Critical Commentary on Portfolio Two:
High Resolution Motion Images and the Iconic Image
Portfolio 2 from Studio VisualFields on Vimeo.
The artefacts and other works included in the first portfolio looked at objects of near proximity to ourselves represented in an unfamiliar way (via hyperrealism). In the second portfolio I wished to review how iconic imagery of the wider environment might also be presented via hyperrealism, which presented this as unfamiliar and then reveals that thing as something with which you are actually familiar, which itself most often brings pleasure. By iconic I mean a well known-image, much seen and much travelled to – hence an image that was a potent attractor of attention.
I had quite a specific experience in mind when considering the effect of mediated images from the middle to far distance from an experience I had had whilst working for the BBC on three series of Building Sights (1988-90). This required taking a famous artist to review an architectural gem. Every director throughout the three series had avoided the Lloyds Building – which eventually fell on my desk with the collaboration of the artist Michael Craig-Martin. The issue at hand was how to reinvent the depiction of a pictorially over-mediated icon. Engaging with this proposition then sent me on a lifelong research path to deal with iconic images and what is familiar and how that can be remade and reinvented and refreshed with a different stylistic treatment, aided by emerging technology with reference to the idea of technicity. (As of March 2019 I am currently working on the research artefact: Reimagining Venice).
Thus the 14 artefacts here depict various landscapes. All were intended to have a physical presence in their staging, to distinguish this work from standard cinematic display forms, to interrogate forms of audience engagement. In the case of Un Tempo Una Volta, for instance, the 20 foot by 10 foot projection screen was suspended at a 45 degree angle 15 feet above the audience’s heads who themselves reclined on a reflective soft surface. The principal artefact, In Re Ansel Adams (2008), that became an important intervention, was shot in Yosemite Valley in Central California. Ansel Adams famously photographed Yosemite Valley to profound effect (Newhall, N, Yosemite Valley, 1967, throughout) and I wished to investigate if it was possible to evoke the potency of Adam’s high-resolution photography with moving image capture that utilized resolutions far below that of plate-photography. I went to Yosemite National Park and filmed a close-up of the view for 30 seconds, which I then zoomed into digitality to reveal any artefacts that came about within the process. I then digitally zoomed back until the image was the same as the optical image, which at that moment itself began zooming back to the exact black and white shot that Adams had realised 70 or so years before. Please go to this link to view the 90 second work: https://www.seditionart.com/terry-flaxton/artworks
This was then used in presentations at a time when the new medium was not completely understood, including special screenings for BBC engineers at the University of Bristol prior to their production of the Blue Planet and another special presentation to the AHRC). This served to reveal the proposition that the expanding parameters of the motion image could be viewed as a container of properties and could refresh the potency of the landscape image.
I then created three more artefacts with the intention of further exploring the consumer experience of High Definition. After this, I then created nine other artefacts to investigate ideas of ‘Place and Space’ which had developed within my previous works, as well as investigating levels of scale of display both in terms of size and of resolution. The effect of the creation and exhibition of these artefacts is discussed in two included academic articles.
An important conference paper for me – because it was popular but more importantly because it allowed me to crystallise some important ideas and realisations around the construction of the signal – was The Concept of Colour Space as seen from the Practitioner’s Standpoint. This was important in 2009 because concrete information was very thin on the ground – so I set about to elucidate some ideas around colour space:
I had quite a specific experience in mind when considering the effect of mediated images from the middle to far distance from an experience I had had whilst working for the BBC on three series of Building Sights (1988-90). This required taking a famous artist to review an architectural gem. Every director throughout the three series had avoided the Lloyds Building – which eventually fell on my desk with the collaboration of the artist Michael Craig-Martin. The issue at hand was how to reinvent the depiction of a pictorially over-mediated icon. Engaging with this proposition then sent me on a lifelong research path to deal with iconic images and what is familiar and how that can be remade and reinvented and refreshed with a different stylistic treatment, aided by emerging technology with reference to the idea of technicity. (As of March 2019 I am currently working on the research artefact: Reimagining Venice).
Thus the 14 artefacts here depict various landscapes. All were intended to have a physical presence in their staging, to distinguish this work from standard cinematic display forms, to interrogate forms of audience engagement. In the case of Un Tempo Una Volta, for instance, the 20 foot by 10 foot projection screen was suspended at a 45 degree angle 15 feet above the audience’s heads who themselves reclined on a reflective soft surface. The principal artefact, In Re Ansel Adams (2008), that became an important intervention, was shot in Yosemite Valley in Central California. Ansel Adams famously photographed Yosemite Valley to profound effect (Newhall, N, Yosemite Valley, 1967, throughout) and I wished to investigate if it was possible to evoke the potency of Adam’s high-resolution photography with moving image capture that utilized resolutions far below that of plate-photography. I went to Yosemite National Park and filmed a close-up of the view for 30 seconds, which I then zoomed into digitality to reveal any artefacts that came about within the process. I then digitally zoomed back until the image was the same as the optical image, which at that moment itself began zooming back to the exact black and white shot that Adams had realised 70 or so years before. Please go to this link to view the 90 second work: https://www.seditionart.com/terry-flaxton/artworks
This was then used in presentations at a time when the new medium was not completely understood, including special screenings for BBC engineers at the University of Bristol prior to their production of the Blue Planet and another special presentation to the AHRC). This served to reveal the proposition that the expanding parameters of the motion image could be viewed as a container of properties and could refresh the potency of the landscape image.
I then created three more artefacts with the intention of further exploring the consumer experience of High Definition. After this, I then created nine other artefacts to investigate ideas of ‘Place and Space’ which had developed within my previous works, as well as investigating levels of scale of display both in terms of size and of resolution. The effect of the creation and exhibition of these artefacts is discussed in two included academic articles.
An important conference paper for me – because it was popular but more importantly because it allowed me to crystallise some important ideas and realisations around the construction of the signal – was The Concept of Colour Space as seen from the Practitioner’s Standpoint. This was important in 2009 because concrete information was very thin on the ground – so I set about to elucidate some ideas around colour space:
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It is significant that in our model of electro-magnetic radiation, said to contain 80 octaves of values, that the human eye can only discern one octave of perception, sight - and yet this area is replete with all the meaning of human experience, most exemplified by film-form. Of significance within our octave of perception is colour, said to be a phenomenon of mind and eye and our understanding of this is embodied in theories of colour, which typically generate three-dimensional mathematical models entitled ‘colour space’. I wish to ask some questions around the generation of ideas that encode emotions and experience into psychological, physiological and perceptual frameworks. I also wish to discuss the nature of the underlying science and how that relates to the practice of film-making as it is delivered via contemporary means of display. In so-doing I wish to reveal the history of ideas that precede and lead to the development of the concept of colour space and how those ideas, generated in times typified by the prevalence of analogue technologies, like film, both engenders theoretical, social and cultural meanings and how these relate to the changing paradigm that now includes electronic cinematography within the digital realm.
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Overall though, whilst confirming the proposition that increased resolution produces longer engagement times, Portfolio 2 demonstrated that the ‘reveal’ is the functional device in the narrative impact in terms of reading a narrative – even if it is a single shot. As the familiar image becomes known, the surprise then abates into a knowingness of the image. The artefacts of Portfolio 2 utilised the simple surprise of offering the familiar, by first withholding its nature, then revealing what had been withheld. Through this device, audiences take longer to read and then recognise what has been offered. The hypothesis explored was that increased resolution adds an extra dimension to engagement as an addition to familiar tropes. What this means is that re-presenting the iconic in an unfamiliar way activates a sense of the unfamiliar and therefore attracts the viewers’ attention.
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NHK, (or the Japan Broadcasting Corporation), recently conducted an experiment through linking a prototype 8k camera to 18 one-hour data recorders. The subject of the test was a car ride lasting 3 minutes. In order to capture it, the SR data recorders ran so fast that they went through one hour's worth of recording during the three-minute shoot - all 18 of them. The resolution of the projected image was immense: imagine a normal computer display set at say 1280 x 1024 pixels expanded to some 27 feet long. The technological moment had echoes of the Lumière brothers’ screening in January 1896 of a train arriving in a station. At the NHK screening, the Japanese audience were reported to have found the experience so overpowering that many of them experienced nausea. Currently we can place a computer image on a standard screen of 27 feet, given that film has been displayed for many years in cinemas at this kind of resolution – so, imagine if the density of pixels were then displayed across that screen – the possibilities of deep engagement and belief in the experience seem to have lead to a physiological reaction.
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My research then began to move away from what I now saw as the crude empiricism of the proposition that a response to moving images was mainly measurable in physical terms. It soon became apparent that the terrain was in fact both physiological and also psychological – but not simply those two together. In fact, from the earliest moment it became clear to me that the interweave of responses was related to the physiology of the eye brain system, something which would be explored in Portfolio 3.
NEXT: Portfolio 2 Complete List of Outputs
NEXT: Portfolio 2 Complete List of Outputs