Digital Media, Memory and the Photograph

I am currently in Canberra, where I am enrolled at the School of Art
as a Phd candidate. After a couple of meetings today to discuss my
directions for research and practice, I feel that many of my original
ideas appear to have been cast away as new ideas begin to percolate
with the promise of experimentation and discovery.

Last week I was in Wellington, New Zealand for a symposium on
mobile art. It was until I went to the Te Papa Museum that I
realised the enormity of the threat that earthquakes posed to the
country. This has got me thinking about how when looking at archival
images there is a kind temporal shift. Past and present move like tectonic
plates, one over the other, creating tensions that pull the images forward
rather than take the viewer back.

Perhaps it may be the case that some choose to ignore these tensions
and look only ahead in order to avoid  the past rocketing towards them
and shaking up their perceived grip on the present. I am curious about
this tension as I look at the only photograph of myself as a young child
(pictured above with Mother and sisters). How do photographs manage
to carry out this piece of magic? When I was a child, we would get two
empty baked beans or soup cans, secure a piece of string to the bottom
of each, and create walkie talkies. I can still remember the sound of my
sisters voice vibrating across the taught string, as if travelling from
another planet, and bearing the heavy echo of it’s owners voice, which
sounded distant yet the physically present.

In my Phd I have set out to explore the ways in which digital media can be
used by artists to create dialogues around memory. Considering that much digital media is screen based, lacking the tactile nature and established grammar of it’s  cousin ‘analogue photography’. I am curious to how this new medium can be massaged and manipulated to tell stories and/or share personal and collective memories.

As our family photo albums give way  to the seduction and convenience of the digital realm, our photographic artefacts are now leaving the physical world to find refuge in the virtual land of binary code, pixels and  computer networks. So what are the implications for our memories, which now drift on the winds of social media, destined to travel through the time until eventually dissolved by the introduction of a new technology that will render older images invisible. Will technology decide what is remembered and/or forgotten? Is there a new visual language emerging that will give us the vocabulary required to write and read with digital tools? What are the digital aesthetics of memory and are they a product
of our visual literacy or an entirely new language?

These thoughts, though random at the time of writing this post, need to be
documented as I work towards developing my creative experiments and writing my exegesis. At this point in time my thoughts are scattered as I sift through all the possibilities and opportunities that present themselves on this Phd endeavour.

I guess it’s back to the books and trying to articulate exactly what questions I need to ask. In the meantime I will be producing some  video and photographic experiments which aim to exploit the unique opportunities presented by  digital media.

Digital Ghosts in the Network

The subject of my Phd is the use of digital media by artists to create creative works
which explore dialogues around memory and place.  This has got me thinking
about the ways in which digital and network technologies frame our memories
and shape the way we perceive personal information which is produced and/or
filtered/mediated via a range of digital tools and applications.

So how can/do digital technologies frame our memories and perceptions of people and place?

How can/do we leave a digital presence after death?

These are both interesting questions for me. But most importantly, how can artists use
digital and networked technologies to create works which communicate such ideas?
As I set out on a journey to explore these issues, I am presented with a range of works
by artists such as Bill Viola, Rachel Whiteread, and Christain Boltanski.

I have started to explore this theme of memory in my own work. Whether it be a
recording of everyday events such as in my video ‘Memory Cathedral’ (2008) which
was shot on a mobile phone) or through the revisiting of archival video footage in
‘All that Remains’ (2011), dedicated to my sister who died suddenly in 2005.

Video Still taken from ’All that Remains’ (2011).

So as I investigate a range of research methodologies and creative practices
for the production of my thesis and related creative works, I find myself
trying to locate what it is exactly that I want to say about this new digital
realm that we inhabit. At this point there are only images and a few words that
spring to mind, and I am yet to decipher there relevance to the finished work.

Traces

Aura

Digital Ghosts

Echoes

I see the words above as signposts which give me some direction, a path to walk
as I set out to explore the issues outlined above. When I look back at my previous
creative works, it would appear that I have always had an interest in personal histories
and the documentation of human experience.

This post is just the beginning of the process and I hope to use this blog as a place to
document my process towards the completion of my Phd and the ongoing development
of my creative work.

Transmedia Storytelling: Convergent Culture and Hybrid Narratives

Transmedia Storytelling has been around for awhile but who would
have thought that it would have garnished so much interest in the
past few years. As new communication and media technologies continue to
adapt and remediate traditional forms, narrative is also evolving to fit the
parameters of our constantly changing viewing  habits.

It would appear that linear forms are so last century, as we ditch the t.v.
to embrace cross-platform media content which exists across a plethora
of formats and devices. So what is Transmedia Storytelling?

Henry Jenkins, author of ‘Convergent Culture’ states that:

“Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction
get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of
creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally each medium
makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story”

For many new media artists this concept is not so new, perhaps one man’s ‘hybrid
narrative’ is another man’s ‘transmedia story’. But beyond all the jockeying for position
amongst academics and the entertainment industry players, what I find most interesting
is how new media technologies are reconfiguring our relationship with
narrative and shaping our views of what we deem to be entertainment in the 21st Century.

Transmedia narratives continue to chart new territory, pushing the boundaries
of our understanding by introducing new rules of engagement. Entertainment is no
longer confined to a dedicated space, rather it now follows us, concealed in portable
networked devices. The mobile phone has become a microscope capable of detecting
virtual content pinned to co-ordinates within our living spaces. Stories connect and
stretch across multiple platforms and devices, no longer bound by linearity.

So how is Transmedia Storytelling changing our relationship with both media
and Narrative? Is new media simply a a safety blanket, a thumb to suck, something
to spirit us away from the pressures and challenges of the everyday? Or does Transmedia
Storytelling offer artists unique and engaging ways to present narrative content in a
dynamic digital environment?

If you would like to know more about Transmedia Storytelling, check out the videos below.

Henry Jenkins at Toying with Transmedia: The Future of Entertainment is Child’s Play, MIT Media Lab.http://mitworld.mit.edu/flash/player/Main.swf?host=cp58255.edgefcs.net&flv=mitw-01328-ed-arcade-sandbox-pt-1-jenkins-transmedia-18may2010&preview=http://mitworld.mit.edu//uploads/mitwstill01328edarcadesandboxpt1jenkinstransmedia18may2010.jpg

Henry Jenkins at The Future of Entertainment 4, MIT Media Lab.
http://www.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/_203822/uiconf_id/1898102/entry_id/1_yrvfbxo8/

Henry Jenkins old blog

Henry Jenkins new blog

More Transmedia resources:

Mobile Photography: not drowning, waving.

As camera phones and portable imaging devices proliferate our public
and private spaces, it would appear that our relationship with photography
is shifting to fit the parameters of a digital world. In a landscape of networked
immediacy, photographs have become as much about the present as they are the past.
Many of these online photographs are used to position us within the immediate
present, they are entertainment for others, and a confirmation of our existence.

‘I photograph, therefore I am’ has become the mantra of the Internet. The author has
become the subject, whether seen or unseen, and the visual aesthetic has arguably
given way to a networked narcissism which demands ongoing validation of our current
status (see Facebook).

Based on conversations with friends and students, it would appear that many of
these digital photos are never printed and are constantly edited, re-purposed
and then deleted when they lose their currency. These images are also very much
a form of communication, so to save them would be like saving a recording of
your voice each time you made a phone call.

Rather than simple documents of our past, these online photos belong to
the here and now, they are like flags to be waved across the globe, bobbing up
like beacons on social software applications. As a visual artist, I believe these
images exist somewhere between writing and photography. They are both
autobiographical and voyeuristic, mapping the points where lives intersect
on a map that is constantly being redefined and renegotiated over time.

Photographs on twitter, facebook, etc provide an avenue to share our experiences
as they happen, for it seems that in a world with much talk about an ambiguous
future, it is the present that is perhaps more seductive than collecting family histories
for an uncertain future past. But in a sea of online voices and avatars, these digital
photos are like hands breaking the waves, they are reminders of the physical world
and our need to talk about human experience. Such photos are the evidence of our
endeavours and adventures.

In her post ‘Drifting in Streets’ my colleague Marousia examines the ways
in which we are using mobile media to navigate and re-imagine the city.
She also looks at how mobile photography is  continuing to  be more
integrated into our daily communications across the digital networks.
Camera phones are shaping our experiences and arguably establishing new
forms of communication whereby images are used to promote immediacy and
set the scene for the drama of the everyday.

Below are some examples of my own mobile photography.

Post-Memories of Hiroshima

In 1946 my father (pictured left in the photo above) served in Japan as a part of an Australian contingent of the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces (BCOF). A carpenter by trade, his job was to assist in the rebuilding of homes in the city of Hiroshima Prefecture, a city still suffering the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on its population in August 1945, instantly killing tens of thousands and reducing the city into a desert of rubble that stretched miles from the hypocentre.

I can still recall the first time I saw my father’s photos of Hiroshima, I had discovered the images whilst fossicking through the hall cupboard which always contained curios that were no longer of interest to the previous owners. Amongst the unwanted china figurines that once belonged to my grandmother, my sisters’ scarves decorated with caricatures of ‘The Beatles’ I came across a battered shoebox and lifting the lid I was pleasantly surprised to find a large collection of black and white photographs.

When I leafed through the photographs I soon became aware that the yellowing B&W images were very much products of a past that did not include myself. Here I am reminded of the shock felt by Barthes (1993) when he looked upon a photograph of his mother as a child, his gaze separated by an enormous temporal chasm. Amongst the snapshots of my parents and their parents, numerous weddings and anonymous smiling faces I came across a series of images documenting the effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On looking at the photos, I was both captivated and repulsed. Skeletons of steel buildings lurched like wounded beasts in a landscape reminiscent of an ancient ruin.

I later discovered that packets of such images had at that time been made available to visitors of Hiroshima as souvenirs, but it wasn’t until reaching adulthood that I later realised the influence of these images on my understanding of both my father and the city depicted in the photographs. The souvenir photographs of the aftermath of the bomb in Hiroshima became collocated with family snaps where I could not look at one without thinking of the other.

figure 2. Mother with children, Hiroshima 1947.

Of particular interest to me is a photograph of a mother standing in a ramshackle street (see figure 3), she is holding a small baby, and a young girl, possibly her daughter, stands by her side. The image is one of the few remaining photographs my father had taken during his time in Hiroshima. The handwritten inscription on the back reads, “This will give you an idea of the morale here”. My father had once told me that the atomic bomb had inflicted terrible injuries upon the population and during his service he had seen many sights that had stayed with him over the years. He recalled a young girl standing in the street, her skin hanging off her legs, her body covered in Keloid scars.

My father had never talked much about his experiences in Japan, and in later conversations with my siblings I discovered that I had been the only child with which my father had chosen to share his memories of the event. I was the one chosen to remember his impressions of the early reconstruction Hiroshima. As is noted by Gibbon “Postmemory carries an obligation to continue that process of working through or over the event or experience”(2007, p.73), and it is this very sense of responsibility that bore down upon me like a great weight, for I have grown up in the shadow of Hiroshima. My father’s stories and photographs have shaped both my personal memories and my imaginings of the people, places and emotions that had populated my father’s experiences in Hiroshima.

The family photograph has become an important artefact for the preservation of memories, connecting the past with the present. More than just a document of proof, the photograph is an active memory site, as it enables a viewer to situate his/herself both within and outside of the frame, promoting an empathy with both the photographer and subject. We suggest that such images, whether still or moving, act like temporal portals into places that can no longer be reached, they provide glimpses into a time that is always past and can never be present.

In combination with the retelling of family histories, family photographs and artefacts of traumatic experience can also contribute towards the building of vivid emotional maps that are then projected upon the locations associated with traumatic experience. Trigg (2009) suggests that traumatic events can materially alter  ‘natural’ environments. In the mind of the secondary witness, postmemory can transform contemporary landscapes into potent memory sites.

As Downing observes “Our imaginative remembrance of things past creates our histories and actively shapes our present and future experience” (2000, p.71). And it is the very intrusion of the present that plays a role in ongoing slow erasure of our emotional maps and memories of the past. Although photographs and home movies may help authentic stories and/or assist with the remembrance of significant events, I sometimes wonder if there is also a value in forgetting.

 

Bibliography

Barthes, R. (1993). Camera Lucida : reflections on photography. London, Vintage Books.

Downing, F. (2000). Remembrance and the design of place, Texas A&M University press, College Station.

Gibbons, J. (2007). Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of recollection and remembrance, I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, London.

Trigg, D. (2009). The place of Trauma: Memory, hauntings, and the temporality of ruins, Memory Studies (2009); 2;87.

Digital Media, Memory and Personal Photography

The infiltration of everyday spaces by camera-phone
wielding individuals is a now a common phenomena.
Delivering the user with a heightened sense of immediacy
and the power to capture, share and store the minutae of
daily life, the camera-phone is reshaping the way we go
about the practice of memory making and remembrance.

Whereas once the camera would be pulled out for the
recording of significant events, the camera-phone is
always lurking, ready to capture the moment for sharing
across the globe via social software sites such as Flickr,
Youtube and Facebook.  But my concern here is not with
the possible erosion of privacy, that is a discussion for
another time, rather it is the way that we have worked
the visual language of camera-phone images into our
day-to-day communications that I find of great interest.

As a child of the 1960’s, photographic images produced
by analogue cameras took pride and place in the family
photo album, a private space where only family and close
friends were permitted to share our family’s most
intimate moments. Inside the photo album a collection
of images sat neatly on each page, each photo selected
based on its importance within the family history.
Those images deemed not important enough or poorly
photographed were relegated to the large shoebox
that sat atop of my parent’s wardrobe.

Revisiting the family album I am made aware of
all those special moments in my life, as well as the lives
of others connected to our family. These small photographs
have become the artefacts of an oft forgotten past.
Jaundice with age, their yellowing surfaces a reminder
of the passing of time. Thinking back, it was not that
often that the camera was dusted off and put into use,
except of course when there was a birthday, wedding
and the occasional Christmas day.

In some ways I am glad that some of the significant
moments have not been mediated by the eye of the
camera, for the memories that got away have a far
more abstract shape in my mind. As I stare at a picture
of myself as a small child I am mentally transported
back to that particular moment in time. The image
acts as a place-marker, a keyframe on my timeline.
I see myself as a two year old holding my mother’s
hand whilst my older sister looks back at my father
as he captures the moment on film.

This photograph is the only photographic evidence
of my childhood and seems to have aged along
with me, it’s wrinkles and faded complexion a reminder
that the event depicted was in a past where
time stood still for a fleeting moment.

The aura of memory is potent and tactile, the image
exists in the physical realm, and this in someway seems to
provide me with comfort and reinforces my own existence.
I haven’t been photo-shopped into this world, the
photograph is evidence of my belonging to a time that
is now past. Temporal boundaries are blurred as
I step into a past that I can no longer remember, so to
ease the difficulty of recollection I find myself inventing
a rational sequence of events that might fill in the gaps.
But how many of us do this, how many of us use old
family photos as a point of departure to enter
dreamworlds that allow us to deal with our often
forgotten or unremembered past?

The Ghost in the Machine: Digital Media and the Art of Remembrance.

Digital media, and in particular mobile media, is arguably changing
the way we capture, share and store the artefacts of memory. Whereas
once the camera would generally only make an appearance on special
occasions, the ubiquity of camera-phones has meant that the camera
is ever present to capture us in all our glory and defeat.

The advent of the mobile camera phone has transformed image
capture from a consciously planned activity to one that can occur
spontaneously. Capturing a moment in time is not just the creation
of a visual artefact to aid the remembrance of past events,
but also a means of enabling individuals to locate themselves in the present.

As we move away from analogue technologies and into a digital realm,
it’s important to consider the implications of such a paradigm shift.
The ways in which digital images are used to communicate
and record information suggests that we are not only using images
to recollect or connect to specific moments, but also as a means of
aiding our memory.

The camera-phone is shaping our personal and collective
memories of events and this is evidenced in the London bombings
when the first pictures and video of the disaster was captured by
eyewitnesses using mobile phones, rather than through traditional
broadcast models. The execution of Saddam Hussein was seen to
be less dignified than originally reported  when mobile footage
of the event emerged a few days after the execution.

What we capture with our digital devices is arguably also changing.
The photographing of objects to aid personal memory is common practice
amongst many camera-phone users. Whether its a wine label,
the cover of a book, or even a menu in a restaurant, this practice
seems more preoccupied with the collection of data than an exercise in
aesthetics.

Many people using digital technologies never print their images, and
therefore their images only ever exist as pixels on a screen. Recently,
I visited a friend  and I was surprised to see a computer monitor in
living family room playing a slideshow of family images. Oddly enough
there were no photographs adorning the walls, and I was left contemplating
the purpose of this presentation of images as they shuffled through their
prescribed order as I shared a meal with the family.

But does this need to retain information erode the aesthetic
concerns that have long been associated with photography and the
moving image? And in particular, what do these changes mean for
for visual artists using digital media to explore notions of memory
and remembrance in their work.

Memory studies has emerged as an important field of inquiry
for both academics and artists, its themes often explored through
the work of artists such as Christian Boltanski, Rachel Whiteread
and Bill Viola, to name but a few. The emergence of
networked and convergent media promotes new modes
of self-expression and thus presents us with new ways
to reminisce, interact and reflect upon the experiences
which shape our personal and collective cultural identity.
Digital media technologies are arguably reconfiguring the creation,
sharing and storage of the digital artefacts associated with
memory. In this paper I will focus on how contemporary media
artists are using digtal media to explore and interrogate
narratives of memory and remembrance.

This is the beginning of my journey to explore the ways that new
digital media technologies are used to capture, share and store the
memories of the future past.

The Slow Aesthetic: A manifesto for camera-phone art

The portability of the mobile camera-phone is arguably
driving a new style of image capture whereby the user of
the camera can access places where a conventional camera
would be less welcome or recognizable by others in the space.
The camera-phone is often available at times when there is
not a conventional camera and it is this availability that enables
users to capture content and contribute to the sense of
immediacy that is so often associated with the camera-phone.

Just as Dziga Vertov, equipped with his movie camera, had traversed
the deep and breathe of the city, mobile camera-phone users
are also exploring the opportunities that portable media makes
available to its users. Whether its still images or video footage
collected, camera-phone users are taking their devices into places
where perhaps cameras have never been before,  capturing
footage from within the environment rather than being an
outsider with a more conventional and recognizable camera.

In the spirit of Vertov, my colleague <a href=”Marousiahttp://marousia.wordpress.com/”>Marousia</a> and I have
set out to exploit the image capturing capabilities of the camera-phone.
We explore new ways to collect and present the visual artefacts
that are captured on our camera-phones. We also look for new
vantage points and techniques that may push this emergent
visual medium in new directions.  Below are some ideas we have
been exploring

Mobile Video Skimming

The process of ‘mobile video skimming’ is based around selecting
a still image from the mobile video footage. When a suitable
composition is found, a screen capture is taken and the image is
then resized to emphasis the distortion and excessive pixelation
that can occur during the process.

So why I am doing this? I think the answer to that question
is based on my desire to strip the image back to its raw state,
to deconstruct and then from the debris build something
more abstract.

Trans Dolly

Trans-dolly’ is a technique whereby the operator of the
camera-phone positions the camera upon the glass of a
train, bus or car window then proceeds to capture video footage
for a period of time. There is little effort to frame the composition,
infact it is more of a case of information falling into the frame
rather than a conscious effort to select and compose subject
matter as may be the case with someone using a dedicated
video camera.

The resulting video becomes a document of the journey, the
camera-phone a net to capture the visual artefacts that often
go unnoticed when travelling from one location to another.

Andy Warhol experimented with the grammar of cinema in
many of his experimental films made during the 1960’s.
Multiple screens, unnecessary zooms on irrelevant objects
within the frame and single takes which extended into hours.
Warhol’s films were intended to challenge the established
conventions surrounding filmmaking and it’s with Warhol
in mind that my colleague and I set out to challenge ours
and other perceptions of images captured on a camera-phone.

The resulting video is not edited to remove unwanted footage,
for there is no unwanted footage as the video is played in
its entirety. Notions of low and high quality are not used to
form hierarchies, rather they are both viewed as simply types
of quality which both have their own character.

Multiple frames within a frame

The use of multiple frames within the one screen is used as
a device to add further complexity to the montage through
the adding of visual elements that may often share little or
no similarities with subject matter presented in other frames
within the screen. For it is not the intention of the authors to
construct a clear narrative direction, rather it is our intention
to inject uncertainty into the mix of imagery.

Mobile Photography back on the Agenda

Hi,

It’s been awhile since I got back onto the blog, but I thought
the blog would make an excellent place to discuss my
current experiments with mobile photography.

In a world where quality is often measured in high resolution
and pixel ratios, mobile phones offer a chance to celebrate
a loss of quality. Mobile phone photography arguably has
a unique quality (or lack of quality) that makes it ideal
for creative experimentation with still images and video.

Mobile phones and evolutionary art.

Hi,

I have  been reading a couple of interesting books on digital culture.
Delete: The virtue of forgetting in the digital age” (Mayer-Schonberger)
looks at the problems arising from the social obsession of documenting
our every move, whilst Christian Nold’s “Emotional Cartography”
(download free copy at http://emotionalcartography.net/) is a collection
of essays which ponder the value of emotional mapping in public spaces.

Both of these texts are a good read and provide an insight into the ways
in which society is navigating and negotiating a path through the ever
changing digital landscape. I am about to start work on a new paper
which will look at the mobile phone-camera as a tool for surveillance,
and as a facilitator of free speech.

Lately I have been playing with mobile phone images and evolutionary art.
It’s nice to get a chance to play whilst I am working on a few new projects.
In 2009 I curated the “EVOLVE” exhibition held at The Design Hub Gallery
in Melbourne. For more information see:
http://evol-art.cs.rmit.edu.au/exhibitions/evolve.html

Here’s a few of my early evolutionary art pics…..