One of our most influential commentators on photography investigates the future of visual media as the digital revolution transforms images, changing the way we conceptualize the world. From photos of news events taken on cell phones to the widespread use of image surveillance, digital media has fundamentally altered the way we receive visual information. Simultaneously, the increased manipulation of photographs has made photography suspect as reliable documentation, raising questions about its role in recounting personal and public histories. In a world beset by critical problems and ambiguous boundaries, Ritchin argues that it is time to begin energetically exploring possibilities created by technological innovations, and to use them to better understand our rapidly changing world.
Slitscan imaging techniques are used to create static images of time-based phenomena. In traditional film photography, slit scan images are created by exposing film as it slides past a slit-shaped aperture. In the digital realm, thin slices are extracted from a sequence of video frames, and concatenated into a new image.
Nowdays we have devices of «digital memory» (Clipnarrative, Mecam…etc) that offer us the possibility of storage our daily live for an affordable price and little effort.
I´m really interesting in all the questions that this fact open about a possible future where we can rewind our memory everytime we need and the consequences of this permanent digital memory. We know that the act of remembering is as important as the act of forgetting (We need both in order to have a healthy mind). But beyond this questions I want to use this devices in order to experiment with multiperspective narrative, memory narrative and digital visualization of forgetting.
I´ve been thinking about create the following exercise (this is an idea in development).
1. Four people are asked to use for one day this tiny camera.
2. These four people have to be a group (friends, family etc) who are going to be part or attend to the same event that day.
3.The event should be a meaningful event for that group. Of course the most interesting the event and the group of people are the more interesting will be the exercise. So this is a very important point, but I need time to think and research about it.
4. Days after the event they will be asked about what they remember about that day (They will be asked to try to remember everything hour per hour).Their memories will be recorded.
5.The memories of each person will be check with the image they recorded.
6.The image will be distort through a process called «Databending» creating an effect called «Wordpad Effect». This software disrupt, intentionally, the information contained within a file. The level of distorsion in the image will be directly proportional to the level of forgetting in their memories. So if certain moment is remebered by the person very well the image will be very clear without «Wordpad effect». In the case a moment is forgotten the image will be highly distorsionated by this effect.
7. I will try to recreate that day an their experience mixing togueter all their memories within an Spatial Montage, where we can see and hear different interpretations of the same day and verify their memories. I think I can create an interesting exercise with all these elements but I have to think more about it. So…
«When Diaghilev began again producing Russian ballets, some critics complained that Petrushka’s decorations had lost the startling polychromy they originally possessed: yet they were the same ones, perfectly conserved. Diaghilev saw himself forced into heightening the tones to put them on par with the spectacular memory that remained of these.»
Around the Day in Eighty Worlds (La Vuelta al Día en Ochenta Mundos). Julio Cortázar.
I’m interested in ‘lies’ and their conscious and unconscious mechanisms to transform truth; the daily lie that lives within each of us as a mode of survival or as a reflexive act, a natural and spontaneous lie. I’m interested in the creative lie that enables biographies to become artistic manifestations; the lie that permits the spectacular memory of the sets of Petrushka and the lie that rewrites history books. I’m interested in lies, in all their variety. A ‘lie’ called fiction or fantasy and that is capable of slipping into reality and transforming itself into truth.
Postproduction is a way of ‘lying’. Perhaps that is why it interests me so much, not only as a means to an end but also as an end in itself, as an artistic expression. A postproduction that is capable of creating multiple layers, new meanings and original perspectives of the research material. I’m interested in everything related to postproduction, the processes that can manipulate, sample and forge, and their translation into an artistic and cinematographic language.
But if I’m interested in lies, its because above all I’m interested in truth, in being honest in the process of profound change that my work finds itself in.
