Janis Klimanovs - Essay 2: On my way

on the way

While practicing things that I am learning during the second term in prototyping, I did come up with issues that are interesting for me to find out during this period of investigations. The project research explores boundaries of lens based medium, looking for manipulation possibilities and finding related connections from history. Practically it displays how to construct a movement of a human body by using digital tools. Visual material has been reassembled and processed in a software, the result is a fast moving image sequence that shows a movement which is corrupted by software, in a away representing time and deformed body move. It is yet another way of manipulating reality, another way of experiencing reality by using these contemporary tools. It is interesting how things can be interpreted, mixed together in the fast, mind-blowing information age.

Exploring body movement studies of Muybridge and other photographers who fixed human body in front of their cameras in various circumstances, I became interested in these kinds of images. In my previous practice my passion was and still is stop-motion video making, it is interesting how I can use photography camera, freeze and divide movement in parts and after reassemble it in one sequence.

I was looking at Thomas Ruffs work. Why? Because of the diversity and complexity of his work, it is unique in the history of art photography starting from the late 1970s and up till today.

“He explores the conceptual survey of the various uses and forms of photography. Constitutes a resolute exploration of photography as a medium and its related imaging technologies, whose applications and technical development become the catalyst for artistic exploration. He continually finds individual approaches to the recurring theme that runs like a thread through his oeuvre to date and expresses itself in works that unite analysis of the medium and image creation in a fascinating way.” Ruff noticed while searching for image material for the series of nudes that the virtual images in the web essentially no longer represented reality but are merely visual stimuli conveyed by purely electronic means. The flood of images in the Web, where images and information get superimposed, hardly allow the viewer an opportunity to decide what of the image information is real and what is virtual. He argues that, photographers in the digital age are no more using only a photo camera for to capture reality. More and more they use pictorial quality of films and photographs but the result is completely digital. Work is produced with the help of different software’s. The images are more like algorithms that can be written down in a code language. My images are mixed between recorded reality and code that is corrupting them. Those can be called digital artifacts or distortions and by looking at them I am trying to find aesthetics in these distortions. I am exploring the boundaries of photography and developing my artistic skills, by exploring the boundaries of lens-based medium. I am looking back in the history and finding connections between how analog photography developed 100 years ago, it became accessible and in a way, it was boring to record everything as it is, to reproduce reality with this medium. I am exploring how the period of pictorialism in photography developed and at the same time cubism started in painting. I have the feeling that the same movement or switch in digital photography is happening recently, all digital tools are quite available for everybody, it is becoming boring with the possibilities of new technology to reproduce images, everything has been photographed as Susan sontag says, also just about everything has been processed in photoshop, every body has their own interpretation of things. Artists are exploring new ways how to work within the medium. Off course, trying to find meanings, talking about hidden layers, etc. Living in the information age where the art is to find a complicated, unique conception for the work of art is a challenge. If there is no added layer, personal approach or knowledge under it, the work can be quite boring because there are so many available tools and techniques how to create something. Also artists must be aware of all the history behind them, to create something unique is quite impossible, we are unconsciously reproducing other people work, it is in the human nature.

What do I mean with pictorial image quality, what is that? Pictorialism dominated in photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There was no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated the image what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of "creating" an image rather than simply recording it. “Typically, a pictorial photograph appears to lack a sharp focus (some more so than others), is printed in one or more colors other than black-and-white and may have visible brush strokes or other manipulation of the surface. For the pictorialist, a photograph, like a painting, drawing or engraving, was a way of projecting an emotional intent into the viewer's realm of imagination.” I am looking forward to explore the boundaries of the visual lens-based medium and see where it can take me as an image-maker using digital technology. Nevertheless, a good part of the nineteenth century was spent debating which of the directions was the medium's true function document or create art.

These debates reached their peak during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating in the creation of a movement that is usually characterized as a particular style of photography: pictorialism. This style is defined first by a distinctly personal expression that emphasizes photography's ability to create visual beauty rather than simply record facts. However, recently historians have recognized that pictorialism is more than just a visual style. It evolved in direct context with the changing social and cultural attitudes of the time, and, as such, it should not be characterized simply as a visual trend, pictorialism was "simultaneously a movement, a philosophy, an aesthetic and a style. I am looking for the pictorial aesthetics in the interaction between different technical approaches in image making, which are reflecting to the same ideology of pictorialism as it was 100 years ago, the difference is that nowadays there are different tools and history behind creating new layers of performance.

One of the primary forces behind the rise of pictorialism was the belief that straight photography was purely representational ‒ that it showed reality without the filter of artistic interpretation. It was for, all intents and purposes, a simple record of the visual facts, lacking artistic intent or merit. Robinson and others felt strongly that the "usually accepted limitations of photography had to be overcome if an equality of status was to be achieved.

As Frank Kessel is arguing, the physicality of represented material in a digital image can no longer be seen as truth. The possibilities of manipulations are unlimited which puts an ending point for documentary photography and film as an ontological claim on the real. The spectator can get confused and the outcome of communication can make an irreversible switch into another state. Image performance can vary depending on the knowledge and understanding of spectator. The solution to avoid it would be proper updated literacy that would enable spectator to think more critically about what is seen and claims to be true. Do we really care about it while living in the age of digital reproduction and being surrounded by visual information? Example from Esposito E., The reality of the world and realism of fiction, she is arguing if "Is non-manipulated representation possible when the medium inevitably affects the reality it represents? And when representation has got distortions and when it is manipulated? Mirror is the ultimate picture, but it is quiet hard to create a perfect mirror.

In this project first I did some tests with a video camera and recorded body movement, using different shutter speeds. After seeing the results, I didn't like them; the images were blurry and boring. I decided to go the opposite way and make a record of a movement by using a high-resolution photography camera and software to process and manipulate the images so as the movement would look different than we are used to see it.

I’ve got inspired by cubist artworks where objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form, “instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space.” Around 1910 Picasso decided to say goodbye to resemblance, after having seen enough of beauty and history, he decided to go for something more mind blowing, unconsciously transforming to a modern painter. Two-dimensional realistic images were becoming boring because photography was made for that, everybody recorded and reproduced reality in a quite handsome quality. Manipulation and personal approach of interpretation of images become interesting within this medium in the period of pictorialism.

Having a different vision of how things really are, Picasso created a portrait of his art dealer Vollard. It was painted in a manner of cubism. He was getting beyond of surface appearances to a core that could mentally describe a subject. These images were not easy for the perception of a human eye and mind. In the period afterwards Picasso was reflecting a lot to Spanish culture, events and the time he was living in. He spread a lot of political messages in his dark fantasy painting that developed from the period of cubism. His subjects were culture, horses, bulls, people, war, politics, the symbol of candle light, etc. He was sketching separate pieces, which were describing partly actions during a longer period of time about Spain, the culmination of inspiration collected all the sketches together and in a certain point Guernica was made after the germans bombarded the small bask town in Spain, the dark painting was his interpretation of the horror. People found out what modern art is really for when bombs were dropping, it was the pain of the painter who was spreading the message with his possibilities, methodologies and tools.

In my experiments with a digital photo camera, time and movement are broken up. I did an experiment using a long shutter speed and in the result I got images that represented a predictive movement. I reassembled time and movement and created a sequence of images by using software. Instead of using a video camera and recording movement with a slow or fast shutter speed, I became interested in how the photographical images of a movement can be manipulated because I wanted to use different tools and approaches for the representation of body strength in a movement.

The software is kind of under control and it allows me to tweak around the parameters and make decisions about how I want to manipulate the motion. Basically, the program is analyzing the input and paints with pixels. The mix between different movements is interesting because the software is working with me, deforming and generating artifacts and distortions in between my images, filling the image space with self-generated pixel calculations.

In the text about objectivity author describes physicists Arthur's Worthington's work. He spent a lot of time analyzing the impact of falling liquid drops that hit a flat surface. He made drawings, after photographs and systematically classified these visualizations. Photographs comparing to drawings showed more details and the irregularity, asymmetrical individuality of drops, while perceiving with eye and drawing them, they seemed regular. Discovering the detailed complexity and the differences between photographed drops and drawings, he realized that photographed might be considered as real, being objective. "Objectivity is blind sight, seeing without inference, interpretation, or intelligence." About blind sight, the "objective view" scientists started to become curious after Worthington's long experiments and emerged a new way how to study nature and work as scientists. Image making was one of the most common new practice ways for to achieve scientifically objective material. I am wondering if the situation with visual material isn't at the same point now as it was 150 years ago, when objectivity derived it’s current use? Nowadays in the age of digital reproduction everything what is photographed and produced digitally in pixels/data, is as close as drawings at the period of Worthington's discoveries, the “objective” medium has no borders, even if it is developed and produced manually in analog techniques, there are too many interpretations of reality. Images, which are generated digitally, contain millions of pixels, and than higher is the quality of an image, than more pixels (data) it has. This data can be adjusted and treated with different kind of software’s in many ways.

The question still remains about how the image is performing? I would like to print them in a large format and exhibit in a space where the spectator can have distance from the image, so there are two ways how to perceive the images. From a distance the image looks smooth and spectator may have a feeling that something is slightly moving, but seeing it close he/she can see all the artifacts and distortions that are made digitally. It is similar like Thomas Ruff created the series of “jpegs”. He was interested in the digital geometrical structure of all the images that underlies the jpeg format. He gave some of them a coarser pixilated structure by increasing the compression and lowering the number of pixels per square centimeter. By intensifying the pixel structure in this way and simultaneously enlarging the overall picture Ruff creates new images that seen up close resemble a geometric color pattern. Seen from a greater distance, the pattern then jells to become a real, photographic image. Here Ruff uses the creative 19th century methods of the Impressionists and Pointillists. The entire range of images published and discussed globally in recent decades served as a potential material for the series “jpegs”.

The questions:

What is the architecture of the image, why do I use software and what is the meaning of it? How is this software working? They want to know, what can I do with it? How can I develop my investigations? Start looking for an answer to the question, why I want to distort an image? Why representation of an unreal thing is necessary?

The why, what is interesting, is: why the post-photographical qualities are interesting nowadays? And how they develop and become necessary? Find a meaning to your technical experiments. What is unique in what I am doing, what are the qualities of my work and how can they become important?

Bibliography and research material:

1. L. Datson & P. Galison. Objectivity. 9-39.

2. De Mul, J. (2009). The work of art in the age of digital recombination. Digital Material. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 95-106.

3. Kessler, F. (2009). What you get is what you see: Digital images and the claim on the real. Digital Material. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 187-197.

4. Cannell, C. (2005) Reality vs. Actuality: A Construction of the Truth

5. about gifs and web glitches, how things become popular http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_gif_trash_became_internet_culture_glue.php

6. Thomas Ruff exhibition in The House of Art, Munich, Germany, 2012

7. Pablo Picasso, the period of cubism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ePPIMazZTw&feature=relmfu

8. Pictorialism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictorialism