Becoming-animal #06

Here's the result of the latest photoshoot. Inspired by another photograph from National Geographic. This time a polar fox with a pray in its mouth.

No feedback yet.

Becoming-domesticated #05

Idea for this image is based on a photograph of a polar bear from the National Geographic magazine. The bear is casually tearing away bloody flesh and bones from a carcass while staring directly to the camera with a dreamy look in its eyes. I found it very inspiring.

The image was deemed too empty, though. "The 'animal' looks perfect, but the human part does not clash enough with the animal. The table, plate, cutlery and the light switch are not enough to bring the animal to the focus. This image needs something more." I was even suggested to try something comical like having someone handing me a napkin or just sitting next to me at the table. Perhaps even change the location to some very typically cluttered home full of human presents. Then the animal would contrast more.

So I went away and made some alterations.
Here's Tom's comment:
Good job! I like the alterations you've made but I'd like to see a lot
more! The wall is looking much better, it sticks out less now than it
did before because it is becoming more believable that the animal in
the picture (!) actually lives in this space - the human aspects of
the phone and the teatowels develop more narrative potential as they
suggest that humans live/lived in the space. Remember what Daniel said
about stories! If I were to suggest anything it would be to do a lot
more - maybe add something to the upper middle of the wall (it still
looks a bit bare) and the table still looks a bit empty: Maybe some
salt and pepper grinders and placemats or something? I still think the
key to adding contrast is to make this image look as homely as
possible: isn't that why we love horror films, when the domestic we
are all used to is shattered by the unnerving and unusual? Not that
this is about horror film aesthetics but you could take influence from
that tension in contrast.

Adding the human detail

Feedback from 12th of June's seminar went something like this:

The 'home' images are lacking contrast between the animal and the human. Human homes are not pristine and clean like on my images. Humans are messy and my locations lack detail. The animal part of the image is very good, though.

So I went on a little guest. Had another photoshoot and added a detail to the previous images. Just to see how it works. I also got rid of the leaves' shadows on the wall. Here are the edited images:I reintroduced the kitchen towel, the glass bowl and a drinking glass drying on the side of the sink and the radiator in the bottom right corner.

The clothes' drying rack and the electricity box were not on the image before.

On this one I've only added the jigsaw puzzle of 'School of Athena' on the wall.

More images and feedback

Here are some more images that I've created in the same series of 'becoming-domesticated' and 'becoming-wild'.

Here's one showing the creature making a nest out of all things human.
And here are three more images from the park sessions. I experimented with other people as well, so the first one is with Victor. For some reason it seems that all the outdoor animals become monkeys. I'm not entirely happy with the lighting conditions. On all the days it was very sunny and beautiful, which is a nightmare for this project. If I want to use these image sin the final show, I will have to go an re-photograph them on a cloudy day. London is not what it used to be. It's sunny almost every day now!
Feedback from this week's seminar:
I explained the two sets of images as different yet connected in the meaning. Some saw it as a narrative. An animal is indoors, at home and then gets out and goes to explore the world. I should explore that more and shoot in different locations like the tube or the bus or the street to show the creature in an "unfamiliar" situation. I guess it's something to think about. Personally I still think of these images as two different avenues to take.

Apparently, I've reached a new starting point and the project should take another big leap now towards something new. They are really pushing this development agenda. At the same time I am thinking of going back to the animated portrait, but use a better image for that.

Natural Habitat

I was thinking here...

The becoming-domesticated series could also be called Natural Habitat or In Natural Habitat.

8 limbed baby

A toddler in Idia was born with eight limbs and believed by some to be the reincarnation of the multi-limbed Hindu goddess Lakshmi. How convenient for her to be vborn in India for such an honour. Poor her, though, would have died without the surgery, but has been saved now. Non Hindus point out she looked more like an octobus, rather than a goddess. I suppose this depends on the cultural point of view.

Woman lives with cheetahs, lions and wolves... and dogs

South African cat keeper Riana Van Nieuwenhuizen ives with four cheetahs, a lion cub and two wolves. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2009-04/02/content_7644659.htm

BBC3 My Life as an Animal

BBC3 did me a favour and premiered a new reality TV series last week calle "My life as an animal". The first eprisode saw two people living with pigs for 4 days. The idea was to get the pigs accept them as pigs, rather than human.

The guy was brilliant! He was really into it. I suppose it was all a bit of a game to him and a challenge as an actor. He went right into it, smeared pig shit all over his face and started making the noise the pigs mke, so they would think he is one of them. Pigs being very intellgent animals, were kind of fooled. Well done!

becoming-domesticated

I followed the idea of the cheetah image and named this series "becoming-anima". The second shoot was not very frutiful. Out of four poses there were only two to really work with. I have to practice my animal poses with more precision. Or just use someone else.

Man with a tale

Berlusconi becoming an animal

Granted, having sex is a very human thing. Nevertheless, what Berlusconi does to this poor police woman, reminds me dogs doing it on the street. Moreover, the fact that this is the Italian prime minister (who should know better) makes his behaviour even more uncivilized or animal-like.

Any random person would be arrested for sexual harrasment if caught doing this. I guess Berlusconi gets away with it...

Dog gives birth to mutant creature that resembles human being

This happened in Russia. Apparently a dog gave birth to a bunch of puppies and one of them looks more like a human being... I thought this is very appropriate considering my project. If this is real news, then I feel really sorry for the little puppy. It's probably not going to hang on for very long.

It's a bit creepy. But why? Because of it's uncanny resemblance to a human baby, when it's clearly not one?

To look at

Movies, artists, theorists and other inspirational things to look at. Daniel, Paul and others:

Ken Russell's "Altered States" 1980
I have a feeling that I've seen this film already, but judging by the trailer and clips on YouTube, it's worth having another look. It's a bout a scientist who tests hallucinogenic drugs on himself while floating in the isolation tank. His hallucinations soon become more than psychological and start altering his physical form.

Bruce Nauman's "Self-Portrait as a Fountain" 1966
Nauman stays himself but takes a form of something else. In this case a fountain. Kind of relates to my photographs of becoming animal.

Alexa Wright "Archaeology of the Self" 1997
In this work the body is represented as ambiguous, androgynous, sculptural and monumental. Alluding to both geological formation and artefact, these images contemplate natural/cultural constructions of self. Fossils, resembling tattoos, are depicted embedded in the back to explore ideas of the body as a territory partly formed and occupied by its own (cultural) history and partly consciously controlled.Wright's other work like "I" (1998/99) are quite interesting as well. She explores similar themes to what I am and uses similar technique, mainly digital manipulation to show what she needs to show.

Ingrid Pollard "Pastoral Interludes" 1980s
A series of photographs of herself in rural landscapes. The works challenge the way that English culture places black people in cities. Just to look at in connection to the "gorilla" image - reclaiming the countryside...


From Jüri:
Becoming animal is something a actors have to observe from time to time. Taking the right pose and making the right movements is the key to representing an animal on stage. Most animals have a characteristic part of the body that an actor can imitate and with success that should be enough to unlock the secret of looking like an animal. Theories to read:

Jerzy Grotowski "Towards Poor Theatre"
This Polish innovator of experimental theatre should give me some clues to how to take the animal form.

Jacques LeCoq
Most famous for his methods on physical theatre, movement and mime

Feedback 31/03/09

Reaction to images: two stand out more and they are the ones I like most myself. They are the 'being human, posing like an animal' images. The big cat at water source and the gorilla at the picnic area. I'll call them cheetah and gorilla.

Cheetah: Looks like from National Geographic program. The animal has been caught at its natural habitat, drinking water from the source. The mood of the image, the leaves leaving shadows, the look, all very good.


Gorilla: Good choice of props and location. Looks like bad acting. Trying to be an animal, but is not really. Good that looks like English countryside, not a savannah or gorilla's natural habitat. Feels like trendy city person is reclaiming the English countryside as an exotic animal. Reaction to notion that you will almost never see anyone except white middle class English people at the countryside. (Not so sure about that) Doesn't look like a jogger (like I intended), rather like a trendy person. This has definitely more meanings to it and seems most interesting out of all the images. Use of colour was mentioned as well. The flat yellows in the background and the yellow hoody are very well opposed.

Both: Perhaps digital editing on bodies and faces is not necessary. Just the pose should be perfectly animalistic and convey the meaning equally well. I disagree. The use of digital editing is a comment on the mutability of the photograph and the image of the body. It's also related to the uncanny and abject that I wrote about earlier.

So, I guess I should carry on along these lines and produce more work.

The flood

On Thursday last week, the 26th of March, I went to see the Spring Show of the MA in Text and Performance Studies students at the RADA / King's College London. The show was titled "The Beginning".

The second part of it, called "The Flood", was most interesting and most daring. As they say in their leaflet:
This is a threefold attempt to respond to the overflow we are experiencing in our daily lives. From within the ubiquitous flood of images, sounds and products, we ask: Where is the line between sexual pleasure and sexual automatism? Do we distinguish between our real and our digital selves, between us and our avatars? Can we still tell play from violence?

At one point all the eight performers were nearly naked, on top of each other, around each other and between each other in a constant flux of apparent pleasure, while the "random" noises of the soundtrack suddenly let us pick up the all too familiar "The next station is King's Cross St. Pancras".

New developments before the Easter break

After the devastating feedback from last week's group tutorial and Daniel's assessment of "borderline fail" to my project so far, I wanted to forget about the whole business. I mean, what kind of motivation is "fail"? I understand that I am supposed to evolve with the project and change it and bring in new images every week. But I don't see why is the emphasize on this kind of change. Obviously I can take the project to different directions, but why do I have to do that just for the sake of it? I did a lot of research into the matter in the previous semester, including visual research and I have already changed my project this way and that way. Anyway, it doesn't matter how sick and tired I am of this project already, I do not want to fail it. So, this is what I have been doing in the past 6 days.

I wanted to explore a little bit further the idea that it is I who is tired of the city life, overcrowded public transport and the mundane daily life. So, I stole a few images of an office and a fake yeti from the interent and created this funny scene.I'm exploring what it is to become an animal in the modern metropolitan. As it is all about me, I am thinking of places and situations that most annoy me about London. There are many. Oxford Street (too many people!), the crowded public transport, the boring office job where people look the same...

I strated with the last one. To be honest, I am lucky to work in the office where people do not look the same. Similarly to the image I used above, people do not have to wear 'office clothes' and fortunately I only work once a week. But it is the idea, that is important here. So, I have photographed myself over and over again in the office. The figure in the foreground is inspired by Antony Crossfield's Foreign Body series. I tried the editing trick again at home - multiple bodies edited together into one. On Crossfield's images you can clearly see that there are images of two people combined together to create a new and mixed body, the lines between two bodies are merged but significant. On my images I wanted to create a new creature, the feeling should be that of misjudgement. While I was printing the images, a first year photography student looked at the one below and thought that it looks like I am having sex with myself. Interesting. Perhaps that is how it looks like at first sight. But look closer!

Following on from the previous theme, I am still trying to think of what it means to become animal and how to represent it on a photo. Here are two images that show me "posing as an animal" in a contemporary setting. After a long trial and error photo shoot accompanied by images of different animals for reference, I edited both of the images to emphasize the animal features.

The first one is "an animal at the water source". It could eb a leopard or gepard or somehtng like that.

The second is a gorilla brwsing the picnik area.

I haven't decides what to do with these images, yet. Tomorrow is the next tutorial...

Leopards and gepards

Some more inspirational images. It's the posture and body movement I am looking at.

Gorillas and werewolves

I've been looking at animal pictures to get some inspiration for my digital editing on faces. Not that I want to make myself look like an animal, rather animal-like. I would introduce animal features to my own face, but only through digital drawing and using elements of myself from photographs of different angles... Even though I came up with this this myself, it is not my original idea. This is where the dissertation research comes handy. Apparently, both of the photographers/artists I was researching for my dissertation - Danile Lee and Eva Lauterlein - used the same technique to create their Manimals and Chimeres.Daniel Lee was looking at a lot of animal pictures and found models that had characteristic features already, so it was easier to edit them. Lauterlein did not use animal features at all. Instead she photographed the same person from different angles and edited these faces into one. They look eery and strange after closer examination, and some of them a bit animalistic.

Also, there's this new drama series on BBC3 caleld Being Human. It 's about a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf house-sharing. It follows the now established TV drama scheme - extraordinary characters living their "normal" lives, just trying to fit in. Mysterious things happen to common people and in the centre of this is the human tragedy and family drama. Think of Lost, Heroes or any other TV series with similar build-up. Anyway, I thought it might be inspirational, but it hasn't been much...

Uncanny valley and abject

In the last tutorial I had with Daniel, he thought my project is mostly about the uncanny and the abject. I agreed with the uncanny part and I have thought about it already. Nevertheless, I found a lot of interesting things about the theory behind uncanny and abject. Until lately, 'uncanny' was familiar to me only thanks to the X-Men comics. :)

uncanny
uncanny valley
abjection

The uncanny valley is the most interesting of these three terms. It's used to describe the humanoid robots that look so uncannily human-like that could be mistaken for humans, yet they lack the detail of realness and consequently they seem weird, creepy and repulsive. At least in theory. I should add, that I have seen videos of the latest robot technology a lot already and it's quite common thanks to YouTube. I guess the more familiar we get to these strange human-looking but mechanical creatures, the more used to we get with them. And they don't seems so strange any more. Just like vampires and zombies are so over-used in contemporary culture that we literally grow up with them. Which leads me to my troubling thought - it is very difficult to show somehting truly uncanny and weird on the image.

This Japanese robot looks super ahppy and rigid and a little bit retarded, especially in the end when she waves. But it's a big advance compared to the ones they have made before. I mean the ones with a very child-like voice and huysterically happy gigling woman-robots...

The animation test

http://www.karelpolt.com/becoming

Here's a Flash test animation of the image below. I changed the colour of the shirt, so I would 'merge' with the wall, as if I'm part of it. Or something.

At the moment there are three variables - the eyes, the nose and the chin/mouth. They have different degrees of manipulation and different speeds, so theoretically you are never looking at the same image. Or at least not any time soon after starting the animation. All the three elements change individually from each other. This is exactly the kind of randomness I wanted for the animation. Now, if I was to add more variables (ears, top of the head) the resulting monster/human would have even more ways of being.

But, I at the moment I am at a stage, where I am pretty sure that this will not happen. Followed by the very bad feedback from last week's group tutorial, I have no reason to pursue with this. I was told, that the image lacks meaning, is empty, doesn't communicate any (!) ideas, is pretentious, boring, under-developed and not sophisticated enough. Also, the apparently, the animation looks as if it is a loop of me looking normal and turning into a monster and back. :(

I've been taking new photos this week. Will post them here soon.

Size matters

I realized that the Yuraku flat screen monitor I use for work, might be ok for just that - work, with its 21.6'' diagonal, but it looks tiny from only 2 metres away. Small for displaying my work, that is.

The resolution of this screen is max 1680 x 1050 pixels. I'd love to use a screen four times as big, but will have to do with a double size. This would mean about 29'' diagonal for the monitor.

Here's a list of large screen manufacturers with all the details
http://www.wedgwood-group.com/30_and_above_lcd_desktop.htm

To do:
Go to electronics store to see the actual possible size and brands for the monitor. Best would be a large wall-mountable computer screen.

Looking for the background

These are the different locations I tried out the last week. All of the five locations are pretty similar, but also quite different in detail. All of the images are shot outdoors. Though I am looking for 'pretty' aesthetics, I love working with natural light and don't want to over-stylize the look.

This is a very interesting background and the light was amazingly soft, considering that it is under a railway bridge. But the reliefed back doesn't work for this projest as it looks more like an indoors shot, rather than on the street.


This is the background I like the most out of the ones here, because of the little plant pushing itself out of the wall. The struggle of this tree to win back its natural habitat reflects very much the ideas of what is going to happen to me on the foregroound, once I start morping into animal-like creatures.

Starting to become

On Friday last week I had another test shoot with the Mamiya and the results are good. The flexibility of the digital negatives is exactly what I need.

For the test shoot I tried different backgrounds in the crim urban space around Elephant & Castle in London. The dusty brick walls and patchy concrete are exactly what I am after. I will add more images here soon. I chose this one because of the single plant that tries to take back it's rightful place in nature. I hope this reflects the theme of my project behind the subject, which is me. Perhaps the background should be more in focus, though?

On the image above I have tried creating something towards the final look I am after - becoming an animal. I have moved the eyes further appart and streched the chin down creating the space betweenthe nose and the upper lip. I don't want to make the changes too obiuos (though these ones obviously are) as the final image will be changing constantly anyway. I'm also working on the animated Flash version of this to show in the seminar tomorrow. Will post a link tomorrow here as well.

Here's another photo I took with Mamiya over the weekend. It's the semi-urban landscape around the reservoires in North London. It's still zone 3, but at the same time quite wild, while heavily reshaped by man.

Human Nature

Some links on exploring the animal instincts and contemporary social conditions

Human Nature
http://www.humannature.org.uk/index.html

Articles on Marcus Coates
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/focus_marcus_coates/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/jan/25/art.vivgroskop

Marcus Coates

Marcus Coates is a British artist who 'talks' to animals and connects to the spirit world by covering himself in animal skins and making various animal noises. He presents himself as a kind of a shaman and travels to many places to help solve people's problems by asking for advice from the animal spirits.His film 'The Plover's Wing' is currently part of the Altermodern triennal exhibition at the TATE Britain.

Generating a monster I have no control over

Here are some thoughts I walked away with after the tutorial with Paul on Friday 20/02/2009

My issues:
Who to photograph?
As my brief-led project's mock-up showed, photographing a random person and editing his facial features ever so slightly to resemble an animal, don't really have the effect I was after. Even though Eva Lauterleins Ghimeres (my visual inspiration) have the same 'problem'. So, my idea was to photograph either a very well known face (aka celebrities) or myself. Photographing celebrities would create another set of annoying issues, which I don't want. They would bring a different layer of meaning to the project which I am not interested in. Therefore, photographing myself would be the best option. In so, I can better convey the meanings behind the project that I initially had - that of (me) being tired of the big city life and everything it comes with, while loving the life of a metropolis. This dilemma or contradiction seems to be the very centre of this project in both the concept and on the technical part.

Feedback:
Continue with the idea of photographing myself. Not only will this make sure that my dilemma is tied to me and not an overall condition of people living in big cities, but it will also bring more interesting thoughts along.

Now, if I digitally edit and animate my facial features so that they start resembling an animal, I want the different features (the eyes, the ears, the nose, ect) to change constantly and randomly. Once I start the animation, it should be programmed to change randomly, so that I do not have any control over it.

Pauls response:
I am generating a Frankenstain 'monster' of myself, let it go and loose control over it.

To do:
To make sure the aesthetics of the changing animation will work the way I want it to work, I need to find out if it is technically possible.
Go through blogs of technical stuf on Photoshop, Flash, Actionscript and Javascript to find if there is anything on generating random change with using parts of images. Post questions on blogs and discussion groups. Ask technical staff at the uni and other lecturers if they know anyone who could advise me.

Interactivating the image

Here's one possibility to interactivate my project by using the Nintendo Wii remote and infrared sensors. Johnny Chung Lee has some interesting ideas worth researching. johnnylee.net

The detail I am after

Here are a few example images from a Turkish film director and photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan. What amazed me about his photography is the amount of detail in the images. I knew already that I want to have my images desaturated and with cold colours, but combined with this contrasty details they woudl be much stronger, I think.Mr Ceylan told me that he uses a similar camera to the Mamiya we have in the university. It's medium format and digital. He often uses a panoramic camera though. His tips were to photograph with as little contrast as possible to gain the control over contrast once post-processing the images in Photoshop. He thinks that digital technologies are a blessing to artistic minds as it gives more opportunities to experiment and is much cheaper. He also said that he is not afraid of absolute dark areas on his photos as it is not important to show everything. With this he can draw attention to areas on the photos that really matter to him.
His website www.nuribilgeceylan.comHis photos are printed out in quite large format. The technique he uses is archival pigment ink on 460grm cotton rag paper. This gives the images a subtle texture and painting-like apparance. Mr Ceylan prints out his images himself.

Testing the Mamiya

Due to the nature of the final images I am hoping to produce, I need the images to have as much digital information as possible. This means I need to use the best technology available for me to get as hgh resolution images as I can. The choice is limited to the medium format Mamiya from university kit room, so this will have to do. Here are some results and conclusions from my first day with Mamiya.Here's one of the first images I took. I must say, the display on this camera is awful. It shows the images very dark, with horrible colours and at first there seemed to be nothing I could do about it. I'm used to cameras that display the images more or less the same way they will show up on the computer screen. Mamyia was at first a huge disappointment. After uploading the images to my PC I realized the quality of the results. The RAW file processing in Photoshop is as amazing as ever and the image files can be blown up to sizes that I haven't even used before. My verdict is that when well planned, I will get the images I want. Just have to be patient with the camera.

Project proposal

This project will examine the philosophically occult notion of becoming-animal, as developed in the work of French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari in their book A Thousand Plateaus. They write about human-animal relations, specifically about man becoming animal or animal-like in contemporary culture. They emphasize the becoming, rather than the animal, which in turn also interests me, as whilst the man becomes animal, the animal becomes something else and disappears. Therefore it is not important, what kind of animal the man becomes, but it is the process of becoming that matters.

Eventually the outcome of the project should be a set of digital portraits displayed on LCD screens that are mounted on the wall. The use of digital technology is crucial as each portrait would be digitally edited so that the facial features of the sitter would start to resemble animal features. As the animal is not important, I plan to photograph each sitter from various angles and use details from different shots to combine the final portrait, so that the animal parts will actually be parts from the same person, only from different angles. The editing should be very fine, creating a new reality and eliminating the original portrait. To take the becoming even further, I want to program the portraits to change constantly. The change would be subtle, but big enough to be noticed. In this endless state of change the sitter will never be neither human nor animal, but always becoming.

The problem with the idea is that photographing a random person, the effect might get lost as there are limitless different appearances that humans can. So, if the viewer is not familiar with the original look of the sitter and the editing has been done very well, the effect of becoming animal might not come across. Ways around this might be either to photograph celebrities whose faces are familiar to many people or alternatively photograph myself. Photographing celebrities will bring in a myriad of new meanings and might not benefit the project, but I am willing to try nevertheless. Photographing myself, on the other hand, could introduce my personal angst of being tired of the big city – the ultimate outcome of modern society – and looking for a connection with nature, which ironically and contradictively will be achieved through the use of modern technologies.

Visually, I plan to use cold colours, nearly gray and desaturated tones to create the mood I have just described. The final image should be nearly painting like, so I plan to experiment with adding subtle textures either digitally or physically on top of the LCD screen. This could be further emphasized by framing the monitor.