Studio Directions: Frames, foci, and points of departure

Following are some studio directions that you may take up in your studio work. My recommendation is that you engage at least 2 of these directions in distinct bodies of work. You may also propose additional frameworks or points of departure. Studio work is powerful because it can deal with multiple kinds of knowledge simultaneously in a materially integrated form - the thing you are making. Most of these areas will run together or overlap - especially as you get further into work. These are suggested as clear starting points, but learning from what happens in the studio process is key. If you would like more structure we can establish more specific parameters in one-to-one discussion.

Individual Studio:

1. History / Documentation and Image

the image shows "what happened"

The reference to history here means that it claims to represent something that operates in the imagination of happenings. This includes actual events, but also fictional ones, the past as well as the future, the factual as well as the proposed, the real as well as the staged event. As we learned in our readings/discussions, when it comes to images the lines between these things are not always clear because the meaning of images are constructed by the viewer. Many of the strategies in this domain involve being deliberate about how evident the constructedness is. Usually this means hiding the construction and presenting truth as natural or given (self-evident or matter of fact). Visual work in this domain always includes mediating issues about the understanding and imagination about the world and how it is, could be, or should be. Material and visual, and contextual choices are the instruments of this mediation.
Many images fall into this category: Actual images that document events, news photos, paintings of historic- religious- mythological events, war imagery, snapshots, portraits, staged events, questionable events (ufos), proposals for designs/sculptures, and the documentation of temporary art.
You may document things that happen, but also stage events or scenarios just for their documentation. You could also use digital imaging technologies to edit, construct, and/or strategically change elements to make the idea of truth conform to what you show. You can also show how you think things could be 0r ought to be. Generally narrative in form. Even when the image shows one moment in time, it often projects things that came before or may come after the moment.

2. Material vs. Pictorial in the Image
The use of materials in an image is meant to engage the viewer in a kind of direct experience of actual things. The material response evokes experiential bodily thinking referred to as phenomenological (Merleu-Ponty). The pictorial in an image involves engaging the viewer in an indirect experience through a pictorial representation. Often these two things are used in combination/opposition/contrast which brings into question the constructedness of the whole thing. The argument could be made that when one of these is present and not the other that the other is still implied.
Sometimes dealing with this can be done as combinations of the material and pictorial. Other times it may solely focus on one or the other and often imply the other. Often abstraction aims to engage the viewer directly with material responses. The use in painting of material chunks of paint on the surface of a painting engages this idea. The abstract expressionists work is understood as being wrought in material and engaging a material response to the paint. The use of actual objects in images or actual materials in collage. The use or disuse of evident materials in pictorial images effects much about the image and its meaning. Some techniques work to gain power through making the material construction of the image perfected crafted or by making invisible any sign of the things construction invisible. Many techniques and technologies work to amplify the visual richness of the materials used such as techniques of layering paint in underpainting and various media and varnishes. Other ways this is enacted include the richness and detail of the image/print, the choice of paper or substrate, how the object of the image is presented and structured, and the visibility of the construction of the image. Much of our attention to the quality of digital printing output has to do with this dynamic. This also plays a part in many contextual decisions about presentation (as we experienced in presenting the exhibit of projected images). We want to feel the physical/visual weight of an image when we look at it and know that we have a range of possibilities available so that we can make choices about how it will be as an object as well as an image. How does it feel/look?
trompe-oeil, wood-grain vinyl, plastic with the texture of pigskin, cubism

3. Database and Image
This work often looks like grids, catalogues, modules, or abstract shapes or lines.
The order or structure is deliberate and becomes a significant part of the image. The viewer can often navigate or progress through the work in their own order. The structure sets up system of comparison between/among parts which serve as a kind of analog for the subject matter. The forms on the page are an analog for the subject matter. Often this can be about sets of equals that exist in static or dynamic modular, repetitious structures. This can also be a structure of varied values that give greater or lesser priority to some parts over others.
They also can be viewed as being a set that have more flow in how they relate. Each part is a molecule of water and can flow randomly and be ordered in a variety of arrangements or sequences. The set can be searched, rearranged, sorted, recombined, randomized.
Often the work involves a serial set of image spaces or cells. This is one way that the static image can connect to time or space based media. The multiples are easily related to events over time or space, and can be looked at in these modalities.
Mapping is a subset of database. Maps are abstract representations of data/ non-linear sets/ maps use cartesian grid as organizational system. The chart of chemical elements. Graphs, diagrams. In "The Language of New Media", Lev Manovich makes a case for the database taking over for the narrative as the dominant form.

4. Science and Image
Things are presented as truthful through clear empirical proof and visual demonstration. This also includes the critique of science and/or objective truth. The focus is on showing how things work.
This is often done by showing a systematic visualization. This includes magnifying small things so they can be seen (micro) as well as depicting things that are so large that they can't be simultaneously seen through scaling them down or abstracting them (macro). Another technique involves cutting things apart so that their parts can be visibly understood. A frequent variation of this is the cutting open of things so that the viewer can see inside of them. This can be seen in many images of the human body and are the aim of many new visualization technologies in medicine. Other methods of analysis . . . . .

5. Desire, Identity, and Image
(Truth results from a negotiation between our desire and those who control what we want. Material goods are highly efficient forms with which we can evolve culturally from imagination. We use them individually to create our identity through desire and affiliation.)
Most of the theory that deals with how we (as viewers) are "hailed" by images involves a critique of the power relationships established and exercised by those in control of the media. Much art that deals with desire and image also works as a reaction to these power relationships or as a critique of how they work in our society and market. These ideas are discussed in Chapter 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9. Engaging with any of these issues as investigation and critique fits in this category.
I propose attempting another kind of work in this area. If images can the give for to the extension of our identities into the world then, why not attempt to step outside of the loop that includes this other power that controls us through controlling our desire and imagination. How could we attempt to promote and extend ways of being that are empowering and helpful to the viewer. Can visual work participate in cultural discourse directly on a mass scale? Much in the way that bands are marketing their music (and participating in the musical cultural discourse) by making their music available for download (mp3), why can't the visual work be distributed and promoted in the same way. How could it gain enough scale and conciseness without it being supported and motivated by capital interests? What are the systems by which such work could be distributed and presented? Most importantly, what would the images be? How about setting up a market/exchange of images that satisfied, defined, and extended viewers desires and imaginations of self, community, and culture. Digital printing technologies allow for inexpensive runs of prints. Printing can be combined with hand-made components or material samples. This might be a way of creating a new context for hand-made work. Artists could make multiples of hand-made works or make work as viewers ordered it from set catalogues.

6. Index and Image
Index here refers to Charles Sanders Peirce's definition (see text cha. 4).
All hand-made works are indexical in that they have an existential connection to the artist. They are an actual recording of activity of the artist. Photographs (analog) are also indexical, because the film is touched by the actual light from the situation in which it was exposed. It is marked by light. With digital photos, however the light is immediately turned into digital code.
Works that focus on the indexical as a primary mode can effectively deal with obsessive working, exhaustion, infinite variety, the human touch. Indexical phenomena in images can be meaningful because they are the result of intense focussed effort or because they are unintentional, incidental or even random markings or residue.
Indexical phenomena in images can lend a real-world worn matter-of-factness. They can also engage our sense of time and set up a narrative in which the object/image is part of the story that includes the artist. The index can generate thoughts of things that are not present; the artist, implements of fabrication. They can also generate kinesthetic imagination in the viewer - specifically to do with the fabrication of the indexical element. They can generate intense feeling and emotional imagination.

7. Good Looking- Pleasure, Decoration, Eye candy
(truth as coming from pleasure)
This approach begins with what pleases. What attracts your eye and appeals to you? What do you think will appeal to others?
Critical, cultural, and political considerations in visual culture have often resulted in an avoidance of pleasure, beauty, and decoration. Modernism's criticism of decoration is most extremely voiced in Adolph Loos' essay "Ornament and Crime". One result of a focus on theory has been to reduce the importance of the sensual or experiential.
Reaction to the restriction and regulation of beauty and pleasure as being significant include 2 general ideas.
1. It is all about appearances. (begins and ends there)
2. It all begins with appearances and then leads to everything else. The sensory is the primary material of visual culture. The visual is a multivalent form in which many varied kinds of knowledge come together in a wholly integrated manner. An image or object as a sign can contain signifiers for a whole range of signifieds that can even be conflicting and contradictory. Why take attention away from the power and appeal of how things look.

8. Site and Image
The primary question of sites for images as well as functions of images can be continued in further studio planning and implementation.

Whole group work:

1. Projected Image studio (w/ Kham) - curated and presented
2. Archive and Image
We can continue work on the image archives as a way of building a resource for images and gaining an understanding of what it is like to be awash in images. The process of gathering and sorting images is both a traditional and contemporary studio practice. We could create a web-based copyright free indexes of images. We could also annotate it with keywords that made it searchable and infinitely sortable. This relates to the Database and Image ideas.
3. Public Projections project (cha. 5 - Mass media and the Public Sphere)
This is the proposal I am making that we create and curate a set of images that are presented as a projection in a public place. This could be in our studio, the Calder Art Center, another location on GVSU campus, or other public space.