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
Keeping Time
(in 2 Parts)
Overview
When we speak of “keeping time,” we’re often referring to a “clock,” whose name derives from the Latin clocca, meaning bell. Early mechanical clocks relied on bells to signal times for prayer before they evolved into highly calibrated instruments regulating the circular motion of hands in relation to calibrated marks on a similarly circular dial.
Rather than accept the way these circular mechanisms influence socially constructed images of time, any thing that changes in a predictable manner could be considered a clock. After all, an atomic clock depends on oscillations in the nucleus of an atom and the surrounding electrons. The universe contains a multitude of phenomenae that change in a predictable manner, like the seasonal transformation of trees, or the dissolution of sugar in water.
Instructions
Develop a personal device for measuring time. This could relate to your interests, perceptions, habits, practices, or other agenda.
This could begin with a strategic transformation of the mechanical or digitial clocks we know well.
It could also depart from the conventional entirely, leverageing some phenomenon of predictable change or specific phenomenae as a measure: physical, geological, biological, ecological, economic, hydrologic, sonic, climatic, celestial, etc.
Schedule
Part 1 (one week)
1. Written Brief
Write a brief using this Prompt as a model (Overview, Instructions, Schedule, Required Reading, Optional Reading, Relevant Tutorials (if applicable), Other References)
2. Schematic Design
This is a drawing that describes the anticipated outcome, its constituent parts, and materials.
Part 2 (one week)
Fabricate the operational piece (OR) produce a physical model of the piece (OR) refine the design drawings to a high level.
Required Reading:
Gilles Deleuze, Intuition as Method, 1966.
Joshua Foer, A Minor History of Time without Clocks, 2008.
Robert Smithson, Entropy Made Visible, 1973.
Optional Reading:
Richard Carrigan Jr., Decimal Time, 1978.
Mitsura and Kiwotaka, Units of Time in Ancient China and Japan, 2004.
Relevant Tutorials
Other References:
What is an Escapement?
How a Watch Works, 1949.
Long Duration Observation (Perspective)
Overview
“To question the habitual. But that’s just it, we’re habituated to it. We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us, it doesn’t seem to pose a problem, we live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither question nor answers, as if it weren’t the bearer of any information. This is not longer even conditioning, it’s anaesthesia. We sleep through our lives in a dreamless sleep. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space?
How are we to speak of these ‘common things’, how to track them down rather, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what is, of what we are.
What’s needed perhaps is finally to found our own anthropology, one that will speak about us, will look in ourselves for what for so long we’ve been pillaging from others. Not the exotic anymore, but the endotic.“
George Perec, The Infra-ordinary, 1973
Instructions
1. ‘Write a space’ as it unfolds.
With George Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris as a model, write for at least four hours on one day (or for at least one hour on at least four days): exhaustively taking an inventory of every thing, being, action, sound, climatic condition or other observable phenomenon that unfoldsw.
There can be no “etcetera.”
Perec re-constructs St. Sulpice as a text. Rather than focusing on the exotic, he attends to the ‘endotic,’ the “infra-ordinary,” and the mundane. He assumes a methodical, objective voice and is judicious in avoiding personal commentary or interpretation. Similarly, when an event in the space reoccurs, Perec’s text correspondingly repeats, and so repetition comes alive on the page. This is a poetic form of observation.
2. With the space transcribed, use the text to produce a work in another medium.
Taking the long-duration observation as a script, use it to direct the production of a visual work. This could be a drawing, a model, a play to be performed, a sound or musical piece, a film, etc.
Relevant Tutorials
If editing sound Audacity might be useful.
Required Reading:
George Perec, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, 1974.
Optional Reading:
Celeste Olalquiaga, Dust, 1998.
Rebecca Solnit, The Ruins of Memory, 2007.
Other References:
N/A
Long Duration Observation (Retrospective)
Overview
After a few hours in Arches National Park, the sublime experience of scale slowly exposes a sublime experience of time.
This happens with a shift of focus: moving from the overall figural forms of the mountains and geological masses to the striations of texture and color on their surfaces. Slowly, one feels a kind of reverse vertigo, as if walking on an ocean floor, realizing that there used to be a ground plane hovering hundreds of meters above one’s head, and that the apparent stillness of the hulking figures and masses of rock are actually falling ever-so-slowly in a hundreds-of-millions-of-years-long process of weathering and erosion.
Like a puzzle of fragments scattered on a table, relations begin to appear. It seems like it should be possible to reconstruct or replace each of the durable hunks of rock into their original position. Meanwhile, one is aware that the dust under one’s feet is probably the residue of masses that have been pulverized into small particles by eons of weathering and erosion.
Examining elements visible in a contemporary landscape, attempt to reconstruct their primordial or previous positions. You may use photographs, drawings, or another medium of your choice.
Instructions
Choose two moments in the entropy of a landscape (natural or urbanistic). One moment should be in the present. The other should be in the past.
Devise a technique (drawing, collage, montage, model, or other) to visually compare the present state to the past state, noting what elements have endured or remain continuous and what have disappeared.
Once these two states have been visuallly established, devise a second drawing system to trace the passage of time between them. (You may need to conduct additional research.) Questions may emerve about whether to integrate these changes into a single drawing or to curate instances to describe changes across the longer interval of time. How long do changes take?
Relevant Tutorials
- N/A
Required Reading:
Bryon Roberts, A Brief History of Time Reversal, 2022.
Optional Reading:
Jon May, Timespace: Geographies of Temporality, 2001.
Robert Smithson, A Tour of the Monuments of the Passaic River, 1967.
Uya Kabakov, The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away, c. 1977.
Tom McDonough, The Archivist of Urban Waste: Zoe Leonard,
Photographer as Rag Picker, 2010.
Adrian Stokes, The Pleasures of Limestone, 1934
Other References:
Michael Landy, “Breakdown” (link)
Long Duration Observation (Prospective)
Overview
“At my request, my mother went to a detective agency called “Duluc”. She hired them to follow me, to report my daily activities and to provide photographic evidence of my existence. The investigation was conducted on April 16, 1981.”
In 1981, the artist Sophie Calle requested that her mother hire a private detective to log her movements and photograph her activities as she, without his knowledge, recorded her experience of being watched.
She later assembled the two reports side-by-side in her piece La Filature (The Shadow).
Instructions
Using Sophie Calle’s La Filature as a model, work with a partner to produce two different reports of the same unfolding events. These could be structured, as Calle did, with one partner surveilling the other. You could also devise another way to relate to one another -- for example, surveilling each other, or recording your own impressions. That’s up to you. Regardless of how you choose to relate, both partners must be precise in maintaining (1) a leger of observations, noting the time of day and perhaps durations of each entry, and (2) a visual companion to the notes, which could take the form of documentary drawings, photographs, sound recordings, or video.
Ideally these written and visual ledgers would unfold across several days, or weeks.
Upon completing the independent ledgers, put them together into new composition. Depending on the visual medium, this composition could be resemble La Filature (The Shadow), or be mixed into a film, sound piece, or other form/format.
Relevant Tutorials
If editing images or drawings, Photoshop and InDesign might be helpful.
If editing sound, Audacity might be helpful.
If editing video, Adobe Premier might be useful.
Required Reading:
Jean Beaudriard, Please follow me, 1983.
Optional Reading:
Sophie Calle, The Detective.
Doreen Massey, Some Times of Space, 2003.
Other References:
N/A
Bracketing
Overview
Translate the principle of photographic bracketing to a drawing, painting or other manual medium.
Instructions
Via a manual medium (draw, paint, sculpt), render the exact same thing 7 times via a sequence of increasing and decreasing exposures.
- second 1 second
- decasecond 10 seconds
- hectosecond 100 seconds
- kilosecond 1000 seconds
- hectosecond 100 seconds
- decasecond 10 seconds
- second 1 second
Take stock of the effect of time and timing on the process of production.
Then, compose another work in any medium of your choosing, devising a time-related constraint for yourself.
Relevant Tutorials
Required Reading:
Adrian Heathfield, Thought of Duration, 2009
Optional Reading:
George Woodcock, The Tyranny of the Clock, 1944
Hans Belgting, The Theater of Illusion, 2000
Sigmund Freud, A Note Upon The Mystic Writing-Pad, 1925
Other References:
Mark Evanstein: - Suite for Computer Assisted Music in Python (SCAMP)- SCAMP Tutorials
- Informant and Timbreland
- Rhythm of the Primes
- Making of the Rhythm of the Primes
- Counterflow
David Bruce:
- 100 year old Polyrhythms Vs. New Polyrhythms
- MicroRhythm
- How the way you talk affects the music you write
Sequence Diagram
Overview
Sequence diagrams are used primarily to understand the time-elapsed interactions between objects (things, actors, phenomae, etc.) in the sequence that those interactions occur.
In computer science, these diagrams establish a dashed vertical lifeline for every object in the system. There can be as many as needed to describe all the objects participating in the system. When an object is active, a narrow rectangle shows the duration that it is “on.” Perpendicular to the lifelines are arrows denoting some kind of message (a call, a transaction, or other interaction between objects). Sometimes there are conditions that must be met before an action can continue (e.g. you must show identification or pay a fee before acess is granted to a space or an item is received.)
Instructions
Observe a situated activity or environment as it unfolds over time.
Identify all entities or participants: humans, objects, atmospheres, non-human actors, environmental changes - everything that plays a role in shaping interactione. Construct a notation on a roll of paper, by hand, in Astah, or Adobe Illustrator.
Every entity (environment, human, non-human, object) should have its own “lifeline.” When a that entity acts or changes state, a slender rectangle indicates the start and end of that action. Interactions are drawn with various kinds of arrows to indicate that one object/participant has sent a request, object etc. to another. Sometimes a request is literally verbal - “please pass the salt”, but it can take different forms - like a gesture, a non-verbal trigger, a reaction, or an environmental change - “the lights dim”. Sometimes the recipient of a message reacts (passes the salt). Sometimes the recipient replies with a message -“I don’t have the salt.” Sometimes there is no response. And sometimes there are conditions that must be met before a response is generated to a request.
Relevant Tutorials
Required Reading:
IBM Sequence Diagrams, also here.
Optional Reading:
Timothy Barker, Recomposing the Digital Present, 2011
Rebecca Hill, The Interval, 2012
Christophe Girot, Vision in Motion, Representing Landscape in Time.
Lyster, Clare, Landscapes of Exchange.
Other References: