Author: Philippe de Bree

Project To Share Addition

In addition to Christian Brom’s post about joiners:

I feel that David Hockney has always been at the edge of what painting and image making could be (I’m personally a big fan of his Bigger Grand Canyon) and the fact that he’s now largely painting on an iPad I feel is, while safe in it’s execution, somewhat risky within the scope of being a painter. Looking at Joiners I was reminded of an animation I saw last semester, namely Faux Plafond – Cosmic Promenade by Francois Vogel:

faux plafond from francois vogel on Vimeo.

At one level the aesthetic of it is similar to Joiners, but at another I feel the notion of the image spliced together with others to produce a greater whole connects them as well. It’s also an example of a piece where the “360 camera” is used, but also a necessary component of narrative which in my opinion not many work using 360 cameras are.

Other posts reviewed:

Tahira, Quayola and Memo Akten “Forms”

Olivia, Clelia Knox “Experiments with Security Cameras”

Policarpo, James Bulley and Daniel Jones “Variable 4”

Lukas, Dirk Koy “Escape Route”

Response: The Camera, Transformed by Machine Vision

In essence I find that in the age of Machine Vision, the operator of the camera becomes more and more a curator of vision. GAN, Google Clips and Bruce Sterling’s camera all to me seem facets of a form of permanent world data collection, that are then curated and filtered by the operator. Through this, the individual’s biases and interests act in through the content they choose to convey, much in a similar fashion to the traditional notion of the eye of the photographer with the point and shoot. The user becomes author of their specific curations, with the camera act as a point of data collection of their world, with the world of camera no longer framed through a snapshot of time but rather a continuous stream of input that is then filtered through: the camera operator as film editor. Through this, the data collection and curation in essence become one. This collected data in turn is no longer limited by the notion of light and indeed visual aesthetics, but becomes a way to frame any stimulus that the world and human existence provides that can be documented.

Christian Marclay’s The Clock

Christian Marclay’s The Clock is not only a feat in film editing, I feel it’s also in a way a snapshot of the sheer volume of film, and to a degree, human culture. A looping 24 hour film, The Clock is a series of film clips with clocks in them edited together that so that the time presented on the clocks in the film coincides with the real life time of day the film is being shown. Due to this, the viewer is in essence watching the time pass by as the film progresses, with the film itself functioning as a clock.

I find is particularly interesting both as a feat of editing but also as a form of abstraction of time. There’s a curious tension between being wholly aware of the time as a physical construct (ie the clock) while altogether being separated from the cultural notions of time (ie death, business etc) that arise through existing as a human being. I also marvel at the fact that humanity has produced enough film to present all 24 hours on clocks.