[-empyre-] Camera Obscura
Stephanie Strickland
stephanie.strickland at gm.slc.edu
Fri Jul 29 17:10:10 AEST 2016
An old book, an insightful *practitioner's* book full of nuanced
insights into video at its birth and ongoingly, is Paul Ryan's *Video Mind,
Earth Mind*.
Ryan is a passionately idealistic proponent of systems to promote
interpersonal communication and ecology, aligned in some ways with
Bateson and Peirce. I think his observations can be usefully extended to
work with various technologies.
Stephanie
Stephanie Strickland
1175 York Avenue 16B
New York NY 10065
212-759-5175
http://stephaniestrickland.com
.. .. .. ..
Hours of the Night
http://hoursofthenight.com
House of Trust
http://www.house-of-trust.org/
*Dragon Logic, *Ahsahta Press
*Vniverse *iPad app
On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 11:37 AM, Jacky Sawatzky <sawatzky.jacky at gmail.com>
wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
>
>
> --
> http://vimeo.com/videovectors <http://www.jackysawatzky.net>
>
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