art + technology

Fayum – Mike Ware

Mike Ware with Evaporation Basin. South Ronaldsay, Orkney. 1984.
from an 8×10 inch negative.

Continuing with an infatuation to draw connections between my portrait work and the extraordinary panel paintings from Fayum, I look back to this photograph of my dear friend, technical guru and the most generous of souls, Mike Ware. This photograph, one of the first made with an 8×10 camera, was taken while he was visiting me in Orkney as we delved into the puzzles of platinum-palladium printing and malt whisky. Somewhat incredibly, the delicate glass basin just happened to be sitting in the shed of the fishing cottage Mike and his family were renting. Mike is a chemist.

Mike’s sideways look, the almost-smiling but stolid mouth, his eyes catching light and this catching echoed in the glass basin and then passing on again as shadow on the wall, all gather into something that harkens to… that space inside the basin, where the air is still and substances may evaporate without being disturbed. I recall clearly that we were both living and dreaming in and about the platinum-palladium printing process at that time, and looked everywhere for indications and signals that would help us update and modernize the process. We were looking for a smoothly rendered tonality, a stilled transition. Mike’s ability to manifest as print and tone his conceptual understanding of the chemical processes at play astonished me. And still does. And I will always be indebted to him for the way he has clarified this and other photographic processes to myself and the greater photographic community.

At the time we began to successfully modernize the process, many people were interested in the archival aspects of the process—being composed of noble metals attached to cellulose fibres makes the platinum-palladium print one of, if not the most permanent and enduring of photographic processes. It is possible that the prints could last 2000 years. The Fayums, if still around, will then be 4000 years old.

Neurotype – A New Photographic Process

From Pradip Malde & Mike Ware

We are pleased to announce an exciting newly-invented iron-based
printing process, which we are today offering to the alternative
photographic process community.

 

It makes use of the recent scientific discovery that human brain
tissue may accumulate deposits of reactive, neurotoxic iron(III) salts:

http://www.wiley-vch.de/vch/journals/2002/press/200808press.html

 

Neurotype Instructions

1) Drink regular daily amounts of citrus fruit juice, iron tonic, and
colloidal gold dietary supplement. (see http://www.goldcolloidal.com/ )

 

2) In the dark, practice lengthy Yoga headstands in order to promote
gravitational sedimentation of the carboxylic acids and metal ions,
forming a sub-cranial deposit of cerebral iron(III) photosensitizer.

 

3) Carefully shave your scalp (this step may be omitted by the
follically-challenged, and tonsured monks).

 

4) Tape a photographic negative to the top of your head – emulsion
down, of course.

 

5) Stand in the sun for 30 minutes, with your hat removed, in order
to print-out a truly conceptual art-work. See illustration.
 

6) To secure an archival neurotype, the final processing step is,
necessarily, thorough brainwashing.

 

The Neurotype is designed especially for those alternative
practitioners who are susceptible to degenerative brain disorders,
such as Poissondavril’s Syndrome.

 

PS. The authors have also developed a camera-speed version of this
process which will revolutionise photography; the secret will be
divulged to selected practitioners only, on payment of an agreed fee.
This version is called neurotype rex.

gurus

polaroid resurrection

 

8-3-2008_lucabrassaieye

Luca. Brassai-eye.
Polaroid. 2008

Please let this be true – the Polaroid factory in the Netherlands is going back into production! [Thanks Bjorn!]

the plebs, the priests and the very large hadron collider

3000308_FloatingStone_gray.jpg
Floating Stone (from series, Memory Balance Love)
1989
platinum-palladium print, 8×10 in
The same mental types as those who broke into hives and weeping fits at the onset of solar eclipses centuries ago, and as those who crowed disaster with the arrival of 2000 are now approaching thrombo red-zones with the powering up of the Large Hadron Collider. And things have changed – the high priests, the technicians of what may well turn out to be sacred, are stepping into the uncertain, sure – but they now want to share their knowledge, not use it to wield power over the plebs! So ease up folks. This is an exciting event, and one that is better characterized as a sliding, zonal adventure than a singularity triggered by a Big Red Switch. We are not all going to meld into one tiny speck of density on Wednesday, September 10. (And if we do, no one will be around to say, I told you so.)

chris bucklow

3000982_ChrisBucklow.jpg
chris bucklow. (wave. particle.)
2008
platinum-palladium print, 8×10 in

Stepen Alvarez's blog

photo: Stephen Alvarez

My friend Stephen Alvarez has started a wonderful photo blog. Consistently making heartfelt work for National Geographic and other notable publications, Stephen is now posting images almost daily with an accompanying commentary. Additionally, another friend, Geof Bowie posts weekly tech notes about the Mac and related matters. Thanks guys for sharing so much experience and wonder!

Debra Swack

Debra Swack’s Animal Patterning Project considers the implications and motivations of genetically modification for aesthetic purposes. In this case, Swack ‘explores the concept of genetically altering the patterning of animal skins to make them more aesthetic for human exploitation and later usage in garments and accessories.’

There’s some challenging stuff here. What do you think?

emergence

I’ve been thinking about Steven Johnson’s book, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software – and this interview which sums up some of his ideas.

photo.jpg

Street in Eatonton, GA. While on my way to to give a talk at GCSU

Curt Cloninger and the Emily Dickinson Difference Engine

Sewanee Alum and long-lost friend Curt Cloninger has put up a fascinating project on the web. His ‘Emily Dickinson Difference Engine‘ layers visual data with text data (Dickinson’s poetry), thereby “revealing the impenetrability of things, the malleability of words, and the feelings that humans associate with things and words.” Thanks Curt!

Art, mathematics and your kidneys

Kidney Matching

What does this IMAGE have to do with kidney transplant / donor patients? The research that this diagram illustrates (carried out by Sommer Gentry and T. S. Michael, mathematicians at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore) could lead to dramatically improving the chances of finding a match between kidney donor and recipient patient. What does that have to do with art? Well, just take a look at the mathematics of graph theory! And what does that have to do with this:

Seven Bridges of Konigsberg

 

 

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