The Slide Hack Experiment

11/21/13

Im always seeking new ways to create and communicate through visual imagery. Even if I don’t have a specific concept or meaning to what I generate. Sometimes the subject matter is simply “making art” at first. I love the fact that today’s technology provides us with so many ways to be experimental. Not solely based on the use of computers, but to have the option to mix the analog and the outdated with the new and the advanced. I feel that one of the most traditional roles of any artist is to generate new ways of looking at the world, objects and things. I am lucky to work simultaneously between 4 universities here in NY. Over the last five years I have discovered that some of the old slide libraries have since been dormant and left abandoned. I have taken advantage of working with some of these precious fossils. Yes, I called them fossils, but I find the first series of experiments to be jewels of new awareness. As an undergraduate art student many years ago, I had an abundant art history course load of requirements. Slide lectures seemed like they would never end, depending on the professor, some were very limiting and boring, and some were energetic and enthusiastic. Either way, I always enjoyed what I would be exposed to. Back then, I never considered viewing the slide projector as a medium for future art making.

I documented this image as a ready made. The slides were bunched up together and sorted completely out of category and time period. This was the last remnant of who had last used the library and returned all of the slides back in any which way. Or perhaps it was the job of a staff member to simply clean the  area up, and this is the way things were placed for storage? I find beauty in this as a concept. It is the remains of a situational narrative, one of which that my own perception has now created. Before the layering experiments took place, I began taking composite photos of four intentionally selected slides arranged together. I found a lot of narrative and contrast by placing the historical images together. It was through this process that I decided to layer two slides on top of each other to see what would happen. The process is intuitive and immediate. I simply love this inspired energy in and of itself.

Below is the first series of “hacks” as layered images. By simply laying the slides on top of each other with the strong light source from underneath them, the images are generated by analog transparency. The images will be turned into “something else” in the way that I decide to present them. Much more to come on this as the series develops.

I idea of context and juxtaposition occurred to me after I started to see images that I liked. I liked many of them, but not every two or three layers worked out well compositionally. I had to make edits quickly, or at least I thought I did.

Presentation? This is the aspect that I am working on now. Several of the images are also being turned into animations for video, and as GIF animations. Part two coming soon.

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