week 10- 03.09

Images/Objects

In this meeting we looked at the possibilities that the conjunction of more than one image might create.

So far we have experimented with creating images in various ways:

  • As sequences or series of shots geared towards creating a narrative or a series of points of views on a topic.
  • More recently, we have looked at the (more traditional)image/shot: an image understood as a whole in itself, a single universe or a window onto one,  encompassing all the meanings, ideas, experiences or whatever it is that we want to convey. I have insisted in calling these ‘photographic’; not attending to their genesis, which may or may not be digital, but in terms of the pictorial tradition they are part of and, more broadly, the way we relate to them.

They can be connected historically with the tradition that was born with the icon and continues throughout the history of painting and visual artifacts to this day. As such, it is also part of the long love-hate relation to images that is today still so central to our life: from our Western fascination with contemporary icons (celebrities, visual artifacts, design objects) to the tragic defacement of historical monuments.

Moving on in this trajectory, we are now going to complicate the status of this single ‘photographic’ image: What happens when they enter in dialogue with others? What possibilities open up? We have a few examples from which to take:

  • The haiku,  designed to convey the essence of an experience in a short format.  Here are some beautiful examples
  •  There are also the Borgesian objects of many terms: the sun and the water on a swimmer’s chest, the vague tremulous rose color we see with our eyes closed, the sensation of being carried along by a river and also by sleep.

In these two cases the result is what Borges (in response to Hume’s ideas) calls ‘objects‘ (or mockingly, Hronir, Hron or Ur)- an array of perceptions organized by the mind into a whole.

Interestingly, this discussion updates the old debate reality/objects/perception with the perspective of theory of relativity (min 29 – min 31)

Whatever our philosophical positions, these ideas offer a good place from which to use several images in trying to depict our own experiences. This is our challenge for this week

 

24 thoughts on “week 10- 03.09”

  3. NASA Released The Largest Picture Ever Taken And It Will Shake Up Your UniverseAre you ready to see the largest picture ever taken?
    For your information, it’s a whopping 1.5 billion pixel image (69,536 x 22,230) and on January 5th, NASA released an image of the Andromeda galaxy, our closest galactic neighbor, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
    The final image is composed of 411 Hubble images, and takes you through 100 million stars and travels over 40,000 light years! Well, a section of it does anyway.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udAL48P5NJU

    Reply

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