Open ended images?

[Alex_Es]

<p>Gateway time out.</p>

[Alex_Es]

<p>Gateway time out. Gateway, Crateway, this computer leaves much to be desired of.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Some good points by the last two or three posters (among others of course). Wouter is absolutely right about the image versus data thing. Alex is wise to mention the short lifetime of text or image if relegated to a desk drawer (or even a photo.net portfolio, given the great mass of images out there). Exhibitions are also very temporary, unless they are fortunate enough to kick-start or aid a career. Like Alex, my successes are in the past (exhibitions, prizes, critiques) and of little importance, but the photo project always greatly interests me and is a way of communication (with a possible book of photos and text) that gets out of the desk drawer and has a potential to perhaps move a few other souls. Which I guess is one main purpose of the medium of expression we enjoy.</p>

<p>Open-ended. I see Alan'sOP question not in terms of data but in terms of new and interesting uses/applications/creations of photography, whether film or digital based - the latter choice has little importance for me, except in the process of realisation of the final image, but not in terms of the nature of its (or photography's) application.</p>

[alan_zinn]

<p>Some of you cannot accept that, just as in 1839, photography is informed by the NOW and you should be paying attention whether creativity is your thing or isn't. The original thrust of the question BTW. It was open-ended <em>history</em> then but in a different way. They were informed solely by the history of graphic arts <em>without</em> photography. We have a history with it. History doesn't just end.<br /> As it happens I have stuff in the gallery pipeline, books in the works, web pages at the ready, concepts to explore in film, AND digital, and would have to be living in a lead-lined room (as would you) for creativity NOT to be informed by present trends in the medium. i.e, a digital data salient open-endedness.<br>

Alex,<br>

This should have gone in the desk drawer! :-)</p>

 

[Norma Desmond]

<p><<<<em>a digital data salient open-endedness.</em>>>></p>

<p>Again, Alan, you seem confident that some of us can't accept something or are missing something when, to me, it's quite obvious that you haven't yet made a coherent case for what in the world you're talking about. In plain English, what in the world is "a digital data salient open-endedness."?</p>

<p>You're taking a lack of communication for a substantive difference about something. That is surely a problem. </p>

<p>Is there a way in which what you're talking about differs from the film photographer who took lots of photos and only developed a few of them . . . is that open-endedness. Again, no idea what you're going on about.</p>

[sjmurray]

<p><strong>How is photography conceptualized that never leaves the data state?</strong> I have been saying all along here that this is already happening and that most of this type of photography is about illustrating the conversations and communication across the internet. Does this change the way I conceptualize photography? Yes, in that I participate in this type of photo-illustration like everyone else. But, this is different from what I do for myself, for printing, etc. Like Fred, I'm not quite sure what you are asking. </p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Agree with Fred and Steve. Alan, a little more lucidity in your OP and recent remarks would allow a more collaborative discussion and contributions to you.</p>

[yangchen_lin]

<p>The elasticity of photographic interpretation is such that the same photograph could be interpreted by different people, or by the same individual at different times, as a facebook-type communication or as a work of profound art. And it sometimes depends on the way it is presented - the size, format, lighting etc. And, say, how about the music that accompanies it, if any. I would actually prefer my photographs to me open-ended and subject to diverse interpretations, although I would try to suggest via captions the inspiration I had when I took it. But I would be reluctant to impose a concrete interpretation.<br>

Ultimately, we are forced to ask the question of what happens to our photographs long after we're gone. Perhaps the best thing that could happen is that they continue to be hung in a gallery in Paris or London for the enjoyment and inspiration of future generations.</p>

[alan_zinn]

<p>Girrr! <br>

Here I am NOW with my pocket cam. Almost two hundred years of philosophical discussion, the <em>digital age</em> happens, and some of you are asking what the fuss is all about? It was not supposed to be a difficult question. <br>

Talbot and Daguerre surely didn't think of their images as "data" in the contemporary sense of the term. "Salient" means <em>most important</em>. In this case most important to the question.<br>

Think about the popularity of <em>creative</em> modes informed by the popular modalities of art and photography. (Just for one instance.) The as-taken data remains the same. What will be the <em>look </em>of the present early digital era? The creative imagination will invent new ways to use images. Being creative is a dialog with the times.</p>

<p>Photograph taken with pocket cam and rendered to look the way the bike-mounted camera of the times might look.</p><div></div>

[Julie H]

<p>Alan, I don't think 'open-ended' is the way the 'vernacular' photographer (everyday photo-shooter; the great majority of digital picture makers) uses his digital data. I think it's become more and more a closed circle -- bent back on itself. <em>Not</em> open; reflexive. The people make pictures; the pictures make the people; then the picture-made people make more pictures and around and around we go. Data is stuff that is thought about -- that gets mentally handled/digested. I see the picture data as oscillating in a feedback circle that is less and less open; more and more absorbed into the fabric of the circular build.</p>

[alan_zinn]

<p>Julie,<br>

The vernacular informs the creative. It just keeps on going. We don't privilege a certain form or method as in the past. There have been no broadly influential masters or avant garde for a long time. Notice how the usual suspects keep coming up. Part of --maybe all of it -- is our global culture driven by instant media. The last chapter in the book for a while? Why shouldn't we have some fun anticipating what's next?<br>

Trying to think of a witty quip, but all I can think of is "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree' . </p>

[Julie H]

<p>Alan, I think you're mixing up two conditions. In the OP you said: "A kind where nobody knows or cares how the data gets used or what to call it?" That's comparable to "a" language. Langauge is an ever morphing body of common understanding that fluxes according to the needs and usages of its speaking/writing population, but "a" language, its grammar and vocabulary, can't be self-consciously creative or avant-garde or even particularly noticed by people other than linguists and xenophobes.</p>

<p>As soon as one does become self-conscious of language -- writers, poets in particular -- yes, you get the creative feeding on the vernacular but you also get firmly placed in the history of that medium, and influential masters do emerge.</p>

<p>I don't think they have "seen Paree," unless and until they (self-consciously) step beyond the vernacular use -- beyond the conversational photo -- to noticing it as a thing-in-itself (the data coagulates ... ).</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>I think we are conferring upon the photographic process, whether emulsion based or digital, more importance in determining directions than we should. Yes, some techniques like Xray photography or high speed photography, or even instant re-visualisation of the result afforded by digital capture, have opened up, or can open up, new applications for the medium and have thus in that sense been open-ended. Creative photographers have used the medium to produce novel products (as Julie says, the thing in itself, (which is) the coagulation of data) but the examples of open-endedness I have witnessed have been mainly due to the personal creative use of the technique and not to the technique itself. Mind before data.</p>

[alan_zinn]

<p>I keep repeating that the question has only to do with how we approach <em>creative</em> uses of digitally acquired images. (Would Mr. T & D find <em>acquired</em> a strange, vague word? ) <br>

I have used x-ray, graphic arts, and technical films for art but as I've said, that is not the open-ended media awareness particular to digital data I'm asking about. </p>

<p>Everybody's left the farm -- that is the point. <em>Nobody</em> can look at images in the same way. As I said, the <em>creative</em> modes wouldn't be there if marketing people didn't think people in general (globally!) were more visually <em>literate</em>. Think of the history of photography besides technical changes. It is about what people want to look at evolves over time and how they want to see it. That is an investigation for creative people. One way to think of a priori thinking is: why would you NOT first think of a slide show (projected image) while using chrome film? Certainly not a B/W print!</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>The "digital" data starts out in your camera or cellphone as photons hitting the sensor and producing analogue signal data. Analogue data. It is only the conversion of that analogue data to digital form (1 and 0) by some electronic software that digital becomes important, but the data is already there.</p>

<p>I can scan my analogue negatives and produce digital data. Maybe it is not photography that is open-ended, but simply the treatment by electronics of analogue data or the treatment of ensuing digital data to modify the original sensor analogue response. All sorts of convenient exposure methodologies (cellphone camera use, etc.) and subsequent manipulations and outputs can be produced (data splicing of different images, etc.) but the main "open-endedness" is still in the mind of the photographer and not in his tools or his latent image "substrates", digital or analogue.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>I see little difference in a screen image from a digital camera or a 12 x 16 inch print from a film camera negative or positive. Each is a grouping of either digital data or exposed, developed and fixed silver grains. The pixels and the grains achieve pretty much the same purpose. So, if you replace the digital screen image with some new open-ended configuration of the original data, what do you foresee? If you scramble your pixels to remove the original image capture you are indeed making something else, but it is then only a photograph in terms of the methodology but not in terms of being a likeness for what the camera captured. Do you want to use the data to generate a 3D holographic image? Maybe you can screen out of the image making data some form or colour, or whatever. We are back to simple post exposure manipulations, that are hardly as open-ended as the thoughts (image-creating ones) of the human mind.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Datafication (digitization) commoditizes experience -- makes it use-full, transferable, marketable. It can be "wielded" by who possesses it. It becomes weaponized (on the micro or macro level).</p>

<p>(This implies that un-datafied experience is no useful value in this market. A schism is born ... )</p>

[alan_zinn]

<blockquote>

<p>"but the main "open-endedness" is still in the mind of the photographer"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That is the WHOLE point Arthur! It is you that are going in circles. Analog-to-digital conversion (and back) creates a philosophically <em>new thing</em> that must inform our thinking -- every click of the shutter. That is ALL I'm saying. The open end is about that click. You could argue that <em>any</em> possibility was always there but our <em>heads</em> were not. Again, the "chromes are for projected images analogy". We must be creatively aware that digi-cams are for…?</p>

<p>The work I am doing now touches on that idea, as I've said, and will keep me busy from now on. I already did the smack in the head. As usual, I'm always decades behind. The Global Digital Era chapter is well along I believe. Think of music <em>after</em> John Cage if you like. Maybe there are other, better paradigm shifters in the other arts?</p><div></div>

[aplumpton]

<blockquote>

<p>(Think of music <em>after</em> John Cage</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Alan, as a student I interviewed Lejaren Hillar at Buffalo for a radio program in 1968 and he had just set up (with the aid of Cage) a piece involving 7 harpsichords, 52 tapes and electronic music complement, which followed I think the major milestone works of John Cage. Different, but was it really different?</p>

<p>I like to sit in concerts of post 2000 contemporary music and that does seem to open up some new doors. But then I am not a well informed musician. Cage, for all his brilliance and contributions to music and dance, composed within a cage of definite dimensions and it takes others to work outside of that cage. The only Cage piece I can play is his 4'33".</p>

<p>So what will digital photography do differently? There may be other applications, but like engineering, and unless it is something based on science that is novel as an application, it may take new science and not new engineering to achieve an open ended liberation.</p>

<p>We are still capturing photons and turning them into something we can read with our eyes and usually onto a two dimensional (how abstract that is compared to the subject itself) substrate. That doesn't seem to change.</p>

<p>Maybe the open endness we can expect is like that of a small hole in a beer production vat. It may take a very long time for it to remove what we are accustomed to.</p>

<p>We can replace the brush in painting, by typing in or mousing in a design and textures otherwise (and with different result), but for most practicing artists that doesn't seem all that useful.</p>

<p>(It looks more like 50 x 60 on canvas and a very conventional museum type of showing - did I miss something in your photo example?)</p>

[alan_zinn]

<p>Aurthur,<br>

The picture is <em>not</em> the picture in the picture it is the one on your screen. Trying for some Zen/Magritte here. :-)<br>

Thinking of Cage - I'm not a musician and don't know any theory. Like the idea of new music and <em>noise</em>. Have even done several <em>noise</em> art sculpture pieces -- one involving live rats! Can't help it if I'm a victim of the '60's!<br>

I'm finding some of the sense in what you and the other's are saying. I'm still beating my drum for a new state of reality as far as mind-set though. It may be just shadings of meaning. I'm on a creative high right now and easily excitable. :-)</p><div></div>

[sjmurray]

<p>I was discussing this topic with an artist friend of mine, Corey. His perspective was that with digital photography and the Internet and the "ballizions" of images that are out there, one thing that is entirely different now is that a single image can catch on and spread “virally” so that within a very short time of thousands of people have seen it, like a “splash on a pond.” Many of this type of images become cultural “memes.” They do so because they have meaning in the cultural context of the moment. Compare this to producing a single photograph to be hung in a gallery. Instead, the image remains in the "data state," and thousands of people see it and interact with it instantly, sending it along to others. Its “value” if you wish, is equated with the number of times it has been seen, which signifies in some way, the degree of impact it has on the people observing it. More food for thought!</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Thinking about Steve's post above and what I think (maybe?) Alan is talking about -- the image gone liquid, the picture that has escaped the frame, makes me turn back and think about what the "frame" is or does. Frame, stage, theater, screen, billboard, TV; a somehow delineated, delimited space that positions you, the viewer in a particular relation to it and what it has or does or is. If this is dissolved or blurred or indeterminate, what happens to both the contents *and* to you, the viewer because that frame isn't there to mark the signals to/from? I'm guessing that the wildness, the rogue content is what Alan's interested in, what Steve is talking about ("interact with it instantly").</p>

<p>BUT, what if, and just take this as a thought experiment, not something to yes-or-no versus the above, what if it's not possible for a picture to escape the frame. If a frame is not "given" via location or physical enclosure, it *WILL* generate its own virtual frame in the instant of viewing. Rather than a viral picture (or just a viral picture) you have viral framing. Go back to thinking about what frames do; the stilling, the nulling, the quieting, the out-of-bounds invisibility of what's not in the frame -- what viral framing might mean in its generation of viral audiences everywhere, anywhere. The viewer is the one who is *not* in the frame. Not acting. Waiting.</p>

<p>“To be on the wire is life; the rest is waiting.” -- <em>Karl Wallenda</em></p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Framing positions and is important to photographers, painters. It's not just a "viewer" thing. It's part of the making.</p>

[alan_zinn]

<p>Now you are getting it. I have put frames or mats on some of my web pictures to make that point. Pictures put in the comfortably familiar frame context change completely. My titles for some images are fictive sizes and media. i.e. " 48 x 60 in. Acrylic on Canvas." to provoke a dialog about what the viewer is really seeing. I've always thought of the image, in some cases, as the step, <em>before,</em> or instead of, an idea for another medium. I have to quit doing that and be thinking of ideas that work best as <em>live</em> display.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Alan (and all you other gods), you and I are looking down from the cosmos at Earth -- the earth that "is blue like an orange"* -- and we notice something interesting so we decide to run an experiment, observing closely for how a certain new phenomenon materializes itself. [i'm doing this with music instead of pictures because -- I want to. I am confident that you can do the translation from audio to visual.]</p>

<p>We start with a busker. We'll call him Alan2. He's escaping the need for the frame of auditorium or recording studio and he's taken his "act" out onto the street. There, his performance generates its own little "frame" -- which can be surmised by the circumference of the circle formed by his spontaneous audience.</p>

<p>Shortly, Alan2 is joined on this same street by another busker. And another and another. In a remarkably short time (this is the beginning, the seed, of the new, interesting phenomenon that we gods have noticed), <em>everybody</em> on the street is a busker, each with his own little sound-frame, each doing his own musical thing. There is no audience because *everybody* is busking.</p>

<p>KEY MOMENT. All of us gods bend forward in eager anticipation, watching Alan2 closely. Sure enough, as we watch, we notice a ... drift in his music, a certain mild confusion in his attention and then, TA-DA!, he begins, without ever entirely breaking stride, to harmonize with his neighbor busker. His "frame" has jumped, gone snaking over and around another busker and now we have a pair of buskers in a new frame, which is fast slip-sliding into improvisated flow with further buskers, who, from other similar centers of emergence/mergence are mingle/merging into each other to form integrating and disintegrating framings of one-into-many where the many is nobody's "decision" but is lassoed by this rogue or viral frame that finds its own boundaries, inclusive or exclusive, ever-changing ... But where is Alan2? "Who?" we ask. The music owns the frame; the individual busker is irrelevant to its existence. Ultimately, we see the whole blue-orange world playing in one grand improvisational ever-ongoing orchestration (people drop in and out; makes no difference to the viral whole of the billions).</p>

<p>But WAIT. Something's happening. Big-assed busker Beethoven shows up. Sets in a good spot and starts doing his own thing. He does NOT allow this viral frame to lasso his space. He enforces his frame; he <em>makes</em>, he is not played (with). Eventually, his "frame" will develop into the concert hall, and the full ritual of the enforced frame.</p>

<p>[* "<em>the earth is blue like an orange</em>" — Paul Éluard <<< because I try to *always* include at least one quote in my posts.]</p>