User:Nicole Hametner/Graduate Research Seminar 2013-TM5.01

Nicole Hametner, outline for praxis based thesis 

Abstract

(250 words)

The following essay is an attempt to disclose my current artistic research. Parallel to my visual working process, some theoretical aspects will be treaten, will complete and come full circle with my practice. The main part of this essay contains a description of the aspired outcome in constant dialogue with the theoretical research. Through the writing and working process a first outline in chapter one will lead to a modified version, up to the concluding description at the end. Therefore this text can be seen as an insight into the process as well as a documentation of the final graduation project.

Having a background in photography, I now work with the intersection of the analog still image and the electronic moving image. Within that juxtaposition my interest focuses on their mediaspecificity. An observation between stillness and movement leads to different temporalities, from instant to duration and ends with the question about their materiality and thereby inherent constitution. I am using their mechanisms as conceptual framework in a rather metaphorical way to reflect about the passing of time. The shift from stillness to the moving image is based on my interest in the threshold of something that is in constant movement, and thereby articulates the theme of presence, absence and disappearance. In addition to that, the confrontation of the analog photographic image and the digital moving image evokes as mentioned above the question of materiality and thus its character of indexicality. My essay Black Box written in the second trimester explores what is being transformed or "lost" in the analog digital conversion. For the thesis I would like to key into this point and investigate the construction and dissolution of the image itself.

Intro

(words)

The core mechanism of the photographic image captures a trace out of the real, due to the engraving light on a photosensible surface. The connection between the depicted object and the film is hidden inside the technical camera, furthermore the instant of capturing inevitably falls in the past. Then the image finds itself in a state of waiting to become, waiting to get unveiled, meanwhile its presence lies at the border of the visible. This is the very basic of the latent image in photography. A topic that always exerted a special kind of fascination on me. (why?/ former work?) The photographic image is captured in an instant of time or in the case of a long time exposure contains a certain duration of time. In both ways, delayed or not, the imprint is frozen on the film all at once. The moment is recorded and now can be saved and archived. This act inevitably evokes the link to our memory, where all the nostalgic attachement to the medium might come from. A promise to somehow stop and rewind in time. The video image also contains, although in a completely different way, the fuction of stop and rewind. In this sense another new technology about 150 years after the advent of photography, which seems to simulate an interference with the passing of time. (I will deepen that point later in the essay while having a closer look on the affect of new technologies and their promises in the 19th century compared to the turn of the last century and our contemporary situation. Jonathan Crary/ Mulvey and the Uncanny) For now I briefly want to come back to the basic of the electronic image and its relation to our memory...

Project description and aims

250 words
(copy and paste from project proposal TM04)

• I will record night-shots using a digital camera to explore how low-light zones in an image can be rendered and received. The presentation will take the form of a multi-screen installation using projections within a darkened room. Each screen will be big enough to give the viewer the impression of being surrounded by the images. The reduced visibility in the night-shots necessitates the concentrated gaze of the viewer. The seeking gaze encounters through the temporal moving noise in the images underexposure the revealed object lying behind. One by one, filmed using a fixed frame, urban constructions followed by views of the harbour will lead up to a vast scene of the dark sea. Given that the subject matter of the work is the act of seeing itself, and thereby the constructed image, the scenes presented show archetypes that the viewer can use as an anchor point before the image dissolves back into the dark.
• In juxtaposition to these outside views will be projections of portraits. For this second part of the graduation project, I will create a sequence of photographic portraits recorded using an additional counter zoom. Here a digital stills camera moves backwards while zooming in and vice versa. Afterwards a looped sequence presents one image after the other with an interpolation between each one to ensure the illusion of continuous movement. I use this effect with a black background to focus only on the alteration of the faces. This modification of perspective creates an illusive movement, barely recognizable. Both the outside views and the accompanying portraits stand at the threshold between presence and absence. They present a constant becoming and fading at the limits of perception.
  
• The research I began in the second trimester is what I want to deepen for the graduation project. In that trimester my field of interest lay in a comparison of photography and video, from stillness towards the moving image, shifting from analog to digital. The construction of the image itself was looked at in a rather metaphorical way and expressed some philosophical and poetic aspects of its media specificity. In this final year I will investigate technical aspects of the digital moving image during the shooting, the postproduction and the final presentation. I will also reflect on the form of the video installation, the role of the observer and read some theory of cinema.
  

Past work and contextualisation

1000 words
(copy and paste from project proposal TM04)

• Relation to previous practice
• Self directed research essay

For a better understanding of how I got to this point, it is useful to look back at the origin of my investigations with photography and its time-based image. Several interests and points of research have built a background that serves as constant reference that flows into the concrete creation of a new work. For example, my current research on the construction of the image and the behaviour of the medium can be found in previous photographic works, which was once again activated by a curiosity in the digital moving image, which seemed to me to be the counterpart of the stillness in analogue photography. Furthermore, my exploration of the gaze in the portrait works treats, with its subtle movement, the idea of presence and absence that constitutes the whole construction of the time-based image and links to my previous work Black Light, 2010. The theme of the night always allowed me to talk about the process, the latent image and to reveal the unseen. To sum up, my initial period of research into the theme of disappearance in photography together with the theme of the „nocturne“ from the romantics, links to my current interest in the subject of the limits of perception.

Continuation and contextualisation

1000 words
(copy and paste from project proposal TM04)
The crucial unique instant while triggering the photograph turned into duration while using long exposures, which I used a lot in my previous works. Now, through thinking about the construction of the digital moving image time again plays an important role and presents the idea that the image as such is never present as a whole (Videophilosophie, Maurizio Lazzarato). This intriguing insight links to the role of the observer, her perception and the question of where the actual image is created, and what it means if it never exists all at once? These reflections increased my curiosity in the origin of the image, which can be understood as the foundation that drives me in my current research. I am heading towards the construction and dissolution of the image, which moves between materiality and pure signal, between duration and instant; searching for the missing link and the space and time in between, at the threshold of abstraction.
Using a background in photography, I am exploring the electronic moving image towards the presentation of work in a video installation.

• Relation to larger context
  

Genesis of current project

1000 words

Current project and contextualisation

2000 words

Presentation

1000 words
(copy and paste from project proposal TM04)

• In the final presentation the spectator will find herself in a delimited space surrounded by large, hung projection screens. Perception lies at the center of my investigation and this will be challenged by an initially slight disorientation due to the darkness of the room, where the eye has to adapt to the low light condition. The night shots will be projected onto the screens, but instead of being a blinding light the dominant part will be the dark zones of the image. Because of the slight underexposure of the video there will be temporal moving noise created by the flickering of pixels, which provokes a vibration in the shadows. The aim is a composition of different low light areas, resulting in more or less abstract images.
  
• Next to these outside scenes there will be vertical projections of portraits, evoking the theme of the gaze back to the beholder, another line of research that I have started in the second trimester mentioned above. I was influenced by the topic of the gaze through my research into cinema theory, psychoanalysis and the uncanny. Furthermore, my interest in perception leads to the role of the observer. Her implication while looking at an artwork become important, especially when considering Henri Bergson's idea that the image is an artificial product of mind. The filmed portraits will all be recorded with an additional counter zoom, creating a vertigo effect. The induced changing of perspective provokes a subtle movement. The portraits gaze back at the audience, and the slight deformation of the faces leave the spectator with an uncertainty about who is the one that is shifting. The current tentative title Oscillating Shadows speaks to the night-shots as well as to the portraits, while referring to the threshold of stillness and barely recognizable movement explored in both pieces.
  
• The created environment of the multi-screen installation challenges the viewer's perception. The viewer finds herself in a transitory moment; her glance simultaneously seeking orientation through the revealed image, she shifts between a perceived outside and her own inner world. I would like to create a psychological space that is situated between fascination and repulsion. On the one hand, the blackness and vibrations in the dark zones attract like a light, on the other hand, the observer might have an anticipation linked to the idea of disappearance and loss. The feeling of an undefined menace could come up, like in Kafka's universe with its obscure fear of getting lost. My attention is to evoke through the installation an experience situated between a nervous, anxious feeling and pure contemplation.
  

Conclusion

500 words

Bibliography

• Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time
• Kaja Silverman, The Threshold of the Visible World
• Laura Mulvey, Death 24 Times a Second
• Maurizio Lazzarato, Videophilosophy
• Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer
• Marcel Finke/ Mark A. Halawa (eds), Materialität und Bildlichkeit