Mia/Captain's Log

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29. 10. 2018 - Javi's tutorial

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


29. 10. 2018 - David's tutorial

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

26. 11. 2018 - Javi's tutorial

1. PHOTOBOOK - BRUSHSTROKES (working title):

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

2. FOCAL CAMERA - DRAWING CAMERA

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

27. 11. 2018 Barend's Tutorial

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

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

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

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

[About your own work:]

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

10. 12. 2018 - David's tutorial

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

  • David's keywords:
    • SURFACE
    • texture-structure
    • abstract-figurative
    • chance - not chance (graffiti)
    • mark making
    • left behind
    • implied image
    • ink drawings of landscape (>>but soon we realise that is not it<<)
    • specific choices of paper
    • feeling of the paper
    • photographed or printed?
    • MARK MAKING in all forms
  • the discussion:
    • it still seems as a precious object/book, >>I would not feel comfortable make interventions in it<<
    • the means of presentation could achieve that the intervention is inevitable
    • shallow box with charcoal dust where the book is placed (viewers touch the pages with dusty fingers - mark making, chance or conscious marks)
    • the presentation would help the object generate its own content
    • you could extend the performative aspect (make 3 books, document the process, compare their development into 3 different end results...)
  • you are dealing with very fundamental formalist questions - a lot of potential derives from them
  • questions like: why we make images? How (deliberately, by chance)? What does it mean to leave a mark?
  • Photocopy is basically dust on paper - echoes the idea of marks left by leafing through the book with dusty fingers
  • INDEXICALITY

11. 12. 2018 Ine's tutorial

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