I think I'm seeing things again
Sep. 7th, 2005 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirezI think what's happening is this: I've always rather liked art that isn't strictly representational. Stuff that forces you to think a bit...
... You know the sort of people who insist on asking 'But what is it?', 'But what's it supposed to be?' or (of words) 'But what does it mean?' They annoy me beyond words. None of them are my friends, thankfully. It means whatever you want it to mean, and as a notional creator I employ the Humpty Dumpty defence...
... Impressionism (apart from Mike Yarwood), Surrealism (obviously), Futurism (while doing one's best to disinfect the dodgy politics. Outside the trains don't run on time.) and a certain amount of Cubism. Skronky jazz and techno, industrial played on bits of industry rather than whinecore synth-wrangling, Ballard, Burroughs, Stockhausen, MBV, HST - The Usual Suspects for anyone with half a brain and more than one pair of black jeans to their name.
It's not terribly surprising that I'd semi-consciously try to replicate that. For a long time, I resisted camera-wielding because... Whenever I have tried to take pictures of things they've come out tedious and uninteresting. In focus, but boring.
The 7250i was a lot of a revelation. The rubbishness of previous digital things had been in the colour (and the white-balance, lens and resolution. I think.) but this one smeared over those problems with a horrible fish-eye lens that made everything look like alien television. Common household objects pictured at an unusual angle which suggests a shadowy quasi-life in a universe not our own. With the right sort of mind, they write themselves and then like the fnords the bloody things are everywhere, leaking into the universe I have to share with managers, functionaries and forms. Result.
The four-lens thing... It's not a real Lomo. It's a branding exercise by the Lomographic mob. It's functionally impossible to take normal pictures with the thing. I've tried; they come out rubbish. So one gives up and points it in any old direction and oh look here come the rusty petrol pumps anchored to an art-deco-ish garage in the middle of Wales.
Those things would not have shown themselves if I'd not had that camera to hand. I think that's the key to understanding how this works.
The next move was the LC-A - A real Lomo - and... A lot of what I've done with it thus far has been rubbish. The thing's more than capable of taking proper pictures, which means getting that bit right before I can get properly silly and come up with something like this, which I'm probably over-pleased with. Still, it makes me think of Ballardian Chronograms which is just good. And indeed![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
grh's gig and B-Movie photographs, which lurch between inspiring and 'you bastard'.
I suspect that there are layers of object-leakage or intrusions from other universes. The early kit had quickly picked up the easy ones, but there are many more strange things... Well, not exactly waiting to be discovered, but just there if you look at them in the right way. I just need to worry about focus and depth of field a bit more.
The XA2 is... A bit of an experiment. It works like the LC-A, but with a better lens and a flash. I won't be using the flash much at all. It makes people look sleepy, sweaty, unshaven and double-chinned. I'm uninterested in revealing ugliness; people manage that on their own without any of my help. If I can come up with more things like this, though, I shall be quietly pleased.
At least I think that's what's going on.
... You know the sort of people who insist on asking 'But what is it?', 'But what's it supposed to be?' or (of words) 'But what does it mean?' They annoy me beyond words. None of them are my friends, thankfully. It means whatever you want it to mean, and as a notional creator I employ the Humpty Dumpty defence...
... Impressionism (apart from Mike Yarwood), Surrealism (obviously), Futurism (while doing one's best to disinfect the dodgy politics. Outside the trains don't run on time.) and a certain amount of Cubism. Skronky jazz and techno, industrial played on bits of industry rather than whinecore synth-wrangling, Ballard, Burroughs, Stockhausen, MBV, HST - The Usual Suspects for anyone with half a brain and more than one pair of black jeans to their name.
It's not terribly surprising that I'd semi-consciously try to replicate that. For a long time, I resisted camera-wielding because... Whenever I have tried to take pictures of things they've come out tedious and uninteresting. In focus, but boring.
The 7250i was a lot of a revelation. The rubbishness of previous digital things had been in the colour (and the white-balance, lens and resolution. I think.) but this one smeared over those problems with a horrible fish-eye lens that made everything look like alien television. Common household objects pictured at an unusual angle which suggests a shadowy quasi-life in a universe not our own. With the right sort of mind, they write themselves and then like the fnords the bloody things are everywhere, leaking into the universe I have to share with managers, functionaries and forms. Result.
The four-lens thing... It's not a real Lomo. It's a branding exercise by the Lomographic mob. It's functionally impossible to take normal pictures with the thing. I've tried; they come out rubbish. So one gives up and points it in any old direction and oh look here come the rusty petrol pumps anchored to an art-deco-ish garage in the middle of Wales.
Those things would not have shown themselves if I'd not had that camera to hand. I think that's the key to understanding how this works.
The next move was the LC-A - A real Lomo - and... A lot of what I've done with it thus far has been rubbish. The thing's more than capable of taking proper pictures, which means getting that bit right before I can get properly silly and come up with something like this, which I'm probably over-pleased with. Still, it makes me think of Ballardian Chronograms which is just good. And indeed
grh's gig and B-Movie photographs, which lurch between inspiring and 'you bastard'. I suspect that there are layers of object-leakage or intrusions from other universes. The early kit had quickly picked up the easy ones, but there are many more strange things... Well, not exactly waiting to be discovered, but just there if you look at them in the right way. I just need to worry about focus and depth of field a bit more.
The XA2 is... A bit of an experiment. It works like the LC-A, but with a better lens and a flash. I won't be using the flash much at all. It makes people look sleepy, sweaty, unshaven and double-chinned. I'm uninterested in revealing ugliness; people manage that on their own without any of my help. If I can come up with more things like this, though, I shall be quietly pleased.
At least I think that's what's going on.
