Monthly Archives: March 2024

Major Project – Test Pieces #02 – Album Images

I started to explore glitch art and computer generated faults with patchy success. I used one of these corrupted images which I was most happy with to pursue a slightly different path.

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Corruption Example #09

From this starting point, I added to my collection of old album images, finding some which appealed to me on eBay. I wondered if part of what I like in above image was the starting image rather than the corruption? I chose another interesting picture as a different starting point in some pictures I got from Germany showing small boy and a cat. I mention Germany as the boy is wearing tradition clothing. I enlarged a section of corruption in red from another image and layered image so that boy and cat most clear with background washed out and the water at bottom of image covered in red.

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Corruption Example #16

I then experimented with the image of the boy and cat and removed them from background seeking to simplify image..

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Boy & Cat #06

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Boy & Cat #07

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Boy & Cat #08

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Boy & Cat #09

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Boy & Cat #10

These test pieces focus on a single image treated in different ways. I chose to work with this image as the original photograph showed a boy and cat peering into a river or pond. This water theme is something I played with thinking as I did so of the river between life and death. I think the boy peering into the water is something which works well for me. It a thoughtful pose with no hint of fear and no sense he is being watched. I wondered about the cat and whether there a mythological element to this. I would have to do some research into that.

My final image in this sequence #10shown above is one I enjoy the most although I admit that part of that enjoyment comes from the fun in the making. I will revisit my editing as not yet entirely happy with final output. The image shows the boy placed in my photograph of a Scottish Loch with multiple layers of texture of seaweed, dicolourataion of water, and reflections of the clouds and hints of stones beneath the clear water contrasting with patches of still clear water.

As can be seen with view of original, I created the reflection on the computer and played with adding texture with a nod to an element of corruption.

I show this original as I been wondering whether a few select images I have found showed be used without editing and in their natural size and form. I will show more development of this idea next month.

Major Project – Test Pieces #01 – Corruption

I will show a series of test pieces and my thinking behind these based upon my research and on feedback as well as using the creative process as a way to discover.

In this month’s post I show work continuing my exploration into glitch art and the accidental corruption of image files on my home computer because of a video card which is no longer supported by Adobe Photoshop. I could change the card but like the accidental nature of these images over which I have no control. My tutor suggested that this could be aligned to feelings of death which for most of us, is outwith our control.

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Video Card Error

I started to save these examples of accidental corruption. Below I show some examples. These have not been subject to any manual edit.

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Corruption Example #02

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Corruption Examples #12

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Corruption Example #11

I also started to experiment with trying to manually create the glitches and in subverting the original images. I did this through using glitch tutorials I found online and learning how to manually shift the colour paths and channels in an image file. I also experimented with extreme colour and contrast shifts. Below I show a selection of examples of these tests.

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Corruption Examples #14

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Corruption Example #15

In these works I ask myself, how do these images make me feel, do these speak to me of the liminal death space and do I like any of these pieces?

My favourite is corruption example #09 which I think I like because of its simplicity. The video card error has filled 2/3rds of the image with a red cast. Could this be blood or is it reminiscent of a sunset? The colour shift from red to original also produces an obvious barrier.

My image example #14 was originally a picture of the texture of velvet of chairs in a concert hall with the metal folding mechanism and armrest.I was attracted to the shape and colour but does this corruption speak to me of death or just of confusion? Does it need to be part of a larger work?

© Richard Dalgleish, 2024, Corruption Example #15-original

All in all, an interesting start but at the same time oddly unsatisfying. For this reason, I worked on some images using album images as an extension of the image I liked best in this test. These are shown at following link:

Major Project – Test Pieces #02 – Album Images

Work in Progress, Reflection and Planning

The course notes divide work for this month into 3 exercises and a research task looking at a case study. I find this too prescriptive so will cover them in my own way.

I have spend time thinking about my project. I would say this is the foundations for a plan but that a detailed plan lies ahead.

Part I – Observations on planning for Major Project

My chosen subject of the liminal space surrounding death is an ideal project to explore through the liminal medium of photography. Photography shows what is to come and that which has already passed. Photography is often used to try and preserve a sense of life when in reality it preserves a sense of loss. Having said this, how do I go about throwing the idea of the reason why I create my work to the forefront and at the same time don’t make this obvious or repulsive? If the concept behind my art is the basic idea of confronting our mortality, then how to engage with my audience through my ideas and the presentation of my work and at the same time how not convey the meaning until the end? Much here to consider.

It is interesting to me that one of the exercises from last month was to draft a project plan with detailed timeframes, a breakdown of costs and funding, practice and research outcomes and more. This plan, the coursework suggests, should be 1,200 words. I read this and have been thinking about it but it still feels way too early for me as if it putting the cart before the horse. In my practice, I don’t feel ready to detail such specific elements of my plan when I have not yet decided how my idea will develop. I note that one ask for month 2 is to revise that plan from month 1. It feels like one of the strange ideas we come across now and again with OCA coursework.

Before I can produce any kind of detailed plan I must first look at the most basic considerations for my project and practice:

keep working creatively, trying different ideas and techniques and slowly refining the visual expression of my thoughts.
As part of my existing experimentation, I bought an old photograph album and several job lots of old photographs and some individual old photos which interested me. One of these came from Germany and I wondered whether I would notice any obvious differences in the images which interested me, from ones I had used in the past from the UK.
I also built myself a copy stand from a chopping board, some plumber’s pipe and a floor flange to which I added a clamp for the camera and some spirit levels. I will use this when I digitise the old photos and to ensure the work is level. Such manual tasks give me time and space to consider my practice as I work.
If, at the heart of my thinking is to build some form of exhibition around an idea, how would I present that idea? As part of this, I will research other practitioners
Research conceptual art and the idea of the presentation of an idea over a ‘traditional photography exhibition’
Research other conceptual artists using photography. This will help me think of my own personal journey.
My research, creative experimentation and then feedback and reflection, which I used in 3.2 will continue for my major project. One helpful suggestion from Jane Weinmann’s Case Study in the course notes was to “share your work and ideas often – even if you think it is not ready”. Another idea to “be open to ideas from many different places”.

I had thoughts around engagement with other artists and maybe residencies, and while I will look at these and do not reject such input at this early stage, it seems that these depend upon finding some basics about my work and the direction I want to go. One thing I have done is build a website, separate from my OCA blog. This is specifically to act as a way to showcase some of my work so that when I do need to approach outside partners, they have somewhere they can come to gain a sense of my creative interests.

Part ii – A worked example

My tutor described to me a conceptual art project. This was made by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon who works with photography, video and film. This particular work by Gordon is called “30 Seconds Text” and was made in 1996. It surrounds experimentation conducted by a French doctor, Jacques Beaurieux, into victims of those executed by guillotine. After the execution of Henri Languille in 1905, the doctor asked the severed head to blink to try and gauge residual consciousness of the head. His experiments showed that after 30 seconds responses faded. This is the same period a lightbulb is illuminated on some text in Gordon’s work. This work made me think about how long it takes to die. From that starting point, how long might it take to cross the River Styx from life to death? These two examples focussed on the dead person yet as my work has shown, the liminal threshold of death is not just a space for the dying but also for those who work with those close to death and those in the throws of grief. When I ask how long it takes to cross the River Styx, do I mean how long does grief last? Or how long before the rites for the dead have been completed and the living have found a resting place for their memories of the dead person and found a way to accommodate their own sense of grief? In terms of memory of the dead and of our own grief, these are all things which fade and eventually vanish leaving no trace behind. Visit an old graveyard and look at the abandoned gravestones, left to weeds and waste, cracked stone and erosion. Where is the grief for the people buried here and the memories of these people and what they once were? Is existence within grief a balance or seesaw with different aspects of life and of memory weighing down on either side of the liminal threshold?

There are some basic foundations in this example.

How long do the dead and the living exist in the liminal gateway of death?
Our loved ones and ourselves will all vanish from the world as if we were never here. What traces do we leave behind and how long do these last?
The passage of time and when we die or how long we experience grief are outwith our control.
Should art which tries to make sense of this part of life, our transient nature and our lack of control be controlled or created with the same transience and lack of control?

I have wondered about how to engage with my audience. I had thought of an enclosed exhibition space such as a boat in the dark or a coffin. Spaces the audience could step down into and which I could fill with a digital exhibition space. Are these ideas too claustrophobic? I also wondered in the past about placing a child’s coffin in an exhibition space and asking the audience to write memories onto pieces of paper and place these into the coffin. However, is the coffin, and especially the child’s coffin, too in your face and obvious? Am I forcing my idea down the throat of my audience? I wondered about how to construct an exhibition which was more collaborative and less obviously about me with more space for the audience. I mentioned the see-saw or balance at the very point of death and with my work arranged around this balance on the floor and walls. I could build a seesaw to form a centrepiece of my exhibition. The audience could be asked to write thoughts of death, loss, grief and memory and place their pieces of paper on either side of the balance depending on where on the balance between life and death their thoughts feel right. So, with the balance made from heavy wood, the balance would subtly shift as the weight of paper is so slight compared with the construction of a seesaw.

There is potential for a second part of exhibition, a retrospective where I decide what to do with the pieces of paper from my audience. If paper is very light such as rich paper, could the audience on the last day walk to river with me and throw the memories into the water? This would mimic the casting of Rebecca’s ashes into a river.

These questions are in part about time but also about our relationship with the dead and also with our own mortality.

I have been working on some creative test pieces which might not be an end in themselves but instead allow me to explore methods of working and different outcomes. I will present these for peer feedback and from there will be better equipped to pen a reflective statement of my earlky work in 3.3.

Exercise 2: Ethics

What does ethics mean to me in my photography and in particular to my major project? My project has obvious ethical considerations as I explore subjects surrounding death which might cause discomfort or psychological impacts to my audience. Is it enough to be up front and honest about what my work is about and then to present my potential audience of the choice of walking away or engaging with my work? I think that this would mean that my work must be presented in a way that this choice is available and my work should not be presented in a way that people who have not made this conscious choice could stumble across my work. This would preclude exhibitions spaces where public going about their lives such as hospital corridors, railways stations, outdoor spaces. It also means I would have to think carefully about choice of venue. For example, a hospital which contains the sick and their relatives. How might they respond to a project about loss. Similarly, if project shown in church hall used by the elderly. These considerations a balance as I also feel my work has beneficial element and can help open thoughts and discussion around death. Should this discussion element be part of the exhibition where audience have chance to feed back and to interact with the artist?

Just from my brief thoughts above, I think that framing my motives in a statement of ethics will help to evolve my practice over time. In my practice, I have to tread a fine line between what I want to capture to try to tell stories through my work, and moral considerations when I tackle subject areas which can be challenging and painful.

The points I raise above are the beginnings of an empathetic understanding of my project through the eyes of others and potential impacts on them. Part of this ethics discourse is about describing potential risks and thinking of ways to mitigate such risks. If my work challenges conventions, I need to find ways not to make my work less upsetting and more bland or palatable or ‘middle of the road’ but to recognise the potential risks to others and to see how such risks can be managed.

Ethics of my major project is something I will think on as I work and will return to time and time again throughout this year.

Exercise 1: Reviewing and Situating Your Practice

Produce a reflective document that articulates:

past trajectory of your topic, work already undertaken in previous units and that you intend to extend.
The context of your work within your specific topic
The broader discipline and a statement of intent for the final iteration of your topic and work
The rationale for your choices

The introduction to the course notes describes the major project as offering, “a platform to focus on a specialist area of enquiry and to undertake a substantial and sustained body of work. You will devise a project that allows you to explore a field of interest and to further develop your emerging practice.” My work on this project has its roots in the death of my daughter in 2015 and her illness starting in 2014. There was a long period where I was lost in grief and didn’t even understand that I was grieving and searching for a way to express myself. My photography and my research into this area have provided the outlet which I needed and the understanding which I craved. In 2021, at the end of level 2, I started to look at the medical scan and re-thinking this as children’s games or as works placed on the art gallery wall. As I began level 3, my knowledge increased and my creative work headed in different directions as I looked at the symbolism surrounding death and touched upon memory and loss. Later, I worked to express the liminal threshold of death and did collaborative works exploring text and combining my work with folklore and the forest.

That gives a view of the track which my research and creative interests have been following. Going forward into 3.3, I have given thought to where my interests will develop.

· I will continue to develop and mature my work around what the liminal means to me.

· I been experimenting with the corruption of the image which I feel sits well with the liminal.

· I will consider if physical and tactile work or digital work or a mixture of both best suits my practice.

· Am interested in the space between having been inspired by the work of John Baldessari. To me, that space can be thought of if I imagine a photograph of a child and another photograph of that child in old age. What goes between these two images?

· I have been thinking about a multidisciplinary approach and bringing more video and especially sound to my practice. I think that a liminal space consisting of only visual elements is missing much of the information we use in memory.

· I have also wondered about the use of a child-sized coffin. Could I create this digitally and it becomes a space an audience can enter and fill it with sound and images so that the coffin becomes my gallery? Or should I turn the coffin into a bench, mirroring early work where I change the context of an object?

I can see that my work has been maturing and that as my knowledge increases, so does how I engage with what makes me me. My art and my learning are tools which interact with how I live my life.

For the coming year, I have identified some external sources I can use which will help to refine my practice.

· I have found a Museum of Loss and Renewal which provides space for artist residencies. This is divided between two sites which focus on Air, Sea and Soil based in the Orkneys and on Place, People and Time based in Italy. Will be interesting to investigate this further. The advantages of such a residency would be in exposing me to practitioners working in my own field with the potential for collaborative work. It would also be interesting to communicate my ideas with strangers and take their ideas on board.

· I don’t know if there is scope and interest on all sides to extend some of my collaboration work from last year.

· I want to post work for public viewing, for competitions, and exhibitions. This will be a valuable experience in its own right plus will provide useful feedback.

· I want to consider publishing written work and how this fits with my practice and future study.

There is a networking element here which builds my contacts from in-University peer groups and starts to include more and more external partners. One of first steps for such engagement is to build myself a website to showcase some of my work and ideas.

I need to consider the skills and experiences my practice needs and then plan on how I identify gaps and how I increase my knowledge to fill these gaps. I have started a crude skills planner which provides me with broad indicators of progress in this area. One part of expanding skills with video, sounds, exhibitions, residencies and more is the cost. Do I investigate the potential for grants? This in itself is another skill and experience. If I need more technical equipment is an alternative to approach a bricks and mortar university Photography department and ask if I could borrow some kit?

I have thought about whether my work is suited to a book or an exhibition but not clear on this yet. I know that hospitals near to me have exhibition spaces in their corridors which I had thought might be appropriate for my work. However, on recent trips to hospitals, I have watched how the public engages with the work on the walls. They often seem lost in thoughts or are hurrying to get to appointments or to visit patients. Many have little time for art. I have also noticed that much of the art tends to be brightly coloured and upbeat. How would my darker, more thoughtful work fit into such a space? I asked peers about this and a helpful piece of feedback was that my work might be seen as challenging particularly to the sick or to the elderly. Maybe a separate and distinct space for an exhibition which an audience has to make a conscious effort to attend is more relevant rather than using a space where people can come into and encounter my art unintentionally. At the same time there is an element to my work which could be thought of as beneficial. Interesting points to consider.

In addition to work within 3.3, I have identified some interests for future projects which I won’t have time for in 3.3 and might just about cram into this lifetime.

I mentioned my dissertation earlier, and it is interesting to consider how my research and any written work will continue in the coming year which I assume is not going to be 100% creative work. In turn, I wonder about my post-graduate direction. Should I take on board another undergraduate course to broaden my skills? Things such as Sound Art or Fine Arts interest me. Or do I look at a Masters to continue my research interests? Whatever I decide, I can’t see a point where I only write or I only produce creative works as each depends on the other. I also wonder if I looked at future studies how a bricks and mortar University would feel in comparison to home-study.

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