Piero Manzoni - Socle du monde (Base of the World)
one of my favorite pieces of art. whenever i get stuck in thinking about something (translation: almost always), it helps to remember that all perception is dependent upon perception.
as a kid, i would lie down on my back staring at the ceiling, and trying to envision what the world would be like if gravity suddenly reversed. would stepping over the tops (now bottoms) of doorframes become a learned habit? after enough time, would we grow accustomed to the eerie lights and shadows that light fixtures affixed on the floor would cast upon a face? would we all have miniature aeroplanes that we would need to hop into as we left our homes, for fear of a certain death by falling downwards into the sky, forever?
although this was a mostly facetious exercise (at least for my five-year-old brain), manzoni's piece in particular serves as a necessary reminder of the relativity of objects, words, and inherent meaning. in a literal sense, socle du monde forces the viewer's reversal or confusion of physical orientation. but it's more than this. it forces one to consider the underlying logic (or lack thereof) behind things that we accept as indisputable fact. the ceiling is above our heads. the floor is beneath our feet.
i've started working recently in a cognitive psychology lab that investigates the effect of perception upon subsequent memory. the lab's previous work has been expansive in its experimental interests. to name a few: the effect of distance upon perception and subsequent memory formation, analyzing the different aspects of images that makes them memorable (i.e; more general familiarity vs. a specific feature), how stimulus contrast subsequently affects the visual system and subseqent formed memories. what underlies all of these seemingly disparate investigations is a profound curiosity in questioning the invisible intermediate processes that results in what we "see". and from there, unpacking the differing factors that corresponds between the act of seeing and remembering. we are so predisposed to regard what we remember as fact - to some degree, this is a defensive mechanism. the world is uncertain enough and our insecurity of our place within it is so vast, it would be somewhat impossible to function 'normally' if we couldn't count on our own memories to be at least somewhat reliable documentation of what has happened.
i think that there is a fundamental similarity between our treatment of memories and photographs alike. our compulsion to trust the photograph due to the mechanical processes involved in its making is similar to our reluctance to admit biases in what we remember. working in a lab necessitates a more methological approach. much of the actual time spent is on logistics - programming, running, the collection and analysis of data. an entire experiment draws previous literature in order to attempt to make one small assertion, one hypothesis, one attempted explaination at what is what. it is easy to lose the full implications of the work in the day-to-day grind. but in the end, though the work takes a vastly different approach, its concerns and its questions are very much in alignment in my interest in photography.
what do you see?
why do you see what you see?
how is your process of seeing affected by personal and collective and biological history?
i think that what interests and frustrates me most about photography is the tension between the connect/disconnect between the thing as it happened, and the thing that is seen, and the thing that is remembered. This is in part due to its inability to show what came before. i don't mean this in chronological, 'real' terms; obviously cinema is accommodating of the additional dimension of time. but what happened before for you, the viewer? photography does not inherently force the viewer to question how the component parts of their collective social and biological histories cooperate with real world stimuli to result in perception. it gives you an image, and it says here, here it is, and this is it. and as a viewer you see it, and you think what you think, and as far as you are concerned, it's a fact.
so i guess, though i may use photography as a medium, i am not interested in the impossible task of capturing of a point in time, and its deliverance to the viewer as fact. in this way, i can't forsee my work turning out to look like photographs, per se. i am not interested in cartier-bresson's decisive moment, nor am i particularly enthralled with documentation. because when it comes down to it, the idea of both of these things are fundamentally flawed. images must inevitably undergo a transformation through the act of seeing and perceiving.
so, the key is to make photographs that don't look like photographs. to consider the manipulation of information through subtraction and aggregation and convolution to force the viewer to impose meaning in a conscious way, much as manzoni forced his viewers to physically upturn their orientation of the world.
as a kid, i would lie down on my back staring at the ceiling, and trying to envision what the world would be like if gravity suddenly reversed. would stepping over the tops (now bottoms) of doorframes become a learned habit? after enough time, would we grow accustomed to the eerie lights and shadows that light fixtures affixed on the floor would cast upon a face? would we all have miniature aeroplanes that we would need to hop into as we left our homes, for fear of a certain death by falling downwards into the sky, forever?
although this was a mostly facetious exercise (at least for my five-year-old brain), manzoni's piece in particular serves as a necessary reminder of the relativity of objects, words, and inherent meaning. in a literal sense, socle du monde forces the viewer's reversal or confusion of physical orientation. but it's more than this. it forces one to consider the underlying logic (or lack thereof) behind things that we accept as indisputable fact. the ceiling is above our heads. the floor is beneath our feet.
i've started working recently in a cognitive psychology lab that investigates the effect of perception upon subsequent memory. the lab's previous work has been expansive in its experimental interests. to name a few: the effect of distance upon perception and subsequent memory formation, analyzing the different aspects of images that makes them memorable (i.e; more general familiarity vs. a specific feature), how stimulus contrast subsequently affects the visual system and subseqent formed memories. what underlies all of these seemingly disparate investigations is a profound curiosity in questioning the invisible intermediate processes that results in what we "see". and from there, unpacking the differing factors that corresponds between the act of seeing and remembering. we are so predisposed to regard what we remember as fact - to some degree, this is a defensive mechanism. the world is uncertain enough and our insecurity of our place within it is so vast, it would be somewhat impossible to function 'normally' if we couldn't count on our own memories to be at least somewhat reliable documentation of what has happened.
i think that there is a fundamental similarity between our treatment of memories and photographs alike. our compulsion to trust the photograph due to the mechanical processes involved in its making is similar to our reluctance to admit biases in what we remember. working in a lab necessitates a more methological approach. much of the actual time spent is on logistics - programming, running, the collection and analysis of data. an entire experiment draws previous literature in order to attempt to make one small assertion, one hypothesis, one attempted explaination at what is what. it is easy to lose the full implications of the work in the day-to-day grind. but in the end, though the work takes a vastly different approach, its concerns and its questions are very much in alignment in my interest in photography.
what do you see?
why do you see what you see?
how is your process of seeing affected by personal and collective and biological history?
i think that what interests and frustrates me most about photography is the tension between the connect/disconnect between the thing as it happened, and the thing that is seen, and the thing that is remembered. This is in part due to its inability to show what came before. i don't mean this in chronological, 'real' terms; obviously cinema is accommodating of the additional dimension of time. but what happened before for you, the viewer? photography does not inherently force the viewer to question how the component parts of their collective social and biological histories cooperate with real world stimuli to result in perception. it gives you an image, and it says here, here it is, and this is it. and as a viewer you see it, and you think what you think, and as far as you are concerned, it's a fact.
so i guess, though i may use photography as a medium, i am not interested in the impossible task of capturing of a point in time, and its deliverance to the viewer as fact. in this way, i can't forsee my work turning out to look like photographs, per se. i am not interested in cartier-bresson's decisive moment, nor am i particularly enthralled with documentation. because when it comes down to it, the idea of both of these things are fundamentally flawed. images must inevitably undergo a transformation through the act of seeing and perceiving.
so, the key is to make photographs that don't look like photographs. to consider the manipulation of information through subtraction and aggregation and convolution to force the viewer to impose meaning in a conscious way, much as manzoni forced his viewers to physically upturn their orientation of the world.
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