MA-Ness Term 2 Week 7 - Cyanotyping Rescue, Dissecting a Heart, Making Stuff Out of Cast Offs Prevarication and Words....

this weeks post it note - along with papers I'm trying to work on but am actually putting off looking at, the most magnificent gift of an old coverless book from one of my fellow MA-ers who rescued it from a skip, some paint, and a bookmark made out of some acetate leftover with some skeleton stickers and my photocopying experiments using multiple copies of acetate negatives overlaid and reinverted on the photocopier.

overdone cyanotype in the wash - think I left it in the sun too long, got distracted with my time keeping...

and in the wash again after a rescue with a bit of a soak in a bleach solution, not brilliant but slightly better as in you can at least see some of the image on it - an image of the subscription graves down the side of the chapel at St George's Field 

lumen prints in progress resting on the towel rail in the bathroom as that gets the best sun first thing in the morning - using  very old Agfa Brovira paper both gloss and matte given to me by friends, not sure how old it is except it is at least 30, maybe even 40 years old. Those on the bigger pieces of matte paper worked better than those on the smaller gloss paper  

having fun at Thackray Medical Museum at their Anti Valentine's Event - I was living my wannabe Viktor Frankenstein fantasies by dissecting a sheeps heart, I could do this as a) it had already been taken from the sheeps body by a butcher b) I had gloves on c) it didn't smell and wasn't significantly decomposed d) it wasn't given to me with a face and e) I wasn't expected to kill it.  I have nothing but awe/admiration and a massive feeling of eeww and revulsion at the 18th and 19th century anatomists who did this without latex between them and their subject and without the benefit of refrigeration either, I also cannot cannot help but admire and feel revulsed by their ability to go against the perceived moral teaching of their age ie stealing bodies, preventing lawful burial, etc....
Photo taken by my ever supportive husband

end result of one of the lumens - need to try and fix it with uv resistant gloss spray and see if that works but as the spray is potentially toxic am going to keep it in the dark and wait until it is a little bit warmer and spray it outside, and in the meantime have scanned it and taken a digital photograph of it and boosted the levels digitally to get more of a contrast.

Lots of pictures in this weeks post - back to its usual Monday posting now anniversary related gallivanting has ended. As you can see from the above pics I've been up to heart dissecting for Valentines Day, lumen printing and cyanotyping over the last couple of days and it's somewhat ironic that this post is so full of pictures as what I'd actually been mostly thinking about last week was words.

Last Friday's seminar was given over entirely to words, and we were set tasks like writing about our work without using the words we usually use. For me this meant phrases like 'being inspired death culture in general and victorian death culture in particular were out as were practically descriptive phrases like 'analogue photographic processes' or 'gothic photographic artist'.

I found it quite difficult and my friends description of me as an historian is making me think even more about what it is I actually do and what it is I am most interested in - not just out of navel gazing reasons but also out of possible phd applications. Anyway what I came up with was:

Eclectic re-image-ing of years gone by, hoping to evoke in the reader/viewer a wish to accompany me on my journey ferreting out the stories of the past that run alongside the present.

Distortion, fading, fixing fading memories, writing up the contrast

Am I really a writer? I'm definitely a reader.

Feelings/Fears of not being taken seriously if I call myself a writer as well or am I actually a historian?

Re-enactments of personal/impersonal histories

Words spoken and forgotten, details lost/blurred but feelings remain extant.

Narrative

Are you sitting comfortably?    
Then I'll begin.


I found it really interesting to listen to other peoples descriptions of their work and quite scarey having to read what I'd written out after hearing the eloquence of the others in the seminar as well as very thought provoking to think about questions like 'who do you write for?' and 'do you show courtesy to your audience?'. I use this blog as my research journal so it is both a record of what I've been up to and so a document for assessment for the research journal assessment part of the course but I make it public so it is also a broadcast platform. A broadcast platform for me to in some ways brag about what I've been up to - eg heart dissection as well as to question/record what's going on coursewise and what I'm thinking about....am back to the navel gazing point except at least it is navel gazing with an end in sight (ie a Masters qualification) as opposed to just navel gazing...hopefully.

The conversation turned also to why we do the work we do in the first place and questions like - is it important if people like it or not, does it matter if it is understood, is it automatically a bad thing to be misunderstood or misrepresented? What happens in the space between the image maker and the receiver? And my first thoughts are - yes it is important if people like it partly from an ego stroking point of view, partly from a practical point of view as in people aren't likely to hand over cash/time for something they don't like or at the very least appreciate in some way, and I don't like being misunderstood or misrepresented....though in some ways you might never know if this is happening and in others it's all too evident but you might not be able to do anything about it.

Hmm as ever lots of food for thought - as were the opening exercises in which we had to write our signatures in different ways but only after swapping pens with the person next to us. I went from using a wooden pencil to using a rollerball type pen. Until I had to loan my pencil to the person sitting next to me I hadn't realised how much I was enjoying the feel of its wooden-ness as opposed to the plastic casing of the rollerball pen. We had to sign our names using the hand we don't normally write with - I am lefthanded and my righthanded signature wasn't so a signature as a squiggle seemingly made during an earthquake. It went very small and not making much of an indent on the page when I was trying to disappear and quite bold and flowery when I was trying to be a celebrity. I did suffer somewhat from 'blank page anxiety' - which is the same anxiety I feel when starting a new notebook or trying to decide which notebook to use for which purpose. Choosing a new diary/journal is something that always takes me an age - currently using one I bought from John Rylands Library which looks like an old fashioned library card, but I haven't written in it since December 30th 2015. It's on my list of things to do update though...and when I do write in it it will be in black ink - from one of those disposable fountain pens. I've written my diary using one of those for a long time now and whilst I don't like the throwaway nature of them I find they suit my lefthandedness best.

The eagle eyed amongst you might have noticed some of my reusing rather than just throwing away tendencies by my making of a bookmark using some leftover acetate from making a cyanotype negative and some stickers in the top image on this post.

Along with lots of thinking about words I'm also thinking a lot about opposites and how they can't exist without one another - negative/positive, absence/presence,permanence/impermanence and how it is the spaces and gaps between words that help them make sense, without them it would just be a constant stream of letters. 

What else? well chuffed with some of the film pics I took in Morecambe so now looking over them deciding which ones I want to print/get printed, happily playing on the photocopiers at college with overlaying negative copies, acetates and copies of copies and watching how images degrade and evolve, also having lots of fun looking at and re-watching films like the 1935 Hitchcock directed version of The 39 Steps, Young Frankenstein - the Putting On The Ritz dance scene with the Creature is one of my all times faves and snuggling up with Mapp who is being very snuggly at the moment and lovely company when you're watching such beautiful monochrome goodness.

I also spent a very chilly hour in the garage aka pop up meth lab yesterday afternoon developing some black and white 120 film I took on an Ensign Full Vue from the 1950's back when St George's Field was partially snow covered in January. There isn't much room so it's just as well that me and Mr Pops get on so well as we quite often had to swap places - I was mostly in charge of the thermometer and mixing the chemicals and getting them to the right temperature, pouring them in and agitating the tank, he was in charge of threading the film onto the spool (something I find fiendishly difficult unless I can begin to spool it in/on in the light - though I have managed it in the complete dark on occasion, I find that easier than sweating it out using a darkbag) and fetching a big water carrier. And it seems to have worked - as in there are very definitely images on the film and I just need to scan them in - which is my next task, not that I'm putting off working on my abstract submission....oh no....not that the thought of it being rejected or accepted is giving me pause....

 

 

MA-Ness Year 2 Term 1 Week 12 - Ongoing Dissertation Determination, Walking, Not Doing Enough Doing, Joy of Doing, Poster Meltdown and Lumen-Ness

this weeks post it note - looking a lot fuller than last weeks - got a bit more blog mojo back

Mapp 'helping' with my research - she told me she too was fascinated with Secure The Shadow by Jay Ruby  - the name comes from a daguerreotype photographers advertising slogan 'secure the shadow, ere the substance fade, let nature imitate, what nature made'

a nice bit of doing - a lumen print made using very old photographic paper indeed - Agfa Type W Brovira Crystal normal white lustre and a card sent to me by a chum a while back which I thought would make a nice 'negative' as it's a cut out. This is a photo of the print - I have also scanned it, might try and fix it too but not sure yet. Did a couple of others using acetates I'd initially made to make cyanotypes with - well chuffed with the results. 

I was getting slightly better at maintaining a balance between doing and thinking (which for the purposes of this blog also includes writing and reading - by doing I means hands on image creation of some kind)  but the last couple of weeks that went right out of the window as all the concentration has been on what has become known as 'the bastard dissertation'.

It's also thanks to the 'bastard dissertation' that I am writing this on a Sunday afternoon (which is normally reserved for proper 70's Columbo watching) for the third week running when I normally do it on a Monday but deadlines are fast approaching and as this blog functions as my research journal and also needs handing in for assessment I need to keep up with it and if I do it today it means I have more time to concentrate on said 'bastard dissertation'...

I had been getting more disciplined at going for a walk before settling down in front of the computer but that too had got a bit lost in the midst of bad weather and the bed being so much warmer than the cold outside. But I must remember that I feel *so* much better for doing some doing and going a for a walk too.

I did try last week though to follow my husbands suggestion of going for a walk around lunchtime as opposed to earlier in the day but then it didn't happen as I was stuck in midst of bastard dissertation arguments and didn't want to lose my thread plus the weather was really horrid and so I stayed in front of the computer instead. On balance I think it would have been better if I'd gone for a stroll.

Very glad though that I went for a walk today and also that I went when I did - ie before the weather became really wet and storm force windy or else there was a real risk I'd have ended up in either Kansas or Atlantis. Didn't really do much thinking on the walk though, was too busy enjoying squishing through mud and big puddles in my wellies..andf hoping that the wind didn't blow down any trees or blow the pilot light out on the boiler.

But I forwent the temporary loveliness of the weather on Wednesday morning for a go at doing some lumen prints instead using some very very old photographic paper given to us by a chum. I also used the safe light they gave us too - made poking about in the dark so much easier. We don't have a darkroom but we do have very heavy bedroom curtains lined with black out material so in that room at least I can block out the bulk of the light. There is still a bit of light that comes in over the top of the curtains which I can't block out and a bit at the bottom of the curtains which I can by flattening the curtains against the radiator so although not completely light tight it is light tight enough to set up cyanotypes and lumens - providing I get the bulk of it done beforehand - ie deciding which acetate to use, getting the clip frames ready and the red safe light saves a lot of extra fumbling about on my part.

Can't find a manufacture date for the paper but it must be decades old - it looks like Agfa started manufacturing Brovira in the 1940's and the packaging on the stuff I've got looks quite 60's-70's. I love that it has none of the browny purpley tones I've got with lumen prints before and instead is a quite gentle shade of original paper and blue. I left them in the bright wintery watery sunshine for about an hour - I really must get better at timing things and making a note of what time I put things in the sunshine, but think it was about an hour - it was long enough for me to do some washing up, hoovering, tidying round and some washing and also to check email and so have a mini meltdown over an email informing me that the academic poster I'd sent through for a conference in York wasn't the right size.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am a bear of little brain when it comes to computery things at the best of times and I googled for how to resize it, asked on Facebook for advice and got some but still wasn't able to do it myself as in spite of following the instructions and getting partial success I couldn't do it....but a knight in shining armour (well a chum in a very nice new winter coat) came over and helped sort it out for me in return for dinner (lincolnshire sausages, mashed spuds and sprouts) and I am enormously indebted to him. Not just because he helped me sort it out - turned out to be quite a simple fix (setting image size in powerpoint before you even start) but also because his saying that he would come round after work and help me fix it (he is a photoshop wiz and one of the sites I'd looked at suggested using photoshop) meant I could stop trying to fix it and getting nowhere and concentrate upon bastard dissertation instead in the meantime.

I am very lucky indeed to have such clever, technically able and generous friends.

What else - well the week before I went to a lecture at Thackray Medical Museum which was partly about the use of puppets in theatre and featured the story of a woman called Anne Green who in 1650 was sentenced to death and dissection for infanticide (it was a crime then to not reveal if you were pregnant and you then miscarried - if this happened you were considered to have brought about the miscarriage on purpose) but who revived on the dissection table and whose first words when she properly came round were 'behold god's providence'. She was helped in this coming round-ness by one of her would be dissectors ordering one of his maids to get under the covers with her and warm her up.

You can see an image here  of the woodcut contained in a pamphlet called Wonder of Wonders which was published the following year.
It was fascinating - both from a seeing how a puppet can become so lifelike that even though we know and can see it is a puppet we still believe it is real and from a history point of view too and from a wow - just how misogynistic a culture and legislature we have had (and in lots of ways still do) and also I am really glad I am not anyone's maid and can't be ordered to do things like that.

But aside from computer wobbles, not going for a walk (as I typed the word 'walk' The Cure song of the same name came on - I am experimenting with working to music at the moment again and have got some kind of 80's compilation on media player, not sure what it was called as when I ripped it, it didn't transfer over the names or titles so it's been a fantastic meander down memory lane so far with wonderful gems from Landscape, Haysi Fantayzee, Associates, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Soft Cell and Japan to name but a few...) I have also done some gazing this week.

I gazed at the buildings being demolished on Headingley Lane - a huge crane like machine with a jaw on the end was twisting and tearing down girders - fascinating to see the skeletal insides of a building - the layers of bricks, plasterboard and insulation as well as watching the jaws almost play with the girders the same way a cat does with a spider - that is tapping and gently holding before applying the killer blow. I was utterly mesmerised by it and spent a good few minutes just watching it and wishing I'd had a good quality video camera on me to record it....

The other gazing I did was at the big screen - the big screen of the ever fantastic Hyde Park Picture House to see a documentary called Star*Men which was part documentary, part road trip and part memoir of a group of british mathematicians, astronomers and physicists who literally changed the way we view the world or rather the sky. Donald Lynden- Bell, Wal Sargent, Nick Woolf and Roger Griffin met at Cal Tech in the early 60's and one of them helped develop the spectrascope, one changed the way telescope mirrors were made and the film followed their reunion, the recreation of a long road trip to an american national monument called Rainbow Bridge interspersed with head shots whilst they talked about their respective childhoods and beliefs and of course amazing shots of the night sky which thanks to light pollution we so rarely get to see.

Apparently to make mirrors suitable for use in modern telescopes takes 2 days to bake the silica in the oven, 2-3 mths to cool it down and then 2-3 years to polish it!!! - clearly not a job for someone as impatient as me which does make me wonder why I love the comparative slowness of film when I could have the speed of digital...I occupy some kind of liminal space inbetween the two photographic disciplines though my heart belongs to film really.

It was that fantastic mix of thought provoking, poignant and just gobsmackingly beautiful to look at and it made me want to learn more of the stars (I can only reliably spot the Plough) and learn a bit more about astrophysics too. I saw a bit more - I know feck all of astrophysics so some would be a more accurate word to use. One thing that stood out for me (partly because it's one of the things I look at in my dissertation) was Wal Sargents assertion that it was hearing Fred Hoyle's voice on the radio - not just what he was talking about but that he had a yorkshire accent which made him realise that he (Wal) as a working class man could also learn of these things and go to university and how that Britain was and is such a class ridden society. The others in the film came from much more middle class backgrounds where university was more of a matter of course than a rarity. Anyways you can see a trailer for it here  - see it if you can for it is aces...especially the bit where Roger Griffin explains that though it might look to others as if he was in a sulk - actually he was in a misery.

The other word on my post it note is Locarno - when I was little my folks used to talk about the Locarno all the time, which was initially the local swimming pool and then converted into a dance hall and then sometime in the late 60's it was converted into the form it has now - a bingo hall. I didn't know then that Locarno was in Switzerland but I knew that it was some kind of exotic place where all sorts of shenanigans had gone on - girl and boyfriends met. It just reminded me of the way places might change but that the names for them stay the same for some and is all part of the differences of language and how people might ostensibly be speaking the same language but might mean or understand very different things....

It's making me want to visit it - not the part of Switzerland but the Locarno as was via time machine in its dance hall prime.