Blog Post: Border Patrol
09.20.2011
This post is part of Border Town Online, a digital complement to the Border Town Design Studio which will be on display in Detroit starting on September 21st. You can find the rest of the posts at dividedcities.com.
Several years ago I was invited by an acquaintance to dinner. In the entryway of their apartment was a large color photograph of a naked woman in a classic pinup pose. The photo would have been sexy in that vintage girl-next-door way, shot against a soft pale-blue background, hands up to her head gently holding back a cascade of natural blond hair. But instead of a soft pouty expression, the woman's hair framed a gaping, empty hole, which echoed the large white punches made in her chest and the wide white circle between her legs.
I didn't know our host well enough to comment until later in the evening, when I learned the image was part of a collection his grandfather had. Apparently, working at a mail-order photo-processor, it was his grandfather's job to work as censor. Using a strict set of guidelines and a metal punch, he selectively defaced customers' negatives, printing the results and sending everything back in this new, more appropriate form.
There is much that is amusing in this anecdote (at the time I found the mental image of the inevitable outcome hilarious: a desk strewn with tiny cutouts of nipples) but the disturbing nature of the end result was what stood out. In a bid to make the picture less objectionable, the censors had made the photo far more violent and transgressive than it actually was, evoking dismemberment and a total loss of identity in a way I found frightening.
The playful look I imagined the woman gave (or feigned for) the camera was excised, emphasizing the uncomfortableness of the pose and the canned background, bringing attention to the most unseemly parts of the process. The image, meant to at least simulate the intimate, had been blatantly "handled;" sharp-edged and mechanical, threatening and violent. The normal border of the photograph, a natural horizon we accept as the edges of a magic window, was made intensely obvious by the missing pieces in the middle. Not only the mental illusion of an intimate, erotic encounter, but the illusion of photography was broken - the process itself was made aggressively visible.
I had more or less forgotten this image until a few years ago, when virtually the same technique (in inverse) was discovered by the internet as a meme known as bubbling, where celebrity photos are "undressed" by carefully masking clothing. A kind of reverse-censorship in the service of titillation.
Read the rest (and comment) on HiLoBrow.com...
This post is part of Border Town Online, a digital complement to the Border Town Design Studio which will be on display in Detroit starting on September 21st. You can find the rest of the posts at dividedcities.com.
Several years ago I was invited by an acquaintance to dinner. In the entryway of their apartment was a large color photograph of a naked woman in a classic pinup pose. The photo would have been sexy in that vintage girl-next-door way, shot against a soft pale-blue background, hands up to her head gently holding back a cascade of natural blond hair. But instead of a soft pouty expression, the woman's hair framed a gaping, empty hole, which echoed the large white punches made in her chest and the wide white circle between her legs.
I didn't know our host well enough to comment until later in the evening, when I learned the image was part of a collection his grandfather had. Apparently, working at a mail-order photo-processor, it was his grandfather's job to work as censor. Using a strict set of guidelines and a metal punch, he selectively defaced customers' negatives, printing the results and sending everything back in this new, more appropriate form.
There is much that is amusing in this anecdote (at the time I found the mental image of the inevitable outcome hilarious: a desk strewn with tiny cutouts of nipples) but the disturbing nature of the end result was what stood out. In a bid to make the picture less objectionable, the censors had made the photo far more violent and transgressive than it actually was, evoking dismemberment and a total loss of identity in a way I found frightening.
The playful look I imagined the woman gave (or feigned for) the camera was excised, emphasizing the uncomfortableness of the pose and the canned background, bringing attention to the most unseemly parts of the process. The image, meant to at least simulate the intimate, had been blatantly "handled;" sharp-edged and mechanical, threatening and violent. The normal border of the photograph, a natural horizon we accept as the edges of a magic window, was made intensely obvious by the missing pieces in the middle. Not only the mental illusion of an intimate, erotic encounter, but the illusion of photography was broken - the process itself was made aggressively visible.
I had more or less forgotten this image until a few years ago, when virtually the same technique (in inverse) was discovered by the internet as a meme known as bubbling, where celebrity photos are "undressed" by carefully masking clothing. A kind of reverse-censorship in the service of titillation.
Read the rest (and comment) on HiLoBrow.com...
The Meaning of Work
Interactive sound piece with video created for the 4th Moscow Biennale INTERIOR-ITY show
September 20, 2011 - October 30, 2011
Work is always being done. But where, and by whom, and to what end? Mixing ideas of surveillance, remote control and the atmosphere of the Cold War, The Meaning of Work is an interactive audio piece featuring original video loops and audio sampled from The Conet Project (a collection of "numbers stations"). By selecting objects on the desktop, the viewer can induce the hidden operator to work: infinitely transcribing, typing and recomposing the layered, haunted soundtrack.
September 20, 2011 - October 30, 2011
Work is always being done. But where, and by whom, and to what end? Mixing ideas of surveillance, remote control and the atmosphere of the Cold War, The Meaning of Work is an interactive audio piece featuring original video loops and audio sampled from The Conet Project (a collection of "numbers stations"). By selecting objects on the desktop, the viewer can induce the hidden operator to work: infinitely transcribing, typing and recomposing the layered, haunted soundtrack.
Working From Home (Video 1:55)
November 6 - December 12, 2009
Video piece created for Riders on the Train exhibit,
Axiom Center for New & Experimental Media
Jamaica Plain, MA
I have always loved subterranean passageways and subways for the way in which they carry you through them in odd little bubbles of climate controlled comfort. The lights inside glint off the interior glass and prevent you from seeing what's really out there, but you know: there are creatures, old stations, homeless camps, cold war bomb shelters, thirty foot rats. It's a voyeristic game really, flying by at speed, only occasionally glimpsing curious shapes, spaces just beyond reach.
I commute on the subway almost every day, except when I work at home. This short video blends an audio clip of my commute with a subway-like view of my house (beginning next to my desk and ending somewhere in the dining room.) Here be dragons, or dogs at least, and who knows what else.
Video piece created for Riders on the Train exhibit,
Axiom Center for New & Experimental Media
Jamaica Plain, MA
I have always loved subterranean passageways and subways for the way in which they carry you through them in odd little bubbles of climate controlled comfort. The lights inside glint off the interior glass and prevent you from seeing what's really out there, but you know: there are creatures, old stations, homeless camps, cold war bomb shelters, thirty foot rats. It's a voyeristic game really, flying by at speed, only occasionally glimpsing curious shapes, spaces just beyond reach.
I commute on the subway almost every day, except when I work at home. This short video blends an audio clip of my commute with a subway-like view of my house (beginning next to my desk and ending somewhere in the dining room.) Here be dragons, or dogs at least, and who knows what else.