#vart3503

[3490148]

Project, Process, Practice

The semester began with quite a broad and varied invitation to the idea of working with site, like a large storm cloud of inspirational vapor.

As a class we watched it solidify, and were rained on together, but no two students were struck by the same drop.

I found my site; a small pocket, which collected the droplets, and formed a pool, a lake, and finally spilled over into a stream.

At times, connecting with other rivers, or focused by obstacles it became a rapid; turbulent and unpredictable.

But it always took the path of least resistance as it snaked and forked, creating smaller creeks and offshoots; always of the same water.

Finally, it widened and slowed to form a broad delta, joining the larger ocean of other students work, only - I hope - to evaporate and rain once again.

Beyond the three individual projects and their particular features I wanted to close this journal by thinking about the broader ideas and processes I developed during the semester, and thinking about where I might go from here.

What are the core lessons I will take away from this unit?

What can I carry over to other projects (big and small) in future.

What are the transpose-able techniques?

Is there a fundamental idea here which I could carry over into an honors, masters, or PhD level project?

Ontology Ontology!

One of my key recurring themes is that of arbitrary divisions or distinctions; particularly when relating to how to clearly define objects and concepts. I’ve written a lot about these ideas but essentially the problem is how to understand the division between one thing and another, when there must be a separation for them to exist, but they only exist in relation, which is a kind of connection.

I understand these problems aren’t mine - I come to them, no more or less than I come to the rest of the world. But my intuition will only take me so far - to paraphrase Robert Irwin, you could go off and invent art all by yourself, but would there be a point? Art is relational, so to not engage with a greater history and culture, you only limit its power. I’d like to continue looking deeper into the history of the problems I hope to engage with.

Division (Ancient Greek Philosophy)

Also called dialectic, a method of definition employed by Plato, especially in his later dialogues. It consists of a complete and exact division of a genus into a series of subgenera or species. The classification corresponds to a Form in nature and was compared to dissection according to the joints. Plato used it in an attempt to answer the problem of the one and the many. As an exploration of the relation between genus and species, the method contributed to the formation of Aristotle’s logic.

- Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy

In this project the ‘arbitrary’ problem appeared in the form of the edges of photos and audio. But rather than working purely through concept like I may have with other projects, developing a physical product to illustrate the idea, because of the bind to site in this unit I had an opportunity to think through something.

There was a real intersection of process and material, and given I’m interested in this type of binary-unity it makes sense to work in this way. That is, taking a somewhat grounded subject to work with (site), and then pulling at it’s loose threads: what is the nature of this thing?

I don’t have a great interest in pure philosophy - or to put it another way - if philosophy is inherently bound to language, if the love of wisdom can only be expressed in language, then I have no interest in restricting language to spoken or written text. If symbolic systems can exist in material and form, then surely the love of wisdom can be expressed through them also.

Repetition and Generation.

One method I tend to return to a lot is that of repetition, where any observable aspect of a subject can be duplicated. The result can be illuminating for a number of reasons:

The first may come from the inability to successfully duplicate the original. The missing information could be seen as either a degradation, or an evolution. Difference is then created as each new copy highlights the separation from one to another: pluralising the singular.

Through a feedback loop, repetition can destroy what is different about each copy and amplify their similarities working to distill the fundamental essence of the thing. This is a way of singularising the plural.

Repetition can also create new objects, by creating patterns across the repetitious field that can not exist as a singularity. Patterns as new subjects can then also be repeated, evolving, degrading, and distilling.

This might also be achieved in a number of ways, many of which I used in various combinations during the course of the project.

Blended Repetition - where the loop points are hidden to create seamless loops and question the ‘limitation’ of ‘limits’

Agitated Repetition - where the seams are highlighted to make a point of the join, in turn creating new objects and patterns.

Rigid Repetition - where the loop is simply repeated so it can be remembered and then importantly, ignored - so new information can be created within it as a context.

Aleatoric Repetition - where the repetition is disguised through further fragmentation and randomisation - becoming unconsciously familiar.

The original recording may also have repetition introduced into it on multiple scales...

Scale and Time

Another dimension of the singular-plural problem is time, which could be thought of as the simultaneousness of other dimensions. Time is closely bound to memory, but rather than thinking through duration, it might be considered the extent to, or reach of thought: how complex an idea can be at once.

Repetition can paradoxically bring objects and subjects to a standstill, or cause them to move. [How does it do this? {Graeve/Satie}] Animation of an object is life giving, it becomes flexible, it can evolve. Repetition forcing an object to stand still can allow it to function as a measure or guide for other objects.

Repetition can also help transpose objects from one scale into another, making them sensible to different types of thought. This of course could be a success or failure, but similarly to the repetition described above, degradation and evolution have their benefits.

Systems,  Process, and Methodology.

I’m trying to stand back from my work this semester and summarise it, but I can’t get outside the project to do so. There doesn’t seem to be an objective position from which to view it.

At the start of semester when introduced to the subject of sonic and spatial environments we were invited to consider all the ways we could understand it. [methodology]

I chose a site, documented it in a number of ways, and then when reviewing the documentation noticed heavy bias, which I decided to engage with as fundamentally environmental.

That is to say, there is no environment separate from the way we perceive it, and as that perception is inherently biased - the bias itself is an element in that environment.

When trying to make work about this environmental-bias I fell back on a set of ideas about how to deal with sets of information. [methodology]

But while working, with my focus so firmly rooted in the the idea of environment and documentation, I hadn’t begun to consider my methodological bias.

[A philosophical method is a] combination of rules, assumptions, procedures, and examples determining the scope and limits of a subject and establishing acceptable ways of working within those limits to achieve truth.

- Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy

I doubt this is something I can get away from, but I think it’s going to become more important to be conscious of how I work, and why I work that way.

When presented with what should be an open task, I feel I’ve become likely to systematise the process; break it down, divide tasks where possible...

I felt, like this was a good thing: I’d developed a set of conceptual strategies, meaning they aren’t bound to a medium, so I could hopefully engage with any subject.

My aim with this last journal entry was to clearly explain my methods, separate from the subject, to show what I had learned. But what I found was a much harder set of questions to answer:

If arts function is to destroy assumption, why do I think having a preset methodology is a good thing?

Is my methodology systematic, and does it produce it’s own bias?

What is the difference between a system and a process?

I obviously don’t have the time or space to begin answering these questions here, but in preparing for longer-term projects (honours, masters, phd) I think it’s important I consider this kind of thing.

My fear was that my work had, or would become subservient to methodological systems, producing their own bias, and essentially working against my project.

But if I shift my focus from system to process, I relinquish the burden of having had to produce any kind of final outcome.

Where from here?

On this idea of process and system, I’d like to look at more theory that deals with this verb-like interpretation of truth, meaning, art and so on, including: Alffred North Whitehead, Isabelle Stegers, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Deleuze.

I’d like to look at more art theory, as opposed to philosophy to help connect my work and thinking through materials and expanding the concept of language. I feel I need a better foundation in particular movements and traditions in art such as Conceptual art, and formalism, so I hope to look more at Sol Lewitt’s Sentences/Paragraphs on Conceptual Art and Richard Serra’s Verbs.

Also, practically speaking, I feel a strong connection between my understanding of sound, and my approach to working with it as a medium, and this process philosophy. But as a way of maintaining my conceptual flexibility, including being able to work in mediums other than sound I’d like to look at more programming, specifically node-based programming including more Max/MSP, and Arduino work, but also possibly similar Processing/Python/Raspberry Pi, and more 3D printing work with Rhino and Grasshopper.

On this note I might add Manuel DeLanda, for his connection to Deleuze, and his interest in programming as a way of understanding process. Possibly Alain Badiou, for his interest in pure mathematics as a source of inspiration for philosophy. And Paul Fayerabend’s Against Method as a way of understanding what method is, and when and how it may be appropriate to question it.

Whether all of these avenues are explored or worth exploring, whether each question is pursued, or answered, is of course impossible to say in advance. The interest or point is that they only function in situ, in flux, as processes.

[3490148]

Perspectivism and Uncertainty

While presenting my work for the semester Michael asked me a question about how much the site I had started with really informed the work I did. If my project had become about documentation itself, how important was Merri Creek or the Koonda Lat bridge to the project. Or more seriously, had I really engaged with the site - in a way encouraged by, and considered important to the unit.

I found it quite difficult to answer on the spot, because I always feel like I’ve been caught off guard in moments like this, and gave a fairly back-footed answer. My reasoning simply being that the lens through which we view an image is inseparable from from it.

So I might begin by expanding on this answer slightly, then trying to let my guard down some what, and deal with the accusation I may have neglected my original chosen site, and consider ways I could reintroduce it, or let it further inform the resolution of this project of documentation.

The recognition of the Anthropocene is an important step toward acknowledging the futility of trying to perceive a world free from human contact. But to go one step further, I hope it becomes a key to recognising the lack of boundary between the observer and observed. This human-touched-world doesn’t remain ‘out there’ for us to observe, the Anthropocene begins with us and extends out into the world, simultaneously creating it and us.

Perspectivism

From Colleen Boyle’s PhD: “Philosopher of science, Ronald Giere, cuts a middle road between these waring factions and introduces the concept of perspectivism as a way of recognising that “scientific claims may be in part socially constructed” and that “the practice of science itself supports a perspectival rather than objectivist understanding of scientific realism.”

The ‘ism’ affixed to perspective by Giere denotes an ideology. That is a collection of beliefs and ideas held as true. Perspective, as Boyle writes is often a dirty word in the context of science, whose aim is omnipotence, and because of the shame attached it is often mis-recognised, or not seen at all.

Arts job, is then to ‘make strange’, to undo the cloaking of ideology.

No one could see the colour blue until modern times:

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2

A quick example of one aspect... based on the work of one scholar in particular, William Gladstone, a few articles have blossomed recently exploring the idea that people could not see the colour blue until recently. The story goes that in almost all civilizations and cultures, the first colours to be given names are always black and white, followed by red, then green and yellow more or less interchangeably and then almost always lastly, blue.

Various experiments have been performed that essentially demonstrate that the way we see the world greatly depends on the way we are taught to. If I try to address a site, but all I really see, hear, touch, ect. is what I’ve been taught to I create a powerful feedback loop with the past and sense nothing new.

Geochemistry & Other Planetary Perspectives

by Ursula Biemann

from Art In The Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environents and Epistemologies.

Ursula Biemann is Swiss artist, writer, and video essayist. In this piece she explains some of the research and background on her films Egyptian Chemistry and Deep Weather.

“al-khemia, the contemporary Arabic term for ‘chemistry,’ is based on the ancient word for the place we call Egypt; it means ‘the Black Land’” (p118)

In the essay she mentions being influenced by the metaphysics of Bruno Latour and Graham Harman, and the quantum physics of Karen Barad. (p188)

Egyptian Chemistry does not directly address the power brokers behind Egypt’s uneasy move from the old hydraulic state model to a neoliberal market model of water management because this style of critique limits generative thinking by reproducing state narratives. (p120)

The consideration here of the methods and aesthetics of the final project are inspiring. The consideration of meta-languages in extending the conversation.

The methodology and aesthetic of Egyptian Chemistry sets out to unhinge patterns of thought rather than affirm them. (p121)

Here we see a recognition of the interference and influence of a way of understanding on the thing to be understood.

It elicits a shift from epistemological questions about how things are known toward an ontological inquiry regarding how reality is characterized as coming into existence. (p121)

Many of my projects seem to bend back toward an Ontology of sorts. It might be a good idea to familiarize myself with the fundamentals of Ontology and employ it’s tools while making my own work.

Drawing on quantum physics, I could no longer assume a pre-existing and static world whose observable features possessed a priori values that could readily be recorded and interpreted. (p121)

This is how I came to feel about the site I was documenting.

As Barad has convincingly argued in Meeting the Universe Halfway, it is the questions, choices, movements, equipment, and directed observations that generate a specific material reality which the artist-scientist co-produces, and of which she is a part. (p121)

This sounds like a fantastic book. This is exactly how I came to see the work I was making in relation to the site I had chosen.

According to Barad, practices of knowing and forms of being cannot be isolated from one another. [...] Barad’s account suggests that video recording does not represent but generates reality. (p122)

So the photograph of a site, can not be separated from the site.

The agency of image-making is not located within the assumed intentionality of the film maker who wants to represent a situation, but is found instead in a filmmaker’s process and her direct contribution to changing configurations of materials, politics, and knowledge. (p122)

This point about process greatly interests me because it is the active and verb-like part of the other dimensions mentioned. The becoming, the being.

Fieldwork is central to this ontological orientation [and] takes place in a series of present moments. There is something absurd about trying to locate and define the qualities of a particular place based on flowing water. (p122)

Of course I love this absurdity.

So this idea the site could even be abandoned doesn’t really hold in this way, as it remains a genus or source for later work, even if later works have evolved beyond superficial connection to that site.

Egyptian Chemistry is an expression of the disrupted and re-emerging material bonds that form non-verbal narrative configurations. I wanted the project to move the boundary inside, toward the innermost dimensions of a composite reality. (p.123)

This non-verbal note is also important, as the word language is often bound to its verbal aspect, but I think art (as a philosophical practice) has strong linguistic ties, but is not necessarily bound to text-language, yet still performs as and makes use of symbolic systems.

These components do not line up as a simple causal chain of reactions, as they constantly shift and create strange feedback loops - nor are they soley the result of specific economic policies. Each element interacts to create hybrid ecologies [...] (p.125)

While referring to specific water chemistries in Egypt, I still think there’s definitely something to the style of thinking around dealing with subjects with multiple dimensions that’s worth hanging onto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEnXtzBBCKo

The Humanities in Europe Interview Series - Dr. Ursula Biemann  

“Artists are like a kind of compost heap, where they work through a lot of things, and then bring it out again.“

Images Do Not Show: The Desire to See in the Anthropocene by Irmgard Emmelheinz

from Art In The Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environents and Epistemologies.

“The radical change in the conditions of visuality under the Anthropocene has brought about a new subject position, or point of view, announced by the trajectories of impressionism and cubism (anti-humanism), and subsequently between cubism and experimental film (post-humanism), and then from experimental film to digital media (a non-grounded form of vision).” (p.132)

This whole essay - and particularly things like referring to impressionism and cubism as ‘ani-human’ really struck me. Though admittedly a lot of it goes over my head I think there’s a lot here worth spending more time with.

“The proliferation of images [results in a] cancellation of vision.” (p.132)

Breaking up the word image by looking at it’s variants, and then treating those as meaning entirely different things is a greatly productive exercise.

“Cubism decomposed anthropomorphism through its break with Renaissance point of view.” [...] Renaissance perspective made the pictoral plane analogous to a window. [...] Moreover, with cubism, both duration and a perspectival multiplicity became embedded in the picture plane.” (p.132)

Michael Snow’s experimental film La Region centrale (1971)

“Snow explores the generic properties of the filmic apparatus by using it to intensify and diminish aspects of normal vision.” (p.133)

I look into Snow a bit later on and love what I find.

“To paraphrase Rosalind Krauss on minimalism, the film subverts the notion of a stable structure that could mirror the viewer’s own self, a self that is completely constituted prior to experience.” (p.133)

I feel that if I want to run down this path I need to spend more time with Kant.

“In an era of ubiquitous, synthetic digital images dissociated from human vision and directly tied to power and capital, when images and aesthetic experience have been turned into cognition and thus into empty sensations or tautological truths about reality, the image of the Anthropocene is still to come.” (p.138)

She uses the word tautological a few times in this essay, often derisively to suggest an unproductive effect - something that self references and goes no-where. But I used the word in a positive sense to describe my own photos, which are tautologically described as photos, even though they stretch the definition. Even Snow’s films can perform the same function: a film is a film if and when it is a film.

In short, images of the Anthropocene are missing; thus, it is first necessary to transcend our incapacity to imagine an alternative or something better by drawing a distinction between images and imagery, or pictures.” (p.138)

Perhaps the problem is this idea that there can be an ‘other’. What if everything that could be simply was, and it becomes the function of art to simply reveal its virtuality? Like Snow’s films that evoke in the viewer a feeling of: “I didn’t know a film could do that”.

“Although it is relayed by the optic nerve, the picture does not make an image.[24] In order to make images, it is necessary to make vision assassinate perception; to ground vision, and then to perform (as an artistic activity) and think vision as a critical activity. [25]” (p.138)

“[O]nly cinema is capable of delivering images as opposed to imagery, conveying not a subject but the supposition of the subject and thus substance.” (p.138)

“Alterity is absolutely necessary for the image, as the image is an intensification of precense; this is why it is able to hold out against all experiences of vision.” (p.138)

This goes back to what I was saying at the beginning - is interesting but will take a while to unpack.

Michael Snow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYr_SvIKKuI

I loved this short section from La Region centrale and the short I saw from Back and Forth. Both made me smile as soon as they started. As I mentioned earlier, Snow’s films gave me that wonderful feeling ‘I didn’t know a film could do that’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nir7aNK5794

The aim is “to bring out the content that’s latent in these techniques, so they don’t disappear in their use.”

I love this way of describing the process of art without using the word ‘reveal’.

He goes on to give panning as an example, where it might be used to follow an action “you’re not supposed to think about panning, you’re supposed to follow the action”. To “bring out the content that’s latent in zooms and pans”

I feel this is exactly what I was trying to get at with my own work this semester. If I took a photo, there was no doubt a lot that had gone into it that I might not recognise. My decision to document the site in a particular way is informed simultaneously by the site and ideologically by the way I had been taught to see the site before I even got there.

By focusing so hard on these preconceptions, or lenses I hoped to be able to reveal something about the site unable to be seen before. So, in long answer to this question of whether I had abandoned the site itself in favor of a project about perception, I’d still argue that you can not have one without the other...

[Image, essentially means ‘likeness’, similar to analogous]

That by not considering documentation, and representation, you’re more likely to make work that creates an image of the lens instead of one using it.

Left Hand Shake

While I stand by my reasoning above, I accept a certain amount of my responsibility to deal with a particular site, was neglected in favor of a personal project, and I wonder how the project might have turned out differently if I had chosen other tines in the path.

Like Irmgard Emmelheinz‘s complication of words like ‘image’ and ‘vision’ I’d like to consider ways this question of whether I addressed the site I had chosen or not could be resolved by thinking about things like the difference between ‘place’, ‘site’, ‘location’, and so on.

A great inspiration to me, Robert Irwin, is in many ways the father of this ‘response to site’ or ‘site specific’ approach. Below, his work at San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla, was simply three square holes cut into the glass of the gallery’s windows, allowing the viewer to see directly into the bay.

Of course, Irwin’s long-term interest is in perception, light, phenomenology, and so on. He isn’t interested in glass, or the bay as such, but what he does is allows the space - through sheer duration of exposure, sometimes weeks spent there all day, every day - without making any plans or assumptions  to reveal itself. In the same way Snow wanted to reveal the latent qualities of film, Irwin seems to want to reveal the latent qualities of a particular space.

Irwin intends to bring no intention. He has taste, and possibly a few key technologies or materials, but with each new place, the aim is to merely tease out what is already there to be found. To do the least amount possible, for the biggest effect.

Matthew Barney on the other hand seeks out and uses locations for their characteristics as connected to other sites, objects, subjects, mediums ect. When planning the Cremaster Cycle Barney had initially intended to create a piece of ‘land art’ but was so inspired by the location, that features of the landscape, as well as local histories, and his own connections to the place generated a much deeper and more ambitious project than the one he intended.

The Guggenheim gallery seen below was used to film and display the work created. The Order a short at the centre of the Cycle was deigned for the space, the location is a character in the film and the narrative performed within it, particular to it.

In future I’d like to draw on both these approaches where they feel appropriate, and like Irwin, perhaps simply spend more time with any site I hope to work with not documenting it, but just looking, listening, feeling...

Considering my own work, artists I’ve researched, and other students responces in class, I think I have a clearer idea of how to tackle questions like this. First and foremost addressing the language used:

Location to mean the geographic area, it’s location on the globe, its physical relation to other locations, and it’s contemporary configuration. Location is externally referential.

Site, would be a combination of this greater geography, and physical elements within it. A location does not refer to a tree, but where a tree is. A site on the other hand can contain a tree.

Place, would be more psychological/cultural. A site may contain objects, but not subjects, it may contain structures, but a place is where events happened. Place is durational.

Environment, would then be the same contents found in location, site, and place, but considered conditionally. Environments produce, and are produced. They don’t take place in time, like place does, they are time, they are the time of site and place.

I could go on, but of course this question of how far I strayed from location, site, place, or environment becomes far more complex. I’m assuming the question was not meant to be answered, so much as provoke; and it has.

[3490148]

Site as Prism

Documentation and Refraction

From my seven excursions to the Koonda Lat bridge and surrounding Merri Creek I generated three main bands of inquiry and reflection. All three deal in some way deal with the problem of documentation as inherent limitation, but what I also found was that a single site, put through various processes and mediums will generate a broad and detailed spectrum of new ideas and experiences not found in the original site.

The Arbitrary Limits of Documentation

If the medium is the message, the logical extension of documenting a site would be to do to the documents what I did to the site; to reveal the inherent limitation in any documentation. Counter to R. Murray Schafer‘s idea that the overall impression of a site can be more broadly captured in image than sound.

My aim was slow looking down to the speed of sound, by making photos that can’t be seen in a single glance. For ironic punctuation, I used full 360 degree panoramic shots; which we might intuitively say - horizontally cover a wide range of the subject, but are vertically are limited. But I would argue just the opposite: the pictures limited in both dimensions.

{(Universal)[Order]} {(Particular)[Chaos]}

A lot of the recordings I made were uneventful; the soundscape has an equal or flat distribution. But in short loops, traffic drone, the wind, birds, the bubbling creek became familiar; events were created. In the same way Koonda Lat bridge became ‘the bridge’ as opposed to ‘a bridge’ these details became particular once the container was recognised.

We stop hearing traffic, once we hear a car.

If you simply hear one sound looped twice, it doesn’t sound twice as long. What is the least amount of information (shortest audio recording, smallest crop of an image…) that can be used to create the effect of a longer duration? Is it possible to find 10 seconds within 5 seconds?

Granular Nodes and Recursive Vectors

Beyond simply illustrating the /cut/ as a final result, I wanted a way to demonstrate the process of cutting; to reveal the recursive nature of working with documentation. Both the audio and photos were manipulated in the same way: by repeating an ever-smaller section of the whole.

By scanning the documented site with a narrow, yet flexible frame, a range of temporary and uncertain objects also emerge. And as these shifting limits intersect with one another, the result is a paradoxical speeding up and slowing down of the experience.

[3490148]

Granular Nodes and Recursive Vectors

In mathematics, and more specifically in graph theory, a vertex (plural vertices) or node is the fundamental unit of which graphs are formed. They have no depth, width, height ect.

In computer science, a vector might be described as a one-dimensional array. It could also be described as a trajectory, a line or arc with no property of width or thickness, simply it’s start, end, and curve coordinates.

This extension of the project came from two earlier experiments. The first was the kind of repetition in photos you can see below.

Which then transformed into this:

It became another way of illustrating the arbitrary limits of a crop, and also speaks to the documents becoming environments themselves which might be recursively documented. Crop the crop.

While this was certainly a tedious process, it did afford me some lovely accidents: while scrolling horizontally across the file I noticed a stereoscopic illusion, where each frame would both blend and separate from its neighbors. I wanted to animate this scrolling and have control over it’s speed as well as the effect of the frames narrowing and then oping up.

A tried writing a Max patch to automate this but probably spent too much time on it considering how far I got before hitting dead ends. Maybe I was just going about it in a clumsy way, but the frame rates would drop too far for the effect to really work, and I was running out of time.

So, I drew automation into Adobe Premiere and used a few short clips to kind of fudge the results a little. My biggest problem with this is not how slow the process is, but it’s inflexibility. Changes in the animation are broad and repetetive - where programming would have brought variation and subtlety. This is something I’d still like to explore later - as I’m quite happy with the results I got!

Grain Melodies

The music used in this piece was created using similar methods to the visuals, with links also to some of the ‘nothing’ soundscapes in earlier journal entries.

Field recordings made around the site as part of the documentation were then scanned using a very short looping window. The result is a ‘pitching’ of what would otherwise be heard as unpitched sound. The result is both a kind of speeding up and slowing down of the space captured in the recording.

The observer becomes trapped in a nearing-still moment within the longer sound scape - as though you were crossing the bridge, but at the far end was a teleporter that returned you to the beginning only to cross the bridge again.

An audible eternal return.

This is something I mentioned I’d been working on a few weeks ago, and was noted by others in our group feedback session. Also noted was my use of quad speaker layouts to play this audio back. As sound has two main dimensions; frequency and amplitude, when I spaced two stereo versions of the same sequence across four speakers as the samples were scanned they created their own stability in the frequency domain by looping faster than they traveled through the sample. But also, more extremely in the amplitude domain where sounds become canceled out to silence as each speaker lines up with the others.

The psycho-acoustic effects generated by the experiments were similarly surprising to the visual ones generated by the animation. Unfortunately they aren’t as easy to translate to web-based media.

Shifting Windows

Another extension of the pieces I’ve been working on, that I’d like to try in future - and will definitely require programming as there is no way I have the patience to edit this by hand - is using this process of shifting the loop points on a video while it’s playing.

The key to the effect being, that the loop points change while the video is in play, so it’s only on a successive repeat that the change takes place. Each loop would also only be nudged forward by one frame, so you feel the passing of time, but you can’t see it passing.

All of this, always, relates for me back to Nietzsche’s Eternal Return, and similar theories on time that posit an ever-present.

I don't mind that a process is recognised, even in retrospect  - maybe someone not noticing it at first, but then figuring out "oh i must have been looking at that the whole time"  - because at that moment, they aren't looking at "nature" - they're looking at a cropped photo, which is entirely the point.

Lastly, as I mentioned earlier regarding the short ‘granular’ loops creating new objects within, and outside the boundaries of the loop start and end points, there may be groundwork and language within Gestalt psychology for understanding and explainging the way objects emerge.

I recently submitted a piece to The Auricle where I explored very similar themes surrounding Pierre Schaeffer’s Sonorous Object, where I concluded that for any object to emerge in sound there must be a decisive limitation on the part of the listener. A cropping so to speak.

I see these combined subjects and approaches as being fundamental to my ongoing core practice and methodology, but there is no where the time or space to explore them in all their details here and now.

I might also make special mention of Curtis Roads here, who was another potential artist to present, as his ideas about timescales and the granulation of sound continue to inspire and inform work I do in the domain.

Curtis Roads (born May 9, 1951 in Cleveland, Ohio[1]) is a composer, author and computer programmer. He composes electronic and electroacoustic music, specializing in granular and pulsar synthesis.

[3490148]

The Arbitrary Limits of Documentation

I spent more time with the documentation almost as a new site to be explored. When what I did on site was limit the site - when what documentation equals is a kind of selection, limitation, cropping...

The logical extension of this in the studio would be to do to the documents what I did to the site.

You end up with a kind of documentary tautology: a photo of the creek is a photo of the creek if and when it is a photo of the creek.

We often use words such as normal or standard to refer to combinations of height and width in printed photos, but these could easily be confused for one another. And may also be nudged slightly without notice.

6x4, 6x3.9, 6x3.8... 5.9x4...

Fuck the golden ratio.

One of the main processes of the project came from taking photos, which is something I’m sure we all do more now than we used to, but because of that the act has become unconscious, which is reflected in the language we use to describe the act.

The readings suggested from R Murray Schaefer’s Tuning of the World make mention of this idea that a photo can supposedly capture the general idea of an environment, while many audio recordings would need to be made to give a similar sonic impression. Something I’m not convinced of.

The problem seems to be time. The idea might be that you can look at a photograph quickly, where as you can’t listen to a sound any quicker than it occurs.

To slow the looking down by making photos that can’t be seen in one glance.

Throughout this post I have inserted photos which I took at the site, but the unusual thing about them is of course their dimensions. Most of the photos are panoramic shots that complete the full 360 degree rotation possible at the location I stood.

Horizontally they cover a wide range of the subject, and intuitively, we might say that vertically, they are limited. But I would argue just the opposite...

The pictures should demonstrate that they are limited in both dimensions.

I also appreciate the fact these pictures, don’t translate well on screen, and this is precisely the problem I have with R. Murray Schafer’s idea about an image being able to capture a space.

As screens are designed to be viewed in a single glance. The visual has been designed for the eye, not the other way around.

In order to properly enact this experiment of ‘slowing down looking’ I would need to create an image too large, or too awkwardly shaped to be viewed in a single glance. 

To do this I plan on printing the photos I have taken on long strips of paper, they may be taped together in loops, held by hand, suspended, or hung on walls in ways that make them impossible to grasp in a single gaze.

I particularly like the hand held aspect as it forces the viewer to engage with the highly physical act of viewing, where walking around an object becomes quite unconscious, the hands are always in front of the eyes.

Edit: Below are documentations of the printed photos discussed above.

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Universal Chaos vs Particular Order: Universal Order vs Particular Chaos

(Universal) [Order] (Particular) [Chaos]

To try and separate the projects in order to focus in on their specifics... this is the collage section of the project. Both sound and stills are subjected to similar processes, to better understand the process, or the collage, the constructed-ness of the work.

Playing with the idea of ‘nothing’ being captured when recording. While making field recordings around the area I ended up with a lot of audio where nothing remarkable happens. No ‘events’ as such.

But even the most bland and stable recording - maybe ambient traffic sounds, or a bubbling creek - once looped become familiar. The chaos of an ever changing soundscape [infinite duration] while listened to from within has an equal distribution of events. But when a sound is looped and repeated, certain elements begin to stand out above others. Of course we were always listening to the same thing - it was never chaotic - our perception was fragmented - granulised - randomised.

Water

In the same way the bridge I chose to investigate became ‘my bridge’ as opposed to ‘a bridge’ a particular car becomes not just listened to but listened for. With this familiarity comes the crossing of a boundary from one scale into another. The universal noise, or chaos of the traffic-scape disappears when a car is recognised. We move into the environment, rather than remaining outside it where it may be viewed as a single object.

As a way of exploring this binary, I experimented with memory, and what threshold of familiarity could create this effect. The idea being, what is the least amount of information (shortest audio recording, smallest crop of an image...) that can be used to create the effect of a longer duration.

If you simply hear one sound looped twice, it doesn’t sound twice as long. But can this information be re-arranged to disguise its repetition? Is it possible to find 10 seconds within 5 seconds?

Air

In order to play with this boundary of perception, or to understand when we shift from one mode into the other I want to make audio collages that use repeated sections chaotically to zoom in on the familiar - to hint at it constantly but avoid repeating the same section.

Systematically, how did I approach the problem? - I think this answer is a much longer term problem I’ll need to address in my practice. Though I’ll attempt a more abstract answer in the last week of this project.

This is also where I might add a short note one one of the potential artists for my presentation: Annea Lockwood.

An aural journey  from the source of the river, in the high peak area of the Adirondacks, downstream  to the Lower Bay and the Atlantic Ocean; Lockwood traces the course of the Hudson  through on-site recordings of its flow at 15 separate locations. Annea Lockwood  has recorded rivers in many countries to explore the special state of mind and  body which the sounds of moving water create when one listens intently to the  complex mesh of rhythms and pitches. The listener will find that each stretch  of the Hudson has its own sonic texture, formed by the terrain, varying according  to the weather, the season and downstream, the human environment whose sounds  are intimately woven into the river's sounds. 71 minutes 33 seconds.

http://www.lovely.com/titles/cd2081.html

Lockwood’s recordings might take a long form approach to the subject compared to mine, but this idea of stitching parts together to create a coherent image of the whole still plays out in much the same way.

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Advanced Play

Here I’m really trying to look at extensions of all the experiments I outlined in the last entry. That is, building on top of the documentation, conceptual development in our Inventory and Digging Deeper workshops, and my own research into artists.

Trying to hide my hand to a certain extent, using limited documentation to create unlimited work. This is quite a basic version using blended loops to disguise the start and end points.

And here simply layering the sound over itself - in a way to reveal what was happening in the last clip. Creating a kind of constant familiarity and distraction without looping.

In this version I use similar effects of simply doubling the same thing on top of itself, but rather than the even paced repetition of the audio loops - which would be very obvious and sound quite unnatural when reversed - I use doubled images. By sending one left and the other right, there is a sense of movement with no direction. I also love the distraction created here by each layer, where they eye can settle on a single element - perceived as stationary - before the illusion is disrupted.

Beyond simply repeating images, I wanted to create some work that would demonstrate the process of cropping, repeating ect. I used this simple technique of shaving just a couple of pixels off each iteration of the same image to demonstrate how arbitrary any crop can be.

While while working on this image I found that scrolling quickly from left to right also created strange optical illusions, so I tried writing a Max patch that would animate them, and give me a flexibility in how they move, but spent too much time getting nowhere with it.

I’ve decided for the purpose of this project, a short demonstration - animated by hand - would be enough to explain the idea. More on this later though.

It seemed fitting then to use this image as the cover for a piece where the same basic idea is applied to audio. Here I create a loop taken from one of the field recordings and make it so short it moves into a higher scale - perceived as pitch.

This piece is slightly different though, as I changed the loop size  - changing the perceived pitch - intuitively, rather than simply illustratively from 0-100.

I also found certain sections of the stereo bounce go silent as the frequencies cancel one another out. But I created a surround, 4 channel mix I would love to share, where the sounds the speakers play are more evenly distributed and interesting phasing effects are created instead of silence.

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Post-Documentation, Pre-Project

This is a selection of the free play (rearranging, cutting up, filtering…) I’ve had with the material I collected in the first half of semester (plus one extra visit made in week 7). From these experiments, and inspired by research into other artists - namely Colleen Boyle’s essays on photography and imagination - I feel a few core projects developing that I will focus in on during the next few weeks.

Trying out different methods of blocking and framing - to look at the shape, size and consistency of picture frames.

This framing idea also extending into a third dimension, where the white overlay is considered part of the frame. Think of the glass often placed on top of photos in frames. So rather than exploring the arbitrary ratio of height and width, this is playing with the arbitrary density of the lens.

Collage and mirroring in the water beneath the bridge.

Taking different elements from different site visits to suggest an accumulation of experiences of a single site that frame one another.

Probably my favorite of these style collages - unfortunately very little link to other work I’ve done.

These videos were some early experiments with using short samples to create the sensation of longer durations.

Physical modification of the space - inserting twigs into tree bark. What I found was that the tops of the twigs designated a zone around the tree establishing it as an environment in and of itself.

These were short loops of audio, with no clear events - just random ‘background’ noise - but while these sections appear to have no content as such, by looping them, or limiting them severely it highlights what is particular about them.

Also extending the theme of repetition, but trying to hide my hand to a certain extent. This picture contains many doubles of objects within it, which I later tried to use with sound.