Studio 1, MFA Zo Damage Studio 1, MFA Zo Damage

Slideshow with soundscape

Raul Sanchez[1] and I collaborated in composing a soundscape (Damage and Sanchez 2022) comprised exclusively of recordings of my analogue photographic processes to accompany a display of images I have created for Studio 1. Sanchez made the recordings in situ, resampling and mixing the material in his studio. Contemplating Wabi Sabi' sound', I have edited the soundscape and embedded it into a slideshow of random images created for my Studio 1 projects. Titled Exposure (Damage and Sanchez 2022), the composition reflects the 'evolving' and 'devolving' Wabi Sabi aesthetic, transforming 'process' into music to further challenge the 'photographic index'[2] while exploring modes of representing and iterating 'musical emotion', perception and observational awareness of the photographer's presence and intention in the image (Berger 1972, 10).

Footnotes

  1. Sanchez is a founding member of Melbourne rock band Magic Dirt, solo artist, sound artist and recording engineer.

  2. “Photography is indexical insofar as the represented object is ‘imprinted’ by light and the chemical (or electronic) process on the image, creating a visual likeness that possesses a degree of accuracy and ‘truthfulness’ unattainable in purely iconic signs such as painting, drawing, or sculpture.” (Sadowski 2011)

  3. According to Sanchez, the Kontakt is “a plugin sampler that can vary the pitch, and length etc, of the sounds to create a variety of Virtual Instruments”.

Keywords

Studio 1, Wabi Sabi, Sound, Soundscape, Slideshow, Raul Sanchez, Sound art

Bibliography

Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books

Damage, Zo. 2022. 2022. “Slideshow with soundscape 2”. Zo Damage. June 7, 2022. YouTube video, 02:57. https://youtu.be/3ek06V-vqWU.

Damage, Zo, and Raul Sanchez. 2022. Exposure. Online soundtrack. https://zed-oh.com/mfa-journal/exposure-soundtrack.

Sadowski, Piotr. 2011. “The Iconic Indexicality Of Photography”. John Benjamins Publishing Catalog. https://benjamins.com/catalog/ill.10.20sad.

Sanchez, Raul. 2022. Experimental music. Email.

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SV Zo Damage SV Zo Damage

Reflection

Today's supervisor meeting was very productive, with many breakthroughs. Dom followed up with an email outlining what was discussed and provided me with a plan of action for the rest of this semester.

My studio-based research was indeed prompted, or clarified, by the "Dinner Party" exercise, the outcome of which, as outlined in Dom's meeting debrief below, is in "pivoting the camera inwards" to reflect on my own life, surroundings and my humanity including mental and physical states.

The research includes Kintsugi and Wabi-Sabi aesthetics and philosophical theory in acknowledging fragments, fissures and the displaced with newfound beauty. The work intends to reinterpret what is perceived as broken as 'whole' – embracing how decay and time shape space, environment and existence.

The proposed equipment and method embrace and foster the unpredictable. This includes using a broken 35mm camera with a shutter that jams and slips on the reel producing fragmented images and novel gestalts. The pinhole camera epitomises unpredictability as there is no viewfinder or mechanisms to show or create any ‘settings’ – for example, exposure times are based on an educated guess.

Email from Dom

So big news today, something for you, something about you, not facing outwards but just pivoting to point the camera inwards in a more overt/deliberate way. In Zo’s words, ‘my life, my surrounds, my humanity’.

Rules

  • Kintugi, we are repairing and treasuring the broken and imperfect.

  • Wabi Sabi, we are embracing decay, time, aging and way it shapes things.

  • We are handicapping ourselves, we are using tools that won’t give us the ‘perfect’ photo – pinhole camera, Diana F, Broken SLR.

  • Pinhole cameras are key, it may be that we become interested in the object itself and consider how it’s size, design, or placement may become a vector in the project too.

  • Note: the pinhole and the broken SLR must be ‘performed’ and we cannot know what they might produce until developing – this is an important element of these processes.

Tone words (themes if you like)

  • Energy

  • Rhythm

  • No truth

  • ASKEW – ‘nothing is rigid, particularly me’

And to get us loose, we are going to MAKE ONE COMPLETE ARTWORK EVERYWEEK FOR THE REMAINING 4 WEEKS OF SEMESTER.

Keywords

Kintsugi, Wabi Sabi, Pinhole photography, Lomography, Broken SLR

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