hello Photoshop.

I have been reluctantly avoiding Photoshop. Why? I have been avoiding the computer.
I used to be so amazed with Photoshop, and have since become so infatuated with producing images with the 'altered' quality via analogue. It is amazing what you can produce the good old fashion way using hands on processes, versus what you can produce in a computer program. I have always loved 'messing' around in Photoshop. I love how you can take digitized film negatives and begin to work on your computer with these 'grain' produced images.

The old can become the new. But can the new become the old? (ponder ponder)

The oh-so popular app which originated for the iPhone, called Instagram, has taken the analogue style of film, and tried to replicate it with Photoshop pre-set filters to achieve a certain look.
It begins with either choosing or taking a photo. Then you crop it down to a square, or what was once called 'medium format' which could be achieved by using a camera that takes 120 film (among other methods). Then you choose your pre-set filter, and volaire, you have created an Instagram. Within a few swipes of your little finger a vintage-esque photo is created within your phone.

Many users of Instagram may forget that once upon a time there was film and little cameras with buttons and a shutter that captured photographs. One of a kind. It was through MANY factors that a photo may become 'altered.' Whether it be a roll of film shot on the wrong ISO or in undesired (or desired) lighting conditions, or toning processes for a silver gelatin print, just to name a few. Even a polaroid that spontaneously developed with complications. These methods, whether happy accidents or intentional are the basis of where these ideas of manipulation rooted.

With all this in mind I decided to get semi-creative today and take some photos on my phone. I then emailed them to myself, downloaded then, and montaged them in Photoshop.

Here are some renditions all shot and edited by mee ooo weeee! :

V.E.G. Day series 

   

With all that said I would like to acknowledge after neglecting Photoshop for awhile, I have definitely become rusty. But regardless...I have always liked it for making wacky imagery. The more experimental and spontaneous the better for me!

Powerful Words

Found this quote on artist RKDB's social networking page. I was instantly drawn to the first sentence, and after further reading began to become enlightened.

In order to talk about initiation and healing cinema, we need to talk about the ‘industry’ of movies. The movie industry is a business for entertainment. And who controls this business?… The tastes and demands of normal people, no? But normal people represent mediocrity, not art; their entertainment is vulgar and gives you nothing with which to change your life. It’s like a cigarette; you smoke tobacco, and it gives you nothing, unlike marijuana, which always gives you something. That is the industrial picture.

In order to think about the ‘initiatic’ picture, we need to break with industry. The goal of industry is to make a lot of money – this is the measure of a film’s art. Three hundred million dollars – it’s a masterwork! If it doesn’t make money, it’s an awful picture, a failure. But the initiatic picture doesn’t work with money, it works with soul, with spirituality. A lot of spirituality is a good picture, lack of spirituality is a bad picture. It’s different.

And then, what is it to heal somebody? In reality, the biggest illness is not to be what you are but to be what the other wants you to be – the family, the society, the culture. They tell you “You need to be like this, with these morals, with these feelings, with this economy, with this political thing, with this religion”. And then, you go and sign a form that puts you into a spiritual jail for your entire life. The initiation, initiatic cinema, frees you from all these forms, from the artificial world where you started out in the belly of your mother.

Initiating – the art initiation – reveals to you the hell, this prison, and shows you how to escape from it. And to heal you is to give you the opportunity to be yourself and to have your own opinion. Hitchcock, in movies, is an ill person. Why? Because he has disguised himself as a genius of movies, but in reality, he’s making his movies in jail, because he’s saying, “That is a system that will make terror. This, the public will love. There, they will be anguished.” He’s directing your emotions; everything is done to hypnotize you in order to react in a certain way.

In a healing picture, they don’t say you need to react like that. You will react as you react!

--- Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky is the master mind behind cult films El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973).

I love how he acknowledges out natural state, and explicates the need for humanity to embrace it. Why do we try to be something we are not? The pressures of society seem to pull us in so many directions, but reality is, we are most humbled in our natural state of time and place. The here and now- this should be our concern, and to fulfill ourselves only with the simplicit potential of the moment we are in. Let those thoughts come out, let it flow, let it embrace you. Let the stream of consciousness in the brain become  a pathway for mental excretion. Embrace and allow your 'flow' to 'float' amongst others, as the natural excretions refuel imagination in others. Avoid hypnotism, and become aware of when you are.

You have the power to consume what you want to. You have the power to come to your own conclusions. You are not a force-fed.

We have the power to be free and 'flowing' our thoughts and actions.

Just in ...

Red Scale

shot with Olympus Infinity II

{ More }

Color Negative 100

GP Hero Focus Free (plastic shit camera)

{ More }

FREEEEEEE!

... events in the Bay Area


at museums & galleries

thank you Bay Area Art Grind

the Digital Glitch

For some reason my computer cannot play videos anymore. It all happened when Facebook forced me to install a new Flash Player to watch videos. From then on any video I watch on YouTube twitches with a static jolt the entire time, while audio comes in just fine. It is interesting to see tidbits of the actual video peep through the bits of "remembered" imagery shaking around in the video window.
It is so frustrating, but I had an epiphany when using YouTube to listen to music, as this is the only use for YouTube on my computer now.
(P.S. Vimeo works perfect...thank you Vimeo).

The epiphany :

This "digital glitch" occurring on YouTube is something one would have a hard time replicating in any program. It is almost as if the computer is creating it's own expression by certain software not supporting the video. With the ability to capture video on your computer screen it would be an interesting technique to capture this "glitch" and allow it to take place in a video of some kind. No need for special effects or editing. The glitch occurs all on its own, and provides material that may be desirable.