Overview:
General Instructions for the Prompts
Overview
In Part I, the investigations introduce some initial techniques and establish a common set of concerns and terms.
In Part II, the Time Piece investigation is an intermediate step in a sequence of increasing independence.
In Part III, you may:
A. Continue with weekly or bi-weekly prompts, choosing any that you haven’t previously attempted. These would be completed on a weekly, or bi-weekly basis.
(OR)
B. You may also revisit ANY of the prior Prompts, adapting or extending them into something that results in a highly refined outcome.*
(OR)
C. You may devise your own.*
Instructions
For Part III
If you follow the investigation as written, then you should compose a reflection (250 words) on the work you completed, with text citations and/or documentation of the work as a grounding for your analysis and reflection.
You may also deviate from the prompt. In that case, the writen component would include a formal rewrite of the prompt to reflect the changes you made. This formal process provides (a) a cleaer basis to support discussion in studio and (b) creates new themes and variations for others to attempt or revise for themselves.
If you choose to devise your own investigation, anticipate how that might be structured from the start, writing your own prompt with the template as a basis.
If Rewriting or Conceiving Prompts:
Please follow the model below:
1. Title
2. Overview
3. Instructions
5. Tools and Materials
6. Required Reading
7. Optional Reading
8. Relevant Tutorials
9. Other Resources
See the Template.
Eadweard Muybridge
Overview
Edwweard Muybridge produced 781 sets of animals and people in locomotion. In 1884 he filmed wild animals at the Philadelphia Zoological Garden. In 1885 he filmed horses, farm, and domesticated animals at the Gentlemans Driving Park. A portable backdrop was marked off in 5cm squares using threads. These assisted with following the path of movements which were captured by two arrays of individual cameras. 24 of which were arranged parallel to the backdrop. 12 more were positioned at each end, at a perpendicular or 60-degree angle. The cameras allowed three photographs to be taken simultaneously – one from each array. The photographs in each array were numbered in chronological order in the direciton of movement. (Sometimes the animals did not move according to plan.)
With the ability to capture instants up to 1/2000th of a second, the invention of photography allowed Muybridge to capture nuances of movements that were previously too rapid to observe — shifts in the center of gravity, sequencing in the rhythms of limbs, changes in head position — resolving many scientific and artistic debates.
Instructions
In groups of two.
Step 1:
Take a burst or video of a movement. Think carefully about how you position the camera and frame the movement.
For a burst on an iPhone:
- Open the Camera app and frame your shot.
- On an iPhone XS, iPhone 11, or newer, swipe the Shutter button all the way to the left. On an iPhone X or older, just tap and hold the Shutter button.
- Alternatively, you can go to Settings > Camera > Use Volume Up for Burst and then hold the Volume Up button on the side of your iPhone. The second method works regardless of the model.
- You’ll see a counter in the center that shows the number of photos taken. Let go of the button when you’ve taken enough photos or have captured what you wanted.
Step 2:
If not a burst, export the video to stills.
Step 3:
Import the stills into InDesign to generate a three different image sequences:
- Equal Time Interval
- Selected moments
- Any 3rd way of your choosing.
Relevant Tutorials
- For a burst on an iPhone:
- Open the Camera app and frame your shot.
- On an iPhone XS, iPhone 11, or newer, swipe the Shutter button all the way to the left. On an iPhone X or older, just tap and hold the Shutter button.
- Alternatively, you can go to Settings > Camera > Use Volume Up for Burst and then hold the Volume Up button on the side of your iPhone. The second method works regardless of the model.
- You’ll see a counter in the center that shows the number of photos taken. Let go of the button when you’ve taken enough photos or have captured what you wanted.
Required Reading:
Marta Braun, Picturing Time, Chapter 3.
Optional Reading:
Marta Braun, Picturing Time, Chapter 2: The Graphic Method.
Marta Braun, Edweard Muybridge, Chapter 6: Stopping Time on Stanford’s Ranch.
Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows, Stopping Time.
Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows, The Annihilation of Time and Space.
Other References:
Edweard Mubridge, The Human Figure in Motion, 1907.
Edweard Muybridge, Horses and Other Animals in Motion, 1985.
Online Zoetrope by Andy Giger.
Étienne–
Jules
Marey
Overview
“When Etienne-Jules Marey invented his photographic gun to visualize at last the precise motions of doves in flight, it was certainly not to “geometricize” the passage of time (Dagonet, 1992). It was to produce time as much as space. More exactly, it was to produce something entirely different from both which we can call synopticity.
[...]
What is important about Marey looking at the successive images of the dove in flight impressed on the circular silver-coated plate is not [...] that he lost the passage of duration, since it is precisely to lose it that we went to great pains to invent his photographic gun! If anything, he was utterly fed up with “duree,” with uncontrolable, invisible fuzzy patterns of doves flying in the air without being seizable, fixable, catchable. (This is why, by the way, he never invented the movie camera, to the great shame of my Burgundian compatriots; what Marey wanted was to invent the anti-movie camera! Something that would turn movememtn into a succession of images synoptically and not successively visible.)
[...]
Marey is not losing the lived and rich durée of the dove for the poor and cold geometry of the dove. On the contrary, he is adding to the flight of the dove, something never observed by anyone on earth before, the enrapting contemplation of successive motions transformed, on the plate, into coexisting shapes. He has not “degraded” time into space as Heidegger would say; the leap is more more innovative and daring that that: the few flash seconds of the dove’s flight have been transformed into an ever-lasting silver photograph that can be contemplated for hours and quickly scanned by Marey’s gaze again and again, in search of structural features...”
Bruno Latour, Trains of Thought: The Fifth Dimension of Time and its Fabrication, 182-183.
Instructions
In groups of two.
Step 1:
Prepare a scene to eliminate contrast between the object or subject in the foreground and the background.
Step2:
Add graphic marks to the object or subject before photographing.
Step 3:
Take a burst or video of a movement. Think carefully about how you position the camera and frame the movement.
For a burst on an iPhone:
- Open the Camera app and frame your shot.
- On an iPhone XS, iPhone 11, or newer, swipe the Shutter button all the way to the left. On an iPhone X or older, just tap and hold the Shutter button.
- Alternatively, you can go to Settings > Camera > Use Volume Up for Burst and then hold the Volume Up button on the side of your iPhone. The second method works regardless of the model.
- You’ll see a counter in the center that shows the number of photos taken. Let go of the button when you’ve taken enough photos or have captured what you wanted.
Step 2:
If not a burst, export the video to stills.
Step 3:
Import the stills into Photoshop as separate layers.
- Gather the images into one folder.
- Open a new document matching the dimensions of your source images. (Quick way, open an image and Save As something new.)
- Select all of the source images and drag them together into Photoshop. Release them over the general workspace. The first image should show up with a superimposed “X.” (In Photoshop CS5, the images will stack one at a time as layers in your current document when you hit “Enter.” Note: In older version of Photoshop, dragging the files into the workspace will simply open each one up as separate files)
- Continue to press “Enter” until all of the images are loaded as individual layers.
- Rearrange the layers into the correct order, if necessary.
Step 4:
Adjust the contrast of layers.
Step 5:
Change the blend mode of all layers to ‘Linear Dodge’ or ‘Exclusion’ to create superimpositions of all layers in the series.
Relevant Tutorials
- For a burst on an iPhone:
- Open the Camera app and frame your shot.
- On an iPhone XS, iPhone 11, or newer, swipe the Shutter button all the way to the left. On an iPhone X or older, just tap and hold the Shutter button.
- Alternatively, you can go to Settings > Camera > Use Volume Up for Burst and then hold the Volume Up button on the side of your iPhone. The second method works regardless of the model.
- You’ll see a counter in the center that shows the number of photos taken. Let go of the button when you’ve taken enough photos or have captured what you wanted.
Required Reading:
Marta Braun, Picturing Time, Chapter 3.
Optional Reading:
Marta Braun, Picturing Time, Chapter 2.
Other References:
Étienne-Jules Marey, Mouvement, 1895.
Comic
Timings
Richard McGuire, Here, 1989.
Overview(Borrowed from Ivan Brunetti)
Not unlike the marks that form letters and words, we can also think of the lines of our drawing as having a “sound”; they can be cacophonous, flow melodiously, or even evoke silence. Think of a thin, curved dotted line, a harshly jagged scrawl, or a thick droop of ink. Can you hear them in your head? Just as calligraphy can represent sound, so too can composition within a panel represent sound: a few horizontal and vertical lines can suggest the repose and stillness of a quiet room, while a jumble of diagonal lines can suggest an unruly, loud mob. Extrapolating from this, we see that a sequence of panels also has a sound, a rhythm, some might even say a “music.” This week we will begin to think of panels in relation to each other. First, let us loosen up with a little drawing exercise.
Instructions(Borrowed from Ivan Brunetti)
“You will need 12 index cards and the pen/pencil of your choice. Draw one panel per card, spending no more than 3–4 minutes per card. Do not use any words.
Draw the following scenarios: (A) The beginning of the world; (B) The end of the world; (C) A self-portrait, including your entire body; (D) Something that happened at lunchtime (or breakfast, if it’s still morning); (E) An image from a dream you had recently; (F) Something that happened in the middle of the world’ existence, i.e., between drawings A and B; (G) What happened right after that?; (H) Something that happened early this morning; (I) Something that has yet to happen; (J) Pick any of the above panels and draw something that happened immediately afterward; (K) Draw a “riff” on panel J; for example, a different perspective, another character’s viewpoint, something that happened off-panel, or a close-up on some detail or aspect of the drawing; (L) Finally, draw something that has absolutely nothing to do with anything else you have drawn in the other panels.
Spread the 12 panels out in front of you. Try to create a comic strip by choosing 4 of the panels in any order. Mix and match them however you wish. Observe how the emotional rhythm or “timing” changes when panels are rearranged. Choose a four panel sequence that “reads” best to you. Think about why that might be. What kind of narrative do you prefer? Do the panels flow seamlessly? Are there visual elements that clearly connect one panel to the next? Do you see any abrupt breaks in the narrative? What about re-ordering the strip so that it reads in the opposite direction?
Experiment with as many different narratives as you can muster. Pay attention to what happens to the story when the point of view changes or the scale shifts. Note how easy it is to completely change the intent or meaning of the strip by substituting or moving even one panel.”
Once you have a four-panel comic that you like, write a description of what kind of change is implied in the space between panls, otherwise known as the “gutter.”
Relevant Tutorials
Ivan Brunetti, Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, Week 3: Four Panel Strips, p. 37-40.
Required Reading:
Augustine, Time and Eternity, 397.
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics, Chapter 3: Blood in the Gutter, 1993.
Optional Reading:
Ivan Brunetti, Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, Yale, New Haven, 2001.
Other References:
How Panel Sizes Convey Time in Comics