This one almost works for me, except the second frame feels too derivative of its source, the Daft Punk Guy-Manuel helmet. I had been listening to their first album, and was taken with the reflected neon lights in an image of that helmet's surface. There was a little poetic license, but ultimately it just feels like I copied a slick image and it seems out of place.
But I don't know why it feels out of place because in effect this is another needle point sampler strip. It really began with the stitching in the third frame and a desire to satisfyingly replicate that. (Which I did, and I'm very happy with that. It doesn't mean anything beyond the satisfying feeling I get looking at it, and knowing that there was a precision in the repetition it took to create that. The original (this is a zoomed-in partial) was a computer-generated image. I follow several programmers on Twitter who routinely post experiment successes and failure, or glitch results. Have no idea which this was - I just find that stuff beaux.
The first a detail from "Man in Doorway" by Vitor Friedman, seen on the Website mythicjourneys dot org in a post about the Stevens poem, "Angel Surrounded by Paysans" (Auroras of Autumn, 1950). An image of a man in a black hat standing near a back-lit window. I attempted washing the frame with ink and water, brushed, and I rubbed the image with my fingers hoping to smear the lines in order to replicate the murky lighting. In the end I lost any sense of a window, and I created a frame that has two figures. I thought it was two different faces, but looking now I see a face and a headless body.
And the fourth was another Giacometti figure waist down, forming a triangle in the frame. I tried to replicate the mottled surface of the Giacometti figures and ended up with a quite unexpected contour line that makes the image all its own. The idea of the triangle, of legs forming a triangle, was by way of a resolution - if there is to be one here - yoga, the body, deliberately forming shapes, imposing shapes onto the body, and onto one's existence.
So I had a 'censor' frame, the first frame, of an edict to get messy and use wash to relinquish control. And then I had an 'anxiety' frame of ... a daft punk helmet? Shiny curved lights? ...not sure where that comes in. And then I have the 'quantification' frame of replicated stitching ... I guess I measure my work by my ability to faithfully reproduce such obsessive detail. Or perhaps it's a measure of life that is a replica of a machine (an AI) replicating a machine-made version of what was originally a human construct. (?) And the resolution is in a meandering contour line; it is meandering and baroque, but is also contained within the construct of ancient practice. That analysis is mostly an afterthought.
In the end, though, what I realized I had really made was four juxtaposed textures, and that was the point I took home. This is the most satisfying to me. I just wish I didn't have this embarrassed association with the helmet. That one thing ruins it for me, and I don't know why.
The title, "repetitions of half meanings", a line from "Angel Surrounded by Paysans", which I absently take to refer to ritual behavior that serves no conceived tangible purpose. Religious ritual, or the habitual ritual of the mind. This comic strip itself a repetition of half meanings.
This one almost works for me, except the second frame feels too derivative of its source, the Daft Punk Guy-Manuel helmet. I had been listening to their first album, and was taken with the reflected neon lights in an image of that helmet's surface. There was a little poetic license, but ultimately it just feels like I copied a slick image and it seems out of place.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't know why it feels out of place because in effect this is another needle point sampler strip. It really began with the stitching in the third frame and a desire to satisfyingly replicate that. (Which I did, and I'm very happy with that. It doesn't mean anything beyond the satisfying feeling I get looking at it, and knowing that there was a precision in the repetition it took to create that. The original (this is a zoomed-in partial) was a computer-generated image. I follow several programmers on Twitter who routinely post experiment successes and failure, or glitch results. Have no idea which this was - I just find that stuff beaux.
The first a detail from "Man in Doorway" by Vitor Friedman, seen on the Website mythicjourneys dot org in a post about the Stevens poem, "Angel Surrounded by Paysans" (Auroras of Autumn, 1950). An image of a man in a black hat standing near a back-lit window. I attempted washing the frame with ink and water, brushed, and I rubbed the image with my fingers hoping to smear the lines in order to replicate the murky lighting. In the end I lost any sense of a window, and I created a frame that has two figures. I thought it was two different faces, but looking now I see a face and a headless body.
And the fourth was another Giacometti figure waist down, forming a triangle in the frame. I tried to replicate the mottled surface of the Giacometti figures and ended up with a quite unexpected contour line that makes the image all its own. The idea of the triangle, of legs forming a triangle, was by way of a resolution - if there is to be one here - yoga, the body, deliberately forming shapes, imposing shapes onto the body, and onto one's existence.
So I had a 'censor' frame, the first frame, of an edict to get messy and use wash to relinquish control. And then I had an 'anxiety' frame of ... a daft punk helmet? Shiny curved lights? ...not sure where that comes in. And then I have the 'quantification' frame of replicated stitching ... I guess I measure my work by my ability to faithfully reproduce such obsessive detail. Or perhaps it's a measure of life that is a replica of a machine (an AI) replicating a machine-made version of what was originally a human construct. (?) And the resolution is in a meandering contour line; it is meandering and baroque, but is also contained within the construct of ancient practice. That analysis is mostly an afterthought.
In the end, though, what I realized I had really made was four juxtaposed textures, and that was the point I took home. This is the most satisfying to me. I just wish I didn't have this embarrassed association with the helmet. That one thing ruins it for me, and I don't know why.
The title, "repetitions of half meanings", a line from "Angel Surrounded by Paysans", which I absently take to refer to ritual behavior that serves no conceived tangible purpose. Religious ritual, or the habitual ritual of the mind. This comic strip itself a repetition of half meanings.