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Artists’ moving image: Film and modern art in Britain 1900-1940
Get PDFThe attraction of film as a medium for artists, and the influence of the visual culture of cinema in shaping modernism is tacitly acknowledged in art history, although rarely explored in detail. Since the 1970s, a growing number of publications have explored experimental film and artists’ moving image internationally, yet only a handful consider film in relation to other media before the 1960s. Those that do mention Britain only briefly or focus on continental European or North American work. Consequently, the complex interrelations between art and film in the first half of the twentieth century in Britain remain largely obscure. This thesis catalogues and analyses – via historicist and formalist methods – how film form, theory, technology, architecture, discourse and ephemera influenced artists working in Britain between 1900 and 1940, focusing on activity in London. It makes detailed case-studies of artists who made work in a range of media in dialogue or in parallel with cinema and traces the evolution of ideas of film as art in texts written during the period in question. The first part, Artists’ Film explores how artists approached the cinema both as a subject and as a medium. In chapter 1, this is considered in relation to historic genres and materials of art via the work of Walter Sickert and Walter Booth, while in chapters 2, 3 and 4, it is considered in the context of competing visions of modernism via the work of Wyndham Lewis, Duncan Grant, Edward Wolfe, Hubert Waley, Dora Carrington, Barbara Ker-Seymer and Edward Burra, alongside criticism by Roger Fry, Clive Bell, Virginia Woolf and Iris Barry. Closing this section, chapter 5 explores the way film was associated with psychology in Close Up, lending significance to the individual viewer’s perception of a film, and thereby raising the possibility that film art could be conceptual more than material. The second part, Art After Film explores artworks that are influenced by and intersect with the attributes of ‘film art’ so far defined. Chapter 6 surveys the work of Oswell Blakeston and his circle and their attempts to render cinema through means other than film. Chapters 7 and 8 explores primarily abstract works in a wide-range of media made by artists including László Moholy-Nagy, Naum Gabo, S. John Woods, Arthur Jackson and John Piper. The significance of Herbert Read as a conduit bringing European ideas around film and art to Britain is also considered. Part three, Film After Art explores works that sought to extend these uses and meanings of film art, and did so by positing a ‘life-ly’ dimension to film, at times connecting with the surreal and at others with the organic. Works by Humphrey Jennings and John Banting are the focus of chapter 9 and works by Len Lye and Paule Vézelay are discussed alongside the neo-vitalist discourse surrounding biomorphism in art in chapter 10. In foregrounding the intermedial, collaborative and experimental practices omitted from existing art historical accounts, the thesis finds a dialectic with film to run throughout modern British art. It connects the contemporary rubric of artists’ moving image to more extensive historical, material and theoretical precedents, and it suggests possibilities for further research into artists’ engagement with film in the period 1945-1965
Material intangibilities
Get PDFThis practice-led PhD research investigates the affective and embodied materialisations of long-term endurance of cisheteronormative structures. At its core, my research is concerned with exposing the possible ways in which white, cisgender, heteronormative and patriarchal frameworks are nonconsciously processed. I build on the concept material intangibilities to rethink how form — the production and reproduction of patterns — travels, spreads, diffuses in efferently multiple and afferently unpredictable ways. My research challenges questions of corroborability in relation to realities that are not capturable through normative forms of legibility. I give an embodied account of the viscerality of affect involved in the process of endurance, when my own identification began by being imposed rather than self-asserted; I allow for my injuries to speak their shape, and in doing so, I highlight the materiality of injuries that are dismissed due to the way they are made invisible, and therefore less important; by prioritising invisibilised injuries and microaggressions, I expose embodied and embedded forms of normality allowed to operate as tools for white, cisgender, heteronormative, and patriarchal supremacy. I position my research in relation to Feminist, queer and decolonial practices that have been providing critiques to white-western patriarchal knowledge systems and their hindering of social justice (da Silva: 2007, 2016, 2019; Hartman: 2012; Jackson: 2020; Wynter: 2013). I draw on thinking frameworks put forward through investigations on nonconscious cognition (Hayles: 2017, 2019), queer aesthetics (Macharia: 2019; Musser: 2014, 2018), Linguistics (Yao: 2021), and semiotics (Kohn: 2013) to inquire how form is processed, propelled, and absorbed consciously and nonconsciously. Operating under a fine art methodological framework, I exercise a practice-led approach to what I am calling nonconscious semiosis of affect: the production and reproduction of patterns, and how the remembering of sensations is tied to affective experiences archived in the body. I use still and moving image, archival retrieval, photographic assemblages, and writing to create speculative non-fictional narratives that challenge pre-established perceptions of embodiment. In doing so, I weave injury and repair, joy and anger, tiredness and endurance through patterns of resistance that reveal how the [hopeful] absence of white, cisgender, heteronormative, and patriarchal structures enable non-hetero futurities to be materialised in the present
Speculative voicing: A sonic speculative design methodology for vocal imaginaries in the AI era
Get PDFVoice increasingly mediates artificially intelligent (AI)-enabled communication, with the expanding proliferation of conversational AI systems like Amazon’s Echo, voiced by ‘Alexa’. This research is concerned with the sound and sounding of voices (human and synthesised) in conversational AI systems and identifies that vocal profiling underpins current understandings of vocal sounding by AI and the AI industry. Vocal profiling relies on normative assumptions that risk misrepresenting individuals, negatively impacting those already marginalised. By fundamentally reorienting the discussion of vocal profiling from ‘listening’ towards ‘sounding’, the voice is given increased agency. The practice-led research created vocal imaginaries that reveal and resist vocal profiling, questioning and disrupting the dominant understanding of voice(s) promoted by AI. Situated at the intersection of sound, design and technology, this research incorporates contemporary societal discourse on identity politics, personhood, being and ecology. Through this PhD research, a sonic speculative design methodology emerged as an original contribution to knowledge, where working with and through sound in the design process created opportunities to establish novel concepts with a turn towards co-creation. Termed ‘Speculative Voicing’, sonic thinking was successfully applied to speculative design to confront contemporary critique of the field, generating a new materialist, intersectional approach. It was developed over six participatory workshops with young people and then applied to an investigation of vocal profiling in conversational AI systems through two case study projects. Evaluation of the works took place in a further workshop with industry professionals. The evaluation found that the Speculative Voicing methodology accomplished the creation of vocal imaginaries that resist vocal profiling while creating space to apply narratives that can also reveal them. Starting from my position as a practising speculative designer and vocal performer, I propose the Speculative Voicing methodology to work with the voice in conversational AI as a design material and treat it as an experimental singer would. Vocal potential is thus generated, building dynamic relations and entanglements to explore concepts of being and identity, supported and evidenced by the motivations of a lineage of female experimental vocalists. Guiding principles of the methodology explorations posit that the voice is always polyphonic through its materiality – co-created with many bodies, environments, matter and the AI system. The recurring metaphor of a vacuum highlights the sonic materiality of voice. Critique is constructed through reflexive analysis of the practice work that demonstrates vocal potentiality in comparison to current profiled presentations and representations of voices in contemporary conversational AI systems. Speculative Voicing provides a practice-focused, voice-led methodology of working with the polyphonic sonic materiality of voices to reveal and resist voice profiling practices. It is intended for those who want to explore speculative design practice from an intersectional position, especially when working, or intending to work, with voice. The methodology is supplemented by accessible outputs for further impact, dissemination, and advocacy against current practices of vocal profiling. These comprise a Speculative Voicing Framework, a prototyped participatory workshop and two interactive tools to reflect and offer feedback on the understanding, design and implementation of voices in conversational AI
Robust building identification from street views using deep convolutional neural networks
Get PDFStreet view imagery (SVI) is a rich source of information for architectural and urban analysis using computer vision techniques, but its integration with other building-level data sources requires an additional step of visual building identification. This step is particularly challenging in architecturally homogeneous, dense residential streets featuring narrow buildings, due to a combination of SVI geolocation errors and occlusions that significantly increase the risk of confusing a building with its neighboring buildings. This paper introduces a robust deep learning-based method to identify buildings across multiple street views taken at different angles and times, using global optimization to correct the position and orientation of street view panoramas relative to their surrounding building footprints. Evaluating the method on a dataset of 2000 street views shows that its identification accuracy (88%) outperforms previous deep learning-based methods (79%), while methods solely relying on geometric parameters correctly show the intended building less than 50% of the time. These results indicate that previous identification methods lack robustness to panorama pose errors when buildings are narrow, densely packed, and subject to occlusions, while collecting multiple views per building can be leveraged to increase the robustness of visual identification by ensuring that building views are consistent
Between movement and stasis: Loops within the durational
Get PDFThis research examines various iterations and configurations of loop forms in moving image and sound, via artists’ use of particular audio-visual technologies; this practice-led investigation acts as a catalyst for academic writing. My field of study moves between the contemporary – including my own practice – and the period from the mid-1960s to early 1970s. I use this historical move to engage with medium-specificities and working processes as they are figured within the reciprocal conditions of technological development and sociopolitical contexts. I set out to discover what “thinking between” the 1960s and now can tell us about the present; this method also creates a temporal looping back and forth throughout the dissertation. With the terms loops and looping I refer firstly to the digital or analogue loop: at its most basic, a short repeating section. I then examine how the loop can embody more complex structures – involving variation, modulation, layering, erasure; taking the form of a spiral, or a multiplicity of loops, or a divergence along different paths which return to the same point. Looping also extends to feedback loops – in terms of analogue audio / video / electronic feedback; as a mode of cybernetics and machine-to-machine imaging; and as a mode of operations within a broader network of social monitoring, surveillance and control. I also explore materiality, meta-materialities, and dematerialisation through the loop. The thesis situates loop forms as manifestations of cultural and ideological conditions – operating through, and at times against, technological medium-specificities. I place the loop within, or alongside (at times contra), the durational; investigating the dynamics between these temporal modes, and the idea of “presence” within them. I use the term durational in the context of time-based media and also with a Bergsonian inflection: duration which involves a flow or flux between different elements of time, where the past flows into the present – at times intersecting it. Through my research I find points of oscillation or confluence between movement and stasis in the loop; this intersects with dualities between recording and erasure, absence and presence – as well as past and present. Informed by post-Marxist philosophy and cultural theory (Agamben, Virilio, Steyerl, Fisher, The Invisible Committee), my research is grounded in the political force of the apparatus and of cultural forms. The thesis also engages with thinking around a posthumanist response to technological mediation (Braidotti, Guattari), and with media archaeology. My thesis addresses the following research questions: How do loops reflect cultural and ideological conditions at the same time as engineering or manipulating them, shaping our perceptual experience? How does this affect our experience of duration? How does the loop in moving image and sound practice operate in relation to particular recording technologies? In what ways does the loop create an oscillation or intersection between movement and stasis, and what kinds of materialities emerge or dissipate through this
Original Copy
No full textOriginal Copy is a collaborative project, between Riccardo Carbone (Bristol UK) and John Strutton (London UK), that explores the acts of translation between visual material and sound. Drawing, painting and moving image are produced using a number of mechanical devices, such as an old windup gramophone, customised mechanical objects, a lightbox and scanner, optical lenses and modified cameras which are then fed into software built in MAX to produce audio text and musical notation. The project has produced a collection of audio works, video works and performances online and live as part of audio-visual installations. Both the online and live performances take on the form of a séance or summoning to think about ideas such as trapped data, lost messages and anecdotal histories and how both digital and material surfaces might contain or encode them
Depth unknown: Archaeology of resistance
Get PDFThis essay explores the complex layers of history and resistance embedded in the landscape of Gaza, where both ancient and contemporary forces converge in the struggle for Palestinian identity and survival. Drawing on the rich archaeological heritage of the region, the piece examines how the ground, marked by layers of time, holds not only the physical remnants of past civilizations but also the scars of ongoing violence and resistance. The ground, often treated as a site of destruction by external powers, is reimagined as an active participant in Palestinian resistance—through the archaeological traces left by ancient civilizations, the contested layers of land, and the subterranean tunnels that have become lifelines for Gaza's people. The essay critiques the Western extraction and objectification of Palestinian artefacts, contrasting this with the deep, living connection Palestinians maintain with their land and its history. The narrative underscores the persistence of Palestinian resilience, as the land itself serves as a dynamic witness to cycles of destruction and regeneration, resisting efforts to erase its history. The essay ultimately argues that the ground of Gaza, both a battlefield and sanctuary, is a powerful symbol of the endurance and liberation of the Palestinian people, whose traces, whether ancient or contemporary, refuse to be extinguished
Unfixed
No full text"Unfixed" is an immersive exhibition at the YKK showroom that explores the intersections of design, technology, and ecology. Central to our journey is the recognition of each organism's unique environment, often caught between opposing forces. We envision a world free from binaries, inspired by the multiverse, and using materials that engage multiple senses. Guided by queer ecology, we challenge the binary norms of virtual and physical worlds. Through prototypes and behind-the-scenes insights, you'll witness our transformation of body, identity, materials, and movement. Experience our creative process, which questions conventional norms and embraces the fluidity of existence. "Unfixed" is a collaboration between Studio Peut-Porter, Jeanne Indriani, Oliver Wrobel, Piero Glina, and Nusa. During the exhibition, you'll engage with textiles that transform and invite playful interactions within digital realms. Our co-design ethos fosters a collaborative environment where your participation shapes the narrative
DAZZLE SOLO at IDAF 2024
No full textThis year, the Istanbul Digital Art Festival, which will hold its fourth edition, gathers artists and digital artworks from around the world annually to celebrate the transformation of art. IDAF aims to explore how digital art and virtual worlds interact with the concept of reality and how this interaction transforms the human experience; it invites participants to think, question, and delve into the depths of virtual worlds as a platform of art, music, and games. Read More Artists exploring the boundaries of digital worlds offer creative expressions beyond classical definitions with AV performances, and deeply examine the idea of seeking truth in the realm of virtual creation while opening the door to virtual realities and different worlds for the audience. The digital world creates a platform for rethinking the concepts of identity and reality, and for redefining reality through identity creation. Artists use digital tools to interpret reality from unique angles, offer alternative perspectives, and question established norms. They create original compositions that transcend traditional genres, providing a music experience in another reality. They shed light on the interaction between reality and the digital world with games that allow participants to build their digital identities and provide a unique sense of reality. From textile art to wearable technology, digital music and games, they express emotions, experiences, and concepts in innovative ways through digital works. They push the boundaries of art supported by XR, AR, VR, AI, from augmented reality to virtual reality. As we navigate the line between reality and the digital world, we begin to question the impact of our digital identities on our real-world selves. The festival encourages thought about the complex interaction between our real and digitally constructed identities and directs us to understand how art shapes identities in different realities. This year, the festival will be a platform that invites contemplation on how identities constructed in the virtual world reflect and influence our real-world identities, delves deeply into the relationship between humans and technology, and shows audiences the doors to different worlds. It awaits visitors to explore the infinite potential of digital art. AKM Gallery Atatürk Kültür Merkezi / Ataturk Cultural Cente
Andromeda's howl: Relayed history and a song cycle as method for collective imagination
No full textAndromeda’s Howl is a piece of research that explore new methods in historical research as a creative practice. It traces and follows 'Andromeda' as a word, name, myth, constellation, galaxy, as frescoes, paintings, sculptures, as archetype. The project acts as a relay, connecting moments in time otherwise unrelated. Think the classical myth, along with a 19th Century sculpture at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, a medieval mystic and translator of Arabic texts into Latin, glass plate photography at the Carnegie Archive in Pasadena of Edward Hubble's 'discovery' of the Andromeda galaxy, an iron forgery in Shropshire, and on and on. Beyond stories captured in text, Andromeda’s Howl is also an 8-part song cycle, whose performance, over time, connects with, records and captures the voices of audience members, public participants, workshop attendees and more into a collective composition, a love letter to Andromeda. Andromeda is a myth that has been a relay of oral histories, material sources, images, representations and morality. Andromeda has been papyrus paper at one point in time and an iron sculpture at another, cast by John Bell and bought by Queen Victoria at the Great Exhibition in 1851. The language, the word, the semantics and the etymology of Andromeda is like an anniversary. Each time it is repeated, it reinforces some origin. But just what is that origin, or source, when Andromeda is a myth? And like all myths, is sourced and sourceless, save for its repetition, its relay. The constellation Andromeda has been drawn, configured, photographed and measured, once even by Michel Scot the 12th Century medieval scholar, appearing in Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell, and described in that text as one whose ribs are thin and small. Visible to the naked eye, the Andromeda Galaxy is a smudge, a blur, something like a cluster or cloud not dissimilar to the Great Nebula that inspired Kant’s ‘island universes’. Andromeda has been a glass plate taken on Mount Wilson Observatory in 1923 and the classification system developed by Henrietta Swan Leavitt to look at variable stars at the Harvard College Observatory. Andromeda is also our closest neighbour, and in a cosmic love dance with us; the Milky Way and Andromeda will, after all, collide in an epic embrace in about 4.5 billion years. Andromeda the myth is relayed in time, through story, to us. Andromeda the galaxy is relayed in time, through space, to us. The light of it we see is already 2.5 million years old when it reaches our eye, and so acts as a perpetually updating archive, or an impossibly slow telegraph line between two galaxies. So why does it feel like this message from two and a half million years ago is really a message from the future