Assemblage and the Image.

For this week's task we were shown examples of works from the likes of Pablo Picasso, Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Cornnell. What I have learnt from them is that visual art can be outside of the frame. Looking at other sources of information such as a website by Tate (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/assemblage), I got more of an idea what a assemblage theme should be. I decided to use things from our home that have largely been forgotten. This was an attempt to make my photographs, not just personal but have a theme for my artwork.

To help me with my photographic theme I decided to use one of my mini studios. Luckily, a new lamp that I ordered had arrived the day before and made a complete set again. I decided to shine the light through the sides of the box instead of shining a light into the box. I hoped the sides would act as a diffuser and get rid of most of the shadow. Instead of printing photographs, I would use a digital frame with a USB stick. I could transfer old photographs onto the screen and  it should give me a better quality picture than one that I can print with my own personal printer. I also used different backdrops so I would not have the same background for all 3 photographs.

The Trinkets of time.

The concept behind this photograph is to understand how largely ignored items  accumulate around the house.  The whole array of items can be interesting to the viewer. This is a collection of things we either bought for next to nothing or found on the beach. We don't tend to look at these items anymore that used to mean something in the past. The concept of this photograph is how personal things can have new meanings to someone else. This was an easy one to do for me as it just meant arranging things 2 dimensionally over a backdrop.

A snapshot of childhood

I have put these photographs together as they are both part of the same theme. I used the digital frame to use two older pictures of my children. The assemblage comprised of toys that they do not use anymore but are still hanging around in draws and cupboards. The concept behind this is to show a snapshot of time with things that were important to them at the time. They now have little meaning to my children anymore. The whole idea is to show how we feel about changes through things through time. How we think what is important to us in one stage in our lifetime can have little importance at another stage in our lifetime. 

Overall I was quite happy with this work. I may not have been able to go on long walks hoping to find other people's discarded items, to make a unique and interesting new piece of work I did however, have enough things lying around the house to make my vision into reality. 

Subject Matter

 As a short exercise we were shown a few examples of conceptual art from the likes of Marcel Duchamp and Hannah Hugues. We were asked to come up with 3 examples of similar content for the 2 hour workshop. I already had a mini studio so, I set it up (with it's one working lamp) and set about completing this task.

 As a first attempt I decided to borrow a mannikin from my daughters bedroom.  I found out it was missing one of it's feet so I decided to show this exhibit to emphasise that it had a foot around the house somewhere but it's location is unknown. I modelled the mannikin so it gives the illusion that it knows that it is missing a foot.

The second photo that I worked on is just a simple one of a toilet duck. I decided to use one of the in-camera effects to emphasise the contours of the subject and to make it more interesting. The headline I used is to signify that there is more to the word duck than the animal itself and can be applied to anything that can be associated with the word "duck".

The last photo was made up of some spongy things that was hanging around the place for a while. Whatever these things are in reality I have no idea but they did look quite phallic. The concept of this was to show that there are many balls to the subject and to treat the subject as plural.

As a conclusion, I thought given more time I could have come up with better conceptuals. I did not reset the camera and could have done them in black and white with high contrast to emphasise the subject. However, I did like the pink background it gave me as I set the camera to vivid colours and I think it went well with the colours of the subjects.

 Seeing the unseeable.

To have some idea of the task in hand I first looked up some work by Samson Young, Ori Gersht (https://www.origersht.com/) and a few visual exhibitions where creations of sounds was the main framework. The best way I thought to do this exercise is to start off with recording some sounds and then to come up with some photographic representations of that sound.

The sound I decided to work with is a short segment of the workmen putting in new gas pipes around the estate. After recording, editing the recording a bit and adding some surround reverb, I eventually used the sound clip as a base. This is the recording displayed below.

 Overall, I was quite happy with the sound that I came up with. There is a lot of metallic drones in the sound clip and this gave it a edgy industrial feeling with some unexpected surprises as metal was hit together to keep the listener alert. 

To keep in line with the general mood of the sound clip I came up with a graphic score to fit the edgy mood that is perceived by the listener. This example is shown below.

 

I decided to use black and white photographs with high contrast as I felt this would give the photographs some of that industrial metallic feel that perpetuates throughout the clip. I decided to take a few pictures of stains and decay that was around the estate to fit the mood. The pictures to complement the sound is displayed below.

And as a extra attempt, I tried to encapsulate the whole of the sound clip with a montage that I constructed. This montage is shown below.

 As a conclusion, I thought I did better than I would have done in completing this task. I tend to only use Photoshop for things that could have easily been done in the film days. Some of this was a new adventure for me. Even though I didn't use the easiest sound clip to work on, I feel that I did manage to pick up some of the feelings of the sounds.

Visualising Sound

For this quick project we had to visualise sounds in a pictorial format. Looking at  works from Ori Gersht, Daniel Palacois and Andy Huntington, I decided that trying to complete this task in their kind of approach of the subject would take far too much time than the two hours I had been allocated. Trying to think fast I decided to download a free wave management program onto the computer and by using a microphone I could tackle this task in the time allocated by using the screensaver function on my laptop, a microphone and my phone.

The first pictorial example I used was just 3 seconds of nothing. This was the easiest of the 3 examples to do as I only had to place the volume control onto zero and just record for 3 seconds and This gave a flat line from the computer and is shown above. I just put a heading on top and this completed the first task.

The second example I used was created by moving the microphone along a rough surface and this gave the wave visualisation as above. Again I added a headline to show what the wave visualisation represents. This turned out to be another easy exercise to complete.

The last example I did not like doing at all. This involved pricking myself with a pin on my finger and recording the noise I made when I was in pain. This gave the wave visualisation above. I did make sure however that I used a clean pin for this exercise and made sure I didn't bleed too much.

Overall, I think I could have come up with a better quality examples if I had more time to do it in. This was the first time I have tried a combination of making visualisations by taking pictures of my laptop through my phone and then using a screensaver again to come with the final result. If I did have time to experiment further I would have come up with better quality photos than the result that I have achieved. It has given me however, better ideas to complete this task the next time I have to do such an exercise.

Photomontage.

Photomontage is the art of putting 2 or more photos together to produce a new artwork. This was the first developed during the middle of the Victorian period with the likes of Oscar Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson. In modern days this is usually made from editing suites electronically rather than multiple exposures and cutting various photographs up to make a new work.

Unfortunately for me, I am still waiting for my licence to be downloaded (as I was going to make a couple electronically) so I had to come up with plan B which was to cut up some magazines and come up with an original work.

The first montage I came up with was looking at work by Peter Kennard. Looking at his simplistic looks I tried to keep all 3 pretty simple (as it shows that striking images and conceptual can be achieved without much clutter). This photo was achieved with using 2 heads of women combined with a tree frog and a photo of a Dutch tulips in a park. I just happened to like the mood that this one give me.

The second montage I came up with is to cut up a black and white landscape photograph and to turn each other part of the print 180 degrees to come up with the desired effect. This gives the whole photograph a different feeling than before. It feels a lot moodier than the original picture gave out.

  The last montage consisted of cutting out the bokah of one photograph and working with various other photos to gain the desired look. The dove was a cut out from an old Christmas card and I also cut out another landscape photograph into parts and see how this relates to the background. Overall I try to keep a flying theme to this montage as a feeling of freedom.

As a conclusion, I was not entirely happy with this experience. I really wanted to use my own photographs for this project but, until I can load up photoshop, I was limited in options to come up with a montage (our printer is just not good enough to come up with prints to be used on this project). It did give me an experience in putting various photographs to come up with a new composition but I would have rather come up with something with my own photographs.    

A quick exercise in making a collage.

The object for today is to make up some collages and to send the best 3 over to the University. We were shown a few examples from some artists and the tutor showed his examples he made. The time limit to do this was just over 1 hour so I had to be quick.

 Due to time restrains, I had little time to think so I ended up with grabbing a couple of magazines and immediately set out to do my task. The photo above is the first one that I came up with. This collage I came up with without thinking. It just seemed to flow as I was making the collage. 

For the second collage, I used a theme of mixing animal photographs with staged portraits. This was an attempt to make a statement between our relationship with humans and the animals around us and our common bond. On this one I was attempting to make the point that all subjects can be staged for the viewer. It muddles the line between what is natural and what is choreographed.

For the last collage, I attempted to make it around a statement. It was something to fit with the words that I cut out (the other two I came up with the words last) and this is the result of the experiment. I was just seeing if it is possible to come up with a statement first and then to work around that statement.

Overall, I found this one more difficult a task to do than the light and shadow exercise. The last time I had make any collages was with my children when they were young and I was out of practice. This one taught me to think fast on a task that I was unfamiliar with and to come up with a result that was pleasing for the viewer. 

Experiments in camera obscura

 When approaching this project I decided to do some research first. I found out that Camera obscura is Latin for darkened room and is a natural occurring phenonium when light goes through a small hole and it's light is automatically brought into focus. There has been evidence that this method has been used since classical times and Leonardo di Vinci was experimenting and wrote the first clear description of the process. Some photographers still use this technique in their work to this day.

For my first experiment, I did have a go in blocking the light out of our bedroom window. Unfortunately, we live in a house that was made in the 1960's that have over 1/2 a wall as windows. Dustbin sacks were not big enough to cover everything without using more than I had and, there was still too much light pollution when I used thick blankets for this process to be useful at all. Luckily, I did have a plan B in trying to use a pinhole as a camera obscura.

For my second attempt. I initially wrapped my mini studio with plastic bags so it let in less light (as the sides were white) and had some overlap so I could Sellotape a piece of cardboard at the front as these two photos show.

Also, I kept a couple of towels handy to cut out more light around the box.

After getting everything prepared I made a hole using the small end of a ball point pen. I then sellotaped most of the cardboard up to the dustbin sacks. I then placed the camera via a remote inside of the apparatus and sealed the rest of the carboard up and started shooting.

When it came to actually shooting under this setup, I found out that there was still too much light pollution. I did drape more towels over the mini studio but I found that the cardboard itself was letting in too much light. The best I could achieve is shown with this unedited photo.

This turned out not to be as useless as it looked at first. I found out that in only messing around a couple of minutes in editing in each photo, by cropping, inverting, converting it to black and white and messing around with the highlights and shadows, what I eventually ended up with was an effect that I did actually like and, reminded me of photographs in it's early beginnings.

After messing around with this configuration for quite a while. I decided to do something different. This time I will try to use an enlarging lens instead of a pinhole. I used one that cost me about £0.25p and is shown in this photo.

I also see if I could project an object. The object I decided to use was an old brooch that we had lying around. A picture of the brooch is shown below.

This time, I made up a primitive holder and an adjustable workspace so I could raise, lower and move the object. My construction was made out of books, Sellotape, and old cereal packets. I also used one of my mini studio lights and the previous apparatus I made before. The finished construction is shown with the photo below.

After messing around for about an hour, I did manage to get a greatly magnified portion of the brooch to project onto the screen and then waited until it became dark.

Unfortunately, whilst waiting for darkness, my whole apparatus must have shifted and, when it came to projecting part of the brooch I was successfully was projecting earlier, whatever I tried did not work this time. The only thing I managed to do was to get the enlarger lens to focus on my light source and to cast shadows. Two examples of this is shown with the photos below.

I also tried another enlarger lens with a different focal length (which also cost me about £0.25p) but the results was just the same. 

 Overall, as a conclusion, I found that you can use camera obscura for various photographic means. I think if I had a few weeks more and spent more than a budget of about £1.50, I could have got the results I was after. This is certainly something that can be used in photography but, it is better to spend time making sure that everything is correct before giving it a go (as light pollution is a very big problem) and once your kit is correct, then go out in the world to show your art.