Claudio's Thesis - FIRST EDIT
Claudio: Currently more than 8000 words already. If I cut out some parts and - especially - only put excerpts of my project proposal instead of the full text, I will have some space to develop Chapter 3 and 4 (OUTRO)
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES
INTRO (first chapter)
20-11-2023
This text is titled INTRO.
INTRO is a general outline of the starting point of my graduation research project, BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES. It will present its premises, the topics that the project will cross and address, the questions driving it, the tools I plan to use, the attitudes I will rely on.
INTRO is a self-analyisis of where I am at right now. Now that I have written my first Project Proposal and I am starting to grasp what I am making yet I feel much will change and evolve and I still have many doubts to figure out. Also, it will serve me as an exercise to reach a temporary state of clarity over the next month and devise an effective and convincing way to present and frame my intentions at the assessment in January.
I will write another text - OUTRO - just before the final due date for thesis. It will be a complementary, mirror text to INTRO, an attempt at recapping the work made and reflecting on its achievements and failures, its discoveries and future trajectories. Also, a more detailed description of the form that this project will take in the graduation show.
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES is a visual research project that I will carry on over the coming months, towards the final graduation show. During the first year I focused on a rather broad yet quite specific field of research, which I would frame as the theory and practice of image-making, and, conversely, of the experience of images, considered in their complex implications - technological/technical, material, semiotic, affective/existential - between their digital and analog nature. In other words, I have been concerned with the conditions of possibility of images by constantly lingering on their limits. This project belongs to the same research path.
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will be an elemental exploration of fundamental questions about seeing and being: the way we see, what we see, why we see, and where we stand. It will give form to a critical discourse and practice that weaves together and questions the experience of the world by seeing it, through light, on images and screens, the materiality of these - as physical/analog and virtual/digital objects, and the related quest to find meaning and stand in between these, living the tension between nihilism and the sublime. A personal reflection on the experience of seeing as well as a (self)reflection on the possibilities of the medium of (moving) images.
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will take the form of a cumulative, open-ended, expansive work on visual material from different sources and with different qualities. Its subjects will be
piercing light leaks and dark black holes, over- and under- exposed shots, webcam shots of empty beaches, blinding flashes and fast flickers, windows, curtains, screens, empty/lost eyes, pixels, digital noise, black and white blank frames [tbc...],
collected and choreographed together in short, stand-alone sketches/fragments. An annotation process will run parallel, unfolding meaning in written form, producing text material that will end up in this thesis work and in the final piece for the graduation show.
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will find its outcome at the graduation show as an experimental moving image work, in an installation form. I envision it either as a single-screen compilation or a multi-channel installation comprising of (4?) speculative episodes/parts, mutually interconnected yet self sufficient.
They will be exercises of/attempts at seeing. For me while making, for the viewer watching.
Hereafter, I compile an expansive list of keywords that will somehow be called into question by BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES. I will consider translating it into a conceptual diagram/map to give a visual sense of their mutual implications, their relevance and position in the project. Elements from this list will be more specifically elaborated on in this thesis (A CATALOG/COMPENDIUM OF CONCEPTS) in closer relation to the actual development of the project over the coming months.
seeing/not seeing
showing/hiding
seeing/watching/staring/gazing
vision/blindness
visibility/invisibility
transparency/opacity
representation
materiality/abstraction
edges/borders/thresholds/margins/limits/interfaces
errors-glitches-artifacts-failures
flashes, flickers
immateriality-materiality in/of (digital) images
blind spots
gaze/image/screen
phisicality of images and image-making devices
depth/surface
lenses, sensors, screens, human eye structures
software/hardware, digital/analog, virtual/physical
technology/the technical
existentialism, nihilism/sublime
A SET OF TOOLS AND ATTITUDES AKA HOW I WANT TO WORK
In working on BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES I will rely on some tools and attitudes that I want to set myself both as guidelines for my practice.
I want to embrace and develop an approach to images that is both, at the same time, sculptural and open-ended. A DIY, constant sketching, “non-finito” approach. Make rapid, rough, short sketches, yet consistently, as a way to explore possible forms and meanings. To keep eyes and doors open, to open eyes and doors.
I want to work with images in a more dirty, reckless, less polished way. This does not mean I want to work carelessly. But carefree. And rather give more space to a process and a practice rather than to projects. . A practice against - or devoid of - the fear and the fetish of the final result. It is the way of working that I feel more at ease with and I believe it can be the most effective one in exploring and reaching the core topics and interests of my work. This does not mean I am not interested in reaching points in which I can show completed works to an audience. This ongoing practice will produce a body of fragments whose meaning is made by their whole, and whose whole will be the foundation for the making of my final graduation piece.
I want to work and convey meaning mainly with and through images. I want to use text and sound as secondary devices to facilitate this.
While I will still be using found footage, I want to work again also behind the lens, making and working with my own images too. I plan to use different cameras. I will rely on my handy Canon camcorder as a visual note-taking device, to capture images on the go. I am getting familiar with more advanced cameras from WDKA's rental facility to be able to make more high-quality footage. I also plan to try my hand at working partially with 16mm. To do so, I will take the introductory workshop and I will become member of Filmwerkplaats in February 2024. I want to work exclusively in black and white, as a way to reduce the information to the essential elements of images that I am interested in - light and shadows, textures. I might withdraw this choice later on, but color feels superfluous right now.
I want to simplify my editing workflow. Keep my timeline slim, avoid excessive use of editing trickeries and rely more on the simple power of juxtaposing images alone.
WHERE I'M AT RIGHT NOW AKA WHAT I'M MAKING WHILE WRITING THIS TEXT
I am currently in the process of making more concrete plans for the assessment. Also, I am trying to answer, through what I am making, to two recurrent remarks that are being made to my work, which address the need to:
1) open up my practice, considering using more images "of the world" - less abstract, less self-referential, consider the agency of my work in the outer world
2) considering the place that text and sound will have, the necessity to find a narrative of some sort, how and to what extent give information to audience.
STUDIO DIARY AKA ANNOTATIONS ON MY OWN WORK (2nd chapter)
21/11/2023 - An episode from last year. (1)
I can pinpoint a specific moment in my practice last year that I now recognize as an early, intuitive yet clear turning point. A turning point that brought up and matched, suddenly, unexpectedly, images and ideas, topics and tools, theory an praxis. An epiphanic encounter that caught my attention, marked my practice and whose resonance I can find in the project I am about to engage with.
For the "Writing through editing" workshop - in the second semester of the first year of the course, we were asked to make a short 5 minute video using footage from the Open Beelden online archive. The piece I made was titled A cameraman filming aka FILMINGWATCHINGBURNING ( https://youtu.be/l_7_ol6iXIo) and was built around a rather intriguing clip I accidentally found in the archive showing two cameramen filming each other on top of a skyscraper being built in New York in the 1920s. That short clip held a unique self-reflexive nature which immediately attracted me: its subject was not New York's fast vertical growth - which remained, literally - in the background, yet the very act of filmmaking, of making images of the world, by means of cameras and film. The subjects were the two filmmakers, filming each other while filming the world in front of them. I built my piece around that clip, editing it together with other footage - this time intentionally looked for, not found - that could bring out and develop that self-reflective nature even further. A film projector, a film strip burning, as well as various images of eyes. I wanted to weave together the act of seeing/watching, the act of making images through film, and a more intuitive notion of burning - light burns the chemicals to impress the celluloid, eyes burn when they stay open for too long or, a burning desire and need to see things. Along the whole piece, with varying intensity, I used a flickering effect, as a device to make the moving image apparatus visible and sensible the viewer; as a metaphor to recall the blinking of the eye, as well as the projector's presence; also, to trigger the physical perception of moving images and further play with the provoking idea of burning eyes.
In the first half of the piece, I crafted a quite intense sequence featuring a fast edit of footage of the two cameramen, images of eyes and text-on-screen playing with variations of the phrases EYES WATCHING / WATCHING EYES, all layered with a flickering effect. All of a sudden, the screens goes black, abruptly. After a few seconds, a new text-on-screen appears, white letters on black: EYES BURNING.
A hard flickering sequence - white and black frames only - follows, emphasizing even more the sensation of burning eyes. The same text stays on screen, floating through the flickering frames. Then, a countershot image of an unfocused projector beaming light towards the camera appears - as if it was the source of that flickering sequence, and brings back the piece to figurative imagery. The piece goes on.
Something very powerful seemed to happen here, which I only realised when watching the final edit of the work. The moment the screen goes black, the viewer's eyes - until then hit and overstimulated by the mass of fast edited images - are caught unprepared. On that unexpected pitch black screen, afterimages appear, the flickering effect seems to continue, the physical effect of the images seen before, their backlash on the viewer's retinas, is felt. Then, on that same black, the text appears. EYES BURNING. A subtle yet precise description not only of some of the images seen before - eyes looking at the camera, shedding tears - but also of the actual physical sensation built and triggered by those very images and the way they had been edited, and felt by the viewer in that specific moment of the piece. Then, a coincidence, a coming together of images seen, physical perception and conceptual meaning.
This effect was not intentional. Of course, it was the result, of a rational process of editing, yet I only realized its potential the moment I exported the final edit. It was an epiphanic moment, whose encounter was unexpected and striking. I don't think I got it immediately, I needed time to digest it, to think about it, yet - now - I feel it is an effective reference point in showing me a direction I want to pursue in my future practice, and that contains, in a nutshell, some elements whose use and potential I want to explore in making this new project.
Abstract, minimal imagery, working with light as a raw material, self reflection on the medium, embodied/physical/haptic (?) experience of images. Engaging and challenging the viewer's experience of moving images, their position in regards to them, both on a conceptual level and on a physical one. Making the viewer conscious of the experience of viewing,
Also, challenging their perception, requiring
MAKING THE VIEWER CONSCIOUS OF THE EXPERIENCE OF VIEWING THE PIECE.
These are all elements I want to deal with in making this new project.
steve comment: Please consider what this mirroring of words does, EYES WATCHING / WATCHING EYES seems redundant, but for me it suggests a shift from the inside of the film to the outside, between the object (the film) and the viewer, between the semiotics and the affect. the dash / is like a hinge that meaning swings on. By this logic FILMINGWATCHINGBURNING could be FILMINGWATCHINGBURNING/BURNINGWATCHINGFILMING. The material and the experience of the material feedback. This is consistent with your desire to work on the border between blindness and sight; visibility and invisibility.]
An episode from last year. (2)
Claudio: [...] (notes on the moment I discovered that pixelated edge around North Sentinel Island on Google Earth imagery, which then became a substantial element in the piece I made for the Eye) - will write it if I have extra words.
11-12/01/2024 - PROJECT PROPOSAL v.2
While working towards the checkpoint of January assessment, I wrote a new version of my proposal. It is an account of the way my plans for my graduation project have progressed in the past one and half months, after I submitted the first PP and after some critical mentor sessions.
As Steve pointed out on the day of the assessment, I am constantly chiseling my own works and words. I feel that this relation between writing and making is working out fruitfully. It might seem a bit absurd and self-enclosed from the outside - which is a remark that is often made to my work overall - but it's giving me the chance to focus on and bring out my own reasons and motivation to do such work, and to develop it steadily and substantially.
Many things have changed from the first proposal. My plans took a more tangible form, that of a proper project. It will surely evolve and change, yet I feel that, finally, I have something solid to stand on. There's a series of elements, a structure, a clear, sensible idea of the way I want them to be made and to stand in relation to each other. Also, a projection of their possible outcome at the graduation show.
First, I contextualize this new iteration of my proposal in the overall process of my practice, tracing a line with the previous version. I then introduce the new structure for the project, its (four) parts, their relation and reasons for being what they are. Then, each part is described more specifically, taking into account both their content as well as the practical process of their making. Finally, I write some notes about some of the choices I made in drafting this new proposal and list some elements that I am considering to include in it.
Claudio: I plan to edit a shorter version of my PP, just some excerpts
Claudio Tola
Project Proposal for January Assessment - PZI - Lens-Based Media
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES
Relation to Previous Practice and Proposal
This project belongs to the same thematic trajectory that I developed over the first four trimesters of this course. It is a direct consequence of that, as well as an attempt at bringing it further and deeper. During the first year I focused on a rather broad yet quite specific field of research, which I would frame as the complex implications - technological/technical, material, semiotic, affective/existential - with particular regard to the digital realm - but not exclusively, of the theory and practice of image-making, and, conversely, of the experience of images, considered. In other words, my work has been concerned with the conditions of possibility of images by lingering on their limits. The research I carried out about North Sentinel Island, and the short film I made for the EYE Research Labs - 1 or 2 images (some notes on) - are examples of this, as well as two other works I made last year, A cameraman filming aka FILMINGWATCHINGBURNING and BLUE BLUE BLUE / BLAH BLAH BLAH.
This project stands in the same field and deals with similar questions and topics. The first version of the Proposal, submitted in November 2023, reflects the very first stages of development of this project. It was more of a very general outline than an actual proposal, yet it helped me in defining and sharpening the content and form, the key questions and the tools of this project.
I wrote:
Through this project I will explore and give form to fundamental questions about seeing and being: the way we see, what we see, why we see, and where we stand [...]; the conditions of vision, their limits and the possibilities of blindness[...]; light and its double potential to make things visible and to make blind [...]; its absence and presence, in images and vision - to drown in/to emerge from it [...].
I want to move along the fine lines between visibility and invisibility, between transparency and opacity. I'm interested in those liminal moments when nothing (or everything) is seen as something, or when something that can no longer be seen becomes nothing. Things becoming nothing, something, everything in and through light, in and trough images. [...]. I want to explore the tension between pure abstraction and mere materiality of images, between representation of the world and presentation of the medium[...]. I’m interested in the images and screens as supports for such paradoxical coexistence of showing and hiding.
The experience of seeing - something, everything, nothing - will be the main subject for the project. Light will be its raw material.
I introduced three key notions I was interested in exploring:
The flash of light - as a concept, an image, and a physical phenomenon [...]; as the basic unit of light; as a (im)pulse for/on vision; as a sudden event of extreme light that paradoxically reveals and blinds [...]; Also, the flash as the fundament of every experience of moving images, and of digital screens too.
The notion of blind spot: ocular blind spots in retinal structures; blind(ing) elements in the "structure" of images (over/under exposures, out-of-focus, flickering ...); images and screens as blind objects; also, blind spots in perception of the world.
The idea and possibility of failure of images. [...] The paradox of making fail-ed/-ing images as part of my image-making practice as a visual artist. [...] Exploring and working on events of failure of images. Failed images as images that question and subvert their expected representative value. Images that represents nothing-ness, that show themselves as images, that are blind and that blind the viewer, both physically and conceptually.
I then summed it up as it follows:
I will work with a sculptural approach to images as raw materials to mould and manipulate, as well as with a conceptual/minimalist attitude and language. I want to challenge the viewer’s way of seeing - and being - conceptually, physically and affectively.
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will then take the form of a cumulative, open-ended, expansive constellation/compilation of rather abstract visual material from different sources and with different qualities, such as appropriated imagery - both still and moving, original footage, DIY animation techniques. Its subjects will be piercing light leaks and dark black holes, over- and under- exposed shots, blinding flashes and fast flickers, windows, curtains, screens, eyes, pixels, digital noise, black and white blank frames [tbc...], collected and choreographed together as an open series of short, stand-alone sketches/fragments.
Outline of the Current state of the Project
Much has changed from that early stage of the project, which has evolved into a more concrete and tangible form that I will now present. Yet, I feel that it is still true to the intentions presented in those lines.
As of now, BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will consist of four sketches (or: scenes), to be presented as self-standing video loops on four different screens.
Their (working) titles are:
1) SENSORS
2) W-O/A-NDERCAMS
3) L S T O L T O S L O S T T O S L
4) Untitled, or: SCREENSHOTS
Together, these sketches (or: scenes) explore and articulate in various ways and from different angles the field of research that I outlined above.
All four are, at their core, exercises in/attempts at/challenges to the act of seeing and of making images. They are so both for the audience - experiencing them in an exhibition setting - as well as for myself - while engaging in their making.
They are in fact outcomes of an experimental - literally, made of trials and errors and feedbacks - approach to moving image-making. Results of extensive acts of watching and filming, challenging the technical limit of the devices - of capturing images, of showing them. Filming from very far, from very close, blinding the cameras, scrutinizing and screenrecording hours of footage from online webcams ...
They all move on and question the fine, blurred line between human desire/need to see and to make sense of the world by seeing and making images of it, and the impossibility of such an attempt, when seeing and image-making happen to fail.
They address the experience of the world by seeing it, through light, on images and screens, the materiality of such devices and the related quest to find meaning and stand in between the world and its techonology-mediated representations.
They shape a speculative reflection - personal and analytical, structural and poetic - on the experience of seeing as well as a (self)reflection on the possibilities and limits of (moving) images.
They stem from - and thus require - a contemplative and speculative attitude.
I will now provide a draft outline of each of the four sketches that make up BSLTTFF.
1) SENSORS (8-10 minutes)
The first sketch will consist of closeup shots of empty/blank/lost eyes of classic greek sculptures, filmed either in the Greek section of the Louvre Museum in Paris or at the exhibition on classical greek sculptor Phidias that is currently being held in Rome. I intend to shoot these images on analog film; either on a high contrast, black and white 16mm stock, or as still pictures on 35mm photographic film. Images of these statues and their eyes will be slowed down and will appear on screen as shapes that are continuously, gradually lost and found. They will be seen and then lost and then seen and over again. The viewers will find themselves actively looking for something to appear, and what they will see are eyes - or traces of now lost, blinded eyes - looking at you. When you see it, you are seen too. The eyes’ shots are spaced out by blank frames of various length. These images are accompanied by a text - ideally in the form of a voiceover - that will draw a speculative parallel between:
- how eyes were crafted in classical greek sculptures and how they decayed and they are now lost, their symbolic/cultural value and the link between such representation of the eyes and contemporary philosophical theories of vision (very physical/material - images as objects colliding with eyes, eyes shooting rays towards the world)
and
- the current, failing state of technologies for bionic eyes - experimental implants of nano-sensors on damaged retinas to (partially) recover vision of blind people. the eye becomes a digital camera)
I am still in the process of researching these two subjects. However, I am interested in articulating this analogy between these small high-tech objects, made of precious materials, speaking of a persistent human quest, a need, an obsession for the eye/vision/seeing over time. Both are reflections of contemporary cultural constructs around vision. Both are on the edge between a material loss of vision and the creation of a sense of it - of seeing, of being seen.
The whole sketch revolves around a quest for seeing, for "making" eyes, while the viewer is drawn to look for and “make” the eyes on screen, actively engaging their own vision.
Here are some other possible elements that I am considering to introduce in this sketch:
- threats to vision by screens and modern lifestyle - rise in myopia and vision loss - because of staring too close to things and screens, not being in nature
- actions/processes of wearing out of eyes/surfaces
- meditations on my own, personal possibility of losing vision because of a genetic predisposition for a degenerative retinal disease.
- found imagery of these bionic eyes experiments
2) W-O/A-NDERCAMS (12/24 minutes)
This sketch will be a compilation of footage from 2 webcams set up on dutch beaches for safety and weather reporting reasons and available as 24/7 live-streams online. These webcams perform automatic Pan-Tilt-Zoom movements, according to internal algorithms, which make their movements look unpredictable and absurd: they continuously scan the beach, the sea, the horizon, zooming in and out, and the feeling they provide is that of a constant quest to see something, a quest that is always bound to fail. They seem to be seeing everything out there, yet what do they see? What are they looking for? Lost eyes, stranded, blind.
Every day, at sunrise, over the course of an hour, the image they provide transitions from a digitally-grained, black and white, opaque, “blind” image, to a well-exposed image - yet always artifacted - of the beach they are on. The same, in reverse, happens at sunset. From seeing almost nothing, to seeing something, then everything in full sunlight, and back. I have collected such footage from these two webcams on the day of the winter solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year - both at sunrise and sunset, capturing the transition from full darkness to full daylight, and back. I will edit it in a 12/24 minute loop. The edit will jump between the two webcams, yet staying "chronologically" true and render the transitions between darkness/blindness and light/vision during the day.
The subjects that this sketch deals with are multiple and interconnected.
The webcams’ contemplative, absurd quest across the sublime, yet eerie landscapes they show. What are these wandering cameras, lost eyes, looking for, what are they absurdly aiming at?
Staring at the sea/horizon/sky as a primordially human act of seeing and of being the world; the sea and the horizon as “screens”, whose staring at has to do with appearing signs, passing time, understanding someone's own position in the world.
The cyclic construction and destruction of the image, the staged process of its material making and unmaking, by means of natural sunlight, through a camera sensor, on a screen.
A state of hyperpresence of machinic, technological gazes and of over-production of images, that are continuously made, yet never watched.
I am also interested in questioning the position of the viewer - myself in the first place - in relation to these images. Not only, then, what are these wandering cameras looking for? But also, what am I - are you - staring at the images made by those cameras - looking for? I am therefore considering the possibility to embark on a journey to go find and see these webcams, and the places they depict, in real life, in first person. Again, an absurd quest to see, and to see what? To cross, to challenge the threshold between the world and its representation, to physically engage with the materiality of such immaterial processes of image-making and mediation of reality. I will film and field-record these trips and find ways to integrate such materials with the webcams' actual footage.
3) L S T O L T O S L O S T T O S L (3-4 minutes)
The image of a word - LOST - as originally found by chance and screenshot while browsing the internet - is blown up on a large LCD screen. The screen is filmed by a handheld digital camera moving in front of it, very up close. It scans the letters and the surface of the screen. In the edit, letters are mixed, reversed, fragmented, repeated.
L S T O L T O S L O S T T O S L
The viewer can never see the full word, but has to make sense of it by following the camera movements through the piece.The hidden, opaque structure of the screen is seen through - as squared edges of the letters, as a grid of pixels, as flickering light interfering with the camera's shutter speed.
A sense of loss is evoked, literally and lyrically. Visually too: the camera constantly loses its object, loses itself in the surface of the screen. A sense of loss that resonates in various ways with the other parts of the project. Loss of vision, lost eyes, lost at sea, lost in screens and pixels. The slow, scanning performed by the camera also resonates by contrast with the webcams' movements: the infinite open of the seascape against the fractional units of the screen's pixel grid. The footage is edited in a loop form and accompanied by a short sound fragment, whose hypnotic repetition matches the visual work that is made with letters on screen.
4) Untitled/SCREENSHOTS (5-8 minutes)
This sketch stems from a practice of "technical/structural experiments" that I engaged with in the past few months consisting of staging self-reflective, absurd interactions/interferences of cameras, screens, light sources, objects, my own figure, with the ultimate intention of exploring, exposing, exhausting the possibilities of such devices involved in making and experiencing images.
I am currently working with two staged scenes - that I might want to eventually film in 16mm too - which are intended to cross-reference, respectively the eyes/heads of statues seen in 1) SENSORS and the seascapes of 2) W-O/A-NDERCAMS .
The first scene features overexposed, closeup pictures of my own face that are shown to the camera by a flash light, while I am being blinded by that same flashlight. My eyes are caught wide open or fully shut.
In the second scene, a picture of the sea, with a sunlight reflection, is shown on a desktop monitor. The screen is flashed, the flash instantly shows the picture of the sea on the monitor while, at the same time the flash is seen back as a light trace on the glass surface of the screen.
Both the two scenes are repeatedly brought to light by a flash - they emerge from and then drown back into the darkness of a blank black screen. Their sudden, intermittent apparitions act as bright flashes on screen, provoking a paradoxical blinding reaction in the viewer. Their repetition is always similar, yet always different, as the interaction between the flashlight, the camera, and the staged scenes is hardly controllable.
I intend to run these scenes through apps for visually impaired people that provide realistic textual and audio description of images. Confronted with such imagery, most often, these apps can not but fail in their task, and make up unlikely descriptions or use such formulas as: “I am not sure but this might be …”, “I have doubts but…” or "Unable to generate captions".
I intend to edit these scenes as long black sequences, interrupted by sudden images as bursts of light, paired with together with the dubious audio-textual descriptions that these apps provide.
I am still figuring out the most effective way to make this piece work, but I am interested in bringing together these "structural" experiments on the techonological limits and intentionally-induced failures of image-making and seeing and the - equally induced - failure of such apps intended to making meaning out of images. I want to explore the blurred lines between seeing nothing, everything, something. I want to question the impulse to make sense/meaning out of what is seen, challenging the supposedly realistic content of images. Guessing what is seen is what our eyes constantly do, making sense of the world as we see it.
Open lines: formal choices, media, possible elements
Looking back at the first steps of this project from the past months, I realize it has largely, and rapidly, evolved. I feel that this happened for the most part in the last few weeks, as if - suddenly - I could link elements and thoughts that were already there - yet scattered - in a stable and meaningful constellation.
Although I find this proposal already relatively convicing, I am aware that there are still many elements and choices that can be subject to development and or change. I therefore know already that the final form of this project is likely to be - partially at least - different from the one that I have just outlined.
Hereafter, I will collect notes regarding either some features of this project that are likely to be reconsidered or some elements that I am currently thinking to bring in.
(WHY 4 SKETCHES AND NOT 1 SINGLE-SCREEN WORK)
As of now, I am convinced that such a 4-part form is the most appropriate for this project. It reflects the way I think and work - in fragments and layers, by juxtaposition and accumulation of images and concepts as materials, and it feels true to the premises of this project and, ultimately to the intentions of my own practice as an artist - exploring, speculating on, tentatively, a field of research, in different ways and from different angles. I am more concerned with such a practice, rather than with making final polished products.
Secondly, I like how a multi-screen, loop-based installation leaves space and time to let the viewer in. It is a looser, more flexible form, that feels more open to unpredictable readings, experiencing, connections, which a more controlled, linearly-edited single-channel form would probably allow less.
However, I know I will carefully question such a choice over the next months, and I will experiment with alternative possibilities. One of them is bringing together these 4 sketches in two pairs (1 and 4), (2 and 3) resulting in a 2-channel installation. This one is indeed an open question for now.
(WHY USE ANALOG FILM)
I am currently planning to shoot some of the footage for the project in 16mm. On a practical level, I will be able to do so by becoming member of the Filmwerkplaats starting from February 2024, which will grant me access to their cameras and lab facilities.
There are several resons why using analog film would be a meaningful choice in the making of this project, and not just a fancy wish. Overall, I feel it would uniquely enhance some of the core features of the work.
The specific qualities of the 16mm film footage, shot handheld, through the camera's viewfinder - its shakiness, grainy texture, imperfections - would largely contribute in bringing out the opacity of the device, building that awareness of the act of seeing and watching images being made and shown that the work is concerned with.
I am also interested in the intrinsic potential of analog film to bring in the actual, tangible, physical dimension of the materiality of images, and light. On top of this, I am drawn to the expressive and critical potential of the stark contrast between 16mm footage and footage from digital sources (webcams, 4k cameras). The juxtaposition, in the same work, of their utterly different textures and qualities would add a powerful layer to the work, contributing to the critical discourse around images that my practice is interested in.
Last but not least, I consider this an occasion to experiment with a medium that I have been interested in using for a long time, and that I feel could be a valuable experience for my future artistic practice outside of this course's safe space.
POSSIBLE NEW ELEMENTS
There are some elements and ideas that I am currently considering to integrate in the work, yet I haven't found a convincing way to do so yet.
Possibly the most important one - I am thinking to bring in a narrative line made of meditations on my own, personal possibility of losing vision because of a genetic predisposition for a degenerative retinal disease. I am interested in using this private circumstance as a prompt to speculate further about the act of seeing, and the possibility of its failure. Also, I feel that this would introduce a more evident first-person involvement, which would enrich the work and open it up, making it more relatable for an audience.
Also, I have been reading about the way the increased exposure to digital screens is causing rise in myopia and vision alterations. I am interested in the paradoxical correlation between digital screens - as primary supports for images, devices to see the world - and their potential to affect and alter vision. Also, I am interested in the advice that is often given to relieve eye strain by excessive screen staring to look out to open spaces and to the horizon - which strikingly resonates with the seascapes of Part 2.
I would like to draw a parallel between the automatic Pan Tilt Zoom movements performed by the cameras in part 2 and the four types of movements that human eyes can make.
Again regarding Part 2, I am thinking of the possibility to "expand" it in a sort of ephemeral screening event to be held during the graduation show. A very rough idea: the whole, unedited, uncut transition between day and night (between light and darkness, seeing and not seeing...) is shown in real-time in the exhibition space, on a large screen; people are invited to come and collectively watch a digitally-mediated summer sunset; lights are off, the space gets darker as the sun sets; downtempo music is played, beers are on the house.
Last but not least, I am thinking of integrating the LOST footage of part 3 with another element found in my archive: a picture of an exhibition text that I photographed at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam which provides a pretentious yet shallow reflection on the contemporary overflow of images in the digital age. I am interested in playing with it, by deconstructing and scanning it, and colliding it with the LOST footage.
9-10/01/2024 - (ASSESSMENT'S AFTERTHOUGHTS)
I feel my presentation could have been more synthetic and straight to the point, but I also feel that I could show how research questions/topics, way of working and practical plans seem to match and be coherent, and appear to be potentially appealing for an audience. In this regard, the most urgent observation that was made after my presentation is that I should still work more on finding the right form and making entry points for the audience to engage more, and more directly with my work, which has the tendency to be cold and cryptic and difficult to access. The personal circumstance of my family predisposition to develop a retinal disease seemed to be a convincing element to open up the work. David said, it's probably a matter of "noticing" those moments, those events, those collisions in which the work sparks further from/outside of itself.
I feel I am finally succeeding in showing awareness and control over my own, self-defined "sculptural" approach to moving image-making, whose development calls for ways and timings that differ from those of more narrative/storytelling-focused filmmaking practices. I feel that my so-called sketching practice - by fragments and layers - is convincingly coming through in what I presented as a way of working that - through its tentative and truly experimental nature - has the potential to produce outcomes that, in their variety of media, forms, qualities, are nonetheless coherent in their forms and contents, making sense as a whole, as different parts of a same body of work and research.
I was encouraged to bring this - once again - "sculptural" approach further, to fully embrace it and unlock its potential in developing my project. This was mainly pointing at considering presence and relations in space as inherent elements in the work. I will keep this invitation in mind.
I also feel that my intention to use 16mm film was also well-received, as a choice that could meaningfully complement the premises and questions of my work. In this regard, a couple of interesting remarks were made: why shoot analog to then show it on a digital screen? why not keep it as a film projection? If I use film, I need to have a critical reflection on its role in the work, and make it fully clear - to me in the first place - why and how it is relevant. Also, I have been told that it is with projected light that moving images take a 3D, expanded presence in space. I will think about it, and research more about experimental, expanded moving images practices with 16mm film in the contemporary. However, I am also interested in digital screens as light-emitting objects we are persistently exposed to, and I'd like to bring in this element in the final display of my work too. As my whole practice moves at the edge of analog and digital, I can see my project coming to life at the grad show through both analog film projection and digital screens.
However, I was warned that I should consider narrowing down my plans and let go of some parts, not only to make my project realistically attainable in the time that is left, but also to make it more precise and less loose. While I see the reasons for such remarks and I understand that, over the past two months, I have brought in several elements and opened up new directions that, if not controlled, might be misleading, I am also convinced that a fundamental specificity of my project - and of my overall practice as an artist - is precisely this expansive, constellation form made of fragments and layers. I understand the need to make choices, to let go of certain parts while fine-tuning what stays, yet I would like to keep working on a project that is multifaceted, layered, fragmented - ultimately complex, and avoid the easy way of choosing one single part and centering the whole final project around it.
I have been told that it is not fully clear why I am making all this, where do I stand, what is my personal involvement within this project. I find this observation - which has been recurring during mentor groups and tutorials - quite frustrating. I feel it's a rather pointless fixation - a not so relevant question that an artist is not necessarily bound to answer overtly. I feel I am in the position to claim a certain degree of opacity. Being generous to the audience is one thing, being fully transparent is another. But I will think about this too.
Also, I have been asked to make it more clear why in my work I seem to refer to a certain tradition of minimalist/conceptual art and experimental/structural filmmaking. I will try to do this by engaging with an exercise of annotating other artists' work in Chapter 3 of this thesis.
CHALLENGES or: HOW TO MAKE THIS WORK WORK, A BULLETPOINT LIST
- Make good research - mostly for 1) SENSORS - and effectively translate it into the project through re-writing practice
- Fine-tune the structure of the project, make it precise; make choices, leave something out while keeping it complex and layered and open. Do not overkill it with too much stuff.
- Be strategic in finding ways to bring in the audience.
- If i decide to go the 16mm film way, make the most out of the Filmwerkplaats membership, use their facilities, ask for help and advice as much as I can
- Making a multichannel (4?), multimedia (digital video/analog film, projectors/screens) installation work in the limited time/space of the final grad show
- Recording/making good sound and (if needed) voiceovers is always a tough technical challenge, maybe even more critical than making images
- Time is short and always runs out, make good use of it
[...]
Possible strategies to think about/test/ways to go in the next weeks:
- try writing a voiceover to weave together the multiple elements that I have now
- think of alternative ways to use some of the parts of my project so far in an installation format. Ex. some elements can be rendered as still frames (the LOST part, the experiments with flash - as sequences of still frames)
- rethink the structure of the project, the order and relations between elements and parts - maybe I can find a more synthetic form, less dispersive yet still complex
[...]
(KEEP ON ANNOTATING THE PROGRESS OF MY WORK)
A CATALOG OF CONCEPTS, ATTITUDES AND DRIVES (OLD TITLE, will find a new one) (3rd chapter)
Claudio: A way to elaborate on and articulate what I am making, and why - as invited to do during January assessment. In two ways. Through an exercise of repeatedly writing series of sentences/short paragraphs in which I try to define what I am interested in, as an artist, the field in which i am moving, as I often struggle to clearly understand and therefore explain/express what I'm interested in, what and why I make. And through an exercise in annotating a selection (3? 5?) of other artists' works as case studies to critically engage with, to understand them better and to better position my work in a broader context - as i was invited to do in assessment. To be written from now to April. Need a new title because the one I had chosen before does not fit much anymore.
5/12/23 - (WHAT) I'M INTERESTED IN (WHAT)
Through making BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES,
I’m interested in exploring the fundamental elements and conditions of vision, its limits and the notion of blindness in relation to images and image-making.
I’m interested in light and its double potential to make things visible and to make blind. Its absence and presence, its double effects on images and vision. To drown in light, or to emerge from it. To appear and conceal. To make the world exist, or vanish.
I'm interested in the fine line between visibility and invisibility, between transparency and opacity.
I'm interested in those liminal moments when nothing (or everything) is seen as something, or when something that can't be seen becomes nothing. Things becoming nothing, something, everything in and through light, in and trough images.
I'm interested in exploring the liminal states between seeing something, everything, nothing.
I'm interested in the paradoxical link between nihilism and the sublime.
I'm interested in explore the tension between pure abstraction and mere materiality of images, between representation of the world and presentation of the medium, between seeing everything and not seeing anything.
I’m interested in images and screens as supports for such paradoxical coexistence of showing and hiding.
I'm interested in the concept of blind spot. Ocular blind spots in retinal structures; blind(ing) elements in the "structure" of images (over/under exposures, out-of-focus, flickering ...); images and screens as blind objects; also, blind spots in perception of the world.
I'm interested in exploring light as a flash. The flash of light as a concept, an image, and a physical phenomenon. The flash as the basic unit of light; as a (im)pulse for/on vision. As a singular, sudden event of extreme light that paradoxically reveals and blinds. As a device for apparition and concealment, of existence and negation. As a metaphor and image for both nihilism and the sublime. Also, the flash as the fundament of every experience of moving images, and of digital screens too.
I'm interested in the failure of images. The paradox of making fail-ed/-ing images as part of my image-making practice as a visual artist. I'm interested in exploring and working on events of failure of images. Failed images as images that question and subvert their expected representative value. Images that represents nothing-ness, that show themselves as images, that are blind and that blind the viewer, both physically and conceptually.
I'm interested in the repetition and variation, in the redundancy, of images.
I'm interested in the durational experience/effect of watching.
18-01-2023 - Notes on Tacita Dean's Disappearance at Sea (1996)
Claudio: (working on it, will try to do it by thursday)
OUTRO (4th chapter)
Claudio: a complementary, mirror text to INTRO, an attempt at recapping the work made and reflecting on its achievements and failures, its discoveries and future trajectories. Also, a more detailed description of the form that this project will take in the graduation show.