Thoughts So Far 2

I’ve let the dust settle.  Following the trip to Sicily there was a lot to think about. Too many questions Elaine suggested. So while waiting to see how the analog photos turned out I read about nostalgia and the evils of persistent digital memory. I knew seeing the photographs would give me a clue in terms of direction to take.

And meanwhile I had a photo/story published in the online photo publication Pictory (www.pictorymag.com/new-york-city). I had a photo-story published in one of their previous features last year (on London) and, together with this New York one, it cemented my sense that photos can inspire a story, rather than the other way around (I’m talking in terms of my general photographic practice here, not as an absolute truth. Stories can certainly inspire photographs, and I’m sure stories inform my general photographic practice in some way, I’m simply reflecting on how I seem to work most of the time). Both of my published photographs were taken simply because I felt like it, I was walking the streets with my camera in hand and wanted to frame stuff and photograph it. The stories came later, something truthful but concocted in order to fit into the constraints of Pictory. I’m reminded of Elaine’s comments about constraints, their part in the creative process, and sometimes their defining part.

(I’d add here, too, that mistakes are an important part of the process. The multiple-exposed pinhole panorama technique would never have occurred to me had it not been for the fact that I didn’t know how to properly advance the film in the camera the first time I used it).

Moral of the story: It’s good to experiment.

NB: A big constraint was equipment, namely the excessive weight while traveling. It made me wish for a single zoom lens, but even when testing one out in London, together with the body the whole rig was HEAVY.  A smaller camera, like a Leica M, would have been much better, both to be less conspicuous as a photographer, and for my ailing back.  A spare $15,000  is all I need to replace a fraction of my kit.

So, anyway, this is what I said in my Autumn semester report:

After 6 months research my core questions are:

If photographs can be used to connect people and share stories, what kinds of relevant objects and experiences can I create to do this? The community is geographically dispersed and engage with new media technologies differently. Can it effectively be engaged? Do individuals in it even want to be engaged?
What part does nostalgia play in the construction of memories? What divergences exist between the villagers who emigrated and those who remained? How different are their respective mental ideas of what the village is now (viewed from up close, viewed from afar)? How will this inform my creative process? How can different photographic technologies express these ideas?

To what extent does my aim to create an original photographic work conflict with the aim of creating a collective interactive experience? Can these two aims be combined effectively?

Before I traveled I was thinking about presenting the work across platforms:

– a hand-crafted wooden box containing photos taken with a modern medium-format folding camera (a Voigtlander Bessa 667) printed on fine-art “photo rag” paper. The whole thing designed to be reminiscent of old-style photographic prints stored in a box. A family heirloom. An evocative object. (Evocative Objects)

– a set of digital trading cards, deployed as an iPhone app, downloadable from the app store, made from photographs taken with an iPhone. Am considering the possibility of making this interactive so that additional “trading cards” could be added by users. Using the trading card idea, both a marketing tool and information channel, applying it to a specific community, deploying it in a digital context.  Post-Optimal design. (Hertzian Tales)

– live video feeds via IP but transmitted on low-frequency VHF transmitters to older, analogue, televisions. Analog In, Digital Out (or maybe in this case, Digital IN, Analog Out)).

– a photobook (an iPad book).

– an exhibition…?

Having had time to reflect on everything I’m no longer sure about engaging with too many different platforms. Partly because there are technological constraints (for example, lack off widespread broadband use by community members, lack of mobile data penetration etc.) but also because, as an artist working principally On my own, it will be over-ambitious I think to produce quality work across all these platforms. I don’t believe I’ll have the resources or time and the thought of working on so many different things is somewhat overwhelming.

So I’ve been thinking about what I’m most interested in exploring.

I purchased an iPad recently. It’s been interesting to use. Its certainly not magical, and versus a desktop, its functionality is limited. But it has something most desktops don’t have i.e a touch screen interface. In Evocative Objects Susan Yee writes about her delight at touching objects within the Le Corbusier archive. How the act of touch lent the experience an intimacy, not just with the object, but with other who had touched the same objects in the past. The ability to hold something in our hands and touch it with our fingers creates a very personal relationship. The importance and penetration of multi-touch screens as an interface will undoubtedly continue grow in the future. Developing something on a device like this, despite the fact that its usage isn’t currently widespread, will be import research.

Further, in terms of non-linear storytelling, the device has the potential to break new ground. The best of the magazine and book applications I’ve seen however have only touched on this potential. They’re a fun way to read a magazine or a book, but they don’t really allow the user to create rhizomatic story paths through the content (the books I’m thinking of here are reference based, like The Elements book). It’s early days, and publishers and designers have only begun to experiment, but what I’ve seen so far hasn’t impressed hugely.

So my aim now is to focus on creating an application for iPad, based around a personal photographic journey, that explores the potential of the touch screen interface in relation to non-linear narrative and rhizomatic paths a user/reader/audience might take. I’ll spend the next 6 months working on a prototype, using existing photographs and sound. This will indicate the creative and technological way forward.

Meanwhile, here are the pinholes multiple exposure panoramas I did in Salaparuta, which embody so well my sense of the place, its importance in my life and yet its distant inaccessibility. Notes on this, and Reflective Nostalgia to follow…

Hmmm. Squashed. Interesting, yet unintentional, effect. Nice visual noise – possibly useful…

Here’s what they look like unsquashed (very small, but my word press theme can’t handle anything too wide. Click on them, you’ll be able to see them bigger):

Tags: consolidation, ipad, june 2010, non-linear narrative, pinhole, review, rhizome, Synthesis