Log
I’m not motivated to make things because i don’t think anybody would care, and what’s the point of making stuff for the drawer. Art is meant to be seen.
The Library of Babel has procedurally generated 410 page books in shelves of 32 volumes, walls of 5 shelves in hexagons (blocks/rooms) of 4 walls. So 640 books/hexagon, 262 400 pages/hexagon.
It’s all possible 410 page books.
What project could i make with this? Print out a book with a specific reference? Print out some pages and do something with them? Use the text as a basis for something? Find english words (library has a tool built in), then use that pattern as a basis for photo composition? The possibilities are endless and I’m not sure I like any of them.
I’m going through sorting/archiving my notes app once again. But I keep coming back to the thought that instead of notes searchable, tagged, categorized by topic, it feels better to use this place as a sort of notes/journal spot. It’s more sequential, not structured at all, but works like my brain works: it is organized by which day I was thinking about a certain thing.
The Library of Babel is about meaninglessness and the human search for meaning in spite of it. It si also about futility: searching for meaningful text in randomness is both useless, meaningless and unlikely to succeed.
So I’m thinking about picking one hexagon, and printing all the books in it, one by one. Binding them, making basically small artifacts of meaninglessness.
One book is 410 pages.
Printing in a self service print shop on A4 paper, 4-up (so I end up with an A6 sized book) is about €13. This doesn’t include binding, I’m not even sure what binding technique would work.
Printing from a print-on-demand service would be around €20 plus shipping.
With 640 books in a hexagon, printing out an entire hexagon would come out to about €8 320 plus binding.
Other uses for the Library:
- use text as light-gray background
- print single pages on small cards, let them mix
- write a script to iterate over all 640 books of a given hexagon and check them, word by word, against an English dictionary to pull out all coherent words (
/usr/share/dict/words has a decent English word list) - do the same, but without a computer, by hand
Nine weeks ago, in 2447W I wrote about working on the important, currently relevant but unpopular and unfun topics. I said that:
“It’s not fun, (…) but it’s the thing that can make what I do more than a self centered hobby.”
Today I’m thinking about that again. That post feels a bit self important now, but some thoughts in there I still think about now.
The central tension defining my relationship with photography is the tension between working on what matters, out of a sense of duty and doing things that feel fun, regardless of importance. In 2447W I argued for the former: photography is a power that comes with responsibility. Today, I’m not so sure.
I think this tension is a somewhat modern problem. It comes from the fundamental irreconcilability of our culture’s multiple, conflicting messages to us.
On the one hand, we have the imperative to be useful, contributing members of society who do their best to improve it and the lives of people in it. Responsibility, duty are somewhat old fashioned values today, but they still linger and their essence still forms the basis of many parts of our value system.
On the other hand we are bombarded with neoliberal-capitalist-individualistic messaging. Be yourself, me-time, self love, self-actualization, have fun, be fun to be around, positive thinking, good vibes only, self-expression. All these and many more concepts and phrases that all say the same thing: your purpose in life should be to maximize your personal enjoyment. Even socially minded work is often framed in terms of it being “fulfilling” to the person doing it.
And here I am, sitting in the middle of this soup of ideas, imprinted with all of them in varying degrees, with a nice little add-on: I have ADHD so I find it very hard to do anything I don’t find enjoyment or excitement in. So besides 2447W I also have 2503W that kinda argues the opposite:
“I want to have fun, without thinking about where that image fits in a larger body of work or in a career.”
At the end of the day this is all just a lot of overthinking. I am easily influenced so whichever side I was last exposed to tends to have more sway over my thinking. When I talk to photojournalists and documentary photographers, I think I need to be an unsung hero of documenting history as it unfolds. If the next day I hang out with artists who use photography for personal expression, I come home thinking about playing around with the medium and how to journal my emotions through images.
I have trouble figuring out what I actually want, independent of wanting to fit in with either crowd.
Photography has been an important part of my life for decades. I took it up as a teenager, and have always felt it fulfilled me and gave me energy rather than took it. The best times were when I didn’t try to define myself or have a larger purpose in mind, I just photographed intuitively. So maybe that’s the answer, stop thinking so much, just shoot what I feel moved to shoot and ignore what I don’t feel like shooting. The Crossroads of Should and Must and all that. (Although I’m not super in love with the type of person that essay talks to or super sure about that framing. The core idea works for me though: I always know what to do, I feel it. Maybe time to follow that a bit more.)
Well, anyways.
Quick note today on thoughts around feeling blocked with photography.
Got into mode of only big, only project, only what matters. No play, no fun, no practice and crucially no building step by step. I want to make a zine, a book, a complete project. Then I feel lost and confused when editing/sequencing. That’s cause I never built up to doing a 10-20 image sequence. I jumped straight there.
Next thought:
Remember Dan Milnor’s picture package videos. Idea is to build a 3-5 image sequence, more conscise, with this few pics it can be more focused, concentrate on a specific event/moment/idea/place. With a 10+ picture set/essay you need more chapters, you need progression. 10 pics about the same thing are boring, 3 are thorough. 1 for context, 1 for the core, 1 for additional detail. Dan’s examples are great, too. Build visually, build content wise, but 3-5 pics don’t need to be a whole story. Or at least not a detailed one. 3 pics can be a glimpse, an impression. 10 pics need to have a developed narrative.
A picpack doesn’t need to be all event, all action. Do detail, do characteristic sections of a bigger thing. Can’t show it all, but show the core and hint at it all. Atmosphere, not documentation.
So I’ll do picture packages from now on. Shoot for them, and only work in packages. Practice, practice, practice. No big finished story, just 3-5 pic packages.
Next thought:
Need to put the picpacks somewhere. fono.day/pics is good for this. Also want to do tangible stuff. Idea: 6-fold zines. Easy to make. Has 4 internal pages -> 4 pictures. Front dated + little text if needed, title or sg. Back can have another couple sentences. Pictures inside. Perfect! Shoot and edit picpacks, focus on what’s at hand, mini stories from my day. (Story, not plot! Not all action.) Make 6-fold of it right away, print 1 copy, fold, rejoice, put in a box. Do this again and again and again. Not much more effort than putting pics up here.
Next thought:
Need a frictionless workflow. Workflow here is great cause I don’t need to faff with anything. Convert to JPEG in camera, transfer to iPhone, select, send to laptop, put in md file, git commit, push. Very easy, focus on selecting and sequencing, don’t need to do anything “around” it. I want a similar workflow for 6 fold zines.
Idea: pandoc to generate PDF from md. Make it similar to this site: I just make md files, link the pics in them, run a command, bammm! it’s built.
Found a guide that could be a starting point. Just need to make a good template to rotate and place the pages, after that I have a script I can run that generates a print-ready PDF for a 6fold from a md. Big success!
Next thought:
Cross process effect on Ricoh GR. And the high-contrast BW effect. Play. Don’t make clean stuff always, not everything is serious business. Not everything is cool, objective documentary work. Look at dirtyharrry. Fenomenal stuff. Playful, but still valid. Why do I feel that anything that has effects or a playful look isn’t valid? Just need to make good photographs either way, filter won’t save a bad one.
Well, anyways.