optics + historical figures
above, the vacant observatory on ballgay hill
below, a few prominent historical thinkers. they understood light before anyone else
a note: this a draft post that should have been published a long time ago
alhazen
conceived the notion that light rays do not travel from our eyes, but rather from luminous sources into our eyes. reflective surfaces + the camera obscura
roger bacon
understood the principle of the rainbow
rené descartes
"And so something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgment which is in my mind"
descartes used an ox's eye to determine that we infact see an upside down image of the world
cogito ergo sum (English: "I think, therefore I am")
finding the site
condition one
the instrument is built around the total solar eclipse commencing july 16th 2186, 15:14:54
condition two
the trajectory of this significant eclipse follows a thin path across the surface of the earth. the only landfall occur in south america
condition three
to increase the chances of the instrument using/experiencing the eclipse, cloud and atmospheric interference need to be reduced. therefore high altitude is required.
condition four
the programme of the instrument suggests that a sharp change in surface inclination could aid the exit route. this could take the form of a cliff, mountainside, impact crater wall, crevasse etc...
clarifying your resistance
clarifying your resistance
following on from monday's critique of my thesis project, i'm currently embarking to clarify 'that which is offering my project resistance' or a solid position on origin and process of my decision making.
the script
the stage directions
the narrative
the site
the physics of light
the human physiological restrains
the human psychological condition
the natural light
the proprioception of space
the path of the sun
the longest theoretical eclipse
on July 16 2186, a solar eclipse lasting 7 minutes and 29 seconds, it is the longest solar eclipse between the dates of 2000bc and 3000ad]
the realisation of illusion
i doubt that my interest is simply in illusion
there is something special in that moment when an apparent illusion is reduced into reality - when the joy of mystery is confirmed as truth - when miracles happen before our eyes. have you ever questioned the actuality of a cantilevered thing? you say to yourself, 'it must be some sort of trick'. well it is, and that's fine. but something did become real, something impossible happened. how self gratifying it is to have been the thing that experienced the realisation of illusion.
illusion
i've been playing with the idea of illusion. it is an idea, illusions only exist between [...]. the quoted definition below has a conflict. is illusion a misleading impression, or misapprehension of reality? i'm inclined to favour 'misapprehension' as the more accurate description - an experience accountable only to your self.
i'm not sure 'misleading impression' actually makes sense. surely impressions are highly subjective, likely-irrational-things from the outset. what in gods good name, then, is a misleading impression?
aside from the origin of the word illusion, its 'cheap' connotations and other things besides, i'm coming to warm to this descriptive noun.
–noun
1.
something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality.
2.
the state or condition of being deceived; misapprehension.
3.
an instance of being deceived.
4.
Psychology. a perception, as of visual stimuli (optical illusion), that represents what is perceived in a way different from the way it is in reality.
5.
a very thin, delicate tulle of silk or nylon having a cobwebbed appearance, for trimmings, veilings, and the like.
6.
Obsolete. the act of deceiving; deception; delusion.
a note on the images appearing in this post.
it took the shape of a 1w*1d*2h metre 'hung' space, with blackout curtains draped, wrapped and slung around a suspended, square-section, aluminium frame.
i relied on clamps, pins and lab-style, miniature scaffolding.
expect more evidence to follow
context
what does context mean?
since matriculating
190 days
16416000 seconds
4026 words for thesis
4.9248x10^15 metres distance travelled by morning light reflected off my drawing board in studio
3x10^8 metres per second is the speed of light
16.6x10^12 metres from our sun of the furthest man made object, Voyager 1
15 hours 27 minutes is how long the light reflected off my drawing board took to overtake the furthest man made object from the sun
revolt
take arms!
this is nothing less than an attack on the very poetics of space!
hoards of lifeless, evenly distributed, white-wash florescence is taking over our space, day and night!
19th century paris revolted against the newly installed public, gas lighting system, being paid for out of the police budget, it was seen to illuminate the streets to help quell rebellion.
our 21st century needs to rise up against the perpetual lamping of every street, the empty, constantly-lit office blocks, the dead-space supermarkets, the flat, seemingly texture-less walls of your children's classrooms.
switch off those over-head bulbs, separate your six species of light and marvel
weep, alas, i'm not talking about light pollution, i'm talking about poison of your very soul.
[a reaction against unsettling trends to evenly light all space]
this is nothing less than an attack on the very poetics of space!
hoards of lifeless, evenly distributed, white-wash florescence is taking over our space, day and night!
19th century paris revolted against the newly installed public, gas lighting system, being paid for out of the police budget, it was seen to illuminate the streets to help quell rebellion.
our 21st century needs to rise up against the perpetual lamping of every street, the empty, constantly-lit office blocks, the dead-space supermarkets, the flat, seemingly texture-less walls of your children's classrooms.
switch off those over-head bulbs, separate your six species of light and marvel
weep, alas, i'm not talking about light pollution, i'm talking about poison of your very soul.
[a reaction against unsettling trends to evenly light all space]
blake
1757 - 1827
william blake
exposure pi'ed
for a long time had i forgotten that the entire film strip used in a camera is photosensitive, and not isolated to a 35mm bias. using a holga medium format camera, with a 35mm film, i was able to cast an image across the entire strip. despite the perforations on the film, a certain portion of image is discernible at the top and bottom.
this medium format camera allowed me to control, roughly, how far along i scrolled the film before i snapped another picture. i wanted to try overlapping some pictures. i had mixed success. in principle i found that alternating, or being even more creative, with the mix of light and dark scenes mixed the best photographs on the negative.
this minor experiment was worthwhile, if only to conclude something quite simple about how cameras, and their films, work.
2400dpi
4800dpi
19200dpi
a recent discovery for me has been the ultra-high resolution scanners in the media labs of duncan of jordanstone. they are specially designed to scan film positives and negatives. i decided to push what 'ultra-high' actually means. it means 19200 dots per inch.
reference point = the majority of digital cameras record pictures at 72dpi
euclid's tomb
euclid's tomb: "euclid's body really shouldn't be at the origin of everything; the big point, but there we are"
this is my own fictitious quote. my latest etching plate, and consequent plates, are the consequence of my under-exercised obsession with étienne-louis boullée's cenotaph to sir isaac newton. notionally i've set this monolithic space station at the centre of the universe - a hypothetical spatial constant. this narrative is not necessarily to supersede another reading of the image
object limits
where is the limit of an object?
is it the boundary of its form?
is it the shadow it casts?
is it an experience of the object?
is it those uninterrupted quanta of light that escape our solar system?
this question really only tests what we might mean by 'limit' but studying the idea of boundary, periphery and edge - as much as object and presence et al - has a hints at something of importance to my thoughts on architecture right now.
in asking questions of 'limit', i have a clue that it may be useful to begin by searching for the essence of a thing
fourth and fifth
recently i was handed the chance to display my 4th year and current 5th year drawings side-by-side. i must admit that it was strange to see my work as a time-line, or a progress bar, and in many ways i was upset that my current work didn't yet compete with the images from 4th year. however, i feel validated in my current obsession with [space and object as revealed through light]
on a side note, i wonder what my blog would contain [or what the contents would feel like] had i began it a year previous... does the blog, or the act of blogging affect ones work?
hopefully a rhetorical question
lux
illuminance = lumens / metre2
the salient difference between illumination and radiance is that illumination considers the power of light in relation to the sensitivity of the human eye at various wavelengths.
brightness on the other hand seems to be illuminance's subjectified sibling - the gauge of which rests tentatively on perceptions shoulders
an ulbricht sphere measures diffused light in manners i don't fully understand
ganzfeld effect
the ganzfeld effect (from german for “complete field”) is a phenomenon of visual perception caused by staring at an undifferentiated and uniform field of color. the effect is described as the loss of vision as the brain cuts off the unchanging signal from the eyes. the result is "seeing black" - apparent blindness.[wikipedia sourced]
at sea on a new moon
going to the bathroom in the middle of the night
spending eight hours in the local anechoic chamber
...rarely does one experience the ganzfeld in nature
light's dark brother
light's dark brother
"photography, it is said, is writing with light"andre laude, 1989
"the architecture of our time is turning into the retinal art of the eye. architecture at large has become an art of the printed image fixed by the hurried eye of the camera"juhani pallasmaa, 1994
"it is only through light and shadow that architecture acquires shape"ingeborg flagge, 2002
used sump oil
richard wilson with used sump oil
viewed from the entrance platform 20:50 appears as a holographic field: simultaneously a polished floor, infinite clear pool, an expansive and indefinable virtual space that clinically absorbs and mirrors the gallery architecture. the room is in fact entirely flooded in oil.
- saatchi gallery excerpt
balka beckett + minkowski
miroslaw balka talking about turbine hall exhibition.
reminds me of eugene minkowski's description of dark space in 1933,
le temps vecu: etudes phenomenologiques et psychopathologiques
i wish miroslaw referenced more people than beckett. although, good choice balka.
more video at tatetube
_
reminds me of eugene minkowski's description of dark space in 1933,
"mystery - if we can use an image here - is like a somber and unknown night which envelops us completely; it is also like dark space, homogeneous, infinite, such as we have before us when we close our eyes."
le temps vecu: etudes phenomenologiques et psychopathologiques
i wish miroslaw referenced more people than beckett. although, good choice balka.
more video at tatetube
_
hiroshi sugimoto and me.
suigmoto's long exposures in north american cinemas.
he says the exposure lasts the length of the durathe film
but what tricks are he playing with? tight aperature, slow film?
ohio theatre, ohio 1980
suigmoto's long exposures in north american cinemas.
he says the exposure lasts the length of the durathe film
but what tricks are he playing with? tight aperature, slow film?
ohio theatre, ohio 1980
steve mcqueen
perhaps this is a technically simple trick of the camera. however i'm inclined to believe these images to be floating in nothingness. why does the obscurity of depth mesmerise my mind like nothing else?
"darkness is not the mere absence of light; it has some positive quality. whereas bright space disappears, giving way to the material concreteness of objects, darkness is "thick"; it directly touches a person, enfolds, penetrates, and even passes through him. thus the "self is permeable to the dark but not to the light"; the feeling of mystery we experience at night probably stems from this."
roger caillois, 1935, the edge of surrealism: a roger caillois reader, p101
"since dark space enfolds me from all sides, and penetrates me much more deeply than does bright space, the role played by the inner/outer distinction and thus by the sensory organs as well [insofar as they enable external perception] is quite minimal"
eugene minkowski, 1933, etudes phenomenologiques et psychopathologiques
i have a sense that my area of academic research is expanding at a quicker rate than i can ultimately fully grasp in time for my thesis submission. at roughly the same moment, i suspended this thought in favour of reckless and altogether self-indulgent investigation.
revi ew
i had a review, in december, of my design thesis to date.
here are some sampled comments raised in the discussion, and my reflection on them.
"you're not interested in light, you're interested in the representation of light..." andrew clancy
"...and the unexpected secondary effect - texture" andrew clancy
"if i came in and didn't listen to you speak i would think your work was about darkness" david sutherland
here are some sampled comments raised in the discussion, and my reflection on them.
"you're not interested in light, you're interested in the representation of light..." andrew clancy
considering my visual presentation, i think clancy makes an insightful conclusion here. while i always expected the representation of light to form a large part of my thesis, i haven't to date considered it the focus of my studies. i can imagine that the strength of this masters thesis may rest largely on how well i communicate particular notions concerning light.
on the representation of light. it occurs to me that in drawing light i'm attracted to scenes of high [wide] contrast; and the boundaries where white light and deep black meet. it's at these boundaries that i form a sense of material and volume of light, or in some cases the space that light excludes. i find some similarity in anthony mccall's projections; smoke diffused rooms express the geometry and nature of the intersecting, space defining blades
"...and the unexpected secondary effect - texture" andrew clancy
i've considered the material qualities i inevitably invoke when representing light and space in one of my etched plates; a rough, coarsely textured surface for black and the rather polished perfection of intense area's of light. although i need not explain that light isn't attributed with qualities synonymous with matter, i find it increasingly useful to transpose descriptions of the ethereal and the material.
"if i came in and didn't listen to you speak i would think your work was about darkness" david sutherland
simply put, light and dark are two aspects of the singular phenomenon. i refrain from dedicating my work in this way and instead ascribe a desire to control and restrict illumination to the prevalent atmosphere of my prints and drawings. in one sense the darkness in the scenes is an aesthetic and somewhat psychological exercise to narrate the story. however i have found that through restricting incidental light a more tightly controlled experiment in light is the product.
