Spent an afternoon messing with a ridiculously powerful macro lens, here are a few photos of bubbles in coke. I have a video to edit and some more photos to put up soon. Love the colours in these and the reflections in the bubbles are awesome.

7:40 pm  •  27 March 2011

Got shown this a while ago by my girlfriend and just spent the last hour hunting it down again…amazing technique and beautifully executed. It’s the thing that gave me the idea of doing something similar with ink blot tests, seeing them grow must change the meaning and the different stages of the ink blot growing will look really cool. Wanted to stray away from the more common ink in water too, mostly because the mirror effect would have to be done in post and I think it would be more interesting if the two sides we slightly different.

10:27 pm  •  25 March 2011

I have already been doing some macro photography and have also been thinking about getting a USB microscope to do some micro photography. Here are a few amazing images and a video I nicked from Emmas blog:

Fluorescent actin protein filaments. / Dennis Breitsprecher, Institute of Biophysical Chemistry at Germany’s Hannover Medical School. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

2008: Pleurosigma (marine diatoms) (200x), Darkfield and Polarized Light. / Michael Stringer, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, United Kingdom. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

1990: Crystals evaporated from solution of magnesium sulfate and tartaric acid (50x), Polarized Light. / Richard H. Lee, Argonne National Laboratory. Courtesy of Nikon Small World

987: Crystals of influenza virus neuraminidase isolated from terns (14x), Brightfield with Colored Filters. / Julie Macklin and Dr. Graeme Laver, Australian National University.

Cannot believe that is the flu…shows the whole beauty and the beast thing pretty perfectly.

9:36 am  •  25 March 2011

Love this juxtaposition of natural landscape and digital graphics, always have, especially since my {Run} project last year. It is definitely something I am going to explore and this video by Matt Pyke is brilliant.

8:57 am  •  25 March 2011

The Rorschach test also known as the Rorschach inkblot test, the Rorschach technique, or simply the inkblot test) is a psychological test in which subjects’ perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex scientifically derived algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person’s personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It has been employed to detect an underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly. The test is named after its creator, Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach.

This is the Wikipedia definition of a Rorschach test but I find it interesting in relation to a more general crisis in meaning. It is known as a genuine psychological test that relies on an essentially meaningless ink blot and the patients crisis in meaning to gauge their mental state. But it doesn’t just fit my project on face value it also fits because of it’s criticisms and quirks.

Some skeptics consider the Rorschach inkblot test pseudoscience, as several studies suggested that conclusions reached by test administrators since the 1950s were akin to cold reading.

The crisis in meaning in the test doesn’t just stop at the patients, the psychologists also create meaning from the patients reactions that are essentially assumptions. The article goes on to say that psychology students wrongly read people as gay because of skewed testing criteria. “These [experiments] showed that the testers’ prejudices could result in them “seeing” non-existent relationships in the data. The Chapmans called this phenomenon “illusory correlation” and it has since been demonstrated in many other contexts.” It also talks about cultural differences in test results which is really interesting:

For instance, texture response is typically zero in European subjects (if interpreted as a need for closeness, in accordance with the system, European would seem to express it only when it reaches the level of a craving for closeness), and there are fewer “good form” responses, to the point where schizophrenia may be suspected if data were correlated to the North American norms.

Theres loads more stuff on Rorschach tests that I could write about it but it seems a little unnecessary, theres more HERE though. Gonna do some experiments with making some of these things soon.

11:03 pm  •  23 March 2011

Finally a final field of study, need to add my bibliography and plan of work, all to follow.

Field of study

Nihilism - Intrinsic meaning is conditioned, nihilism challenges preconditioned ideas of meaning and suggests that life has no “meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value”. Ray Brassier talks about our psychological craving for a fully formed narrative to give meaning to life:

“Try as we might, it becomes increasingly difficult to construct a rationally plausible narrative about the world that satisfies our psychological need for stories that unfold from beginning, through crisis, to ultimate resolution.”

Design Focus/Question/Problem/Proposition

The idea that everything has no intrinsic meaning is interesting in relation to design. Designers manipulate conceptions of meaning for a purpose and play on historically conditioned ideas. My proposition is to explore nihilism and this crisis in meaning through subversion, playing with ideas of false narratives and lying to the audience.

Context

Abstract Expressionism in the 50s and 60s, particularly the work of Pollock, tried to remove any recognizable shapes or figures in their work. This leaves the work open to interpretation as well as stripping all interpretation away leaving just the image.

“to push farther into a world of forms, leaving behind any trace of reference to recognisable objects or scenes.”

“we know that it means something, but we’re not sure what it is. By definition, the art does not give us enough information to decide.”

Abstract expressionism played a lot on it’s inherent subversion of meaning using in jokes and satirical plays.

A lot of modern abstract work uses vague glimpses of recognisable shapes or objects to project new meaning on to the work. Work by Lynn Fox uses an ephemeral blurring of figures to create a sense of mystery in their work whereas Car Crash Studies by Nicolai Howalt uses macro photography to create surprising new meaning out of something quite brutal. This abstract work in a similar way to abstract expressionism uses techniques to subvert or leave behind any meaning.

Technological and scientific research has and still does continue to challenge our historically conditioned ideas of meaning and life (and our place in life). These meanings of life are taught by religion as, “religion is designed to satisfy psychological needs”. This war between faith and rationality has been at the centre of our society for centuries and continues to be at the centre now.

Rationale

This crisis of meaning is at the centre of modern design especially with digital technology able to photo-realistically mimic and alter reality. Not that this is a new argument, Plato argued that “artists and technicians were traitors to Ideas and tricksters because they cunningly seduced people into perceiving distorted ideas.”

Science and technology are at the centre of nihilism too, with a greater understanding comes a realisation that there is no underlying meaning, “We understand nature better than we did, but this understanding no longer requires the postulate of an underlying meaning”.

Technology is interesting in that we use it as a tool to create, view or subvert meaning but the information technology processes in meaningless, no matter how meaningful personally, it is just pixels or light. The process of technology seeing things as merely information has been explored in new media and especially glitch art, celebrating glitches in information as new aesthetic art.

Methods

I have already started to explore crisis in meaning through macro photography and colour and shape in Photoshop making a collaborative book called Beauty and the Beast where we will make the same photos feel both beautiful and creepy by playing with them a little via colour, shape, overlays and cropping. This is just a starting point though and I will continue to explore the ideas I am reading about through image making.

Skills and predicted resolutions

A false narrative could lead to a book or magazine as well as other printed stuff like posters or it could translate into some kind of film or animation. Skills include photography and image making, motion and typography as well as some possible code work in playing with things like slit-scan photography.

10:19 am  •  23 March 2011

Me and Cai spent a day in the studio photographing various things with a macro lens to explore colour and form and play with the idea of the subversion of meaning through macro. This set is unedited at the moment but we are going to make a book over the weekend called “Beauty and the Beast” showing how the same photos, of things that are both pretty and gruesome, can be transformed into a beauty or a beast depending on the photograph and the editing.

3:44 pm  •  10 March 2011

Found this really nice Tomato project that is an odd mix between a narrative novel, a photo book and a book of poetry. It’s a really cool mix that gave me the idea of the false narrative book.

1:47 pm  •  10 March 2011

Version IV proposes to explore the subversion of meaning through abstraction. Specifically using the pseudo-scientific platonic solids as a platform for exploration. I am also interested in lying to the reader/viewer about the meaning of the abstraction further subverting the meaning and possibly creating some kind of false narrative.

8:18 pm  •  7 March 2011

Ok, so basically I’ve been looking at mediums…getting all excited about techniques but I need to take a step back and think about what this really means.

I’ve been looking at how distortion can change the meaning or feeling of things and how different perspectives can distort. All very confusing but I think that the thing that connects them is a distance between the original image and its meaning and the piece that the audience sees. There might be something in the distortion of meaning at the end of the communication process from the tampering of the artist. Maybe its the meaning of the original image to the artist is the message communicated at the end through their distortion…

Maybe I could take a look at Mcluhan’s communication theory and kind of apply that to some of these abstract pieces I have been looking at and see if there is something in that. Or maybe how the distortion of the original image expands on the meaning to the audience?

That is essentially graphic design though, distorting to enhance or change meaning…I guess the interesting thing that all of the abstract pieces I have been looking at do is introduce some kind of noise to blur the meaning not strengthen it. What does this blurring of meaning do the image/message/audience/artist?

Not even sure if there is a research proposal in there…

The other thing I have been looking at is scale and how things when they are extremely scaled can look completely unreal but I feel like that is a whole other kettle of fish. You could argue that extreme close ups do distort the meaning of the whole, like only seeing the last page of a book it takes away the context and leaves you with raw visual information.

/rant

Everything is more complicated than visible.

That quote is from a pretty awesome Tomato book I got out from the library called Process and encapsulated what I want to explore…I want to look at the unseen whether it be showing the digital nature of a photograph or the cellular make up of a plant to the different ways a lens can see something.

5:37 pm  •  28 February 2011