vis-à-vis

While I was working on Rubb-O-grams it wasn't a big stretch to start placing other objects on the overhead projector. Even though I wanted to move away from vintage material I somehow gravitated towards these vintage flash bulbs. The bulbs were chosen for their light modulating characteristics as well as their historical significance to the medium. They were, of course, used to illuminate the photographer’s subjects for the camera.

One of the things I have been thinking about is the different forms an image can exist in.  An image can exist as a print, a negative, a file, appear in a magazine, in a book, on a monitor, you can hold it in your hands, etc and still it is essentially the same image.

Does an image need to take form to be classified as a photograph? Can an image exist as just light? Where does a projected image reside? In this installation I am projecting an image of vintage flash bulbs and providing the viewer with hand held screens. To view the image you must interact with it. I call this piece vis-à-vis; face to face. The viewer is face to face with the lens and light of the overhead projector. The viewer must shift their relationship with the light and hold a screen to find the point where the image becomes visible.

Abstraction can be about what isn’t present; it’s an abstraction of something else. Here I am questioning representation itself, which is always about what’s absent, what is not there.

I also made still photographs of the projected images. They stand as an alternative representation. The piece as a whole turns your attention away from the image and focuses on the mode of production.

And of course I could not stop myself from making even more fractured formal abstract compositions of these. Yet another manifestation.

Rubb-O-gram

It seems another month has come and gone. I have found myself working through ideas, discarding some, refining others. It’s been difficult to actually finish any one of them. This semester has had a bit of a wandering nature to it, not all together bad. I have been going through ideas as quickly as I can with the hope that, in the end, it will lead me to my thesis.

This past month I have been trying to get away from the using the vintage imagery. I have, however, still find myself working with vintage materials such as overhead projectors (go figure). I began to think about random form, drawing with light and pattern. I have also been doing a lot of research into abstract photography, looking closely at the work of Maholy-Nagy and James Welling, to name a few. I began to be intrigued by these artists use of the photogram. A photogram is a camera-less photograph generally made by placing objects directly on light sensitive surface and then processing it in photographic chemicals, producing a negative image. I was interested in the idea of direct representation with the use of light but not terribly interested in the photographic materials themselves. The overhead projector provided me with a surface of light, a playing field, which is then seen by a mirror and projected through a lens (a really bad one) onto a rear projector screen. I am taking this optically compromised imagery and capturing it with the super sharp clarity of a digital camera. I inverted the data to recall the photogram’s negative properties.

    Rubber bands have previously figured in my still life work, functioning as conveyors of line. I began to film rubber bands being dropped onto the overhead projector. As the rubber bands are dropped onto the surface random lines, shapes and patterns appear. I was interested in the accidental forms that would happen. They begin to look a bit like Brice Marden drawings.

Untitled from Rita Maas on Vimeo.

I also took still images of simple random arrangements of the rubber bands. I placed these arbitrarily in a grid. Grids have also featured fairly prominently in my past work so I was interested to read an article that Rosiland Krauss wrote on grids (thanks AE).  Grids can function as a structure of order and have the effect of flattening information. Using the grid is an attempt to place order and catalog these random accidental forms. She also states that the use of grids in Modern and Contemporary art can represent a repressed spirituality. I mean, think Agnes Martin or Sol Le Witt and not think of spirituality. Japer Johns for that matter. Of course their work is about so many other things as well. It was not my intention to make my little rubber bands spiritual but, there you go.

I intend to leave the arrangement loose, as you see here, and do not feel compelled to line everything up in some kind of perfect scheme. A little entropy at play. Oh, and it’s meant to be humorous.

So with any luck I will finish my paper soon and be able to get my other project up on the blog before the month is over.

Work in Progress

March has been a month of much productivity with very little to show for it. I have been working on a few projects at once and not really finishing any of them. I find this process sort of interesting actually. It allows me to kind of fool myself into thinking I'm not really working on something while I really am. It's a little like setting your clock 5 minutes fast. You really know what time it is but somehow you are functioning somewhere else. Anyway, I found that if I work on something to a certain point and then hang it in the studio and then start working on something else it allows the first project to sort of live on its own for awhile. I look at it a few days later and I find I see and think about it differently. I usuallly get  ideas about a project when I am not actually thinking about it.

 Video below is work in progress. I am editing together clips from original 8mm film that I rephotographed as it was being projected. It is interwoven with stills from the film that allowed the images to burn out over a long exposure, allowing the light from the film to spill out of its frame. I put the footage together in a way that sets up for an anticipated but absent narration, toying with audience expectation. The still images flash by rapidly leaving a soft retinal burn or afterimage. I am mixing sounds and imagery that seems familiar and putting them together in an unfamiliar way.

 

Untitled from Rita Maas on Vimeo.

Will post soon on my other project, currently in a state of many pieces on table in studio.

Low Tech

These images are made from some of the previously posted images. They were made by photographing   an 8 mm film as it was projected onto a translucent screen using a digital camera. The exposures are over several seconds allowing the images (or original subject) to be obliterated over the time of the exposure. The area around the image becomes activated by the spilled light (for lack of a better word). What I have done here is first, arrange three images on an 8.5 x 11" page to refer back to the original motion film format. I then digitally inverted some of the images into negatives. I printed some of these groupings onto standard size transparent film (the type you would use for on overhead projector) and others onto a silver based paper. They are both ink jet prints. I then experimented with layering them to see what of an image would be revealed and what would be hidden and what together they would procude. There was a bit of back and forth involved to find pairing that I found "interesting." In doing this I am creating these digitally produced images on this totally low tech material from vintage analog imagery. The images that I posted here are scans, as they are very difficult to photograph because they have a high gloss finish. The actual pieces hang loosely with a bit of air between the layers. They are only 8.5" x 11" so they retain a kind of humbleness.
I have been thinking about representation in abstract photography ( I am wishing for a word better than abstract). My research has brought me to look at "concrete photography", a sub category of "abstract photography", whose credo is that it refers to nothing other than the photographic elements and process themselves and raises the question of "what, in fact, a photograph still is." I am finding that I lean towards leaving some reference, in this case the 8 mm film, to linger. I also have a strong affinity towards the camera itself. I love looking through a lens and discovering what the camera can see that I can not.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately and right now I am feeling a preferance towards researching art rather than makeing art. I am assuming this is only temporary and will serve me well down the line. There are a few lectures at ICP coming up I plan to watch via live stream (Susan Dergens, 3/14 and Christopher Bucklow, 3/21)Lecture Series / International Center of Photography
Also this week there is a lecture at Phillips de Pury, "Photography in Flux, Reinventing the Medium", moderated by Marvin Heiferman. This lecture is sponsored by Art in America. The March issue is devoted to photography and is a great issue.
My mentor suggested a book, "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" by Rebecca Solnit. I am thouroughly enjoying it.

After Image

I got my camera back from Canon so I’ve started exploring the 8mmfilms using the digital camera instead of the instant Fuji Film. It’s interesting how differently they see the light.

I have been thinking about the idea of an afterimage and how it is an image that belongs to the eye. An afterimage is a temporary ghost image and represents what has already been seen. I am exploring the idea of blending and fusing together images that have been previously seen, leaving behind a burned out image, a stain of light.

I am also working on a new video using this material. Coming soon!

The Boaters

The Drive

The Swing

The Sprinkler

The Beach

The Parade

Bumpy Start

Had a great first meeting with my mentor, Randy West, this week. We went over the work I presented at residency and  discussed its weakness and strengths. He was very helpful with nudging me towards new directions, meaning not telling me what to do but asking the kinds of questions that might allow me to figure something out for myself.

This lifted me out of my post residency blues. My brain had been racing during residency trying to keep up with all the input. Between crits, lectures and classes it was a lot to sort out. When I got home it was a difficult transition and was left feeling deflated after so much stimulation. I felt unfocused and cloudy. After my meeting with Randy I felt a lot better. I felt like I had some direction and was eager to get back into the studio. I started with pulling out the old 8mm projector I cleared from my Mom’s house. I looked at it like it was an antiquated machine from another century, which is exactly what it is. I had no idea how to use it so I brought it to my friend’s house and he kindly gave me a tutorial and we got it loaded and up and running. A new bulb would be need, we figured out which one was it was, ordered it online and waited for it to arrive. About a week later I was ready to go. And then, guess what, my 5 year old Canon digital camera refused to operate. No joke.  After some back & forth with Canon on the phone I sent it down to Virginia for repair. It will be a week or two. So what to do? Thank god for my trusty 4X5 camera and instant Fuji film (no more Polaroid)

So of course after I made a few exposures the film broke and I discovered my spicing cement was too old to work (no surprise but I gave it a try) So I’m heading out tomorrow to get some fresh cement (can’t seem to find tape) All these are just annoying little setbacks and I’m not going to let them get me bogged down.

I was looking through my notebook for stamps and in the back flap I found this quote by Lewis Baltz.  I had cut it right out of the magazine and stuck it in my notebook.  I think I may have been carrying this around for about 3 years.

“I’ve thought that when people appear in a picture, they automatically are perceived as the subject, irrespective of how they are represented. In my work, I want the only person in the picture to be the viewer. For better or worse, I was creating some sort of microcosm universe and then inviting people to enter it-and, by entering it, to complete it. The fact that it wasn’t a very inviting universe isn’t lost on me. In one sense, I can understand why people were worked up about it.” LB