occurs during the process. He says: "The grains are not defining the image support, they are the actual material of the image, the specific substance. (…) These small grains constitute the matter of the image." (Dubois, 1998, p.103) At this point Dubois creates another link to the video image, he argues that the photochemical image cannot be compared with the electronic raster. He mentions that the silver salt crystals are very uneven, without a precise order or fixed orientation unlike the points of the electronic image, where it lies in their origin to be similar and ordered in a very strict model. (Dubois, 1998, p. 105) Dubois adds their different behaviour in time. We have encountered this point already at the beginning of the chapter. According to Dubois the video image as such never exists in space, only in time. A synthesis of time, that relies on succession, on endlessly spatial discontinuity. Whereas in photography the image exists entirely in space as in time." (Dubois, 1998, p.106)
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| Transformation of materiality<br>
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| The preceding insights in the construction and the nature of the photographical image now arrive at the issue of the so-called loss of materiality during the process of digitalization and arise the question how far an exact translation of the origin can go? Therefore conducts Joanna Sassoon’s text, Photographical Materiality in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Her arguments add other aspects to the discussion about the constitution of the photographic image by reinterpret the term of materiality in a different way. It is not about the materiality in its purely physical sense, but rather about its context, the process of perception and its social impact.
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| Nowadays most of institutions digitize their whole collection. Looking closer to that act, questions come up under what aspects the photographic image should be treaten. It is not only about the object itself but the meaning being reframed and transmitted into the context of a digital image bank. Sassoon refers to Patricia Hayes who states that this shift results to a “massive decontextualization, which, if it had occurred with documents, would create a massive scandal". (Sassoon, 2004, p.196) Sassoon goes on by arguing, "what appears to be a technical transformation from the material to the digital should in fact be seen as a cultural process”. (Sassoon, 2004, p.197) What constitutes a photograph goes beyond the physical and chemical process, the same is applicable for the part of digitizing, it is not "merely changing the physical state of a photograph from the material to the pixel. If a photograph can be seen as a more complex object than simply an image, digitizing can be seen as more than simply a transformation of state (…). The translation from the material to the digital becomes a cultural, rather than simply a technological process." (Sassoon, 2004, p.198) Sassoon mentions three prominent attributes of photographs and says: "It is therefore appropriate to consider a photograph as a multilayered (…) object in which meaning is derived from a symbiotic relation between materiality, content and context. From this foundation it is possible to investigate how these aspects of the photograph are altered during the digitization process." (Sassoon, 2004, p.199) The original photograph can often reveal additional information, for example about the specific camera, the date and even different photographic processes. Through digitizing, not all of them are being replicated, a variety of physical distinctions are eliminated. Sassoon writes that "(…) technology reduces the subtlety of the material features of the individual photographic object and highlights the homogeneous nature of the digital image." (Sassoon, 2004, p.200)She goes on by saying: "The concentration on its visual nature of the digital image at the expense of other material features is further emphasized in the viewing of images through an intermediate and universalizing technology"(Sassoon, 2004, p.201) It is crucial to be aware of that reduction. With the average screen "the way we interact with a digital image is entirely different to that with an original photographic object." The example of using a loupe to enlarge detail and to delve into "the core materiality of the object" underlines what is no longer possible with a screen, the loupe is being replaced by a keyboard or a mouse. (Joanna Sassoon, "Photographic Materiality in the Age of Digital Reproduction", in Photographs Objects Histories, On the Materiality of Images (New York, Routledge, 2004), p.202)
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| Coming back to the thought about the black box, the question arises if it is the system, the device or the image itself. A final answer in how to define it would diminish the argumentation in this text. The only evident outcome is that there is no clear unique conception of the issue and the previous examination operates with the concept of the black box rather as self-referential approach. I see it as a metaphor that allowed me combine and articulate different concerns I have in my work. I would like to lead over this thematic to my own critical position towards new technology, which find place in another chapter towards the end of this text. Being now one month before the graduation show and in the middle of the process I think that basically the whole working method can be considered as a black box, with deviations between the input and the output. There is still no display that shows a preview of the final result. With the advice to never open the box Pandora could not resist and the consequence was that all disaster spread out into the world over mankind. The only thing left over and hidden inside the box was hope. And even while being a little pathetic, this metaphor of the other box might close the best with an open ending.
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| 2.3 OSCILLATING SHADOWS
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| While working with video I encountered the role of the codec, the software that simplifies the storage of recorded information, that then needs to be decoded again. Without going deeper in this process which seems to be in itself a black box and also being aware that noise is technically nothing more than an artefact of either the sensor or the codec, I was still strongly attracted by the temporal moving noise in the underexposed area in the video image. I saw the threshold of the sensor, its limitations somehow in relation to our own challenged vision in the dark and I recognized in general the construction of the image weeded with the act of seeing. In this beginning of my graduation project I was 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, the space and time in between. Using my background in photography, I was exploring the electronic moving image towards a presentation of work in a video installation. The following lines are taken out of my project proposal at the end of trimester four, based on the above described. I use them as record of this initializing state and will conclude them with a prospect to my final graduation project:
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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. Next to these outside scenes there will be vertical projections of portraits, evoking the theme of the gaze back to the beholder. For this second part I will create a sequence of photographic portraits recorded using an additional counter zoom. Afterwards a looped sequence presents one image after the other with an interpolation between each one to ensure the illusion of continuous movement. 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. 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. The created environment of the multi-screen installation challenges the viewer's perception. The viewer finds himself in a transitory moment; his glance simultaneously seeking orientation through the revealed image, he shifts between a perceived outside and his own inner world. I would like to create a psychological space that is situated between fascination and repulsion. My attention is to evoke through the installation an experience situated between a nervous, anxious feeling and pure contemplation.
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| I afterwards realized that this initial proposal might have missed my main intention. The focus laid too much on the experience of the viewer and therefore moved the topic of perception itself in the center. The latter in relation to darkness is still relevant to my research but only as a part of it. Through a review of the project proposal and the parallel on-going visual working process I finally found back to the image itself.
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| The use of the video image allowed me now to refer back to photography, to a renewed focus on the analogue still. The inherent photographic concept of an image that shifts between presence and absence already referred to an intangibility. Today I see the fascination for the underexposure and the thereby challenged vision in direct connection to it. And the intended vibrations in the dark zones, due to the noise, were considered to underline the image's volatility. What I was searching all comes together and results in the core of my actual research - an image that fluctuates between construction and dissolution. This leads once more back to our own vision and its constant movement of the image that only remains in memory. In my final graduation project I want to articulate through the process of the image the disappearance in the the continual becoming and fading - the passage of time that is like an ungraspable image, out of our reach.
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| 3) GRADUATION PROJECT<br>
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| …I will start the third chapter about my current research again with a look into my method, that moves between observation and construction. A brief draft will outline my intention to end up with an installation with three elements: A portrait (topic of the gaze), a video of a watertank with floating photographs of stones and houses (topic of fragmentation and shadows) and last a projection of the seaside with reflections on a water surface. After a brief overview I split the chapter in the following three subchapters…
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| 3.1 THE GAZE<br>
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| incapacity to see, back to photography, materiality and index
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| 3.2 WATERTANK<br>
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| animated photographs, cinematographic image, the uncanny
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| 3.3 THE SEA <br>
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| reflections on a water surface, topic of the construction of an image
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| 4) THE OBSERVER<br>
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| 4.1 TECHNICAL IMAGE AND PERCEPTION OF TIME (19th and 21st century)<br>
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| The technical image and perception of time in the 19th and now in the 21st century<br>
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| Techniques of the observer<br>
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| 4.2 COUNTERPOSITION<br>
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| my own skeptical view towards new media<br>
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| 4.3 ARTIST STATEMENT (contextualisation)<br>
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| short text about my position as an artist<br>
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| contextualization<br>
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| 4.4 FINAL GRADUATION WORK<br>
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| Final description of the project, max 500 words that can be used later<br>
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| Presentation and conclusion of the installation<br>
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| CONCLUSION<br>
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| BIBLIOGRAPHY/ READINGLIST <br>
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| (needs to be adapted)<br>
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| From instant to duration/ different temporalities<br>
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| - Mirjam Wittmann, Time extended: Sugimoto with Deleuze<br>
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| - Gilles Deleuze, the crystal image, virtual and actual<br>
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| - Philip Dubois, Der Schnitt in Raum und Zeit<br>
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| - Kritik der Fotografie, online Diskurs/ Augenblick<br>
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| - Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory/ diverse Texte zum Begriff der Dauer<br>
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| - The Digital Event, Rodowick, duration in time-based image<br>
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| Indexicality and the uncanny<br>
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| - Mary Ann Doane, The emergency of cinematic time<br>
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| - Laura Mulvey, Death 24 times a second<br>
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| - Freud, Das Unheimliche/ div. zur Psychoanalyse, Barbara Leuner<br>
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| - Marcel Finke/ Mark A. Halawa (Hg.), Materialität und Bildlichkeit<br>
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| From stillness to constant movement<br>
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| - Maurizio Lazzarato, Videophilosophy<br>
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| - The Materiality of Video, article Luxonline<br>
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| - Marks Laura, How Electrons Remember > indexicality<br>
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| - Joanna Sassoon, Photographic Materiality in the age of digital reproduction<br>
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| - TM02: Black Box<br>
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| The beholder<br>
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| - Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the observer<br>
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| - Kaja Silverman, The threshold of the visible world<br>
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| - TM01: Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer<br>
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| - dossier portrait de Nassim/ evt Le Dernier Portrait<br>
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| - Staging the spectator, McGrath<br>
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| Diverse<br>
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| - Black Box, Katalog zu Melancholie<br>
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| - Black Paintings<br>
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| - T.J. Clark, The Sight of Death, About the water reflection..<br>
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| - Objectivity, Daston and Galison<br>
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| - Susan Sontag, Against interpretation<br>
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| - Paul Virilio, Verblendung der Kunst > Counterposition<br>
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| - Tanizaki, Praise of Shadows > Counterposition<br>
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| - TM02: Counterposition, two texts<br>
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| IMAGES
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