[-empyre-] Camera Obscura

Fri Jul 29 01:37:47 AEST 2016

I have been scanning these posts , and thank you for the thought provoking
ideas.
As I am not a theorist but a practitioner _ my practice is called models of
observation, I would like to insert some thoughts about my recent
experimentation in my art practice. Having worked with (video) cameras, all
kinds, in my practice, I have noticed that the technology default mode is
to erase the embodied intent.  The technology and out of that the
'production values' encapsulates diverse physical expression and
'normalizes' this. The users physical vulnerability is compartmentalized
into a tag. There is a dialoque between the intent of the user and the
operative requirements of the device. This results in choices  which,
directs the kind of 'data' (even light, cane be talked about as a kind of
data) and quality. (ideally is would be a nuanced as one requires)  This
dialogue is more and more limited to technological choices and the nuance
is lost, thus becoming a monologue, only more expensive devices give more
nuanced choices. Thus access the funds becomes a criteria. Also a physical
 vulnerability is nullified by technological by supporting devices , a
simple and common example is a tripod.
In my work I have been training in improvisation techniques, and listening.
Thus not to work with the camera as a vision machine, but as an instrument.
Hereby in the process of filming I try not to capture but to sketch. The
device in an environment becomes less of representation of power, though
trust is a big one here.
I am currently interested the 'capturing' of animals with a camera and
searching for a less dominate  power relationship that is not only based on
the captured image.

I thought this might help with the discussion.

Best, Jacky Sawatzky

An older examples of a 'digital camera obscura :
http://www.jackysawatzky.net/social/
and video example of this (my personal website is an utter mess to many
upgrades ) : https://vimeo.com/31227090

And an example of this recent experimentation the sketching camera:

On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 7:00 AM, Cortez, Beatriz <beatriz.cortez at csun.edu>
wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> Thank you very much for your messages. I was very excited about the
> different ways in which Christine, Johanna, and Aviva approach the concept
> of Camera Obscura, and I am so excited about Christina's Transborder
> Immigrant Light installation!
>
>
> In my case, rather than considering the different types of light that
> might evoke different realities, or tracing the data of their trajectories,
> my interest is to consider the possibility of letting go of a manifest
> vision that is linked to modern reason and humanism, that is, to explore
> the possibility of evoking a new vision.
>
>
> Deleuze, when engaging with Henri Bergson's ideas about memory as well as
> the image, spoke of the virtual, which for Deleuze was a type of
> potentiality that was not material, but real, and that allowed for multiple
> possibilities for the creation of the new. The piece functions within a
> duality. On the one hand, the spectator will view different realities
> reflected upside down in the camera obscura chamber, denaturalizing our
> traditional understanding of reality. On the other hand, a camera obscura
> parallels the mechanics of the eye. It generates an objective perspective
> in bi-dimensional format of the way the three-dimensional image is
> perceived by the retina. As spectators of the images generated by the all
> seeing eye of the camera obscura, the viewer will be placed in the position
> of the one who surveys. This will also evoke the all-seeing eye of a
> panopticon, where the possibility of our being under surveillance at any
> moment emerges, immersed as we are in what Deleuze called societies of
> control, in the disciplinarian societies described by Foucault, and in more
> contemporary surveillance regimes with access to advanced technological
> tools. However, the surveillance that takes place through the camera
> obscura generates an image that is upside down, de-naturalizing the
> perspective of the watch person, and putting into question what an image
> is, how we interpret it, and how we assign meaning to it.
>
>
> As a result, my attempt is to create another type of vision through the
> inversion of images that move through space and time, a vision that in some
> ways parallels what Marx/Sellars/Brassier argue. In other words, I am
> interested in the possibility of achieving a vision that deconstructs the
> normalizing transformation of images into objects or concepts embedded
> within Western reason (manifest image), emerging instead the possibility of
> perceiving the building as a platform that is moving through space and
> time, and thus, seeing the world as difference: as shapes, as shadows, as
> colors, as negative spaces, and as surreal manifestations of other possible
> worlds.
>
>
> As the world appears in front of our eyes in moving visions of an inverted
> reality that disarticulates our normalizing understanding of the world, the
> construction of the transcendental identities that are the foundation of
> Western philosophy has the potential of being deconstructed, as it no
> longer makes sense in a world that is in constant motion, made of inverted
> landscapes, of shapes, shadows, and moving visions that invited the viewer
> to become part of other possible changing identities or nomadic
> possibilities of being in this world.
>
>
> Here's a list of some of the works that I cited:
>
>
> Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Trans. N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer. New
> York: Zone Books, 1990.
>
>
> Braidotti, Rosi. Nomadic Theory: The Portable Braidotti. New York:
> Columbia, 2012.
>
>
> Brassier, Ray. "I Am A Nihilist Because I Still Believe in Truth. Ray
> Brassier Interviewed by Marcin Rychter." Kronos 1 (2005). Online.
>
>
> Brassier, Ray. Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction. London:
> Palgrave, 2007.
>
>
> Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam.
> New York: Zone Books, 1991.
>
>
> Deleuze, Gilles. "Post-Script of Societies of Control."  October 59
> (1992): 3-7.
>
>
> Foucault, Michel. "Panopticism."  Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the
> Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.  195-228.
>
>
> Marx, Karl.  "The German Ideology."  Literary Theory: An Anthology.  2nd
> ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.  653-658.
>
>
> Sellars, Wilfrid.  "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man."
>  Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. London: Routledge & Kegan, 1963.
>  1-40.
>
>
> Spinoza, Baruch.  The Letters.  Introd. Steven Barbone, Lee Rice, and
> Jacob Adler.  Trans. Samuel Shirley. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1995.
>
>
> Spinoza, Baruch.  The Ethics: Ethica Ordina Geometrico Demonstrata. Trans.
> R. H. M. Elwes. eBook.
>
>
> Beatriz Cortez, Ph.D.
> Professor, Central American Studies
> California State University, Northridge
> (818) 677-3585
> Http://www.beatrizcortez.com
>
> http://www.csun.edu/humanities/central-american-studies/beatriz-cortez
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>

-- 
http://vimeo.com/videovectors <http://www.jackysawatzky.net>
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