June Blacutt – Experimental Capture

Capturing the Local Landscape

For my final project, I showed both my microscopic captures as well as my recordings of landscape maintenance work.

My ExCap Project 2: CMU Soul Keepers and ExCap Project 3: An Attempt At Exhausting a Park in Pittsburgh come together as explorations or Captures of the Local Landscape— in Schenley Park and on CMU’s campus. Both of these projects helped me see my local environment afresh.

CMU Soul Keepers helped me appreciate the landscape maintenance work and also made me realize that no one knows the landscape as well as they do. No one has occupied every square foot of campus as completely as a maintenance worker, and you can see that in a composite image like the one of Steve below.

An Attempt At Exhausting a Park in Pittsburgh, is what I called my microscopy explorations over the semester because, since project 1, I’ve spent many hours observing and capturing parts of Schenley Park. The observations started when I was using the trail cam. Because I spent so much time in the park for project 1 (I was worried the camera would be stolen), and because I was trying to find and capture some mysterious phenomena, I began collecting small items from the park, like rocks, flowers, acorns, etc. After our spectroscope intro with Ginger, I became very excited about looking at almost anything under a microscope. For our final project exposition, I showed some of my favorite microscopic videos and stills.

[insert favorite microscopy stills and youtube links]

Pollen on a flower found in Schenley Park

Zoomed out view of the pollinated flower

The shock of finding a bug on a leaf that was invisible to the naked eye really stunned me, it made me understand the leaf in a way I had never considered before, it became a whole landscape of its own, the world, or part of the world of this tiny bug. I needed to share this excitement, which is why when my boyfriend came to visit over fall break, I told him to come with me to Schenley Park and collect leaves, flowers, pond water/algae, and more so that we could look at it under the microscope. The recordings from my first video are all from that day. I would like to eventually show more people microscopic views of the world—I think it would be especially meaningful if they look at things they collect themselves—and record their reactions. As suggested, I do think it would be super fun to get a bunch of drunk people to record their observations of microscopic life. Perhaps in the spring, when life is reborn, I can try this again.

Bug found in a tiny patch of moss (tiny to me)

On a reference note… Early in the semester, when I was working on the first project, which involved using the trail cam in Schenley Park, Golan referenced Perec’s An Attempt At Exhausting a Place in Paris. Funny, I had just read the book over the summer, as well as Perec’s Species of Spaces, and was planning to try to do the same with a place in Pittsburgh. My training and professional work as a landscape architect made me obsessed with the idea of “sense of place,” which I think connects quite well the course concept of “quiddity.” Over the years, a lot of people have asked me what my “style” is as a landscape architect, and the best answer I can think of for that is: I don’t exactly have a style, because on each site, what I want to do is honor the place, honor the genius loci. If I have a style, it would be “honor the genius loci.” Anyway, I was trying to find new ways of “knowing” the landscape, of “exhausting” the landscape, of understanding “sense of place,” and through this class, especially through my microscopy studies, my idea of “place” totally shifted… perhaps we experience a sense of place at a human scale, but in each place, there are worlds within worlds.

Also, for our final exhibition, I printed some of my favorite microscope images, which are of bioplastic samples I made for Dana Cupkova’s class. In a failed bioplastic experiment, my bioplastics grew very gross but cool-looking mold on them and I was super excited to look at the mold and the bioplastics under the microscope. I brought my friend Audrey to see it and she was super into it to –we made the bioplastics together.

a thin coat of spirulina over a piece of laser cut chipboard

The side of the bioplastic that dried against aluminum foil

the foil dried side looks like a satin textile

the rigid angular shape is a laser cut piece of chipboard I poured the spirulina bioplastic mixture on top of

I would have liked to have taken both of these projects further. Mario (orange-vested landscaper) did suggest I record him clearing the snow next semester. If things are not too crazy for me then… I’d like to make more time for the landscape maintenance documentation project. In the future, for me or someone else, it might be interesting or fun to recording different people doing different types of landscape maintenance in different places. Like how does the place influence the type of work that is done? How does the tool shape the work? And vice versa, how does the work shape the place? I imagine documenting landscape maintenance work in the parks, and I’d love to do more leaf-blowing captures since those are actually so satisfying to see. I know leaf blowing is not the best for ecosystem health… but it’s important for pedestrian for the sidewalks to be free of slippery leaves… everything is complex, right?

Really this class gave me a great appetite for exploration through experimental capture. For example, right now, I’m on a plane flying to Bolivia. I wish I had the trail cam with me. I wonder what kind of creatures I might be able to document with a trail cam in La Paz. I think of the speedy vizcachas you catch glimpses of, I think of all the street dogs, and of course the people. I really hope that someday I can have the time and the means to pursue these kinds of projects because doing them makes me feel so excited and overall happy.

a vizcacha I bet I could capture on a trail cam if I brought it to La Paz

A GIF I made from a video of my teleferico ride in La Paz, I used LICEcap to make this GIF, thanks for sharing this tool!

Insights:

At the beginning of this class I mentioned that I was interested and worried about tech addiction, my own, but also the screentime of those around me. I’m definitely not anti-tech, but I do think that my health or overall life-enjoyment would improve if I spent less time on screens. Using my phone for example, to explore and record things that were happening outside, feels like a positive use of the technology I often feel I use in an unhealthy way. (the real culprit, I think is social media).

It seems obvious now that I say it, but I think that there are ways of using technology that actually connect you to a place, or “nature.” For example, when we use a lens to augment our perception and expand our sense of what’s “real” or what’s there… this is to see something that is invisible to human eyes… for example, things that are too small, too slow, too fast, too large. Through this class I saw something that was too small for me to see (tiny bugs), but also things that were too slow for me to fully appreciate or understand otherwise (like landscape maintenance work).

Closing Thoughts:

I wish I had an ExCap class every semester. I’m hoping to pursue projects started in this class in the future, and I’ve also started a list of things I’m excited to try in the future thanks to this class:

+ Slow-motion video with the Edgertronic (I’ll be back!!!)

+ I want to try to capture soundwaves generated through wavefield synthesis (if possible) using the Edgertronic, a smart set-up, mirrors and lasers?

+ More video editing with a ChatGPT – FFMPEG pipeline (while looking through Sam’s Github!)

+ Tilt-Shift– I’ll try again.

+ Gaussian Splats– Lorie’s Dead Things In Jars was super cool and I want to try out the splats someday.

+ Axi-Draw– I didn’t even know Axi-draw existed before learning about Marc’s work. I definitely want to try it out sometime and I really appreciated Marc’s projects and questioning what is worth drawing via axi-draw instead of another means.

+ Touch Designer – Abby’s interactive display was very nice and is something I’d like to try sometime.

+ Eulerian Magnification – Cathleen’s body magnification videos are super interesting and I’d like to try it on people who are at the gym or something.

+ A typography of tree hollows, maybe 3D scans? Maybe videos? Idk but I’m sure something interesting is going on inside the tree hollows.

An Attempt at Exhausting A Park In Pittsburgh

When Ginger came to teach us spectroscopy, and we were asked to collect samples outside to look at under a microscope, I unexpectedly discovered a microscopic bug when looking at a leaf from outside (I could’t see it with my plain, human eyes). This made me curious about what else I was missing. Then, for my first project, I spent so much time in Schenley Park (I was trying to exhaust it- à la Perec). In how many ways could I get to know Schenley Park? What was interesting in it?

In October, I collected a bunch of samples (algae from Panther Hollow lake, flowers, twigs, rocks, leaves, etc.) and brought them to the studio to see what I could find in a deeper look. Below is a short video highlighting only a small portion of my micro explorations. A lot of oohs, ahh, and silliness.

Last week, Richard Pell told us about focus stacking! I wanted to try using this technique to make higher resolution images from some of my videos. While the images are not super high resolution because they are made from extracted video stills, you are still able to see more detail in one image with the stacking. I ran a bunch of my captures through heliconFocus to achieve this. Below are my focus stack experiments along with GIFs of the original footage to show the focus depth changing.

Focus Stacking Captures:

Pollinated Flower Petals.

Stacked from 30 images. Method=A (R=8,S=4)

Focus Stacking – Blue Flower

Stacked from 11 images. Method=A (R=8,S=4)

Focus Stacking – Dry Moss

Stacked from 31 images. Method=A (R=8,S=8)

Stacked from 31 images. Method=B (R=8,S=8)

Focus Stacking – Bugs on Flowers

Stacked from 148 images. Method=A (R=8,S=4)

You can see the movement of the bug over time like this!!

I also did this with a tiny bug I saw on this leaf, you can see its path.

Stacked from 51 images. Method=A (R=3,S=1)

Next, you can see some bugs moving around on this flower

Now Mold!

A single strand of moss

Stacked from 44 images. Method=A (R=10,S=5)

Stacked from 44 images. Method=B (R=10,S=7)

A flower bud

Stacked from 70 images. Method=A (R=10,S=5)

Stacked from 70 images. Method=B (R=10,S=5)

Having done these microscopic captures for fun in October and really enjoying this close-up look at things, and being so mesmerized by the bugs lives, I wanted to spend an extraordinary amount of time just looking at the same types of bugs found on Schenley organic matter for my final project. On November 25th, I set out again to collect a plethora of objects from Schenley Park- including flowers, strands of grass, twigs, acorns, stones, algae+water from the pond, charred wood and more… I eagerly brought them to studio… wondering what bugs I’d see. But of course, it had gotten cold. After an hours-long search under the microscope, I did find one bug. But by the time I found the bug, I was exhausted (and interested in other things).

In an Attempt at Exhausting A Park In Pittsburgh. (Schenley Park), I ended up exhausting myself.

Buggin’ Out

Concept:

Invite people to come view objects collected in Schenley Park (such as leaves, flowers, rocks etc.) through microscopic (displayed on my laptop monitor) and capture their reactions with a high speed camera (and an audio recording of their voice, recorded on my computer). I’m expecting them to see bugs, but I am also interested in having them observe some other things, specifically things they have collected*. In general, I’m anticipating some reaction of surprise, some of wonder, and some of disgust. This certainly happened to me when I was looking at the microscopic images. What was especially interesting to me was that it made the observed objects feel totally new! It makes me realize that observing them with the naked eye can only ever go so far, and that there is always more to see! This kind of discovery feels eye-opening and mind-expanding.

*Note: I have previously invited a bunch of people to go on walks with me to Schenley Park, during which I asked them to pay attention to small objects (among a few other things) and to think about small objects as individual things to be observed, but also as interrelated parts of a larger landscape. I’m including some worksheet images of what kinds of objects people were observing at the end here.

Besides capturing people’s facial reactions with the high speed camera, I plan to take videos with the studio microscope of a collection of small organic materials found in Schenley Park (including plants and non-living materials like rocks or trash).

Things to think about:

How could I/ should I display this together? I’m wondering what the best presentation format might be. Also, is there something interesting I could do with the high speed camera that I’m not thinking about?

Bug’s View of Person? (but not if it’s on a leaf on a tree… right?) Or under a microscope..

Lillian suggested that it could be fun to show people in a sort of bug’s eye or worm’s eye view of the people. This sounds potentially fun to me. But not sure how to execute. Any other thoughts or ideas? I want to do something cool, challenging, and fun…

Person(s) Over Time: The Keepers of the CMU Soul

Project Description:

As a landscape architect, one of my guiding principles in design has been to try to honor the spirit of the place, known as genius loci. In order to find the spirit of the place, you must find what makes the place “special.” You must find the unique, celebrated, and cherished aspects of that place.

The concept of genius loci is not too different from the concept of quiddity, for both concepts underline the idea that things (such as places, people, or objects) have a what-ness, a fundamental essence, or soul.

Perhaps my keen interest in place and my efforts in discovering a place’s soul has made me interested in landscape maintenance workers, the keepers or guardians of the place’s atmosphere. According to classical Roman religion, the genius loci shapes and guards the atmosphere of the place and influences those who inhabit or visit it. I think this is exactly what maintenance workers do. They actively tend to, care for, and sustain landscapes. People may not pay much attention to how this careful and consistent work shapes a place and probably don’t realize that this work may be a necessary part of the place’s identity.

The place I am capturing is the landscape upon which Carnegie Mellon University is set. My subjects in this study are three landscape maintenance workers on CMU’s campus: Mario, Nate, and Steve. In this study, I am not attempting to capture the essence of my subjects- as that calls for a different kind of inquiry, rather, I am trying to capture the essential work that they do in maintaining the soul of campus.

References:

1. An important precedent in this project is Ansel Adams landscape photography work, which was used in Sierra club campaigns and books as well as by the National Park Service to justify and support efforts in maintaining these landscapes. Adam’s work has been greatly influential and important in environmental conservation efforts. However, Adams’ static, unpeopled images of landscapes may have contributed to an idea in the cultural psyche that landscapes are timeless and untouched by humans. While I’m not suggesting that the landscaped areas on CMU’s campus are the same as the landscapes Ansel Adams focused on, in my work I am trying to both highlight the dynamic nature of the landscape and the role of humans in creating and/or maintaining landscapes. We may think of nature as a refuge from the artificial or man-made world, but really, most of the ‘natural’ spaces we inhabit are actively shaped by people.*On a side note, Adams’ Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar do show people working landscapes, it’s interesting to learn that these photos were published in a book titled “Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans”
2. I have been reading Jenny Odell’s, How to Do Nothing, and through her I learned about Maintenance Art. Odell talks about how it’s important to realize that our world needs maintenance and care, just as much or more than it needs productivity and innovation. I think we would also do better to focus on care, repair and maintenance. Our culture is so focused on the new – we have a novelty bias… how could we better appreciate circularity and maintenance processes?
3. Through Jenny Odell I learned about Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969! I watched an interview of Ukeles’ where she says, “I choose maintenance and I call it art. I call necessity art. Which actually you could say, that’s bullshit. So what? I name it art.” I later learned that she has been the Artist in Residence of the New York City Department of Sanitations since 1977, and that she did a project called Touch Sanitation in which she personally met with, shook hands and said “thank you for keeping New York City alive” to 8500+ sanitation workers. She also recorded some conversations with the workers and hoped to use her art to increase positive views of those workers. I am inspired by Ukeles’ work because my main objective is to draw positive attention to the work being done by landscape maintenance workers at CMU whose work may not be noticed or appreciated. I want to make their work more visible and for it to be celebratory. Ideally, I would want someone viewing my work to be more appreciative or at least aware of the landscape maintenance work.
4. In trying to find ways to analyze, understand and celebrate the movements of individuals in space, I’ve been looking at NYT Athletics graphics. Specifically, I’ve been looking at 2021 articles about athletes: Simone Manuel, Sunisa Lee, Dalilah Muhammad, and Adam Ondra. I really like the subtle animations that highlight key movements, positions, and the smooth transitions between views. I also like the inclusion of 3D models or illustrations of equipment. If I continue this project further, I would like to include 3D illustrations of the landscape tools and equipment that the landscape maintenance team use. It would be interesting to visualize the techniques and dexterity that is necessary to do the job efficiently and effectively.
5. Finally, there are also influences from Frank and Lillian Gilbreth’s “Time and Motion” efficiency and ergonomic studies. I’m not particularly interested in the efficiency of movement in my subject’s landscape maintenance work. I’m more interested in the fact that they are performing skilled physical acts on the landscape in such ways that shape it. My analysis of their movements is not intended to point out efficiency, rather it is to heighten visibility and showcase skill and impact.
6. Although I didn’t use the tilt shift for my final captures, I was hoping to use that technique after being inspired by Keith Loutit’s Metal Heart.

Capture System and Workflow:

My workflow involved a lot of coordination with the landscape maintenance team on campus, specifically with my three subjects, and mostly with Nate, who is head gardener at CMU. This coordination was mostly done via email.

First, I needed to find someone to reach out to. After some digging, I found the email of head gardener Nate Holback. I wrote him an email and described my project’s needs and intentions. Although it took a full week for Nate to reply, I was really happy when he did respond because he was willing to participate and coordinate. Overall, the landscape maintenance workers I reached out to were positive and liked the idea of my project! This made me excited and motivated.

Before the first day of capture I had the following equipment with me:

1 Sony camera recorder, 1 tilt-shift lens, 2 tripods, 2 iPhones, 2 iPhone holsters

What I wanted to do was capture the landscape using time-lapse, tilt-shift videography… I had the iPhones as backup because I have no experience with the tilt-shift lens and was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get it right.

Day 1: I met Nate and Mario Friday, November 1st at 8:00am on Forbes Ave. in front of Cyert Hall. They were about to blow leaves there. I ran around to try to find a high-up window or rooftop from which to capture them, but couldn’t find one quickly enough. I set up in the best place I could. They were waiting for me to set up my cameras before they got started so I didn’t want to delay them. I ended up following Mario around for the next two and a half hours. He was super friendly and gave me an idea of where to record Nate from when he mowed the Tepper lawn. Mario showed me a picture on his phone taken from the 4th floor of Tepper, where you can see the whole of the Tepper Quad. It’s a great view, he noted. He also suggested I capture his snow clearing in the winter! This sounds super fun to me and if time allows I would like to do this in the future.

I tried using tilt shift photography, but ultimately it was too complicated to pull off and there were more urgent things to coordinate since the landscapers needed to get on with their work.

Day 2: Saturday, November 2nd. I spent the afternoon scoping out spots for capture and emailing those to Nate, see coordination below:

Day 3: On Monday November 4th I got up in the dark to make my way over to Tepper and set up inside Tepper to record Nate. I went inside Tepper to set up the tripods and camera from a 4th floor window. Unfortunately the room I was planning to set up in was locked, and my keycard didn’t have access. A kind maintenance worker let me in (I was carrying a lot of stuff, backpack, tripods, camera). Just after I finished setting up (right before Nate was going to start) a lady came into the room, asked me how I got in and told me that it was a private space (no one was there…) She seemed very upset about me being inside and asked me a bunch of questions. I told her I was doing an art project for a CFA class, that I was coordinating with the landscaper below, that I could share coordination emails with her if she wanted, and that I didn’t know the space was private because when I had been there on Saturday it was open and I just strolled in. She pressed me on who let me in that morning, was it a cleaning person? she asked. I explained that I was carrying a lot of things, so the person who let me in was just helping me out. I was worried that the kind maintenance worker who let me in might be in trouble. I still worry about this and I hope my project has not gotten her in trouble.

Day 4: I greeted Steve with a handshake bright and early on Tuesday morning (November 5th… what a day…) I set up a tripod on the balcony of the MMCH rooftop. Steve started mowing the sloped lawn by the tennis courts at 8:00 am sharp. My movements on the balcony made the tripod unstable and the video unstable. Whoops. If I capture Steve again, I will make sure I don’t step out onto the balcony while the camera is recording. By 9:00 am I was packed up and walked over to my polling place and then anxiety ensued.

Day 5+: Media Editing over the course of multiple days. Note: this is a study, a work in progress. I would have loved to do more with video editing and animation. Alas, I ran out of time. I’m going to work on this until the deadline, and maybe more if I get encouragement. Might want to continue this project into the final project of this class. I think there’s a lot here! More ideas for sure!

Form and Content:

I think that timelapse videos of the landscape work being done helps one appreciate the impact more. Seeing a before and after of the space is cool, but seeing the maintenance movements, the action is much more compelling. I think this is particularly true when it comes to leaf blowing, where the before and after is so clear. The lawn mowing is more frequent and the traces are visible when you look at the lawn. A brief note about seeing clean-ups in videos or in motion- There’s a lot of movies (like Mary Poppins) or animations (like Fantasia) that involve clean-up. I think there’s something compelling about watching something be cleaned, maintained or tidied.

Originally I wanted to use a tilt-shift, but this was a bit of a challenge for me in this case because I wanted my subject to always be in focus. I did get some tilt-shift captures of Nate but they weren’t very successful.

I think that if I do more of this, I would like to capture more leaf blowing, because the before/after is really striking and apparent. It’s also compelling to see it done over time lapse because the traces and changes are easier to understand.

I would also be interested in documenting winter maintenance such as snow plowing as Mario suggested.

Evaluation:

I really enjoyed this project and having my subjects as active, coordinated participants actually made the whole experience better and more interesting. I felt connected to the people whose work I was documenting and I felt grateful to be able to connect with them in this way because it is true that I appreciate their work. Something I realized while working as a landscape architect is that so much of the success of ‘your design’ depends on how it’s maintained, or tended to. As a designer trying to consider the lifecycle of my design propositions, I also think it’s important to think about how design decisions will create new cycles of maintenance and impact.

My process helps reveal that most people pass through these spaces quickly, mostly limiting themselves to moving on paved pathways. The landscape maintenance workers inhabit these spaces in a different way. They move through every square foot of them. They get to the edges, they understand the shape of the space. They cover the ground.

Personally, I felt like I needed to honor these people and their work. Show them in a flattering light. Not make them look silly. I have followed up with Mario to share a quick video edit. I still need to follow up with Nate and Steve with their captures. Having real people involved, who are not friends of mine makes me feel like I have a responsibility to do a good job. This makes me want to re-do, continue and refine this project. I am happy with the way this exploration has gone so far, but there is much more I could do to achieve my broader vision.

Also, this project reveals not only a person in time, but a place in time. In my time-lapse clips, you see the sky change. The shadows change. It just depends how fast you play the video. I would like to do more of these eventually. I have ideas for a more ambitious version of this project already. I am also interested in recording other landscape maintenance in Pittsburgh, like parks or plazas.

Results

https://youtu.be/ubVJsbv_7jk

The first capture I got was of Nate and Mario blowing the leaves off the Forbes Av. sidewalk:

Next, Mario mowing around campus:

Mario mowing in front of Hamerschlag Hall

Here’s Nate at Tepper:

Here’s Steve by the tennis courts:

note-all of these GIFs are here for portability. Higher resolution videos are in progress.

Earlier Plans and Sketches:

Maintenance workers and the essence of place – OR – Chasing microscopic bugs

Who does the work of sustaining and maintaining the landscapes that CMU uses to market and present itself? Can we call attention to and celebrate the work that landscape maintenance workers do by documenting and calling attention to the traces of their maintenance work?

I’m interested in finding ways of exploring these questions and would like to use time-lapse, tilt-shift photography to capture this.

*I am a little worried about the time constraint for this project. I wanted to contact CMU maintenance workers (I haven’t been able to intercept any maintenance working on campus yet, but I have reached out to people via email (although no one has responded yet). I contacted Nate Holback, who I understand is head gardener at CMU, but have not heard back yet (I will try to find other ways of contacting people).*

I described my plan to Nate in this way:

Dear Nate,

I hope you’re enjoying the beautiful fall season. I’m Kim, a graduate design student who is also a landscape architect. I have long admired the often-unseen work of the campus landscape maintenance team, and I want to bring more visibility to it through an experimental art project which is part of a class project.

For this class project, I’m using time-lapse, tilt-shift photography to create an almost toy-like, miniature view of the campus landscapes (you can see fun example of those here) My idea for the project is to capture the movements of members of maintenance team—mowing, pruning, mulching, or even watering plants—highlighting the subtle, repetitive work that keeps the campus looking beautiful but often goes unnoticed. No faces would be visible due to the tilt-shift effect and the far away distance of the camera, but I believe it’s important to have the consent of the workers involved, given they’d be the focal point of the scenes.

I’d love your advice on this. Are there particular people or landscapes on campus you think would be ideal for documenting? And would you be able to point me toward the best contacts to start a conversation about consent? I want to ensure that anyone who may be a focal point is comfortable with the project. I will be beginning the project at the end of this week (and may shift plans according to your response).

Thanks for your time! I really appreciate any thoughts or guidance you can offer.

Kind regards,
Kim

______

If this doesn’t work, I’m planning to continue my fun microscopy explorations. And might change my subject to a bug in time.

Here’s one capture (I have more to share).

Outwards from June – Report 4

Approaches to temporal capture and portraiture that interest me

01 NYT ATHLETE PORTRAITS

I’ve enjoyed NYT articles in recent years that show, freeze, and analyze an athlete’s movements over time. Here are two articles about Olympic runners, titled “How Noah Lyles Won the Men’s 100-Meter Gold by a Fraction” and “How Julien Alfred Beat Sha’Carri Richardson for Gold.” I like these pieces because they freeze, analyze and animate a person. I think this could be fun to do on a subject that is not necessarily a star athlete and not on a race track. What if we took this serious analytical approach to the movements of common people (non olympic athletes)? I think we could make something interesting and fun! I also like it that in this article line graphs are presented.

I also enjoy “Richarlison, Messi and Pulisic: Three Stunning Goals Frozen in Time” as a piece that not only shows and stops goals in a soccer game, but also allows us quickly pan around a 3D view of that critical moment and understand it in a way that is impossible for a spectator in real time. I do like soccer, but I think we could isolate and analyze other human, or maybe even animal movements (or plant movements?) in this way and find something really interesting.

02 NICHOLAS FELTON’S 2010 ANNUAL REPORT

I was incredibly moved by Nicholas Felton’s careful crafting with various forms of data to tell a story about his father, who had passed away the previous year, in an “annual report.” On a 99% Invisible episode, Felton describes his information design work and the annual reports he creates. “He took 4,348 of this father’s personal records and created an intimate portrait of a man, using only the data he left behind.” I love this project because the subject is so personal and the presentation is so clear.

Overall, I think Felton’s other annual reports are versions of a person in time (himself usually, over the course of a year). It was interesting to learn how the collection of data for these reports influenced and perhaps interfered with Felton’s life. Though maybe not as extreme, it reminded me of Tehching’ Hsieh’s One Year Performance 1980-1981 (Time Clock Piece).

03 LOOPING TIME

I really loved Naren Wilks, One Man, Eight Cameras. because it shows how a person and their movements can be rearranged and synchronized, especially to some kind of music (for what purpose, I’m not sure, but it’s so pleasing to see). Here we get to take a subject and the path of their movements as a material. Then we get to see how we can array and recombine those movements. Time loops are often explored in literature and cinema and I think they are very interesting to consider. Sometimes our lives feel like time loops.

In landscape architecture, I think one of the big challenges is to intentionally choreograph possibilities for change and movement within a setting. People try to choreograph the bloom times of plants for example, but you could also try to choreograph people and their movements in space. This makes me think of the landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, and his wife, the dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin. Here’s an interview with the couple where Anna Halprin talks about her study of the nature of movement and the nature of the human body.

Schenley Park Trail Typology

For our first ExCap project, I chose to make typology of actions that take place on a specific section of a trail in Schenley Park. I was interested in the various types of people, animals, and interactions that take place in this spot after once having noticed that someone left a laptop on the bench there and that there was a note on the bench the following day. Just for fun, I chose to present this in a parody nature documentary format. I had so much fun with this and wish to continue, improve and refine… this is as far as I could get for today.

Types of Schenley Trail Goers (video footage is not exhaustive)

In setting up this trail capture system, I had many highs and lows. Below is a log of my travails.

Friday, September 27th

I spent 3 hours in Schenley Park, from 4:00pm to just after 7:00pm. The first hour was spent setting up the trail cam. (I wanted to find a sturdy and inconspicuous spot that I could easily access. It’s important for my project to maintain the same view, so I needed to find a spot that would allow me to remove and replace the camera in the same spot easily. I asked my friend Audrey to come to the park with me and asked if she could bring her ladder. She did, although the spot I selected didn’t require the use of the ladder. Thanks Audrey!) For the next 2 hours, I left the trail cam mounted by the tree. I was content and excited to see what it might capture.

A good friend and an unnecessary ladder.

above, the trail cam set up from behind. below, the trail cam set up from the trail! It’s so camouflaged!

zoomed and highlighted, in case you couldn’t find it.

~A reflection on my setting up the trail cam.~ I got very dirty while setting up the trail cam because I climbed up and down the dirt hill to set it up. I startled some deer that were on the hill. They must have thought I was a freaky human, because I’m sure most humans they encounter don’t climb the steep hills, pressing their hands and knees into the dirt as I did. As I was setting it up, I was sitting next to a tree (for support). Seated beside the tree, toggling the trail cam settings, I saw many people pass through the trail below. Walkers, bikers, dogs, joggers. Not a single person or dog looked up at me. I was not hiding… had they looked up they would have seen me. But they did not look up.

Saturday, September 28th

Currently, I am sitting at a table in Schenley Park Café. It is Saturday, September 28th at 10:32AM. I arrived at the park a little after 8:30am to set the trail cam up. I’m worried because yesterday, I left the trail cam for 2 hours, thinking it was recording activity. I stayed nearby, reading while waiting for nightfall, with the camera in view. My plan was to collect the camera as soon as it stated getting dark. (Around 7:15pm). I picked up the camera, super excited, because I had seen various passerby on the trail… but it turned out that that the trail cam hadn’t filmed a thing!! I was confused!! Frustrated!! Because I had tested the set up before in studio, and on the trail, and the video recording based on motion detection worked as I expected.

I decided it would try again the next morning. Early. This takes us to the present moment. While I sat upon the hill by the tree setting up the trail cam, not a single passerby noticed me. More groups of joggers, walkers, etc. I even filmed some of them with my phone. I continue to be shocked at the fact that so far no one saw me. I wonder how they would react if they did see me! My guess it’s they would be startled and think I am a weirdo.

I’m sitting here, writing these notes, feeling very worried that the trail cam may not be recording. I think it is, because I spent time setting up and confirmed that it was recording before I left it. The interface is not helpful in confirming what the camera is doing. This makes me wish there was a way for me to access the live footage, to receive confirmation that the camera is indeed recording, and that I am not wasting my time. Although I actually enjoyed the time I spent waiting for nightfall in the park yesterday, of course I felt like my efforts had been a waste. Because of this, I have submit request to borrow a GoPro Hero 5 from IDeATe. I hope I can pick it up today. I’ll pick a second spot for the GoPro and will remain nearby as it films! I have downloaded a bluetooth remote control app for the GoPro, so I hope that can allow me to control it from afar. At least this way, I will KNOW that the recording is happening while it happens instead of having to wait and see. This lack of immediate feedback from the recording device makes me think of photography when you didn’t know what you were capturing, or if the camera was working well, until you developed it. In this case, I don’t get to see what the camera is capturing until I remove it from its spot. This is inconvenient!

Speaking of spending time in the park – well… I’ve actually never spent so much time ~still~ in the park. When I’ve spent a lot of time in Schenley, I’m usually in motion, either walking or running. Through my stillness, I’ve noticed and become interested in some new features in the park that I hadn’t thought about before. The first is the variety of textures on the park surfaces. I’ve collected some sort of transect samples in petri dishes (I used petri dishes only as a means of standardizing the amount of material samples collected). I really want to put these dishes under the STUDIO microscope. I was amazed by what I saw under the microscope when we did the spectroscopy workshop a couple weeks ago because though it I was able to see the movements microscopic bug on a leaf that was impossible to see with the naked eye. This was shocking! Amazing! I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like a portal into another dimension, where the familiar looked so different, it became unfamiliar. And I questioned what is really there. We see something like a leaf and we think we know what is it. But do we?

The other new interest is in tree hollows! They are everywhere and they are so mysterious to me! What goes on inside them? As humans don’t see what’s inside of them usually because our bodies are too big. Also they are dark. I would love to use a probe to scan or capture the forms they have on the inside and the activities they allow for plants, animals, fungi, & bacteria. How best to capture tree hollows? What devices could I use to capture the secrets of the tree hollows?

So it is now 11:22am. At noon I will go to the trail cam and confirm that it has been recording videos. WISH ME LUCK! After I check on it I’m going to go to IDeATe to try to borrow a GoPro…

UPDATE I last checked trail cam footage around 12:00pm and it was recording! I’m sooo excited. Set it up again, I think it’s working.. I hope it’s working… I borrowed a go pro from ideate…. It’s 3:09PM

Tuesday, October 1st

9:00am. Update on Schenley Trail Cam – This morning I witnessed something truly amazing.The acorns I left on the bench on Sunday were scattered across it. As I returned to my perch on the hill to set up the trail cam this morning, a passerby stopped by the bench. He spent a few minutes rearranging the acorns on the bench. Since I was so close to him, I tried my hardest to remain completely still. Once he left, I saw the message he wrote. It says “Hi” — this is so amazing to me. Why is it so amazing? Perhaps because that was the message I left, and because he had the exact same idea. It felt like mystical telepathy.

The acorn message that I left on the bench on Sunday.

Below is a link to the video of the guy placing the acorn message below.

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The acorn message that someone place on the bench on Tuesday morning.

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Finally, I just want to express that I’ve enjoyed this project so much and am inspired to do more! I’m eager to investigate human behavior and non-human mysteries in the park. I’m eager to leave more messages for people; I want to capture more footage from my spot; and I want to make new and better videos from my collected footage! What if I could keep this going as the leaves changed colors? Today I also saw deer in front of this spot, unfortunately the trail cam did not capture them.

I’m excited about the acorn messages and have tried some alternative versions. I have also placed some on another bench a few minutes walk away.

-Kim

Schenley Bench – Typology Machine WIP

I am interested in places and the different things that happen within them through time. I’m especially interested in parks because I want to understand why people go to them and what they are doing in them. As people living in 2024, we can get pretty much everything we need indoors, in controlled environments. So why do people outside? What do they do there? And what about the other forms of life in those spaces? Do we interact with other species outside? How so? How do people and animals move through the same space?

Faced with these questions and this typology capture assignment, I want capture a single place from a single view over a period of several days. The place I would like to do this is on a Schenley Park trail. The stretch of the trail that I would like to focus on has a stone bench which has called my attention before. Once I saw that someone had left a laptop on the bench. The next day, the laptop was gone and a note was in its place. I was running past it and didn’t stop to look at the note. I’ve been wondering about that bench and the things that happen around it since then. So, this spot is my intended subject. I am only beginning to think about the set up of my capture system. I’ve outlined some thoughts (with images) below.

What tools do I need?

How will I set up the capturing system?

option 1: mount camera to stake spike tripod?

option 2: tie camera to nearby tree

How might I assemble my recordings? I’m interested in the idea of different things happening in the same place through time. Since I read Watchmen as a teenager, I’ve been haunted by the idea that “things have their shape in time, not space alone. Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future.”

Watchmen – Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, John Higgins

One of my favorite examples of illustrating a place through time and the life and actions within it comes from Richard McGuire’s Here, a book I think about often.

I wonder if I could juxtapose videoclips in a similar way to show this space through time. I wonder what events I might capture and how I could tell their stories.

How could I make my capture plan and system more interesting?

Pocket Postulating

I was interested in trying the “slit scan” app, which I quickly realized makes for interesting effects when capturing something in motion (not as interesting when there isn’t movement). What’s interesting about capturing motion is that as a photographer, you should decide if you are going to move the camera, or if you are going to keep the camera still and capture something that is moving, or both. I have been working on group projects on campus all day, and I was having trouble thinking of a subject or set of subjects whose motion I could capture. I was trying to capture people moving around me, but that didn’t seem like a cohesive set. So I decided to instead capture myself in movement because I could be a clear and consistent subject. In the slit scan selfies below, I took selfies while walking around different places on campus. While I’m not the most avid selfie-taker, I do think that taking selfies this way allowed for a wider display of my different sorts of dispositions – of course my face and it’s expression is distorted in these, but I think that the variety of expressions that you can see here are greater than the variety of expressions there would have been if I had just taken regular selfies instead. I’m planning to try slit scan again for other objects in motion. Maybe tomorrow if I go for a run, I’ll take a pause and use it to capture some of the runners around me from a constant place.

Tomorrow I am also planning to take some panoramic photos as well as Timelapse photos. For the Timelapse photos my first idea is to take Timelapse photos of drinks or dishes with foods and liquids in the that are being consumed. Not sure if this a subject I can capture in a day, but I will try! For the panoramic photos I’m thinking my subject could be the streets I walk along on my way to campus. ~till tomorrow!

While walking to class, I became interested in the motion of various shadows. The wind was subtle, so I wanted to exaggerate and speed up the motion by taking a Timelapse. These photos were more interesting to me than the panoramic photos I took (where I was trying to catch the same car from two views). Above is a sample of the flickering plant shadows and below are couple of my failed car panoramas.

Notes from June: Photography and Observation

The first thing that occurred to me as I read Kelley Wilder’s text on photography and observation is that I know almost nothing about photography – I know little about the different types of photographic techniques that there are, nor do I know the history of photographic development, or their various scientific applications. I am unfamiliar with terms like “plates,” emulsions,” and “collodion,” and I have not given much consideration to the feedback loop between science and photography.

Reading Wilder’s text made me interested in understanding what set of skills the art of observation required before photography. She states that prior to photography, scientific observation required “an innate genius for concentration and attention to detail,” besides the development scientific observation skills (which are not described here).

I often aspire to be an attentive observer of my surroundings. I am interested changes and patterns within the environment, natural processes, and human behavior –but I feel like my observation skills are often a bit lazy and not rigorous enough to come to a meaningful insight, certainly not a scientific insight. I often capture and record without much intention, in fact, I feel as though many of the photos I take on my phone come from a feeling of compulsion. I feel a compulsion to record things and this compulsion is tinged with anxiety – perhaps related to the text’s introductory quote from John Gribbin, “Nothing is real unless it is observed.” There is some feeling that if a moment or an image or a thought is not captured in some way, it is lost and that we have no way of verifying that an event took place if there was no recording of it. (for more on this feeling see image of journal entry below).

I am interested in questioning how the affordances of my most used capture device (my iPhone) affects what I pay attention to and what I ignore in the situations I find myself in.

In some ways I wonder if photography, or photography as most of us perform it today has made our observations lazy. The text explains that one major advantage of photography over prior methods of recording observations was that “photography eliminated the aggravating need to momentarily take one’s eyes off the subject while jotting down notes or sketches.” I wonder though, what skills were perhaps lost when we started relying on photography for the images as opposed to using hand sketching and note taking? As recently as 2022, a new species of giant waterlily was discovered through detailed observation and illustration – the discovery of this new species, Victoria boliviana, was achieved in large part through the patient and rigorous observation work of Kew botanical illustrator Lucy Smith.

In your opinion, What is an artistic opportunity, made possible by methodological/scientific/scientistic approaches to imaging, that is interesting to you?

This article made me interested in how the scientific process for recording and developing images can create not only images but measurable datasets that when probed with certain questions reveal some phenomena about our world. For example, I found it fascinating that Raman plates, which are impossible for a layperson to read as a sort of image can be converted into measurements that can be used to capture information about material substances and structures. (I don’t have a complete understanding of how Raman spectroscopy works, but I am now very curious about it and intend to learn more). I think that overall, it is interesting to think about how a capturing tool (like the Raman plate and associated chemicals) can indeed be used to create an image—but that examining the relationship between the capturing tool, the environment, and the captured element can reveal a totally different ‘picture’.