The Histograms

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The Histograms @ PetaPixel

I'm really excited to see PetaPixel sharing the project with their vast audience. Thanks to them for providing a nice introduction to some of the aims of the project and encouraging readers to head on over.

The tumblr has been quiet for a bit while I finished graduating (harder than I wanted it to be) and moving to a new city (easier than it should have been). But now that things are mostly settled, I'm looking forward to putting more of my energy into this distribution project.

With that in mind, I'm planning on adding a few personal contributions in the next few weeks. I also know that some photographers are currently working on their own interpretations of the images and I will present them here as soon as they are ready. Lastly, I'll take a more direct role in asking specific individuals—artists, designers, economists, engineers, woodworkers—to consider participating, either by making new work or offering up suggestions for what to do with the images/data. 

Screen Capture taken from PetaPixel’s website

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The Histograms @ SPE National

Last week I was at the Society for Photographic Education's National Conference in San Francisco and made a little advertisement promoting the project. I knew I could make the cut lines suggest the curve of a histogram but I went for extra cheesiness by trying to make it look like a representation of the Golden Gate Bridge. Below are the results of this experiment taken over the course of the week:

Sherwin Rivera Tibayan. Cut photocopy advertisement, March 2012

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The Histograms @ Quipsologies

Really excited to find The Histograms project featured on such a great graphic design site like Quipsologies. Many thanks to the crew over there for helping get the word out!

Screen Capture taken from Quipsologies' website

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"San Francisco" Screen Capture

Sherwin Rivera Tibayan. Cut out card taped to monitor, Google Maps, 2012

I’ll be in San Francisco this week to give a presentation at the national conference of the Society for Photographic Education. I’m also excited and humbled to announce that The Histograms will be recieving SPE’s 2012 Award for Innovations in Imaging in Honor of Jeannie Pearce! According to their literature, it’s given to a student project dedicated to:

“work only possible because of emerging digital technologies” and that the jurors “will seek to award work that demonstrates the most innovative, unique, and freshest uses of digital technologies.”

This year’s jurors were Christina Z. Anderson, Sama Alshaibi, and Liz Wells.

This conference, then, is the perfect time to begin promoting The Histograms distribution project. So if I’m lucky, I might be able to convince some of the attendees to make work with the data set or come up with proposals.

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The Family of Histograms

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The sound of "The Americans"

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The Histograms @ XL Art Space

Sherwin Rivera Tibayan. Three-channel video, DVD, March 2012. Installation Views courtesy of Ilari Laamanen and XL Art Space, Helsinki, Finland.

A version of The Histograms is currently on display as part of Switch, a three-person exhibition curated by Ilari Laamanen. Along with works by Heini Aho and Bea Fremderman, Ilari—by way of introduction—notes that:

“It is necessary to slow down and learn how to orientate without an address and a map. Because perhaps one of these days all the lights will be switched off and it will get completely dark. How well can we see in the midst of darkness – or can we see at all? Switch is a group exhibition dealing with distance, temporality and spectating. At the core of the exhibition are the ideas of reduced expression and the rotation of images.”

I live in Oklahoma, so in a gesture inspired by the musical genius of the Flaming Lips and their concept album, Zaireeka, I wrote that the three-channel installation is:

“Composed of a fractured version Frank’s original photographic sequence—each monitor displays the entire set of histograms—and when played together suggest a left to right movement through the work that’s reminiscent of the highways and road markings that were critical to Frank’s project. But, because the starting times will never be perfect, each performance will be different, with the highly structured original narrative finally breaking down into a more open and chaotic movement.”

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Nine views of Detroit

Sherwin Rivera Tibayan. Set of 9 5x7 inch cards, archival pigment prints, 2011

More so than the two previous images, in this one I was intentionally trying to arrange a Becher-style grid presentation involving the industrial city of Detroit.

“Bar — Detroit” 

“Belle Isle — Detroit” 

“Factory — Detroit” 

“Assembly line — Detroit” 

“Drug store — Detroit” 

“Detroit” 

“Rodeo — Detroit” 

“Drive-in movie — Detroit” 

“Belle Isle — Detroit”

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Six scenes from the highway

Sherwin Rivera Tibayan. Set of 6 5x7 inch cards, archival pigment prints, 2011

“Restaurant — U.S. 1 leaving Columbus, South Carolina” 

“U.S. 285, New Mexico” 

“Car accident — U.S. 66, between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona” 

“Crosses at scene of highway accident — U.S. 91, Idaho”

“U.S. 30 between Ogallala and North Platte, Nebraska” 

“U.S. 90, en route to Del Rio, Texas”

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The Ecstasy of Influence

Jonathan Lethem, excerpted from "The Ecstasy of Influence", Harper’s Magazine, Feb 2007

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Stars & Stripes

Sherwin Rivera Tibayan. Set of 72 5x7 inch cards, archival pigment prints, 2011

“Crosses at scene of highway accident — U.S. 91, Idaho”

“Men’s room, railway station — Memphis, Tennessee”

“U.S. 30 between Ogallala and North Platte, Nebraska”

“Rodeo — New York City”

“Navy Recruiting Station, Post Office — Butte, Montana”

“Movie premiere — Hollywood”

“New York City”

“Elevator — Miami Beach”

“Belle Isle — Detroit”

“Courthouse square — Elizabethville, North Carolina”

“Political rally — Chicago”

“Public park — Cleveland, Ohio”

“Car accident — U.S. 66, between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona”

“Covered car — Long Beach, California”

“Newburgh, New York”

“Charity ball — New York City”

“Los Angeles”

“City Hall — Reno Nevada”

“Barber shop through screen door — McClellanville, South Carolina”

“St. Petersburg, Florida”

“Georgetown, South Carolina”

“Picnic ground — Glendale, California”

“Motorama — Los Angeles”

“Bar — Gallup, New Mexico”

“Bar — Detroit”

“Yale Commencement — New Haven Green, New Haven, Connecticut”

“Beaufort, South Carolina”

“Backyard — Venice West, California”

“Drug store — Detroit”

“Fourth of July — Jay, New York”

“Public park — Ann Arbor, Michigan”

“Casino — Elko, Nevada”

“Trolley — New Orleans”

“Hotel lobby — Miami Beach”

“View from hotel window — Butte, Montana”

“San Francisco”

“Bar — New York City”

“City fathers — Hoboken, New Jersey”

“Store window — Washington, D.C.”

“Chicago”

“Canal Street — New Orleans”

“Indianapolis”

“Salt Lake City, Utah”

“Television studio — Burbank, California”

“Charleston, South Carolina”

“Cocktail party — New York City”

“U.S. 285, New Mexico”

“Candy store — New York City”

“Yom Kippur — East River, New York City”

“Rooming house — Bunker Hill, Los Angeles”

“Luncheonette — Butte Montana”

“Parade — Hoboken, New Jersey”

“Political rally — Chicago”

“Chinese cemetery — San Francisco”

“Cafeteria — San Francisco”

“Funeral — St. Helena, South Carolina”

“Chattanooga, Tennessee”

“Rodeo — Detroit”

“Funeral — St. Helena, South Carolina”

“Movie premiere — Hollywood”

“Restaurant — U.S. 1 leaving Columbia, South Carolina”

“U.S. 91, leaving Blackfoot, Idaho”

“Butte, Montana”

“Bar — Las Vegas, Nevada”

“Convention hall — Chicago”

“Savannah, Georgia”

“Ranch market — Hollywood”

“U.S. 90, en route to Del Rio, Texas”

“Mississippi River, Baton Rouge, Louisiana”

“Factory — Detroit”

“Bank — Houston, Texas”

“Detroit”

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The Histograms @ Chapman Gallery

Sherwin Rivera Tibayan. Set of 83 5x7 inch cards, archival pigment prints, Oct 2011

This arrangement of the entire data set was part of an exhibition exchange between the studio grads at the University of Oklahoma and the MFAs at Kansas State University.

Because I was not there to install the work, and because I was interested in avoiding the highly structured narrative sequencing of Frank’s book, I elected to have my colleagues at KSU arrange the cards to their taste. They ended up saying it looked a little bit like Australia.

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From Here On...

Manifesto from Les Recontres d’Arles 2011