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. The false promise that the technological image evokes then leads to the topic of the uncanny, a subject that will apear as common theme through the whole working process.

Intro

(500 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...

Chapter one

Project proposal TM04: Oscillating Shadows

• At that state my aim is to built a visual work based on the just yet described interest for the so called time-based "moving" image.

I will record still images in long exposures, a series in exactly the same frame with the same settings, only the moment of capturing differs from one to the other. The recorded images will then be displayed in a sequence at 24 frames per second played back in a loop. This animated sequence produces a vibration through the temporal moving grain of each image. The representation depicts a constant movement and evokes thereby a paradox feeling while looking at a photograph.

• Now the question arises why should there be a simulation of movement, why the still image has to be animated.

At this point I want to introduce where that intention to work towards the moving image comes from, according to an initial reference that inspired my research. The philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato investigates in his book Videophilosophy the construction of the digital image and the notion of time and space. What does it mean when the image is in constant construction and never present as a whole and how is the spectator involved in the process? In the chapter Video, Flows and Real Time, Lazzarato discuss the movement of the light. He argues that video captures the pure vibration of light, therefore it is constantly moving, not like the immobile single frame in analog cinema, which moves through its mechanical alignment. He continues by referring to Henri Bergson who understands the image as an artificial product of the mind.(p…)
Lazzarato compares the light in the analog and digital, based on the idea of Henri Bergson that the time-based model should be considered superior to the optical model. Lazzarato continues by saying that the general conception is based on a definition of the vision as optical perception, which confronts the world with the image, but the complexity of the image production cannot be reduced to this optical model. A reduction of the simulation technology like video only to the process of recording would imply a reduction of the human perception to automatic recognition. The optical image links to the reality, literally in the corn of the film or in the magnetic particles of the electromagnetic tape. During the processing of the light the machine reveals what exist already before. According to Emond Couchot the "informational machine" breaks with that optical representation. The synthetic image does not reveal an optical mark anymore, but a logical mathematical model that is no more based on phenomenological aspects of the real. The new image indicates the real not through inscription of the light, but through interpretation of the real. 
For Bergson in the center of the construction of the image lies the activity of the memory and the intellectual work. Referred to him the impact of the light in our brain provokes not a single image but an infinite amount of images and it needs the intervention of the memory to compose these millions of vibrations. That is what he calls "intellectual work" and only through that we see and perceive. Digital technologies imitate according to Lazzarato, what Bergson calls "the work of the intellect". They are able to imitate the construction of images that do not yet exist.(p….) This text was the starting point for my interest in the digital moving image. The concept that it is "never present as a whole" and depicts only fragments of the ensemble stands on the complete opposite to the analog still photography. With this juxtaposition I now want to investigate at their intersection the construction and dissolution of an image. The idea of becoming and fading of the image intrigues me since I work with photography.(why? former work?)

• Coming back to the temporal moving grain mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, I want to point out several reasons for my intention to animate a still image and why I aspire a buzzing oscillation in the image.

First, the spatial and temporal shift of materiality (the grain that constitutes the analog image) leads to the fundamental question of presence and absence of the perceived/represented image. In analog photography a recorded moment in time leaves a trace on the photosensible surface, this act inevitably refers to a presence that connects to the film and persists somehow in the grain. However this can also be seen as one of the intriguing but ambivalent promises of photography. Another paradox illusion is that its stillness can be seen equivalent to frozen time. Therefore photography seems to deny the passing of time and thereby the becoming. At this point I want to come back to Henri Bergson who sees perception and image in opposite to term(Begriff) and intellect. He argues that the intellect denies time, it is based on a denial of the becoming and establishes a chronological temporality. The intellect only understands change and movement as sequence of immobilities. (Lazzarato p.8)…

• On the other hand the digital moving image refers directly to the passing of time. The simulated moving still image finds itself in between.

It contains the concept of the instant as well as the concept of duration, which are here represented in two ways. Each of my photographs in the image sequence is a long time exposure (about 10minutes), there are layers of light and an accumulation of time captured. With the playback at 24 frames per second there is an interference of the instant of the display and the duration of the record. The presentation as a continuous moving image evokes as if the spectator would look at a filmed sequence, what refers directly as mentioned above to the passing of time. In the animated photographs the chronological temporality seems to be interrupted....

Chapter two

Project proposal TM05

Chapter three

Final graduation project

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

Images

01) 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.
  

02) 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.

3) 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
  

4)Genesis of current project/ 1000 words

5)Current project and contextualisation/ 2000 words

6) 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.
  

07) Conclusion/ 500 words