Entries from April 2007 ↓

The idea of Photography 2.0, or at least for a permutation of photography as it has historically been known to become a new and independent medium with its own set of hopefully broken boundaries has been in Fred Ritchin’s mind since the late 1980’s, and first published in his prophetic book, In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution in Photography. I have had the completely praise-worthy opportunity of studying with Fred, and consider him to be one of the people to be thinking most hard about the potentials of contemporary, and future photographic practice.

That said, this panel was incredibly strange. Fred who is no stranger to critical public discussion [video example on a separate topic], took the role of the moderator and introduced a cast of opposing views; the young technocrat Jake Dobkin of The Gothamist, hyper intelligent photo editor from Getty Images Pancho Bernasconi, the photojournalism educator Kenny Irby of the Poynter Institute, sadly to say corporate defender of the professionals Mark Lubell of Magnum Photos and Jeffrey Scales, New York Times photo editor, and new media workhorse from FotoLog.com Warren Habib. The limited documentation I have encountered generally places Ritchin on the defensive (as is the case with most radical ideas that end up coming true) showing him on the Today Show in the early 90’s, all the way to a recent Open Source online broadcast discussion (listen), and at the end of this month in conjunction with the Musée de l’Elysée, in Lausanne, Switzerland a conference surrounding their exhibition of the increased scope of photographic participantion - We Are All Photographers Now! This panel, and the upcoming conference in Switzerland to me seems to signal that Ritchin can finally be on the offensive, to shape and make clear his points to an audience that is positive in a manner of being ready to explore the intricacies of what is happening in the world of visual recording.

The initial flaw then in my often sluggish coal train of a logic, is that this panel passed over the groundwork of establishing that what we are seeing in the practice of digitally rendering photographs is in essence something different than before (whatever that means). Mark Lubell, the consummate business mind of Magnum Photos presented an amazing set of statistics that demonstrated how the model of photographic production and distribution has completely revolutionized itself from within in the last ten years, from about a 1:1 ratio of producer to distributor, to now;. 40 million people are “seriously” taking pictures, and while the traditional distribution points that number around 10,000 nationally still hold steady, everyone is circumventing these publications and putting work on the internet, self publishing books, etc.

That aside, a comedy of errors served as a great foil for our human ineptitude in understanding the sweeping technological changes revolutionizing our culture… the panelists had trouble operating the wall size projected web browser for access their support materials on this most glorious of internet. Once they got down to business, the dialogue of a panel of opposing viewpoints did not stimulate the group to step outside of their rhetoric, and the volley of non-exploration took over. Scales and Lubell took the stance of protecting the trained photographer as one who could consistently sustain the production of depth through his or her finely tuned technique, where Warren Habib defended the ability of the citizen journalist to relate stories that are often overlooked by the constant pressure of rapid reporting of all events worldwide.

The youthful attitude inside me wants to grab it all and push so hard in the theoretical “progressive” mode, but for my age group of 80’s babies, the technology is almost so assumed that we barely realize the transitional generation that we are a part of. Jake Dobkin of The Gothamist was the no holds barred boy of speed and technology, but his excitement over it all just left me feeling a bit queasy and wishing for a hill or a holler to hide away in with my family and real life friends till the end comes down. One way or another things aren’t slowing down any time soon, and these issues are far from clarified (if that is even possible when you are in the moment).

*nothing new was said in these notes that helps either, I hope for revisions soon

also, I have recently hooked up to flickr…a test of my resolve for all of this

This American Life - Chris Ware Animation on young digitalers

Blind Camera

We Are All Photographers Now!

IAA Intro Video

Tad Hirsch Different Bits Presentation

Maybe my historical perspective doesn’t allow me to see where the avant garde is these days. For a little while I doubted with near certainty its existence in the United States at least these days. The other night Shelley Rice, an incredibly sharp educator and visual critic reminded our class of the all too obvious point that the idea of an avant garde is not a fixed historical convergence of specific people and that as those conditions and people change the impetus for cultural critique and innovation does not disappear.

So then this got me wondering that if the external societal conditions, be they simply- political, technological, economic, even spatial, have significantly changed during my lifetime (1985-present), enough in my mind at least to distance my generation from using a functional model of the historical avant garde, then what are the signs that the chameleon of an avant garde is out there alive and well?

Being at the ideologically charged age that I am, I have been trying to discern how I have fit myself into the scheme of things, where I want to go, and how I think it might work the best (duh). Pretty clearly, but maybe not when I started out, I have committed myself to being within the world of art. New York (2003-present) and studying art at University certainly implicates me in being part of the “machine.” The ease and subtlety with which this educational process has indoctrinated Us into its flow is pretty incredible. So first of all, I have had the initial, huge bi-polar response that leads me to ask if i should, A. be violent, and outcast myself to a place and surround myself with people that support this now classical form of youthful classic rebellion, or B. give in to it all, and let the wave of certain mediocrity, and ultimate boredom wash over me like a mountain of unsold work in Chelsea (and a lot of the sold stuff too)

Well not that I am any more mature of a person than either of those two emotional options, but it seems after some topical consideration that option C. actually renders the possibility for change; and that being to wear the sheep’s clothing, go deep under, and then rip the middle out from itself. This of course is not a new idea either, but it certainly seems like one that a large number of the smart, young ones are taking on.

And this brings me to the man of the Day, The Institute of Applied Autonomy’s Tad Hirsch. He is a researcher and PhD candidate at MIT’s Media Lab, has worked with Intel’s People and Practices Research Group, the Interaction Design Studio at Carnegie Mellon University, and even Motorola’s Advanced Concepts Group. And while his work definitely is focused on the “intersections between art, activism, and technology”, the ways in which he goes about it have explosive potential. In addition to being part of these incredibly well respected institutions, Hirsch has a propensity to do his real work outside of these confines, primarily as part of the collaborative group, The Institute for Applied Autonomy. Here in the backrooms Hirsch and his anonymous cohorts invent and “adaptively reuse” technology to make projects that are able to be utilized by the citizenry at large in order to give the opportunity for change, or more appropriately; to put some degree of control back into the peoples’ hands. Adaptive reuse is integral to this process in order to mitigate the learning curve when during project implementation.

A great example, is Hirsch’s (IAA) development of txtmob , a group based text messaging bullitin board of sorts that allows groups of people, in the case of its inception during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City (activists), to coordinate, warn, and generally communicate with the others on that topic.

Today Hirsch came NYU to talk about his current project that he is working on with Trevor Paglen, an experimental geographer and fellow PhD seeker. Paglen has spent the last few years researching and tracking the CIA’s illegal extraordinary renditions program.Terminal Air is an installation that attempts to envision the CIA office cum-travel agency in Langley, Virginia from which the Extraordinary Rendition Program is presumably coordinated. Represented on the two large wall displays is a speculative visualization of the known movements of some 30 of these planes. The map on the left indicates the planes movements during the last 6 years. The screen on the right lists the 10 most recent flights. Periodically new information on a plane’s whereabouts will arrive and will be indicated on the map display and by the ringing telephones. Please feel free to answer them. (from IAA website)

This installation’s flexibility is completely endemic of Hirsch’s method regarding the production of art. While this piece could very easily function within the space of a gallery, its power would really lie in it blending into the “real world” of a non descript space with a volume of people to uncover the work for themselves. Tripwire (2006) has a much more specific, but equally assistive purpose. Coconuts that measure the noise pollution, and make automatic reports to the proper authorities demanding action is a pretty good direction to be heading in.

So then, if the strategy of collaborating with Intel in order “to engage the techniques of social science and design in order develop a deep understanding of how people live and work”, and then developing a system of activist communication that subverts the very authority they spend so much money on lobbying is working, then what can the rest of us do?

Step It Up

*I hope that this visual metaphor about avant garde hidden status rings true : whales cruise in ocean, until they are ready to feed on the unsuspecting, then there is a burst of fury like none other
*Next up - I want to create a forum or conduit of sorts for a great number of artists working around these ideas of political subversion to get together (because the world is a big place, but also too small to not communicate with people on the same wavelength)

Parital List Below:

Smart Cities
0100101110101101.org
Trevor Paglen
Bl4ck H4m
Bureau of Inverse Technology
Carbon Defense League
Critical Art Ensemble
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Experimental Interaction Unit
Gallery Green
irational.org
Moport
Mute Magazine
Public Netbase
Reclaim the Streets
Redundant Technology Initiative
RTMark
subRosa
Swipe
University of Openess
The Yes Men
Underfire
Strange Culture - Movie on CAE’s Steven Kurtz
Towards a New Visualization of Secrecy?
Center for Land Use Interpretation
Computing Culture

Dennis Hopper has always loaded me with the perception of being an artist who has been really successful at turning the screws, and manipulating the world he is a part of. Be it as an actor and his proclivity to be involved in really far out projects (at least in terms of the Hollywood Standard), an “important” collector of twentieth century art, or a director and photographer of consummate skill, there is that wild-eyed sharpness that such sorts of domesticated stray cats might have. At once skeptical of its new surroundings, grateful for the warmth and food, but already plotting a way back onto the street. Hopper started out in the 1950’s after moving from Oklahoma to a flat, burgeoning Los Angeles, where he began by taking pictures and painting, joined up and created a “dream colony” where he was an integral part in bringing light to the art scene of 1960’s Los Angeles.

Hopper’s stories are seducing as hell, a lifetime in front of the camera translates this ease to the stage, and his recollections from an often hazed out past are incredibly clear. Buying an Ed Ruscha from him in his studio for $200, with post-Easy Rider successes the studio let him bring in some of his friends to test pilot an independent filmmaker program, and Wallace Berman turned him down flat out, it goes on and on.

Easy Rider was the fruition of his creative intentions, citing that filmmaking was the combination of everything before it, and with the ferocity of needing to do it on his own terms ended up making one of the most successful independent films in history. But the lifestyle of the stray cat in certain ways caught up with him, as his heroic attempt to puncture Hollywood with his epic The Last Movie (1971) seems to have fallen on deaf ears and hasten his fall from grace. The drugs stopped in 1983 after what sounds like to me, one of the most amazing performances in the epoch of early performance art.

1981- Dennis Hopper at a Houston, Texas car racing track situates himself inside of a ring of dynamite, and sits on a chair. Now apparently; this stunt that he learned from a roadshow when he was young, and the deal is if you situate the dynamite facing outwards the blast creates a vacuum of air in the middle, “like the eye of a hurricane,” and after all of the theatrics, the sitter comes out just fine. The setting, conditions, uncertainty, was all a a big part of this performance that really epitomizes the commitment of the artist’s body in early performance art.

Call me old fashioned, but these days not only has the outsourcing production of objects undermined the artist’s physical connection to the work, but the production value, level of planning, and exquisite execution of the idea is so endemic of performance art. There are of course exceptions, and hopefully a new wave of artists will reject the technical acuity in as Thomas Hirschhorn says, “…energy, not perfection.” I think it is pretty goddamn time for the artist to be reckless, over-stimulated, but ultimately fully indoctrinated into the cycle of creation.

Taking the dettached modes of performance and production as larger economic models, we can see how this has undermined the United States domestic manufacturing base, the vast majority of the population is engaged as a consumer, rather than a commodity producer, from transportation to food. If this hollowing out of our country on a big format is any indication, unless artists renew their commitment to being (as the 2007 buzz word would have it) sustainable, the country, and artists themselves are going to in a world of hurt when a big shift is forced upon us.

So I doubt that Hopper’s conversation tonight really had any connection to these thoughts, but if idea of him as a maverick in terms of raising hell, having the clarity to see and hold on to amazing art at a time when the eyes weren’t on it, making films more or less along his own lines means anything, then we should heavily consider putting things back in to our own hands all across the board.

Dennis Hopper Video Still from Bomb Drop (1981)

I grew up in a home where issues of gender roles were pretty much non-starters. My mother and father started a small business jointly in the mid 1980’s, and while it was the South, their names were on the business license, as well as the loans together. My mother, for the most part made dinner for us out of desire rather than obligational necessity, and that’s not to say my dad doesn’t bake an insane rum cake that oozes sweet flavor.

Perhaps they would not have achieved this balance without their involvement in the youthful political movements of the 1960’s, or without consciousness of feminist theory and practice beginning its uphill battle. That battle obviously still has not been won, or even called an equal ground truce, but a question has been nagging me recently; why is 2007 the year of Feminism’s reappraisal by the world of art?

This started to hit me when Melanie Manchot, an internationally exhibited artist, but not self-identified feminist artist presented her past work to our guest lecture class. She was in New York to install a solo show, was missing an opening of a group museum exhibition in Europe, and had three more exhibitions to prepare for in the next few months. Her feeling on the topic was that she was thrown into the pot of resurgent feminist interest where as her work more, …”uses photography and video as a means to investigate notions of intimacy and gesture as a currency of exchange. Most of the recent work looks at specific,often intimate gestures, such as the kiss and attempts to question how such a gesture becomes a metaphor for relating desires, fantasies, needs.In this respect, some of the work attempts to sit at the borderline between reality and fantasy…” such as in her 2007 four channel video work where she collaborated with four Berlin rock bands to record an original song on their perception of what the future will hold. (video of one of the groups resulting song)

So if this is the case, and so it seems historically with female artists such as Marina Abramović who vigorously play down their artistic interest in feminism, then is the lensing effect of the art world focusing a true need to evaluate the needs of contemporary women, or is the organizing of such a significant number of exhibitions surrounding the issue a market driven sales tactic to some extent?

According to Fall 2006 New York Auction results, there is certainly still an incredibly long way to go in relation to valuing the art work of women in a comparable manner to males, with Agnes Martin being the only woman in the top twenty highest grossing artists (check it) We’ve got problems indeed

Feminist exhibitions/programs happening in 2007 (certainly an incomplete list) :

• WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution
• Brooklyn Museum: Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
• (Tender) Assembly
• A Tribute to the Women of Juarez
• Aqui No Hay Virgenes: Queer Latina Visibility
• Global Feminisms
• Identity Theft: Eleanor Antin, Lynn Hershman, and Suzy Lake, 1972–1978
• Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone
• Multiple Vantage Points: Southern California Women Artists, 1980–2006
• Normalization at Outpost for Contemporary Art
• Shared Women at LACE
• The Moral Museum: Selections from the Bick Archive
• The Performing Archive: Restricted Access
• The Sculptures of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air
• Where Did Our Love Go? film series at REDCAT
• Women of Vision: 18 Histories in Feminist Film & Video
• [From Site to Vision] the Women’s Building in Contemporary Culture
• The Feminist Art Project
• FEM·IN·ART at UCLA
• Faith Wilding/subRosa
• Exquisite Acts & Everyday Rebellions
• Echoes: Women Inspired by Nature
• California Institute of the Arts

How to standardize the public’s knowledge & transparency in imaging.

I suppose we could argue the ethics of manipulating photographs for days upon end, but in reality im not sure thats the question we should be asking. Not only is it not the question, but the denial of these activities, such as in some totalitarian state scheme to standardize the ability to manipulate image will be virtually impossible to carry out, the pockets of image revolutionaries will always persist, in sleeper cells deep in the forests and caves of the world. So ultimately the question is how to inform the populace with as much transparency, and clarity as possible as to the changes that have been made to the visuals that they are seeing.  These changes so ultimately pervade our culture already, just as much as the images themselves do, that it becomes ever more difficult to pinpoint as the technology and multiplicity of the manipulations reaches a critical mass, and the realized world falls and gives way to a completely mediated “reality.”

This of course is the worst case scenario where a large feedback loop establishes itself that serves the purpose of establishing a non-existant world of consumable imagery that’s “substance” replaces any direct visual connection to the natural world. But if a level of transparency can be achieved then the visual facade can be in essence cracked. The difficulty of this implementation lies in having to convince both sides of the issue that the transparency is acutally in their best interest. The “establishment” side of the issue

In implementing any sort of cross-societal standard (No Smoking), the greater populace first must be able to understand what is changing, why it is changing, and how the change will effect them directly. (Gas prices are only the top news story when the prices are on the rise) There is this literacy of the issue needed, but also there is a more literal literacy needed, and this is not always easily able to be provided. This is to mean that the populace-side implementation.

Otherworldly hues pop at my eyes and glow with way too much power. These fluorescent monsters seem to contain millions of overly stimulated color particles, bouncing around, and growing ever more intense under the waning strength of a day’s sunlight. I have a total propensity to sucked in to the vibrational intensity of the spectrum of fluorescent colors, but cannot fully explain their significance beyond this. So in the spirit of the “cabinet of curiosity” that Cabinet Magazine founder and editor Sina Najafi so vigorously encouraged during his time with our class, I would like to begin a brief history of the fluorescent pigment based around a compilation of sources.

Several investigators reported luminescence phenomena during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it was British scientist Sir George G. Stokes who first described fluorescence in 1852 and was responsible for coining the term in honor of the blue-white fluorescent mineral fluorite (fluorspar). Stokes also discovered the wavelength shift to longer values in emission spectra that bears his name. Fluorescence was first encountered in optical microscopy during the early part of the twentieth century by several notable scientists, including August Köhler and Carl Reichert, who initially reported that fluorescence was a nuisance in ultraviolet microscopy. The first fluorescence microscopes were developed between 1911 and 1913 by German physicists Otto Heimstädt and Heinrich Lehmann as a spin-off from the ultraviolet instrument. These microscopes were employed to observe autofluorescence in bacteria, animal, and plant tissues. Shortly thereafter, Stanislav Von Provazek launched a new era when he used fluorescence microscopy to study dye binding in fixed tissues and living cells. However, it wasn’t until the early 1940s that Albert Coons developed a technique for labeling antibodies with fluorescent dyes, thus giving birth to the field of immunofluorescence. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the field of fluorescence microscopy was responsible for a revolution in cell biology, coupling the power of live cell imaging to highly specific multiple labeling of individual organelles and macromolecular complexes with synthetic and genetically encoded fluorescent probes. (from Basic Concepts in Fluorescence )

Fluorescence is a luminescence that is mostly found as an optical phenomenon in cold bodies, in which the molecular absorption of a photon triggers the emission of another photon with a longer wavelength. The energy difference between the absorbed and emitted photons ends up as molecular vibrations or heat. Usually the absorbed photon is in the ultraviolet range, and the emitted light is in the visible range, but this depends on the absorbance curve and Stokes shift of the particular fluorophore. Fluorescence is named after the mineral fluorite, composed of calcium fluoride, which often exhibits this phenomenon. (from Wikipedia )

There is a big difference however in what my mind lumps together as flourescent, and the above more strictly scientific rendering. High Visibility clothing, neons, Day Glo colors (Daylight fluorescent pigments), are all part of this power structure of color to me, eating up the more subtle palette in the face of certain doom for all. What I mean i guess, is that in this time of Bleeding Hearts, political lameouts (link + one million other occurrences), hyper hyper stimultation of all sense, these colors can be used to ramp up the message in a formal and emotional way (if those criteria even apply anymore…another day’s topic)

For instance, I am really interested in High Visibility Safety Clothing that the work force in security/prisoners, hazardous materials industry, public works, hunting, construction, it’s all really dangerous, and for the eye to be able to discern figure from ground. Psychologically it is strange that prisoners such as the ones that don’t exist at Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay don the safety orange jumpsuits of a prisoner. Are they not meant to disappear entirely? (BBC News Timeline )

Paperrad, a crew of three most of the time, uses the color to pierce all of this and move their big time installations and books in to more hands. Fashion in the 90’s co-opted these colors in order to be
…associated with cool, summer themes like surfing and the beach. The five fluorescent colours were blue, green, orange, pink, and yellow. Fluorescent clothing was especially popular with teenage and pre-teen girls, but fluorescent t-shirts and shorts were also popular with boys. Fluorescent clothing included t-shirts, sweatshirts, socks, shoelaces, hair scrunchies, and fanny packs. In 1991, fluorescent colours were replaced by colours such as coral, hot pink, and turquoise. The popularity of bright colours declined through 1995. (1990’s )

This desire to loosen up, and let your eyes drink in the color can definitely strike a harmony visually with a

membrane puncturing of our over-saturated eyes, and transgenic artist Eduardo Kac seems to have an intense passion for doing this serious work while maintaining an appeal:
“GFP Bunny” is a transgenic artwork and not a breeding project. The differences between the two include the principles that guide the work, the procedures employed, and the main objectives. Traditionally, animal breeding has been a multi-generational selection process that has sought to create pure breeds with standard form and structure, often to serve a specific performative function. As it moved from rural milieus to urban environments, breeding de-emphasized selection for behavioral attributes but continued to be driven by a notion of aesthetics anchored on visual traits and on morphological principles. Transgenic art, by contrast, offers a concept of aesthetics that emphasizes the social rather than the formal aspects of life and biodiversity, that challenges notions of genetic purity, that incorporates precise work at the genomic level, and that reveals the fluidity of the concept of species in an ever increasingly transgenic social context. (from Eduardo Kac’s homepage)

I say keep it loose, but bring the heat.

Other Notes of Interest from the lecture:
Aspen Art Magazine
Dean MacCannell
Jocko Weyland
Acid Dreams
Eyal Weizman
Nietzsche- On the Genealogy of Morals

1. Always Steal the advantage. If someone is going to call you a whore, call yourself a whore first and win the battle (Strangers with Candy: There Once was a Blank from Nantucket)
2. Art is a Business these days, so you fill a market niche, and if you are going to be pigeonholed, make sure it’s something you like
3. Rainbow RV
4. Follow your Dreams - even if that means running topless on the beach and pretending to be a lifeguard. Subsequent to this; The Secret, weird but keeping it posi works
5. Get off the Internet (I’ll Meet you in the Street)
6. Feminism as a term was considered out of style in the past decade, and in relation to my earlier writing is undergoing a positive change in semantics to allow it to be part of the terminology surrounding those ideas and practices
7. The creation of a persona can have positive implications for giving a figurehead to disparate alliances to rally around
8. Utopias might only be albe to exist for the group, class, or community that is the dominant force in the given society, maybe it’s too hard to escape pressures and have harmony
9. Catherine Opie- Dyke Deck , Dyke Action Machine , Larry Kramer - Tragedy of Today’s Gays
10. Find your crew, Get your team to address the issues, Have fun

DJ JD Samson’s Myspace Page