As the chill blows in today, I am concious of the reflections and camera images we have been experimenting with, somehow, sitting here, I am also concious of them reflecting the cold winters of the past upon the house. It is possible, in my minds eye, to see the family within it’s walls, warm by the fires and other parts of the house cold, silence upon its windows and grounds as the frost clears with the rising sun. It is, as I have said before, not a departure into sentimentality, but a journey with the inside and outside of the house that as kept on forever collecting its winters till summer relieves it.
Thinking of Rachael’s camera obscura images, they are like old postcards faded with cold days and winter morning haze. Looking strangely into them is like looking through a tunnel of time to some distant past living here in the present. I can feel the house now, looking out through it’s windows with old eyes. I wonder if Rachael feels it as I feel it, it’s endurance, it’s dimensions?
Interesting meeting with Rachael, the pinhole camera device she had made gave a very ghostly image, but one that was full of delicate mood. We have decided to continue with the natural develop of the project, see where it leads itself, comforted in the knowledge that a final collection of work will come together. We still agree that we are concious of each others process when apart, and definatly centred by the House.
For my part, I am going to make some drawings that I can then use. I have the areas of the house in mind, so just get down to it is the next thing for me to do. I have made alterations to the tryptich, from observations made by Rachael. I am still has intrigued by what we will learn from the collaboration as from the project itself, but have a feeling that much will be taken in between now and the summer.
Thinking about the drawings/objects may well work as photographs, or rather just showing a photograph of them. There is definitly something about how they look. Two pieces for the exhibition are shown, but they may appear different in their final form, represented on something else. Still planning the projection idea, not certain about their format as yet, or whether I will even show that format in this particular project. My work needs to balance Rachael’s and so I may stick to more ‘static’ forms of representation.
Our last meeting ended in us pondering whether light is the key to our project; I think it’s certainly a strong element of the direction my explorations are taking – Light and History.
I am working from the premise that time and light are one and the same thing and by interrupting or manipulating the straightforward path light takes to reach me (the beholder) I am metaphysically connecting with the past – it’s not the most scientific theory; it holds no water in the physics department and certainly needs some work in the way I’m wording it but I like this theory and I feel like it’s working. (Going with my feelings about my explorations is part of remaining engaged with the metaphysical theme of our project).
So – before I try out some of my more ambitious ideas involving nasty chemicals and hugely time-consuming hand telecineing – I have made a few pinhole cameras as a simple way of interrupting light on its course to the beholder.
I decided to start making based on the few principles I remember about camera obscuras without looking up the best methods of going about it. This way I become discoverer and scientist (as well as irritated struggler) of optical instruments. After much tungsten and daylight testing with different sized apertures I have come to the conclusion that there are all sorts of ways to view these upside-down worlds and each one is as exciting as the other. More tests to follow…
I have studied a piece of my work, a drawing partly cut, and it is giving me some thought about the parts of it that remain ’empty’, the parts that are liying behind the cut, where that part of the drawing once was. Is it possible to develop this part of the drawings, to expand on the empty sections, to give the viewer the possibilities of filling the blank space with meaning? Simple but effective changes. It is the same effect of the white in my windows. I am asking myself also, ‘How does my idea of time relate/exist to my ideas about the spaces I draw?’ Is it expansion or contraction of time and space? Or does the whole thing oscillate?
