13.11.07

Software:

Gently honing in on what my essay will be discussing: software and imaging. Hoping to go further than just exploring the amazing array of things that can be done with images via computers but to look at the very nature of an image in the digital domain. From it's creation from light into its encoding in binary. Obviously a rather broad area of inquiry that i need to refine, pronto. The first five minutes of this video from Sun's Bryan Cantrill offers an insight into something i have never really resolved:

Although a bit old hat in the online world of digital imaging, Content Aware Image Resizing is a fascinating look at where public level interaction with images is heading (my use of 'level' and 'layer' really need to be defined outside of my mind, so as to make sense to others);

"The basic idea is that if you want to stretch out an image, it will keep the key elements of the photo in sensible places while filling in less important areas. The same goes for shrinking an image - it will eliminate the less important features of an image and leave the main subject areas intact and in the same relative location as they previously appeared in the image."

Any truth that people may have seeked from images is now well buried. Much like the shift to mp3 and the mass loss of quality in comparison to other mediums; many people i have observed accept low bit-rate poorly encoded music with it's shrill treble and muffled bass. The real jokers are the people who listen to music from their phones!! Can they really accept that as progress. There is a point where the mediums entropy begins to effect the enjoyment of the music (message). Here i am creeping into Marshal McLuhan territory, so i suppose i could be looking at the amount of effort required to derive a meaning and how the medium is changing the fundamental content of the information. In this sense images will become a further simulacra.

12.11.07

Composites/Contradictions

The most visual thing i have made thus far. At other end of the scale from the Static Time-lapses this image is created by moving the camera on planar plane over time, when composited together it makes an image with a high amount of spatial information but very little temporal (although this could be increased by spacing the shots further apart in time).

I am of the feeling these images/experiments externalize a confusion that is pervasive throughout the culture i am familiar with. An awkward polarization, im often of the opinion that i just have to do what i do without much thought. In a Death of the Author kind of way. This suits me as often im following desires and intuition rather than the institutionally more desirable didactic de-constructible linear workbook mode of getting where needs to be got. But reading Imomus last night triggered the introspection of ones own methodologies. All of these thoughts are in relation to the university (educational?) complex i am doing so well to avoid latterly. Having spent the best part of the last decade on one side of this system i can say that i feel written. Not to the point that im just a node of this system but in a the way i have to challenge myself to think otherwise.
Where does this leave me and my artifacts. I make them but don't want to justify them. They make me, what i create defines aspects of my understanding. So it would seem on a personal level they are self explorative and on a public level they orphans, open to interactions and interpretations free from me. And just think all i ever wanted to do was take pictures but i have ended scripting representations of an abstraction

David Bohm Implication:

As a quick addition i thought i should add some information about David Bohm, he wrote a very successful book 'Wholeness & the Implicate Order' that posits that all existence is an unbroken whole, many ideas he forwards in the book are very compelling and visible in the world we experience. I read this book about five years ago and it has had a lasting effect on how i try an understand the world and allot of my actions in it. With that in mind I am re-reading it and getting excited all over again. Here is a little taster from Bohm;

9.11.07

Conceptual Demands:

After what can only be described as an extended holiday im feeling like im back on track. Feeling obviously being very different from actually doing. For a long period i have been mauling over where i draw inspiration and im still not sure but it's clear that science is at the front of many of my thoughts more than art or even design.

This video is constructed in the same way as the still images but each square plays a portion of time. Combined the video represents about 13Hrs. The time depth of each square limits the overal resolution within the logic of how these images are made and work this highlights a dilema; a high spacial resolution reavealing a clean image or high temopality reavealing changes. I have alot of idea's to add to this concept that are grown out of a tentative understanding of a test used in quantum theory, although this is by no means the driving force.