Using the Pentax 645Z

Week [Camera Research Notes]

Pentax 645Z Medium-Format Camera

After falling in love with the Pentax 654Z medium-format camera from the production shoots I had been carrying out so far this term, I thought it would be beneficial for my project if I did some research about the camera. Since I intended on using this camera for all my future production shoots for the project, it seemed only right to learn more about the mechanics and functions of this camera. Here are some notes from the research about the camera this week:

Main Features and Specifications
Camera Weight: 1.47kg (camera body alone)
Pixel Sensor: 51.4 million pixels (25 x more quality than Full HD 1080p)
LCD Screen: 3.2 inches
Native ISO Sensitivity: 100-204,800
Continous Shooting Speed: 3fps
Focus System: 27-point Auto-Focus
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Sensor Size: CMOS 44x33mm 
Resolution: 8256 x 6192
Metering System: RGB
Storage: x 2 SD card slots

Personal Notes/Tips
- Best for shooting landscape and macro photography, use of tripod will give best results.
- Going above ISO 1600 produces much more grainy images for handheld shots
- Camera meters in a similar way to DSLR's and can under expose details with small apertures. 
- It is weatherproof and water sealed so can withstand some outdoor conditions
- HDR settings and the fast frame rate of the camera will make it easier to properly expose all details within my images than camera bracketing



My First Impressions of the Pentax 645Z

One of the best things about using the Pentax 645Z is that it slows me down. I stopped to think about what I was shooting. how long to exposure my photographsand made sure that my tripod was perfectly positioned for symmetrical compositions.

Of course, I could  do all of this with any digital camera, but there is something about the size, the shape, the cost and the operations of the 645Z that encourages me to get the perfect images of the highest quality with its 51.4-million-pixel sensor. As you would expect with medium-format camera sensors, the image quality is incredible!  Although, photographs captured at higher ISO settings could benefit from a reduction in size to help reduce image noise.

Yet, for the feeling that it was something new with the fact that I had never used a medium-format camera before, it had a sense of familiarity. The buttons, dials and on-screen menus are all logically placed, and although the size and shape of the camera can seem intimidating as the analogue Hasselblad or the Linhof Technika. Essentially, the 645Z handles very much like a big DSLR.

Information Sources:
- http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.uk/en/medium-format-digital/PENTAX-645-Z.html
- http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/reviews/dslrs/pentax-pentax-645z
- https://photographylife.com/reviews/pentax-645z/

TO DO LIST 25th May

Week 5
- Reading Annotations

Week 7
- Brutalist Photographers for R&R

Week 9
- Add Owen Hatherly Reading Notes

Week 10
- Competition R&R
- Brutal London book

4 MORE REFLECTIONS

LDN

Screen Notes

This week, Nathan Miller's documentary LDN dropped on his YouTube channel. In the director's own words, LDN "“LDN hasn’t just been shot in studios and shows, I’m spending time with artists, and so foreign viewers will get a close-up look at what it means to be British: tower blocks, Morleys, sitting on the back of buses, and so on. I’m in the field with those taking part.”
http://www.sbtv.co.uk/news/movie-news/see-first-trailer-ldn-documentary-londons-music-scene/
I decided to watch his documentary as it focused on themes relating to my project such as London, grime music and tower blocks, plus it also features photographers such as Vicky Grout and Courtney Francis, who are photographers that I have done research about earlier this term and follow on my personal Instagram account. 
http://www.sbtv.co.uk/news/movie-news/see-first-trailer-ldn-documentary-londons-music-scene/
Here are the notes I made whilst watching the documentary:

- From the estates of Brixton Hill to the main stage, YouTube has propelled rap group 67 into the forefront in the emerging London drill scene.

- Channels such as SBTV. GRM Daily and LinkUp TV, grime is a lot more accessible than in this day and age. Artists no longer have to sell their mixtapes on the street or perform at raves. The internet has provided a platform that has made grime music explode across the world, allowing more artists to be heard and creating a bigger following for the genre.

- Being there at right time at the right place is a saying that grime music can relate to it how it has become such as successful genre that is breaking into the mainstream.

- DJ Semtex believes J Hus is a unique artist amongst members of the grime scene. The way he fuses African dialect and ways of singing with rap, the way he invents his own slang, his image etc.

- Vicky Grout is one of the the scene's most respected photographers, having shot many of the UKs finest artists, from Skepta to Wiley and everyone in between. One of the DSLR cameras she uses for her work is a Canon EOS 5D.
I got my first camera when I was 11, just a little bridge camera, and I would just take photos of friends and random shit as I didn't really know what I was doing. Then, when I was like 13/14 I found my parents family holiday camera, it was a compact film camera that you point and shoot, and I took it with me everywhere and started shooting at shows I was going to, candids of friends or whatever. From there, I started out doing very casual work, just documenting what I was doing and it was really just for myself. I'd put my work on a blog like Flickr or Instagram as something to look back on for myself. 
Grime is what I would shoot as these were the raves I was going to and I think both myself and the genre progressed further in unison. I never set out to document grime, it was more like: Go to this rave, take some photos and getting feedback from people and developing my style.

- There's a lot of negative energy behind grime but it depends on how you channel it. You can feed of people's negative energy and make something positive.

- According to Morgan Keyz, a veteran grime music video director "Giggs made UK rap and grime the cool thing to do, he totally changed the face of grime and the entire sound."

- Although grime is related to gang culture and there is beef between certain MCs, if the music is right, it doesn't matter where you come from and what endz you rep.

- Para-phrasing Youngs Teflon "Grime is a success story. Nothing became something. The scene has become positive through its role models. People of the younger generation are seeing the people around them going through the same struggles as they are and being a success. Kids want to be the next Stormzy, the next Anthony Joshua, the next Raheem Sterling as they are people that are coming from the environment we grew up in and succeeding in what they do, gaining credibility, respect and money. In my day, the role models were the gangsters in our local areas. They were the people who were respected and making money. But now, as you get older you don't have to be a gangsta to be respected and make money."

- The newfound fans of the emerging sounds of London have created an economy, allowing for many artists to thrive and establish a career as musicians. The sounds coming from London are true, honest and show appreciation to the cultural heritage. New artists are creating songs daily, but the beauty in the climate is that it only takes one hit and great execution to change the lives of the artists and the people around them.

Week 5 Production Planning

Week 5 [Production Development Notes]

The Exhibition of My Creative Project

From this week's close discussion I had with Mehaul during the workshop and practical session, we discussed where I was with my project so far and also the exhibition stage of the module. Since I had requested funding for my project (mainly for the printing and framing of the final images of my project) I discussed with Mehaul how I wanted to exhibit my project as 12, A3-sized, framed photographs as if they were to be displayed in a gallery-like setting of different Brutalist buildings, shoot with an asymmetrical composition. However, Mehaul suggested that I should look into presenting my project as a 'zine' as this would mean I could exhibit all my locations I had carried shoots out at and research I had done into symmetry and Brutalist architecture into a small photo-book. I really liked this idea because I had been worrying about how I would present my creative project to an audience and if choosing a gallery-styled projection of my project would convey it to its full potential. Here are some notes I made about my research on zines.

Issues with Gallery-Style Exhibition
1. Project would need a more clear-cut and direct focus.
In order for my project to be unique and engaging, I would need a message to convey with my photographs e.g. Photograph Brutalist buildings due to be demolished and portray in a beautiful way. This would mean I would have to limit my focus of my final images to 2-3 different Brutalist buildings in order for my audience to clearly interpret and engage with my project.
2. Expensive
Printing, framing and mounting is a lot more costly than simply printing out a small magazine
3. Can only be viewed in one setting
Displaying my project in a gallery setting as 12 large, framed and mounted photographs means my audience could only view my project in one particular setting

By choosing to exhibit my photography project as a photo-book in the form of a zine:
- I could print multiple copies and the same price as framing and mounting 12 images. 
- I could have more than 12 images to exhibit as the final result of my project, meaning I could share a lot more of the photographs I had shot over the year, rather than focus on two particular locations.
- It would be a lot more accessible for audiences
- Would require a lot more time designated to the post-production process of the project.

What are Zines?
In order to understand the exhibition platform I had chosen for my project, I did more research into zines in regards to what they are and how I could present my project as one. Here is some of the research I did online about them.

Research Source 1:
Renstrom, E. (2016) Why photo Zines are more important than ever. Available at: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/why-photo-zines-are-more-important-than-ever (Accessed: 1 March 2017).

Even though paper and ink may seem unnecessary these days, we're living in a golden age of the page.

Common Sense(s) is a show currently on display at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York, that features a compilation of photo-zines and related ephemera by over 50 artists. Juan Madrid, a previous VICE contributor and staffer at the Center, co-curated the impressive display with artist Carlos Loret De Mola. At a time when people can get all their news and scroll through a zillion photos before they're out of bed, what's the point of putting a printed object out? Finding communities and people who are like-minded make me feel a little less insane about the fight for printed matter so I asked Juan and Carlos a couple of questions about the show and their own thoughts about the final fate of print.

What is a Zine?
Carlos:  Independent artist publishing has been experiencing an explosion of activity over the last decade. Within that activity, the "photozine" has emerged as a platform for lens-based artists to publish their work with a raw and experimental urgency that more traditional forms of independent publishing lack.

What do zines mean to you?Juan: They're a lot of different things. In creating them, they're a way of making something that doesn't have to hold the same weight as a fully-fledged photobook—they can be a way of exploring more experimental ideas quickly or act as sketches or drafts of something bigger.

Carlos: We use the term zine in a very contemporary manner that respects its roots but also attempts to explore its current state. The process relies on its independent, artist-made nature. Zines tend to connect the artist more directly with its intended audience, as opposed to a trade publication or a bespoke edition where the imprint of the publisher or gallery or other institution bodes heavily in that connection.


Do you think it's worth it to create them?
Carlos: All zine artists value the look and feel of these very tangible paper-based publications that they imbue with immediacy, intimacy, fervor, and transgression. They are eminently accessible objects with often challenging content. They can be instantly experienced by anyone anywhere at anytime without a monitor screen or a rechargeable battery. Yeah, they're totally worth creating!

Why do you think there's a resurgence of people dedicated to making them?
Carlos: I'm not sure I would call it a resurgence. Steady, increased accessibility to digital printing technologies has definitely expanded the field of practitioners over the last several years. More artists are experimenting with the potential of independent publishing today than ever before and the zine platform has its own unique appeal. Even very established artists as varied as photographer superstar Gregory Crewdson and narcissistic pop super genius Kanye West are using the zine form to distribute their distinct ideas.

Week 9 - Research Notes Competitions and Mehaul reading

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n05/will-self/it-hits-in-the-gut
Check your desktop for reading PDF Micheal emailed

http://www.bjpbreakthrough.com/how-to-enter/
http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/31126/1/what-s-next-for-the-uk-grime-scene

Week 7 - Research Notes Music & Architecture

http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/30607/1/the-brutal-musical-legacy-of-jg-ballard

http://www.archdaily.com/771142/what-can-music-videos-teach-us-about-architecture

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vGMOkKomFsYC&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161&dq=grime+music+brutalist+architecture&source=bl&ots=5oSDOsldLi&sig=r6VbIt1LEyI_sOkevwKzTJv0-Fg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_h_KNlM7SAhWHL8AKHT6YCzsQ6AEIUDAJ#v=onepage&q=grime%20music%20brutalist%20architecture&f=false

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pYG5eRoSTJwC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=grime+music+brutalist+architecture&source=bl&ots=uyj8O9vSGQ&sig=oty0vfmzh5Ci7f9s7u571-o0HVA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw4amQmM7SAhUjLsAKHbK1CzM4ChDoAQg2MAc#v=onepage&q=grime%20music%20brutalist%20architecture&f=false

https://www.grafik.net/category/feature/concrete-crush



http://fuckyeahbrutalism.tumblr.com/

freeprints.co.uk

week 5 research

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/t-magazine/design/brutalist-architecture-revival.html?_r=0

https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Brutalist-architecture.pdf

http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/brutalist-architecture/

Week 5: Workshop and Practical Notes

Mehaul Feedback
Blurb
LuLu
Self-Publishing/print on demand
https://wordery.com/the-architecture-of-parking-simon-henley-9780500287965?currency=GBP&gtrck=d01uYnBEa051eVBMdmlTN1dTZGZmZzNZbVI5VkhwQUVhNlQrRmJGd2xEUlk4U2crYUhUSlZHdklCVmhGNHpVNXdHUHVwKzc0Q3hnc2VveGpqS2tPNEE9PQ&gclid=CjwKEAiA3NTFBRDKheuO6IG43VQSJAA74F77TZMVhAzlLOQ8cUEn2bxKJOSzyyIhimyIxO6gJK4IKRoCi7jw_wcB

Week 4 Workshop NotesINCOMPLETE

Mehaul Feedback

Brian McCabe
Miniclicks in Brighton Jim Stephenson
Luxembourg Rut Bees

New England House, New England Street

Week 3: Workshop + Practical Notes

Competitions and Funding Kickstarter The Elephant Trust Lighthouse The Arts Council Skiddle/Brighton Media Centre National Geographic Fabrica List
Colourfast - CHECK FOR PRINTING: http://www.colourfast.co.uk/pricelist.aspx
Critical Feedback Mo - Emoji's are an extension of our language - Think about the subjects you shoot before you glitch them - Are emoji's directly related to our online self?

Photoshop Queries
- How to freely rotate my images
- Changing the size of the canvas
- Can you tilt you images? (lean forward)
- Perspective warp to straighten up the converging lines
- How to mirror flip my images from a vertical central axis

Free Fall reading

Week 5: Lecture 4 - Nadija Mustapić

Lecture 4: Nadija Mustapic

Nadija Mustapić (Rijeka, 1976) works predominantly in video installation, but her practice included documentary and experimental film, installation, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and performance. Since 2006, she lives and works in Rijeka, Croatia. She is an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Applied Arts, The University of Rijeka where she teaches at Media Arts and Practices graduate program.

In some of her work, she explores multi-dimensional relations between the representation of space, its subjectivity and political contingency. Her approach is based on audio-visual documentarism that focuses on abstracting, fragmenting and constructing poetic narratives, considering therefore documentarismn as an expandable category. She also often employs fictional elements as well as psychogeography to trigger changes in the viewers’ perception of a place in time. The non-linear narratives constructed around places that evoke contingent conditions, states of being or meanings get translated into immersive spatial video/audio installations.

Exhibitions and Installation Work
Mustapić has exhibited in over 30 solo (MMSU – Rijeka, Cecile R. Hunt – St.Louis, MKC – Split, the Home of HDLU – Zagreb..), over 50 group exhibitions and festivals (15th Venice Biennale Architettura, Si:n Festival o video art & performance – Ramallah, Faulconer Gallery – Grinnell, TH-T Award – Zagreb, Directors Lounge – Berlin, Instants Video – Marseilles, Contemporary Art Ruhr Media Art Fair – Essen, Art Kino Croatia – Rijeka..) in Croatia and internationally. Her artistic practice also includes collaborations. She is one of founding members of The Moving Crew art collective (www.themovingcrew.org). Mustapić has received different stipends and awards (Saari Residency/Konnen Foundation, Headlands Artist-in-Residence, Scuola Internazionale di Grafica Assistantship, Peggy Guggenheim Museum Internship..).

Education
She graduated from the faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences, which is part of the Art Department at the University of Rijeka (BFA, 1999). In 2004, she earned her MA and in 2005 her MFA degree (graduated with honours) from the University of Iowa (printmaking/intermedia).

Other Notes:
- An installation is a territory that displays an experience and constructs a relationship between the mind, body and space.

- With spatiality, you must consider sound as part of the experience to make it more engaging for your audiences. It can create various different atmospheres and distances, especially with the use of surround sound. e.g. Mustapic's 3-way audio installation "I don't know about the rest of the world, but here...'

- Rikard Bencic 2008 documentary film focuses on an industrial property based in the centre of an Eastern European city, constructed in the mid-1800s. It's a film about the loss of social identity and deals with representation, subjectivity and the political reality of spaces and cultures.

- An Afternoon without Gravity (2010) is a 2-channel video installation by Mustapic. It considers the physical and metaphorical weight of a building and the alternative narratives that could be constructed around the site itself as if it experienced zero gravity.

Week 5: Research

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698908002800

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LNnSBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA487&lpg=PA487&dq=optical+illusions+symmetry&source=bl&ots=xFRg4LWb4I&sig=6QtJF17jKC3Qf_xok0RtjKHuAy4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-64H08LDSAhXkL8AKHddhBBI4ChDoAQhAMAU#v=onepage&q=optical%20illusions%20symmetry&f=false

Research Week 1 - Debates in Brutalism

https://www.dezeen.com/2016/02/26/welbeck-street-london-car-park-risk-demolition-redevelopment-hotel/

http://www.bjp-online.com/2016/09/demolition-what-lies-behind-the-walls-of-the-brutalist-landmark-estate/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28113687

http://britishbrutalistarchitecture.blogspot.co.uk/p/brutalism-argument.html

https://www.ft.com/content/da3b4540-b83d-11e5-a7cc-280dfe875e28

https://www.ft.com/content/7ae5d134-bacf-11e5-bf7e-8a339b6f2164


PLANNING SHOOTS
https://brutalistconstructions.com/tag/london/

BRUTALIST PHOTOGRAPHERS
http://www.lukehayes.com/2762578-robin-hood-gardens

AYLESBURY ESTATE
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/13/aylesbury-estate-south-london-social-housing
https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2012/may/03/aylesbury-most-maligned-estate-social-housing



GRIME AND BRUTALISM
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JDRuDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT37&lpg=PT37&dq=grime+music+brutal+london&source=bl&ots=9h0lQuRP4t&sig=hcdKapMkMGIaiL7Xn9DC-9jed8c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiWtZaCjpjTAhUGLsAKHbRKATU4ChDoAQgiMAA#v=onepage&q=grime%20music%20brutal%20london&f=false

Research Wk 4 - Grime and Brutalism

- http://thump.vice.com/en_uk/article/i-want-to-blast-my-record-in-chinatown-an-interview-with-fatima-al-qadiri

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLlYrJ8Ao44&feature=related - shazam for tune

http://thespaces.com/2015/07/30/brutalist-music-where-sound-and-architecture-meet/

- http://thespaces.com/2015/05/19/brutalism-6-music-videos-that-celebrate-the-concrete-age/

- http://thespaces.com/2016/07/18/7-best-brutalist-art-galleries/

http://thespaces.com/2016/05/17/kate-jackson-uses-britains-brutalist-landscape-backdrop-debut-album/

http://thespaces.com/2017/02/22/deskopolitan-paris-coworking-space-moreysmith/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/why-we-must-learn-to-love-brutalist-architecture/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/england/london/city/articles/The-Barbican-Londons-ugliest-tall-building/


____


https://thespaces.com/2017/04/03/jo-underhill-britains-unapologetic-brutalism/
http://thespaces.com/2015/07/30/brutalist-music-where-sound-and-architecture-meet/

Baribcan research
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/england/london/city/articles/The-Barbican-Londons-ugliest-tall-building/

Week 7: Lecture Notes - Ashley Pharoah

Lecture 6: Ashley Pharoah

Ashley Pharaoh was educated at Queen Elizabeth’s Sospital School, bristol, and the University of Sussex in Brighton. He then graduated from the National Film and Television School with WATER’S EDGE, a short coming-of-age film set in somerset. 

After Sussex, he enjoyed poetry and novels at Sussex, stayed another year in Kemptown to wait for his girlfriend to graduate from her French degree. 

Got paid £300 after hearing about a scriptwriting offer on Radio 4 and went for it. He aimed to get into the National Film and Television School and sent off his radio play and stories along with his application to the university and he got accepted.

Film School was very different to University education

No film theory or academic content, just discussion about filmmaking and practical situations. He struggled there, and enjoyed talking about narrative and story/script writing. 

His tutor gave him a plan. for two weeks when you wake up, go straight to your desk and write for an hour, not technique or craft, just raw material. Only they discussed it together when he completed the challenge which helped him create and story and set of characters. This results in Water's Edge that was a short bafta-nominated film. 

WATER’S EDGE was nominated for a short-film BAFTA and went on to win awards at the Chicago, Berlin and Bilbao Film Festivals. Wrote screenplay for his first feature, WHITE ELEPHANT, shot in Ghana and starring Peter Firth.

After swanning around Southern Africa writing obscure movies that nobody wanted to make, Ashley spent three years on the BBC soap EastEnders, he got an pilot episode to write and researched the show throughly, 12 million people watched the episode and he got a full pay-check. He knew this was his big chance to make for himself as he was living in London on the doll before this opportunity came his way.

He works mostly in drama-realism. In a mainstream way with a twist. 

Kudos Production company with Tony Jordan and Matthew Graham

where he taught the young Matthew Graham how to hold a pen. After writing on the first series of Silent Witness, he went on to create Where The Heart Is, a show that ran for ten years on the ITV Network. Other series that Ashley created and wrote during this time include PARADISE HEIGHTS, DOWN TO EARTH and LIFE SUPPORT. 

ANCHOR ME was a two-parter for Granada that starred Iain Glenn and Annette Crosbie. Also at this time, Ashley adapted TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS (starring Stephen Fry, produced by Company Pictures) and Thomas Hardy’s UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE (Keeley Hawes, produced by Eccosse), both for ITV. 

Finally, Ashley created and wrote the smash-hit family drama WILD AT HEART (starring Stephen Tompkinson) for Company Pictures which is currently in its sixth series. Wild At Heart was remade as LIFE IS WILD for the CW Network in the USA.

After an infamous weekend in the seaside resort of Blackpool with Matthew Graham and Tony Jordan, Life on Mars was born. Although its gestation was long and sometimes frustrating, it burst onto British screens in 2006 to good reviews and good ratings and a clutch of awards. It was remade for ABC, starring Harvey Keitel. It was now that Ashley and Matthew formed Monastic Productions, and their first produced series were Ashes To Ashes (in association with Kudos Film And Television) and Bonekickers (with Mammoth Screen).

Life on Mars took 8 years to develop and write all the stories and episodes. It was re-written over 40 times. It went from BBC to Channel 4 then back to BBC before it got put into production.

It's about your talent and your drive, not so much your qualifications in this industry. Go with your instincts.

He now works as an executive producer on most of his shows.

Week 4 [Reading Notes] - Stephen Shore and 'The Nature of Photographs'

Reading Notes:

Shore, S. (2007) 'The Deceptive Level' in The Nature of Photographs by Stephen Shore: A Primer. 2nd edn. New York: Phaidon Press. pp. 36-95

Photography is inherently an analytic discipline. Where a painter starts with a blank canvas and builds a picture, a photographer starts with the messiness of the world and selects a picture.

A photographer standing before houses, streets, people, trees and artefacts of a culture imposes an order on the scene - simplifies the jumble by giving it structure. He or she imposes this order by choosing a vantage point, choosing a frame, choosing a moment of exposure, and by selecting a plane of focus.

The formal character of the image is a result of a range of physical and optical factors. These are the factors that define the physical level of the photograph. But on the depictive level, there are four central ways in which the world in front of the camera is transformed into the photograph: flatness, frame, time and focus.

These four attributes mentioned above define the pictures' depictive content and structure. They form the basis of a photograph's visual grammar. They are responsible for the snap shooter's 'mistakes': a blur, a beheading, a jumble, an awkward moment. They are the means by which photographer's express their sense of the world, give structure to their perceptions and articulation of their meanings.

The first means of transformation is flatness. The world is a 3-D; a photographic image is 2-D. Because of this flatness, the depth of the depictive space always bears a relationship to the picture plane. The picture plane is a field upon which the lens's image is projected. A photographic image can rest on this picture plane and, at the same time, contain an illusion of deep space.

- Photographs have (with the exception of stereo pictures) monocular vision - one definite vantage point. They do not have the depth perception our binocular vision affords us.

- When 3D space is project monocularly onto a plane, relationships are created that did not exist before the picture was taken. Things in the back of the picture are brought into juxtaposition with things in the front. Any change in the vantage point results in a change in the relationships.

- Some photographs are opaque. The viewer is stopped by the picture plane. Some photographs are transparent. The viewer is drawn through the surface into the illusion of the image.

- In the field, outside the controlled confines of a studio, a photographer is confronted with a complex web of visual juxtapositions that realign themselves with each step the photographer takes.

The next transformative element is the frame. A photograph has edges; the world does not. The edges separate what is in the pictures from what is not. The frame corrals the content of the photography all at once. The objects, people, events, or forms that are in the forefront of a photographer's attention when making the fine framing decisions are the recipients of the frames emphasis. The frame resonates off them and, in turn, draws the viewer's attention to them. The relationships that edges create are both visual and 'contentual'.

- For some pictures, the frame acts passively. It is where the picture ends. The structure of the picture begins within the image and works its way out of the frame.

Someone saying 'cheese' when having a portrait made acknowledges unconsciously the way time is transformed in a photograph. A photograph is static, but the world flows in time. As this flow in interrupted by the photograph, a new meaning, a photographic meaning, is delineated. 

- Two factors affect time in a photograph: the duration of the exposure and the staticness of the final image. Just as a 3D world is transformed when it is projected onto a flat piece of film, so a fluid world is transformed when it is projected on to a static piece of film. The exposure has a duration, what John Szarkowski in The Photographer's Eye called 'a discrete parcel of time'.

- The duration of exposure could be:
1/10,000th sec = Frozen time: an exposure of short duration, cutting across the grain of time, generating a new moment.
2 secs = Extrusive time: the movement occurring in front of the camera, or movement of the camera itself, accumulating on the film, producing a blur.
6 mins = Still time: the content is at rest and time is still.

Focus is the fourth major transformation in the world of the photograph. Not only does a camera see monocularly from a definite vantage point; it also creates a hierarchy in the depictive place by defining a single place of focus. This plane, which is usually parallel with the picture plane, gives emphasis to part of the picture and helps distil a photograph's subject from its content.

- The spatial hierarchy generated by the plane of focus can be eliminated only by photographing a flat subject that is itself parallel to the picture plane.

- The hierarchal emphasis created by the plane of focus can be minimised by increasing the D.o.F. But there is still one plane that is in focus, with space before and behind rendered with diminishing sharpness. There is a gravitation of attention to the plane of focus. Attention to focus concentrates our attention.

Lecture 3: Louis Porter

Week 4: Lecture 3

Louis Porter - Photographer

Louis Porter (b.1977) is British-born artist who works in the mode of a photographic flâneur, exploring a diverse range of themes including: 
- Urban space
- Photographic archives
- Leisure
- Violence 
His work has been widely exhibited throughout the UK, England, Canada, Austria, China and Australia including multiple solo shows at the Monash Gallery of Art and Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne.
In 2012 he established his own imprint Twenty Shelves, its first publication, The Anatomy of Business, won the inaugural Most Beautiful Books Prize

Overview of Porter's Work
- Photographer/Artist
- Most of his work was produced whilst he was living in Australia.
- The experience of going abroad spurred Porter's interest in photography, and in particular, street photography.
- Became interested in dystopian literature such The Other Side by Alfred Cohen and wanted to create a project around the framework of the city 'Pearl' from Cohen's book
- Carried out in the suburbs of Australia during the summer where the temperature averaged between 20-mid40 degrees.
- Due to the temperatures being so high, most of the suburbs were empty, almost ghost towns 
- Colours such as yellow and blue it's the fastest colour to perceive.
- The project took many years to carry out.

Makes his projects that he is hired to do commercially relate to his own personal projects.
- He aims to focus on the surfaces that are presented to us, looking at structures and frameworks of the environment.

When he was in Beijing, he carried out a project called 'Wires at Night' and 'Red Carpet Security Guards'. 
Another project was 100 flowers, inspired by a communist speech in 1956.
For the 2008 Olympic games there were many flower beds put up in Beijing and this is what Porter focused his project on.

Weegee photographer was a big inspiration for Porter.

Within the archives, there were thousands of mug shots of businessmen. Porter started to categorise these images by hairstyles.

The Small Conflict Archive
Became obsessed with colour, experimented with drum-scanning which are very difficult to use as there are no colour profiles, you had to make comparisons with real life colours.

He chose to photograph subject which are unfinished or poorly painted. He thought there was a hidden pleasure in their incompleteness. 

Other Projects:
- Rupture/Repair
- Signs of Struggle
- Paper Aeroplanes Unraveled
- Digital Wunderkammer
- Exotic Animal Enclosures
- Lost & Found
- The Wall
- Blackout

101 John Smiths
He collected 101 John Smith profile pictures
- By cars, fishing, uniforms, beer, music, guitars

Week 2: Workshop + Practical Session

In this week's workshop, Michael suggested that we read and make notes on McLuhan's chapter on Photography from the book Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. Here are the notes I made on the chapter as well as the discussion we had as a class.

Reading:
Marshall McLuhan (1994) 'The Photograph: the Brothel-without-Walls' in Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, London & New York. The MIT Press; Reprint edition

Marshall McLuhan is an important media theorist who wrote 'Understanding Media', which was influential in the 60s and 70s.
"we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us
"the medium is the message"
"global village"

One might say: "text messaging changes how apples taste."

The word 'camera' comes from the latin word meaning 'room'.

Mediums are extensions of the human body.

Nobody can commit photography alone. It is possible to have at least the illusion of reading and writing in isolation, but photography does not foster such attitudes. If there is any sense in deploring the growth of corporate and collective art forms such as the film and the press, it is surely in relation to the previous individualist technologies that these new forms corrode.

To say that "the camera cannot lie" is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practiced in its name. Indeed, the world of the movie that was prepared by the photograph has become synonymous with illusion and fantasy, turning society into what Joyce called an "all nights newsery reel," that substitutes a "reel" world for reality. Joyce knew more about the effects of the photograph on our senses, our language, and our thought processes than anybody else. His verdict on the "automatic writing" that is photography was the abnihilization of the etym. He saw the photo as at least a rival, and perhaps a usurper, of the word, whether written or spoken.

The technology of the photo is an extension of our own being and can be withdrawn from circulation like any other technology if we decide that it is virulent. But amputation of such extensions of our physical being calls for as much knowledge and skill as are prerequisite to any other physical amputation.

Perhaps the great revolution produced by photograph was in the traditional arts. The painter could no longer depict a world that had been much photographed. He turned, instead, to reveal the inner process of creativity in expressionism and in abstract art. Likewise, the novelist could no longer describe objects or happenings for readers who already knew what was happening by photo, press, film, and radio.

The Photograph
- To 'commit photography'
- Woodcuts, engraving, prints
- The dots get smaller (pointillism, MOC cool media to hot)
- Visual reports without syntax
- Comparisons with Gutenberg
- A break with Mechanical Industrialism to Graphic Age
- Morse (telegraph to photograph)
- The pinhole camera

Photographs almost become meaningless, they numb the origins of the subject that is being photographed. 

Art photography is a minority pursuit in this day and age.

Lecture 2: Adrian Goycoolea

Adrian Goycoolea - Filmmaker
Born in Brazil to Chilean and British parents, and has lived in Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, New York City and the Midwest

This lecture will look at aspects of filmmaking such as
Experimental
Multi-media Installations
Documentary (Personal/Poetic)
Narrative

Adrian has been an experimental filmmaker for the past 20 years.

Education
- Attended the Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad UNIACC, School of Visual Arts in New York then went to do his postgraduate degree at University of Iowa

Anthology Film Archives
- Founded by Jonas Makes
They have a vault there and do a lot of film preservation from films from the 60s and 70s.
Adrian volunteered here as his friend worked as a projectionist there and he was interested about experimental film. 
Soon he got paid work at the box office there, then he became a theatre manager and film programme for the Anthology Film Archives.

Stom Sogo, Mau, Alex Mendizabel, Lee Elikson, Bruce McClure were all inspirational experiemtnal filmmakers of Adrian's at the time when we worked there

Figure 1: Funk-Taxi Visuals Installation at Taller Boricua Gallery

Funk-Taxi Visuals
Provided multimedia installations for:
- Soundlab
- Afrika Bambaata
- The Roots
- DJ Spooky
- New York Underground Film Festival
- Gales Gates Gallery, NYC
- Taller Boricua Gallery, NYC (see figure 1)



Researching My Thesis Film
- Watched many avant-garde films at Anthology Film Archives.
- Read scientific books about vision, blindness and memory.
- Read theory books around ideas of blindness as it relates to notions of art.
- Look at many paintings that had formal qualities that he was interested in exploring with his film.
- Carried out months of formal experimentation with my single frame technique.
- Sourced home video footage to re-photograph.

Formal Influences
- Gerhard Richter
- Robert Rouschenberg
- Sigmar Polke
- Andy Warhol
- Stan Brakhage
- Ken Jacobs
- Bruce Bailie
- Michael Snow

Memories of a Blind Father
About a man who had lost his vision, so his memories were now visual stills and the older he got, the less visual memories he could recall. This film makes use of Adrian's single frame technique to convey this message.

¡Viva Chile Mierda!
This film makes use of animation and illustration within a documentary with its archive footage and audio clips. It was named one of the 10 best Chilean films of 2014 by Twitch Film.

Adrian's Vimeo Account
https://vimeo.com/user8797883/videos

Screening Notes: John Berger/Ways of Seeing (1972)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk

Ways of Seeing: Episode 1
This program aims to question some of the assumptions usually made about the tradition of European painting. He considers that way we see these paintings in a 21st-century perspective as we see these painting as nobody saw them before.

By discovering why we see painting with this perspective, we shall also discover something about ourselves and the situation in which we are living.

- A large part of seeing depends upon habit and convention.

- All of the paintings of the tradition (1400-1900) used the convention of perspective, which is unique to European art

- Perspective centres everything on the eye of the beholder. Perspective makes the eye the centre of the visible world, but the human eye can only be in one place at a time.

- With the invention of the camera, everything changed. We could see things which were not there in front of us. It not only changed what we see, but also how we see. It even changed paintings painted long before it was invented.

- Thanks to photography, we can now see paintings in the context of your own life. Before, a paintings uniqueness was part of the place where it is exhibit such as paintings inside Renaissance churches. Everything around them confirms and consolidates its meaning.

- Images now come to you, you do not come to them. It is the image of the painting which travels now. An images meaning or a large part of it has now become transmittable.

- However, you may say, original paintings are still unique due to their physical authenticity. 

- The camera has made traditional paintings possible meanings and destroyed its unique original meaning.

- The uninterrupted silence and the stillness of a painting can be very striking. Because their meaning has no longer attached to them but has become transmittable, paintings lend themselves to easy manipulation by movement and sound.

- In paintings, there is no unfolding of time. Everything is presented simultaneously, unlike a film.

- Music and rhythm changed the significance of picture.

- When paintings are reproduced they become a form of information which is being transmitted and so there they have to hold their own against all the other information that is jostling around them to appear on the same page/screen.

- The meaning of an image can be changed according to what you see beside it or what comes after it.

- Reproductions of works of art can be used by anybody for their own purposes. Images can be used like words, we can talk with them. They are used to describe or recreate an experience.

- Nowadays, until children are educated out and forced to accept mystifications, they look at images and interpret them very directly. They connect any image directly with their own experience. 

- Berger aims to explore the relationship the experience of art has directly to other experiences in life, and to use the means of reproduction as though they offered a language, as though pictures were like words rather than holy relics.



Brian McCabe
Miniclicks in Brighton Jim Stephenson
Luxembourg Rut Bees

New England House, New England Street
Ways of Seeing: Episode 2
- Men dream of women and women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at. Women constantly meet glances that act as mirrors, reminding them of how they look or how they should look. Behind every glance is a judgement.

- A woman is always accompanied. Even when they are alone, they have an 'image' of themselves. From a young age, woman are taught and persuaded to continually survey herself. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, particularly how she appears to men is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.

- In Kenneth Clark's book In the Nude, he says that being naked is simply being without clothes. The nude, according to him is a form of art. Berger has a different interpretation of this. He believes being naked is to be ones self, to be nude is to be seen naked by other and yet not recognised for oneself. A nude has to be seen as an object in order to considered one.

- The story begins with Adam and Eve in the Genesis chapter of the Bible. There are two things are striking about this story: One being that both Adam and Eve become aware of being naked because as a result of eating the apple from the tree in the Garden of Eden, each sees the other differently. Nakedness is created in the mind of the beholder. The other point being the fact that the woman is blamed and is punished by being made subservient to the man. Thus, in relation to the woman, the man becomes the agent of God.

- The nude implies an awareness of being seen by the spectator. They are not naked as they are, they are naked as you see them. 

- The mirror became a symbol of the vanity of men, yet the male hypocrisy in this is blatant. You paint a naked woman because you enjoy looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and call the image vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness to you have depicted for your own pleasure, repeating the biblical example of blaming the woman.

- There's a great difference between being seen as oneself naked or seeing another in that way with a body put on display. To be naked is to be without disguise, to be on display is to have a person hair and skin turned into a disguise, a disguise which cannot be discarded. Their nakedness in oil paintings becomes as formal as their clothes.

- In another tradition, nakedness is a celebration of active sexual love between two people. The woman as active as the man. However, in oil paintings even when the male lover is present, their gaze is still obeyed towards the spectator of that being from a male gaze. The only one to break this gaze is Cupid.

- Furthermore, women had to be shown languid, exhibiting minimum energy. They are there to feed an appetite and not their own. 




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7wi8jd7aC4
Ways of Seeing: Episode 3We look, we buy, it is ours. It is ours to consume, to sell again, perhaps to give away. More often, it is ours to keep. We look, we buy and we collect valuable objects. But the most valuable object of all has become the oil painting.

- Oil paintings often depict things, things which, in reality, are buyable. To paint a thing and put it on a canvas, is not unlike buying it and putting it in your house. The objects within the painting often appear as tangible as those outside it.

- If you buy a painting, you buy also the looks of the thing it represents. Paintings often show treasures, but they have become treasure themselves. Art galleries are like palaces, but also like banks. When they shut for the night, they are guarded lest the image of things which are desirable. The value of paintings has become mysterious. Where, we ask ourselves, does this value come from?

- Those who use new methods of reproduction and communication, those who write books or make television programmes about art, tend to cling to the old approach. Art remains something sacred. A love of art seems, automatically, to be offered as a sublime human experience. 

- If the experience of art is sublime, it looks as if it can be sublimely independent of a lot of other values. So perhaps we should be somewhat wary of the love of art. You cannot explain anything in history or art history by the love of art. 

- A patron cannot be surrounded by music or poems in the same way as they are by their pictures. From about 1500 to 1900, the visual arts of Europe were dominated by the oil painting, the easel picture. This kind of painting had never been used anywhere else in the world before. The tradition of oil painting was made up of hundred of thousands of unremarkable works hung all over the walls of galleries and private houses, rather in the same way as the Reserve Collection is still hung in the National Gallery.  

-  The European oil painting, unlike the art of other periods, placed a unique emphasis on the tangibility, the solidity, the texture, the weight, the graspability of what was depicted. What was real was what you could put your hands on.  

- Works of art in other cultures and periods celebrated wealth and power. Gods, princes and dynasties were worshipped. But these works were static, ritualistic, hierarchic, symbolic. They celebrated a social or divine order. Whereas, the European oil painting served a different kind of wealth. It glorified not a static order of things, but the ability to buy and furnish and to own.

- A certain kind of oil painting celebrated merchandise in a way that had never happened before in the history of art. Merchandise became the actual principle subject of these works. Eating is a pleasure, but these paintings which depicted foods could not be eaten. They are a demonstration of the artist's virtuosity and the owner's wealth.

Livestock, Objects and Houses