AMP

Back from MacDowell, missing the time & space I had already. Here’s one last install shot of some new work. Will hopefully have this new work on the website soon.

Hard at work here at Camp MacDowell. When I haven’t been making huge blueprints I’ve been creating some experimental projection pieces in which videos are projected onto photographs. The photographs they are projected onto are created by projecting the video onto light-sensitive paper (read: long exposure). There is a certain kind of beauty in both the redundancy of the image/video and the temporal confusion by layering ongoing moments on top of still images. Watch examples below:

Quad folder opens like a Transformer!

“this light is like snowflakes!”

Walked around with the strobe last night–I can’t see anything w/o it.

I’ve been completely obsessed with the Earth’s moon lately. Besides being the only major counterpart to our Sun in the sky (which I’ve pondered for quite some time), I’ve recently been turned on to it’s thrilling history, inspiration, and potential.

This probably all started when my musical companion Ryan and I wrote a song for a concept album about the chaos of peak oil destroying the planet and being forced to colonize the moon, appropriately titled ‘To The Moon‘. It was my first attempt at playing the drums, and nicely mimics the Apollo 13 mission to the moon which was dubbed a ’successful failure’. Still, it’s a fun jam to play–the last time I played it was at a backyard birthday party in which I jumped in the pool upon finishing the song. Forgot to take my phone out of my pocket. Whoops.

Spread from James Nasmyth's 'The Moon Considered As A Planet...'

After replacing my phone I came across a fantastic little reprint of ‘The Moon: Considered As A Planet, A World And A Satellite’. This book was originally published in 1885 and became known for it’s intriguing illustrations of the moon, which are actually photographs of large and highly-detailed models created from many illustrations based on telescopic observation. The results are otherworldly–I would love to see an original copy with the pigment prints if anybody has one. The text is a basic scientific discussion of how the surface of the moon came to be. I’ll be honest and tell you that I haven’t read much of it and usually just look at the pictures.

Michael Collins' book 'Flying to the Moon'

Not too long ago I was given a copy of Michael Collins’ book ‘Flying To The Moon‘, which is an account of Collins’ training as an astronaut and his experience aboard the Gemini 10 and Apollo 11 flights (he’s known for being the unsung third astronaut to accompany Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong to the moon). The book is aimed at younger readers, but I still found plenty to love. I specifically love Collins’ account of orbiting the far side of the moon, completely cut off from all communication and ties to the rest of the world:

“I suppose one reason I didn’t feel lonely was that I had been flying airplanes by myself for nearly twenty years. This time, however, I had to admit that it was a bit different, especially on the far side of the moon. There, cut off from all communication, I was truly alone, the only person in the solar system who could not even see the planet of his birth. Far from causing fear, this situation gave me a good feeling–one of confidence and satisfaction. Outside my windows I could see stars, and nothing else. I knew where the moon was, but in total darkness, it’s surface was not visible: it was simply that part of my window which had no stars in it. The feeling was less like flying than like being alone in a boat on the ocean at night. Stars above, pure black below.”

Later in the book Collins describes how a trip to Mars might happen (unlike the moon mission, which only took 8 days, a Mars mission would likely take a 18 months), the creation of an orbiting city ‘Libra’, and the great potential for both disaster and advanced civilization we have. Did you know that only 66 years passed between the first Wright brothers flight and the moon landing? That’s just fucking crazy.

Spread from Gagarin's work published by Location Books

Lastly, I just received my copy of Location Books‘ first publication which features collages and ‘moonprints’ by Isa Newby Gagarin. It’s very well produced, in a small edition of 100, and features some visually interesting juxtapositions of found photographs and astrophotography. While the bits and pieces of text praising the benefits of laboratory-made diamonds are a bit confusing, the overall metaphor that Gagarin creates throughout the book is strong and inspiring. For Gagarin the moon is a photograph that develops and fades with the sun’s light. It’s an interesting project and works well in book form.

More moon thoughts to come…

I’ve been hopping into photo booths more frequently than normal as of late, and it got me thinking about why the photo booth market never took off in the United States as it did in other areas of the world. In Japan I’ve heard they’re everywhere, and I remember from my time studying in London that I could find one without looking that hard (was it because they were shaped like phone booths, which were also everywhere?). For some reason though, photo booths in the States have been relegated to the area of pure entertainment, found either in bars or amusement parks. Pretty much all of the photo booths I’ve encountered here have been the traditional chemical black & white ones (whereas in Japan most are digital and/or stickers).

Apparently the photo booth first appeared in America, so why didn’t they succeed here? While all of Apple’s computers now come with the Photo Booth application, it’s a distant cousin to the original as it lacks the limitation of a certain # of photos, the cost-per-photo limitation, and the end result of a printed strip of photographs (in these respects, Polaroids are actually more similar).

For now, it looks photo booths will remain a novelty, occasionally used by artists, but mostly for drunken entertainment. While no longer the efficient portrait-generators they used to be, I still hope they stick around, keeping company with typewriters and phonographs. In the meantime, if you’re hunting for a photo booth, I’d recommend using Photobooth.net–and if you know of any that aren’t listed, please contribute!

Here’s my thesis: The sneeze is the closest bodily function we have to the process of photography–or rather, the sneeze is the closest thing we have similar to photographic time in nature. It reflexively slices time up, obscures vision, and for nearly 1/3 of the population, can be triggered by light. I see the act of photography as split-second of momentary blindness–a reactionary interruption that obstructs our seeing. However, while we photograph to preserve, we sneeze to expel, to rid our body of foreign particles, usually dust or other small particulate matter. By expelling the dust, we are preserving our body, our health, and our well-being.

I’ve always found this sequence by Edison to be an interesting documentation of a sneeze:

Even more so interesting knowing that he photographed with a contraption like this:

I made my own interpretation, albeit these are stills from a video camera:

Still, my favorite sneeze photographs are the ones where the sneezer expels a universe of stars into a boogery atmosphere:

A couple weeks ago Thomas Seely from Breakthru Radio visited my studio in Williamsburg to chat about art, music, and the creative process. It was a great conversation, and luckily he recorded it! It’s featured on the program ‘Art Uncovered’, and features the interview, some original compositions, and some choice songs to make for an excellent hour of listening. Listen to the podcast here.

Stayed home sick today and watched a bunch of skate videos vis-a-vis Netflix. I felt like was living in the future. Between watching all these classics and trying to recall if I still have my VHS copies of certain films, my Nyquil-induced haze led me to draw parallels between the construction of a great skateboarding movie and an equally great photobook. Work with me here: skateboarders are photographers, the tricks/lines are their photographs, and then they get placed into a sequential order. I started wondering if skateboarders made maquettes for their video parts, or if they just wrote down the order of their parts as they see fit. At the moment I’m trying to match up the photobook counterpart for the following videos: Animal Chin, Hocus Pocus, Video Days, Welcome to Hell, Yeah Right…or the skate movie equivalent to The Americans, Ballad of Sexual Dependency, American Prospects, Shimmer of Possibility…you get the idea. I’m tempted to match up Lakai’s ‘Fully Flared’ with Crewdson’s Twilight or maybe a Jeff Wall book. Video Days is the closest I can compare to Frank’s ‘The Americans’ sensibility. Welcome to Hell would fit right in with Goldberg’s ‘Raised by Wolves’…I could do this forever. I love sick days.