Claudio's Thesis - printing page
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, I was being told that I was only playing around with formal aspects, without considering - or even worse, withdrawing from doing 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, because of its extremely self-referential, abstract natrure which could hardly offer any grip on reality for an audience to access it.
My plans seem to have taken 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.
I am "constantly chiseling my own works and words". I feel that this relation between writing and making is working out fruitfully, allowing me to focus on and bring out my own reasons to make this project, and therefore to develop it steadily and substantially.
Hereafter, I compile some relevant excerpts from that text, to present this new iteration of my project.
(note: to respect the word limit I retroactively decided to only keep the parts of the project proposal that I kept working on, discarding the rest.)
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.
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 BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES.
[...]
1) SENSORS (8-10 minutes)It 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 in retinas to partially recover vision of blind people (the eye becomes a digital camera)
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 movements, according to internal algorithms; 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.
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 hyper-presence of machinic, technical gazes and of over-production of images, that are continuously made, unnoticedly.
I am also interested in questioning the position of the viewer - myself in the first place - in relation to these webcam's images. Not only, then, what are these wandering cameras looking for? But also: what am I - what 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.
3) L S T O L T O S L O S T T O S L [...]
4) Untitled, or: SCREENSHOTS [...]
Hereafter are some other possible elements that I am considering to introduce in this project:
- 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.
- I have been reading about the way the increased exposure, at close distance, 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.
- found imagery and information about the most advanced, state-of-the-art bionic eyes experiments and technologies