Techniques for Monday

Cliche Verre:
What you need -- Black tempra paint, sheet of plexi or glass or negatives (that you can scratch through), x-acto knife or scratching instrument





Bleach Out:
What you need -- prints to bleach. I will bring Simple Green, bleach, and rubber cement. Try both c-prints and digital prints.



Photogram:
What to bring -- objects to place on the photo paper. Try several of varying transparency. Be creative -- try a variety of things. You can also bring art supplies or materials to paint with -- honey, watercolors, sugar, etc have been used in the past.



Cross Processed Film:
What you need -- film that has been cross-processed. Take negative film to your processing place and ask them to develop it in slide film chemistry (or visa-versa).

Curtis Mann: Experimental Processes / Whitney Biennial 2010

Enhance! (YouTube)

Photoshop Tutorials: CS5

Hi Everyone,

Here is a link for those of you who are fairly confident with Photoshop and want to pick up some new skills.

See Especially:

* Adjust colors nondestructively (video 8:04)
* Dodge, burn, and sponge colors (video 6:47), CS4-CS5
* Match, replace, and mix colors (HTML)

Enjoy! More on Monday...

Simulacra / Simulation / The Hyperreal

Hi Everyone,

Here are the excerpts from Baudrillard that I referred to on Monday. Please take a look below. Read all the way through for an extra credit opportunity.

Start shooting for Assignment 3 -- I will see you next week.

Rebecca



The following are excerpts from Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), pp.166-184:


The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none.

The simulacrum is true.

If we were able to take as the finest allegory of simulation the Borges tale where the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering the territory (but where, with the decline of the Empire this map becomes frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds still discernible in the deserts — the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction, bearing witness to an imperial pride and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double ends up being confused with the real thing), this fable would then have come full circle for us, and now has nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.

Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory — precession of simulacra — it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.

In fact, even inverted, the fable is useless. Perhaps only the allegory of the Empire remains. For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all the real, coincide with their simulation models. But it is no longer a question of either maps or territory. Something has disappeared: the sovereign difference between them that was the abstraction's charm. For it is the difference which forms the poetry of the map and the charm of the territory, the magic of the concept and the charm of the real. This representational imaginary, which both culminates in and is engulfed by the cartographer's mad project of an ideal coextensivity between the map and the territory, disappears with simulation, whose operation is nuclear and genetic, and no longer specular and discursive. With it goes all of metaphysics. No more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept; no more imaginary coextensivity: rather, genetic miniaturization is the dimension of simulation. The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models - and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal: the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.

In this passage to a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor of truth, the age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials - worse: by their art)ficial resurrection in systems of signs, which are a more ductile material than meaning, in that they lend themselves to all systems of equivalence, all binary oppositions and all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have to be produced: this is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference.



and...

Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.



Extra Credit for Blog Readers only: What does this mean to you? Can you state Baudrillard's argument in your own words? What are some examples of the hyperreal in your everyday experiences? Write one page in response and submit before Thanksgiving Break.

Fall 2010 Exhibitions

On Now: Catherine Opie and John Baldessari at LACMA And Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography since the Sixties at the Getty

William Eggleston at LACMA - After October 31

Welcome Back: Fall 2010

Welcome Back Photo Students!

This blog is intended to provide you with additional resources related to assignments, readings and image production for this course.

For Next Monday --

Blog Assignment:
1. I would like you to explore several of the links on the right. In particular, please take a look at those that revisit information from 2D Design. (more information on color section)

2. Pick a Cabinet Magazine reading and write a short response to the way that color is described and enlivened by the author. How do their descriptions open up new perceptions of that color? Your short (one page) response is due at our next meeting.

3. Gather materials for printing (color paper, negative sleeves, film) & bring them to the next class. ***Do not open your color paper***

4. Shoot two rolls of film, get them processed, and bring them to the next class.
Ask for "C-41 processing, do not cut", be sure to use a professional lab
Cut the film yourself and put it in a plastic sleeve, store in a binder

Bring your paper and printing materials, your developed film, and your response to the Cabinet reading to the next class. We will have an extended in-class lab.

p.s. - I have left up some resources from last semester so that you can take a look. They will apply to assignments later in the semester. To avoid confusion, check the posting date. Fall postings are listed first.

Mariko Mori

Hello again,
Here are some links to work and interviews by Mariko Mori whom we were discussing in class this week. On artnet.com there is an interview, a brief review of her work, and some wonderful images. The Deitch Projects website talks more about her sculptures and installations, while Galerie Perrotin has very thorough descriptions on many of her works, click on the images to read them. Also, the Journal of Contemporary Art website has a really nice interview between Mori and Kunié Sugiura.
See you all in crit.
-Alyce

Aperture Interviews with Gregory Crewdson

Hello there color class,
Here is a link to the Aperture magazine website on the work of Gregory Crewdson. The interviews are very thorough and I highly recommend reading them. Crewdson is best known for elaborately staged, surreal scenes of American homes and neighborhoods, check it out!
-Alyce

Pinhole Camera Resources

Several of you requested information on making a pinhole camera. I will bring some examples on Monday, but I wanted to pass along a website that you may want to visit for details on exposures, apertures and how to build your own camera.

Also, take a look at these creative cameras:

The Legacy Project holds the world record for the largest camera and largest pinhole image.

Justin Quinnell's "Smiley Cam" (Mouth as Camera)

Shaun Irving's Camera Truck

Experimental Technique Example Images

Bleach Out:


Polaroid Transfer/Fuji Transfer:


Solvent Transfer:


Photogram:


Infrared Film:


Cross Processed Film:

Alternative Processes - Some Additional Techniques

Hi everyone -- This is Alyce posting.

Here is info on alternative processes. Experiment and maybe create some of your own, or try researching for other methods not mentioned.

Printing Techniques:

Bleach out: This process removes color from color darkroom prints (c-prints).
Materials: prints, a resist (this can include clear varnish, rubber cement, even packing tape), bleach, water, and a tray.

1. Apply the resist to the print in the areas that you DO NOT want to bleach out, let it thoroughly dry.
2. Put the print in a tray of part beach, part water. Be careful with the amount of bleach, the fumes can be quite uncomfortable.
3. Remove the print as quickly as you like for different results.
4. Wash the print under running water for 3-5 minutes. Hang it to dry.

Simple Green or other solvents can produce interesting results when applied to the prints as well. Simple Green works well with ink jet prints too.

Polaroid (Fuji) Image Transfers: (since polaroid is no longer producing film, fuji pack instant film is available, or maybe you can find some old polaroid film on ebay)
Materials: Instant film, a medium format camera with a removable back, or a 4x5, a polaroid back (or fuji instant pack back) that will be compatible with the camera that you are using, an archival paper such as Rives BFK, or Arches. Other porous materials can also be experimented with. A brayer would also be helpful.
1. Expose the image. Pull the film smooth and straight out of the holder
2. Only let the film partially process, around 20 or 30 seconds is sufficient. This allows the dyes to have the ability to transfer nicely. In a dark room, gently peel the film apart.
3. Apply the emulsion side of the instant film to the receiver (paper, or other). Run a brayer over the print for a minute or so.
4. Wait another minute and gently peel the emulsion paper off of the receiver.
5. Neutralize the print (optional) in a bath of lemon juice and water for a minute (agitate). This may intensify the colors. Run under running water. Air dry on a screen (preferably). The prints might need to be pressed in a book afterward as the paper can tend to curl.

Solvent Transfers:
Materials: Photocopied images, print them "mirrored" since the result will be the reverse of the original, a piece of Plexiglas, a paintbrush, a brayer, a solvent (oil of wintergreen and citric acid are less toxic, or commercial solvents such as Kleen Strip or Duracryl) and a receiver like Rives or Arches paper, or maybe another material.
1. Make sure that you have some ventilation (outside). Lay the photocopy image face down on the paper, on top of the Plexi. Tape the image to the paper.
2. Apply the solvent to the back of the photocopy with a paintbrush. Roll the brayer over the paper. This may take a few minutes.
3. Gently peel the copy off of the receiver. Let it dry.

Darkroom Photograms:
Materials: Almost anything you want, objects, paper, lace, etc., and enlarger, color darkroom paper, processor. This works like regular printing but without the negative.
1. Place your interesting materials on top of the photo paper in the darkroom. You might need to use a piece of glass over them like you would in a contact sheet.
2. Decide on a color pack that you think would be interesting, and expose the paper. You most likely will want to create a test strip before moving on to a full print.
3. Process the paper.

Other printing methods: overlapping negatives, collaging negatives, or scratching into the surface of the neg. Create your own!

Shooting Methods: Try infrared film, cross processing, plastic cameras such as Holgas (these can be modified in unique ways), or using multiple exposures.

Experimental process can be great ways to manipulate content and meaning through varied techniques that lead the viewer through the image in new ways. Think about how these methods can support your ideas -- the possibilities are endless.

Simulacra / Simulation Assignment

Hi Everyone,

Here are the excerpts from Baudrillard that I referred to yesterday. Please take a look below. We will spend some time unpacking some of these terms and ideas next week.

Also, I am posting a powerpoint to Beachboard that will help those of you who are using a digital camera with selecting ISO, exposure and file type settings.

Start shooting for Assignment 3 -- I will see you next week.

Rebecca



The following are excerpts from Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), pp.166-184:

You can find more here

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none.

The simulacrum is true.

If we were able to take as the finest allegory of simulation the Borges tale where the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering the territory (but where, with the decline of the Empire this map becomes frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds still discernible in the deserts — the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction, bearing witness to an imperial pride and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double ends up being confused with the real thing), this fable would then have come full circle for us, and now has nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.

Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory — precession of simulacra — it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.

In fact, even inverted, the fable is useless. Perhaps only the allegory of the Empire remains. For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all the real, coincide with their simulation models. But it is no longer a question of either maps or territory. Something has disappeared: the sovereign difference between them that was the abstraction's charm. For it is the difference which forms the poetry of the map and the charm of the territory, the magic of the concept and the charm of the real. This representational imaginary, which both culminates in and is engulfed by the cartographer's mad project of an ideal coextensivity between the map and the territory, disappears with simulation, whose operation is nuclear and genetic, and no longer specular and discursive. With it goes all of metaphysics. No more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept; no more imaginary coextensivity: rather, genetic miniaturization is the dimension of simulation. The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models - and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal: the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.

In this passage to a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor of truth, the age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials - worse: by their art)ficial resurrection in systems of signs, which are a more ductile material than meaning, in that they lend themselves to all systems of equivalence, all binary oppositions and all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have to be produced: this is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference.



and...

Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.



Extra Credit for Blog Readers only: What does this mean to you? Can you state Baudrillard's argument in your own words? What are some examples of the hyperreal in your everyday experiences? Write one page in response and submit before March 22.

Color Announcements / Assignment 2 Details

Hi Everyone -

1. Don't forget to finish and submit your Ring-Around on Monday (Feb 15th). It will be due at the start of class. Enjoy those individual darkrooms!

Also, try to get a start on the next assignment. We will look at more portrait work on Monday.

2. You are all welcome to join my ART 499 course for an off-campus trip to Bergamot Station / The Santa Monica Museum of Art on Wednesday, Feb 17th. We will meet at 2pm at the SMMoA entrance and will see the museum as well as the surrounding galleries, such as Gallery Luisotti.

3. By Request... "In the Flesh" Assignment Guidelines / Criteria
Use of Assignment Concepts– 30%
(contemporary portraiture – use of performance, intimacy, identity, politics, portraiture in context, etc)

Creativity / Inventiveness- 30% (pushing your ideas beyond your first inclination, use of creativity & visual language in service of your ideas, pursuit of complex content beyond illustration)

Color Balance / Exposure- 40% (color balance your prints to the best of your ability – everyone should fall within 5 points of “balanced”. “A” assignments will need to be balanced/or within 0-3 points)

The sun is back -- enjoy the color and light!

Color Photography, Spring 2010

Welcome Back Photo Students!

This blog is intended to provide you with additional resources related to assignments, readings and image production for this course.

If you would like to contribute links or images, email me at rsittler@csulb.edu.

For Next Monday --

Blog Assignment:
1. I would like you to explore several of the links on the right. In particular, please take a look at those that revisit information from 2D Design. (more information on color section)

2. Pick a Cabinet Magazine reading and write a short response to the way that color is described and enlivened by the author. How do their descriptions open up new perceptions of that color? Your short (one page) response is due next week.

3. Gather materials for printing (color paper, negative sleeves, film) & bring them to the next class. ***Do not open your color paper***

4. Shoot at least one roll of film, get it processed, and bring it to the next class.
Ask for "C-41 processing, do not cut", be sure to use a professional lab
Cut the film yourself and put it in a plastic sleeve, store in a binder

Bring your paper and printing materials, your developed film, and your response to the Cabinet reading to class on the 1st of Feb. We will have an extended in-class lab.