SYNTHESIS TEST

This is the page aimed to bring ideas and processes developed during my research into a synthesis.

How to grasp and represent the continuous flow of reality?

How to make a still image with a moving image camera? How do we experience time and space with the resulted image?

How to animate the inanimate? How do stillness and mouvement coexiste in images?

TEXT ON METHODS

THIS IS NOT A TEXT YET, nor a Draft The idea is to combine concrete description and theoretical information I collected in readings. I will combine it with my first text on methods:

What have you been making? General introduction

Starting points: Fluidity of reality, Photo-Filmic ideologies, Identity Continuous recording.

In the last 7 months I ‘ve been making strip-photographs.

I have been exploring the role of the shutter in photographic and cinematographic apparatuses and try to deregulate some dominant usages/ideologies. I built or used shutter-less cameras to make photo-chemicals photographs. Using strip-photography I question the one-point perspective ideology and focus on movement as subject.

How did you do it? (method) Describe your research,

Mainly I alternate between two intensive practices, Image-making and reading & writing. I rarely do the both in the same time, usually I am reading and taking notes intensely for a couple of weeks. I read various academics essays and books, sometimes far from my practice, sometimes I read very precise text about the technique I am using. Once I reach saturation I don’t read or practice for a couple of days and lets information settling down. It feels like an assimilation process. Ideas are coming, sometimes I carry them for days, months or even years before I realized or materialized them. Maybe this is an expression of my nature, always pushing to tomorrow what you can do today. Moving film to make still images is an idea I have with me for so many years, and I never knew it was a known technique until I started working on it within my MA.

Coming back to my images, I usually develop my BW film, but give my color film to the lab down the street. My impatience makes me ask for the 1h service every time. I often have some comments: “ Well Ugo, there is nothing on your film I am afraid” or “Hey, this time one of your film got something”. That something was the first recognizable elements I ended up with: Houses, fields, threes. The fact that the appearance of figurative elements on my films were a sign of success for the lab…

1) what, how and why

WHAT: DESCRIPTION OF WORK:

THE MAIN TECHNIQUE: HOW Strip-Photography Practice:

What is it + What I make with it Strip-photography is a technique dated from end 19th century, largely used in panorama photography and for scientific purpose like mapping or photo-finish recording. The technique is based on the moving of the film linearly behind the aperture or of the aperture over the film surface. It is a technique of capturing a 2-dimensional image as a sequence of 1-dimensional images over time, rather than a single 2-dimensional at one point in time. Strip-photography is a “dynamic exposure technique” that “allows a whole time span to be incorporated within the image, it can also inject duration as a condensed unity into a single object.” The resulting images are composed of fragments of movement seamlessly assembled into a single recording” (Van Volsem p153). The shutter should be open during the whole process. A continuous aperture coupled with the moving of the film provide the setting of a continuous recording, only limited by the length of the film.

Deregulation of single view point ideology

“The continuous movement of the film and the camera while recording means that there is no longer any centrally focused viewpoint. The central perspective is abandoned here in favor of a variable perspective.”p155

WHAT PHOTO-CHEMICAL

What 1: 35mm strip-photography How: Reversing dominant/mainstream usage of popular camera 35mm Minolta srt101 + inversed gesture Problems & Decisions: the rewinding mechanism isn’t fluid, speed variations created frame (variations of exposure), broken cohesion. Constant speed = constant exposure = erasing differences = (Baudry denial of differences between frames in cinema). I am looking to delete those difference I get rid of them by creating a bigger mechanism in my medium format camera.

A dynamic landscape represented by multi-point perspective, the movement of the film coupled to the movement of the camera creates artificial curvatures and motion blurs. that participate to step away from the standards to create more dynamic images. (p140. Van Volsem)

“As a result, space and time are no longer seen as different entities, but are instead described as part of a similar, constantly changing process.” VanVolsem p147

The time aspect and the space aspect. Here a sensitivity to something oher than the freezing of time.

Fusing time and space that interests me as an artist, because it allows me to communicate my experiences of the envirronement. It is a visual scanning and discovering of the space. The seamless interconnectedness of its movement and gestures (dance). Photography’s focus on the performers rather than on the performance. How to make something move in a still image.

Marey describes chronophotographie technique as a method which “ on the one hand, represents the different positions of the space passed through by the mobile, i.e. its trajectory and on the other determines the position of this mobile on its trajectory on fixed moments.

The results are multi-exposure images of an object, an animal or a person in which different phases of one and the same movement are apparent in a single image. P149

It visually synthesizes different stages of movement p151 Movement, changes of speed and rhythms are the subjects rather than the swimming fish.

TRAIN, Transport, body displacement.

HOW 2: Medium format strip-photography How: Building DIY Shutter-less Camera – Thematic workshop + gesture Problems & Decisions: determining speed of object – exposure / poor optics / Good fluidity / Expensive / Limited Length. Building a better lens. Or continuing with 35mm.

WHAT 3: Animation of a film-strip: Abiding HOW: Digital workflow: separating (size & length limit of digital tech), digitizing (scanning), re-composing PS, Choosing a frame, creating a automated script PS (Action 1: move selection, copy, select next document, set selection, paste into, select previous document, repeat) (the saturation of memory), naming and organizing the sequence (the broken flux : repairing the fluidity :chasing the missing frames, replacing, arranging the images in a sequence (DNA)

WHY + RELATION TO THEORETICAL READINGS

WHY 1 Continuous recording and the fluidity of reality. The fluidity of Identity. Fixity in photography. How do I represent my experience? Categories? How to represent and record the fluidity of reality? How to represent movement in a still image?

Motion perception, clarity VS confusion – Fixity VS movement

WHY 2 Deregulation of dominant perspectives (Baudry, Althusser, Marx) or just bourgeois distinction (Bourdieu) Deregulation of memory mechanism – confuse image Questioning one-point perspective ideology = strip-photography eliminate perspective? Questioning frame by frame apparatus in cinematography = From inanimate to animate

The ideology of strip photography process VS Cinema Strip-photography always wears the marks of the making? Or is it just because I am not precise (Mathematic, and mechanics) Cinematographic apparatus is ideological because it hides his means of production to create an illusion of continuity = mystification = ideological surplus value. The apparatus preserves control over the illusion of continuity, and the reproduction of this illusion. The transformation of a discontinuity in a continuity = projection apparatus + subject identification. Continuous reality – Discontinuous Sequence Frames – Illusive reconstructed continuous reality. The film lives on the denial of differences (found between still frames).

2) describe the reading and writing you did and describe how it supported your practice. This may be a discussion of particular texts, or it might be a description of writing and reading methods you adopted and how they helped shape your work.

Reading Baudry and the the distinction between recording and projecting. Projection is the one that creates illusion. Identification in cinema process VS identification in strip-photograph. The power of projection = how to avoid it? Direct projection VS frame by frame deconstruction.

In this section you can help us understand how your work comes together on a practical level and talk about possible outcome(s) in the future. These outcome(s) may have changed as your research evolved, describe the decisions you made along the way which resulted in a change of direction, or which resulted in the recognition of a core research strand.

Relation to previous practice Identify developing practices and theoretical approaches over the last year. This can be very practical: new working methods, new skills &c; describe what such new skills afford.

What do you want to make next? How does your proposed future research connect to previous projects you have done? Here you can use the descriptions you made during the Methods seminar or make new descriptions.

Why do you want to make it?

Relation to a larger context Meaning practices or ideas that go beyond the scope of your personal work. Write briefly about other projects or theoretical material which share an affinity with your work. At this juncture, it's simply about showing an awareness of a broader context, which you will later build upon as your research progresses.

Neurosciences & Art

References A list of references (Remember that dictionaries, encyclopedias and wikipedia are not references to be listed. These are starting points which should lead to more substantial texts and practices.) As with your previous essays, the references need to be formatted according to the Harvard method.)

Feel free to include any visual material to substantiate, illustrate or elucidate your ToM. For example use images to reference your work or that of others.

Bibliography:

M. VANVOLSEM, The Art of Strip Photography, Leuven University Press, 2011 (to check) J-L. BAUDRY, Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus, Uni.Cal.Press, 1974 V. FLUSSER, Towards of Philosophy of Photography, 1983 L. MULVEY, Death 24x times per second, Reaktion Books Ltd., 2006 C. RONDEAU, David Claerbout: l’oeil infini, Noeme, 2013 M. BARNIER & L. JULLIER, Une breve histoire du cinema, Pluriel, 2017 (5 desirs of cinema: 1/Fix the imprint of the objects of the world, 2/Put movement in the images, 3/Fix the trace of the movement of the objects of the world, 4/ Project the images on a screen, 5/ Give a paying show (public)

R. ARNHEIM, Art and Visual Perception, Uni. Cali. Press, Revised Ed., 1974 H. BERGSON, Creative Evolution (cinematic, memory) R. BOGUE, Deleuze on cinema, Routledge, 2003 Z. BAUMAN, Liquid Modernity, 2000 M. BERMAN, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, 1983 K. MARX & F.ENGELS (on capitalism, modernity, melting the solids quote (manifeste p.c)) HERACLITUS (on change, flux, opposites) W. SCHIVELBUSH, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space, Univ. Cali. Press, 1986 M. MERLAU-PONTY, Phenomenologie de la perception, Gallimard, NRF, 1945 M.HALBWACHS, On collective memory, Uni. Chicago Press, 1992