Claudio's Thesis - FIRST EDIT
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES. A STUDIO DIARY.
Note to the reader.
I wrote this thesis to annotate and field-report the unfolding of my research and project over the course of the second year of this program, towards the final graduation show.
It is intended to be a complement to "making". A direct, on-going reflection on/of it. A device to think through, to dive in, to dissect and clarify the reasons, meanings, stakes of the practice I am establishing and the stances I am taking as a visual artist.
It is therefore hardly an academic work. Its mode of address tends to be that of a studio diary, a reasoned compilation of notes, bullet point lists, short-form pieces. I decided to keep the date of the day I wrote each part, as a way to give a sense of the progression of my practice over time.
A critical engagement with theory and with other artists' works was a substantial part of this process, yet I decided not to directly address those in my writing and leave them in the background, only to compile them as a reference list at the end. I claim an unruly approach to theory - hand-picking bits and pieces from different sources,forming a loose constellation of references as a backbone to my own work and research, without the overwhelming weight of having to fully master, control, know the whole of it.
While editing this thesis, I acknowledged and decided to embrace some distinctive, structural traits of my writing, which seemed to resonate with my way of working: repetitions, mirroring, binomes of opposites, fragmented form, recursive elements, feedbacks
[...]
CHAPTER 1: (INTRO)
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 try to 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 know much will change and evolve. 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 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. It will be interesting to witness the way this project developed, the changes and contradictions arising from its first draft.
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 and as 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 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 different speculative episodes/parts, mutually interconnected yet self sufficient. They will be exercises of/attempts at/challenges to the act of 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:
█ seeing/not seeing █████████████████████ showing/hiding ██████████████████ seeing/watching/staring/gazing █████████████████vision/blindness █████████████████████ visibility/invisibility ████████ materiality/abstraction █████ dges/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 and prompts for my practice.
I want to embrace and develop an approach to images that is 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. I want to give more space to a process and a practice rather than to projects. .Develop 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 will not reach points in which I can show completed works to an audience. I see this ongoing practice as the source of 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 media. 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 act of juxtaposing images together.
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 as complementary elements to images, the necessity to find narrative lines of some sort, how and to what extent give information and entry points to bring in the audience.
CHAPTER 2: STUDIO DIARY AKA ANNOTATIONS ON MY OWN WORK
21/11/2023 - An anecdote from last year. (1)
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. I made a piece titled A cameraman filming aka FILMINGWATCHINGBURNING ( https://youtu.be/l_7_ol6iXIo) that I built around a rather intriguing clip from the archive showing two cameramen filming each other on top of a skyscraper being built in New York in the 1920s. Its surprising self-reflexive natureimmediately 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 - to develop that self-reflective nature even further. A film projector, a film strip burning, as well as various shots 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, also, 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; also, to trigger the physical perception of moving images and further play with the provoking idea and feeling of burning eyes.
In the first half of the piece, I crafted a 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 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 more figurative imagery. The piece then goes on.
Something very powerful seemed to happen there, 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, and what is seen - or felt - is the physical effect of the images seen before, their backlash on the viewer's retinas. 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 unintentional rather epiphanic, unexpected and striking. 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, of being, challenging their perception working on liminal, extreme states/conditions of images; blindness and sight, visibility and invisibility.
These are all elements I am interested in dealing with in making this new project.
../../.. - An anecdote 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) - already have some notes from last year, I will include it if I have extra words. Seems another relevant anecdote to frame the course of my practice last year and to introduce some of the topics/attitudes that I am interested in exploring with BSLTTFF
(THAT one) 
../../.. - An anecdote from last year. (3)
Claudio: [...] (i thought about another very relevant one last night, but I can't remember now - but it felt almost necessary for me to write about that,
11-12/01/2024 - PROJECT PROPOSAL v.2
Towards January assessment, I wrote a new version of my proposal, which renders the way my plans have progressed in the past one and half months, after I submitted the first Proposal and after some critical mentor sessions which pointed out the weaknesses and limits of those first intentions. More specifically, I was being told that I was only playing around with formal aspects, without considering - or even worse, avoiding to do so - the agency that my images could have in the "wider" world. I was also told that it was very hard to engage with what I was making as it appeared to be extremely self-referential, abstract and could hardly offer any grip on reality that an audience could hold on to access it.
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. I feel as if - suddenly - I could link elements and thoughts that were already there - yet scattered - in a more stable and meaningful constellation. There's a series of elements, and a clear, sensible idea of the way I want them to be made and to stand in relation to each other.
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 way of working 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.
Hereafter, I compile some relevant excerpts from that text, trying to ... this new iteration of my Project. I introduce its structure, describe its (four) parts, and their relation. 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.
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 screen-recording 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.
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.
SHOULD I KEEP THE FOLLOWING PART? ONLY IF I HAVE WORDS LEFT (SAM told me its interesting)
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.
9-10/01/2024 - (ASSESSMENT'S AFTERTHOUGHTS)
My presentation could have been more synthetic, but I feel that research questions, way of working and practical plans seemed to match and be coherent. I was told 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 quite cryptic. The personal circumstance of my family predisposition to develop a retinal disease was received as 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 meaning further from/outside of itself.
I feel I am finally succeeding in showing more 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, making sense as a whole, as different parts of a same body of work and research. I was encouraged to bring this approach further, to fully embrace it in developing my project. This was mainly pointing at considering presence and relations in space as inherent elements in the work.
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, valuable remarks were made: why shoot analog to then show it digitally? 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, it is with projected light that moving images take a 3d, sculptural presence in space. I will think about it, and try to research more about contemporary expanded moving images practices with 16mm film. 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. As my whole practice moves at the edge of analog and digital, I can see my project coming to life at the graduation show through both analog film projection and digital screens.
I was warned that I should consider narrowing down my plans and let go of some parts, to make my project realistically attainable in the time that is left, and to make it more precise and less loose. While I see the reasons for such remarks, 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 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 the multifaceted nature of my work.
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 - a bit frustrating. I feel I am in the position - that of an artist - 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 and how my work relates 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 FROM NOW ON 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. Do not overload it, keep only information which is essential to the aims of my work.
- Rethink the structure of the project, the order and relations between elements and parts. Make it precise and synthetic; make choices, leave something out while keeping it complex and open - even more than it is now. Do not overkill it with too much stuff. Match form with content. Be strategic in finding ways to open it up and bring in the audience.
- Carefully consider the implications of using 16mm. What would it add to the project more than digital video? Then, make the most out of the Filmwerkplaats membership.
- Keep in mind the constraints - space, time, tech facilities - of the final grad show in devising the outcome of this project. A multichannel, multimedia (digital video/analog film, projectors/screens) installation is a complex thing and possibly too much for the context of the grad show.
Possible directions to think about/test/ways to go in the next coming weeks:
- use writing practice to try and weave together the multiple elements that I have now
- delve deeper in "reading" the personal circumstance of my own possibility of vision loss as a central element to understand and articulate my involvement with these topics, but also, delve deeper in understanding and including in my work the "socio-political" implications in the "wider world"
- try "scripting" the trip to go and find the webcam of Part 2. Make it clear to me what I am doing, what I expect to get from this act. Yet, be open to chance and unexpected findings that might come up in that process.
- think of alternative ways to use some of the parts of my project so far in an installation format. For example, some elements can be rendered and shown as series of still frames (the L-O-S-T part, the experiments with flashes...)
[...]
07-02-24 - ONGOING TRANSFORMATIONS/DEVELOPMENTS (1)
In the past weeks, following the assessment I have been making critical choices for the future of this project. I resolved to temporarily carry on only Part 1 - SENSORS and Part 2 - W-O/A-NDER-CAMS of my Project Proposal - the statues' blinded eyes piece and the stranded beach webcam one - as I feel those are the ones that offer more space for development.
I now see Part 1 - SENSORS as a short (5/8 minutes) 16mm loop projection featuring images of those statues' eyes, filmed in black and white 16mm film stock at the Louvre museum and then edited at Filmwerkplaats - which I am now a member of. I will probably make use of so-called optical printing - an analogue technique of re-filming footage frame-by-frame, allowing to alter and affect it with effects such as slow motion, re-framing/cropping, focus/unfocus, over/under exposure. I am also considering to integrate in the edit - as elements fragmenting and layering the images of the eyes' statues - some added material interventions on the film surface that further contribute to the reflection on vision, blindness, physicality of images that my work is concerned with.
Concerning Part 2 - W-O/A-NDER-CAMS, my current plans are considerably different from the ones outlined in the proposal. I have decided to work with footage from another webcam. The premises are still the same - real-time, automated scanning of a beach in south Holland live-streamed online - yet this other webcam has some features that makes it more interesting for my purposes. For example, it performs a full 360 degree turn (and not just 180), capturing not only the seafront but also what is behind - an eerily deserted industrial landscape. Also, the focus of how i intend to work with such webcam has shifted. As I have started visiting these places where these webcams are located, I realized that what is at stake is related to notions of real-time-ness, of actually being in those places, and wandering through them, and engaging bodily with them, with the experience of them as opposed to the screened experience from the webcam. Notions of and tensions between presence and absence, showing and hiding, being there but not being seen, seeing without being there. Staging acts of looking at, of looking for, of being looked at. I am therefore considering the intention of pairing the footage from the webcam with "stolen" countershots in the forms of a series of photographs that I take while crossing the landscape, trying to move in - or, to be - the blind spots of the webcam. A counter-act of image-making, where the scanning of the place is the one of my own body/eyes/camera crossing the landscape, revolving around the webcam, while hiding from its view.
Finally, I am thinking to bring in the essayistic, text-centered element - consisting of research notes, speculations that I am currently producing on the side - as a standalone element in the final grad installation rather than a text-on-screen (which would distract from the experience of looking at ther images alone) or a voiceover (which is a device that I don't feel belongs to my practice). I envision it as a fragmented moving text on a screen - automatically scrolling both vertically and horizontally - shown on a portable teleprompter, a simple reflecting device that is commonly mounted in front of cameras when shooting talking heads in TV/documentary settings to create eye contact with the viewers. The scrolling motion of the text resonates with the scanning movements of the imagery, and the teleprompter device references the act of image-making, of performing in front of the camera.
PLANS FOR CHAPTER 2:
KEEP ON ANNOTATING THE PROGRESS OF MY WORK. USE WRITING PRACTICE TO RESPOND TO CHALLENGES THAT I AM FACING AND TO MAKE MORE CLEAR MY POSITION AND INTENTIONS.
CONSIDER INCLUDING THE - SORT OF - SCRIPTS I AM STARTING TO WRITE FOR POTENTIAL TEXTS INCLUDED IN FINAL WORK. 1) ABOUT MY PERSONAL POSSIBILITY OF VISION LOSS 2) A SCRIPT TO GUIDE MY JOURNEY TO GO AND FIND THE WEBCAM ON THE BEACH
CHAPTER 3:
REFLECTIONS ON, FROM
Claudio: This 3rd Chapter will be a series of writings to elaborate on and articulate what I am making, and why; to 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 it. I will do so also 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.
05/12/23 - (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: (still working on it, this is what I have for now. Might try to start annotating one of Thomson and Craighead works you suggested me.)
Tacita Dean - Disappearance at Sea (1996) + reading of Maria Walsh's Narrative Duration. TD's Disappearance at sea (parts in italics are quotes from that).
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8j8x5p
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VSjDwSaHtjtYYWnM_ae5VXCXkt1wzDXM/view?usp=sharing
I came across Disappearance at Sea researching about TD's work as a contemporary artist working with 16mm film, referring to a heritage of structural cinema tradition yet making work that is not only self-reflexive but also narrative and speculative. All elements that seem to resonate with my own practice and that were also remarked during the assessment as something whose place in my work I need to carefully reflect on. On top of this, this particular film seems a relevant example to reflect on in relation to the piece I want to make with the footage from the webcam scanning the beach at sunrise and at sunset that I presented in my proposal. (Part 2 W-O/A-NDERCAMS)
TD's film is 14 minutes long. It is a sequence of scenes shot in and from a lighthouse, on the British coast, at sunset. Abstract close-ups of the lighthouse revolving lamp, and four different views of the seascape/horizon (two of them partially framed by the lighthouse architecture, two only consisting of the landscape view). As the sun sets, the shots get darker, the light emitted by the lamp becomes more visible, and is seen projected on the landscape. The end is a pitch black screen. The seven shots are approximately 2 minutes long each. It is shown as a 16mm projected loop.
There seems to be some evident overlappings between TD's work and the way I want to make mine.
- a parallel between the disappearance of the world/landscape/horizon as the sun sets in the night and the disappearance of the image, as light - its raw material - is gradually replaced by darkness. What is shown is the gradient/threshold/transition between day and night, between seeing and not seeing.
- a contemplation of the cyclical nature of time, and a parallel with the rotational, circular, perfectly designed mechanical movements of the lighthouse's lamp.
- the horizon as a universal object of human gaze, as a catalyst for a tension, a quest for something that is expressed through its staring at.
- a reflection on human-made technologies to see and, through seeing, to grasp the world, to know it, to hold it.
Yet, TD's work is one-way - as it only stages the "disappearance" part, at sunset - the form I have in mind for mine is double: as I intend to include also the opposite process of the landscape appearing at sunrise, coming to light/sight from darkness. I want to have a full circle - or a wave-like figure, continuously fluctuating between light and darkness, between vision and blindness.
The fact that i am appropriating fotage from a 24/7 live-stream online webcam calls into question the ubiquitous presence of visibility devices - cameras and screens - a "regime" of visibility, of mass production - and consumption - of images, to which we are constantly subject to, and object of. I feel this comes across through the inherent, material qualities of the footage I am using - the camera movements, the lo-fi digital texture of the image.
I believe that my interest in blindness - or the failure of the act of seeing and making images - has to do with this, as an interest towards a possible way out, an escape from such a state of hyper-visibility and hyper-exposure to images.
TD's work speaks too of such a human strive to see everything and, through seeing, to grasp the world, to control it, yet I feel the lighthouse places her reflection in a more poetic, literary realm, rather than the sociopolitical one that appropriating a webcam's footage can imply. Also in TD's work, the material features of the 16mm film apparatus - light shining through film - are more directly referring and mirroring with the natural sunlight that is present in the film.
On a more "formal" level, in my footage, the point of view is that of the webcam; the viewer coincides with the camera, their gazes coincide.
In TD's film the point of view of the camera is external, a third party. This creates a triangle play between the landscape, the lighthouse, the camera/spectator, a triangle that is staged through a shot-countershot structure.
I don't have that. What does that add? Can I try to do a countershot of that particular webcam I am using? (is this what I am trying to do wanting to go and find the webcam? maybe yes).
I also feel that in the footage that I am using there is something more at stake in relation to the "surface" of the image, which I don't see in TD's work. The depth of the seascape seems to be flattened on a vertical plane by the digital texture/grain that is constantly perceived in the webcam's footage, with varying degrees - at night, but also at times when raindrops or salt from the sea breeze get stuck on the lens glass; as well as by the prevalent panning/scanning movements performed by the webcam which seem to happen on a vertical, flat plane, which resonate with the vertical, flat interface of the screen that these images take form on. TD's footage seem to hold much more depth. Not only when it comes to the landscape shots - which are often composed of different layers - the structure of the lighthouse, the rocks, the sea, the sky - but also for the way the lighthouse lamp is framed and shot - the complex light and shadow plays, the rotational, circular movements, which seem to evoke a three-dimensional space. This is possibly due to the different types of camera - a webcam has for sure less DOF than the more sophisticated cinematic camera that TD has allegedly used for her film. Yet, I feel that this flatness of the footage has much to say in terms of mediation of the world through such barely visible interfaces.
I think that the act of going there to see the webcam - and film this journey - could be motivated as the attempt to break into/through this flatness.
WHAT ABOUT TIME?
In both pieces, nothing really happens, and no one is in sight. Emphasis is put on passing time
Shots are kept long, the same, circular alternance between the two shots is kept all along the piece.
The only human body that is at stake is the one of the viewer, whose experience seems to be perceived, called into question, included as an inherent element in the piece through the durational, prolonged engagement with watching the work.
also, the continuity in time of the production of thies imagery, of this digital gazze who is always on, whose vision is only blinded by the coming of the night - the digital gaze is always ON, the day/night is a cycle
but also disappearance, loss, both on the level of the image and on a more "existential" level poetic
TD's work addresses time as a cycle, as a perpetual repetition, rotation. more on a philosophical/phenomenological level. The same happens wih the footage of my webcams, which also stage a cyclic strucyure of passing time. Yet, as they stream live, 24/7, they also confront the viewer with the notion and possibility/limits of real-time experience of another place. The footage produced by the webcam can be retroactively watched for a limited period of 12 hours, after which it is permanently erased. A matter of disappearance here too, not only of a lace, but of its volatile images floating on the internet.
a real time ness -perception of time.
xx-xx-2024 - Notes on xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Notes on another piece of work that relates to the statues' eyes piece I want to make
CHAPTER 4: (OUTRO)
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 - as of April 2024. 1000 words?
contents:
- comparison with intentions in INTRO
- recap of past months - what has worked out, what hasnt
- latest plans for grad show
REFERENCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
...
FILMOGRAPHY
...
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
...