response one 〰 Tim Berners-Lee and Jorge Luis Borges
When comparing the writings of Tim Berners-Lee and Jorge Luis Borges, the first thing that comes to mind is how both concepts the authors are exploring heavily involve a systematic element of structure. When it comes to Borges, it’s the idea of organization and divine order in the universe, which he discusses in the metaphorical form of the “Library”, while for Berners-Lee it’s more so a man-made structural system required for webpages to work when the internet was still in its infancy.
Even within these parallel structures, there are plenty of similarities in how the writers describe their divisions and workings. Borges goes into depth describing how he sees the universe as an infinite number of hexagonal rooms, each with their own extraordinary precise number and placement of books. In order to source and find the information, people that inhabit the library sometimes use patterns and codes to and access every possible answer, or every possible combination. For this reason, he believes that “for every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences (Broges, p. 53). This can be compared to HTML, the binary code and all other methods of coding discussed in pages 794 and 795 of his book that must be implemented before text on the world wide web cab be recognized. Moreover, while in its formative years the internet was not exactly “unending” like Borges described his “Library” in page 52, Berners-Lee discusses how the goal is to create an infinite “pool of knowledge” accessible to the public (Berners-Lee, 797) as it exists today.
response two 〰 The Last Newspaper Artists in Conversation
At one point in the discussion, they reach the topic of whether the work the three artists had done serves to accomplish or resolve something. However, they all end up agreeing that "artists can only open up more questions, not answers: they can question what exists but not making statement but open up conditions for looking at things", kind of like the nature of a newspaper – you bring the truth to light but in doing so you are only highlighting an issue and nothing more. This idea really resonated with me as it's something I've frequently grappled with. I am not entirely sure whether I completely side with this perspective, but it definitely applies to many familiar situations in which activism, history, art and current affairs intersect. After all, they all keep influencing each other constantly. Sometimes it's important to take a step back and analyze whatever the role of the artist is. For this reason, one of my ideas for my newspaper series is to look at the author and photographers on the cover of NYT papers, rather than only their content. I can map select abstract words on the cover like "change", or values like "justice" and write them in different colors depending on certain categories their journalists or photographers fall into. Another idea is to take a step back and look beyond the words printed on the page, but rather purely on the writers and their intentions. It was brought to my attention by Olivia Wohlgemuth, one of the organizers of the NYC Youth Climate Strike who I interviewed last year, that reporters and the media offer plenty of praise for the children, but maintain a certain distance from their plight. She explained that the reason they march and act is to get adults to snap and react, and take over, not to step back and admire them for doing it all themselves – after all, they’re children. After considering this, I decided on one possibility where I cross out all the text of a paper, and instead write the phrase “LISTEN TO THE KIDS” across a series of pages. The media should not just praise them, but hear their words and take on a more active role.
Another idea I had after listening to the podcast follows Sarah Charlesworth's work in which she mapped themes and recurring structures on the cover of newspapers. This really reminded me of a book I own and saw again at Printed Matters called "Front Pages with pictures of women and flowers" by Laura Fields that cuts out women and flowers from the front picture. I would love to use this technique to make a statement, whether it be to explore the depiction of women by looking through articles that use "woman" and "weak"/"crying"/"fragile" and leaving only these repetitive words and the cut-out image of the woman in the photograph on the page.
response three 〰 MoMA PS1 Printed Matters Fair
Billie by Ofer Wolberger 〰To quote the Flat Fix website, Ofer Wolberger’s Billie is an edition of 600 zines co-published by Flat Fix and Skinnerboox “comprised exclusively of half-frame 35mm photographs, Billie utilizes sequence, progression and repetition to focus its gaze towards a single subject. Presented within a matter-of-fact layout and spare design, the images appear as grainy documents while exploring the collision of portraiture, identity, authorship and cinematic fiction.” I was drawn to this piece of work because of its sense of rawness and simplicity – many of the page spreads feature two almost identical, repetitive images. Sometimes out of focus or faded, and all of the same woman, the enigmatic “Billie” the viewer is given to other context about. Then there’s the use of black and white as well as color photos used interchangeably throughout the book with no warning. In recent years, I’ve thought a lot about authenticity and a sense of genuineness when trying to create something. When I first started experimenting with photography aged thirteen, I was more focused on the post-production stages than in the capturing of a scene’s essence. I reached a point where I opted to strip everything back and use film captures that have not been retouched in an endeavor to pose a more raw and real-feeling image, trying to do the moment getting captured justice. Billie definitely excels in this, and served as wonderful inspiration for a level of authenticity I hope I can come to reach myself. Thinking about how this fits into a larger narrative of visual thinking and a historical narrative of art, I would say that these photographs are a contemporary exploration of portraiture, defying a more formal style in favor of something more intimate and casual. Even the use of repetitive imagery creates a sense of being within that moment in time, capturing the ever so subtle changes between both frames.
image from FlatFix.biz
Pictures from my Cabinet of Memories by Kazuo Kitai 〰
Pictures from my Cabinet of Memories is a collection of 100 essays by the photographer Kazuo Kitai, each essay accompanying one of his photographs taken throughout his 50 year career. In them he gives certain technical information, but also relays the feelings and thought-process that went into the capturing of the shot, conveying a certain nostalgia and fondness. This relates to my personal interest and body of work as I have always felt combining different storytelling mediums is a very powerful tool in art, particularly when something visual can complement a body of text. Writing was my first taste of the world of art and creation when I was still a young child, so I always find myself captivated by writings of reminiscence and as this peaks my own sense of nostalgia. Furthermore, this relates back to visual thinking as a whole because it has the reader take in each photograph twice: once visually, through your own eyes, and a second time more profoundly and analytically, through Kitai’s eyes. The book's website can be viewed here.
image from book's website
All Flowers in Time Bend towards the Sunby Chris Duncan 〰
Quoting its accompanying description at the MoMA PS1 Printed Matters fair, All Flowers in Time Bend towards the Sun is a 68 page zine that is a “collection of associations, inspirations, performance documentation and artworks” color photos hand sewn into black and white photos. It’s an edition of only 20 copies, distributed by Land and Sea, a small Oakland-based press. It was one of the first books I picked up when walking around the fair, and one of the few that I flipped through entirely from cover to cover. Even as I continued browsing, I still found myself thinking about the zine. Something about the way its composed was mesmerizing to me, with its usage of layering through sewing, adding interactive, movable windows and an air of three-dimensionality that make the zine more than a collection of artwork – it becomes a piece of artwork in and of itself. This effect is one that I have been wanting to dabble with for some time now, and I tried my hand at stitching a book earlier this summer for the first time and planned on stitching on layering photos instead of pasting them in a more traditional style. Even Duncan’s loose red threads hanging out of the pages add another textural layer to the zine. The subject matter just furthers this, as it is a compilation of everything from photos of children at play, to shapes, to clouds, to an Instagram screenshot. Everything seems poetic and metaphorical, but simultaneously devoid of meaning. When I see zines that use sewing and post-print methods of adding further depth to the work, I see zines that are testing the boundaries of bookmaking, blurring the lines between the two dimensional page and sculpture, making it an experience to flip through their pages, an experience that could not be mimicked if you saw the same photographs separately. A flip through video of the zine can be watched here.
Screen capture
response four 〰 Color
Before even looking into the content of what I was seeing, I was gripped by the impeccable and unorthodox website design of the Color Goes Electric reading. Coding is definitely the aspect I have enjoyed most out of everything we have gotten the chance to experiment with, so being able to witness the fruit of a coder’s efforts carries a lot more weight now that I know more of the process behind it. One preface before I discuss this page in more detail, however, is that the site kept crashing when I opened it on my computer, so it was difficult to read large portions of it in sequence of each other. I always enjoy reading about color photography in the past, considering how “vulgar” it was first perceived as, as it now reigns our daily lives. A portion I very much also enjoyed reading about the science behind perfecting the hue of the sky to match what humans see with their naked eye, and how we this led to the development of rendering and a lot of this history of color film.
Reading the select color experts made me think about color a lot more holistically which is something I rarely do. The sheer amount of connections and observations and different feelings a single shade can evoke in a multitude of people is astounding. The readings draw in comparison to material culture from everything from Swarovski crystal ads to shades of swimsuits. There’s something so sensory and powerful about the connection between memory and color. I really enjoyed the way these pieces were structured. They got me thinking about the way words are structured, the definition that is given, and the definition we give it ourselves. Words have a tone. Not just the shade. but also a tone the sound evokes. Is it feminine? Is it sharp? Is it solemn? This got me thinking about past images I have captured, particularly some digi cassettes I very recently digitized. They are filled with wandering camera angles, just following what catches my eye and draws me in. What about these shades pique my interest? With this notion fresh in my mind, I turned back and looked at stills. I thought through of instant connotations and feelings each photogtaph produced withing me, and wrote them below each image. The very last is not a video still, but rather a scan of an expired film capture that I over-saturated because I was facinated by the already blueish tones it had produced.
icy, solitude, citirc, glitch, glass, iodine, metal, crushing
I liked this tan shade featured in the photograph so much I wanted to do something with it on my website, so I created this little pop-up window:
lipstick, bottlecap, blood test, fury, shock, firework, lifeguard, yo-yo, masculine, backpack
pale, drowned out, chammomile. still, fries, rain coat, spices, custard, egg, sluggish, incapable, pitied, young
alert, alive, sprite, National Geographic, fast, shock, spasm, spies, England, grass, hospital
distant, sorrow, slow-motion, behind, infantile, shiver, film soundtrack, childhood, bittersweet, mint candies, toothpaste, skyscrapers, dentistry