Mechanism at the 2013 Patio Art Show

"They look like sound."

It's hard to be more public than having the images on a storefront in my own neighbourhood, and the Annex Patio Art Show was a huge success for me as I presented my most unconventional works. Last weekend was the first time I've shown the Mechanism series to a public audience, and largest body of work I've ever shown.

"I don't know what these are, but I like them."

While there's nothing in the world that looks like the Mechanism images, we have a natural desire to place things in context and name them. 'Every Crowd a Voice' was immediately identified as a sound wave; 'Progression and Process' and 'Continuation and Voice' strengthened the communication theme. Continuation and Projection and Continuation and Structure brought across the idea of urbanism, while the dynamism of Every Voice a Shout made it the show favourite.

"It's like DJ'ing with light. It gives me chills."

The Mechanism images are recordings of movement with light – while the capture itself is fundamentally photographic, each creation is a unique performance. Each has a goal and intention, but there's no feedback from the process until it is complete. And although the creation of the images is completely digital, they are typically no more a product of computer manipulation than a scanned film negative would be.

"I can almost hear them."

The ever-expanding Mechanism project is larger than the images themselves, and includes composited audio of the sounds of our city. A five-minute high definition video includes a small sample of these recordings, set into the sounds of the creation of the Mechanism images. Longer tracks, and higher-definition images, will be available at a later date.

A huge thanks to everyone who stopped to say hello at the Patio Art Show; I appreciate being a part of your neighbourhood and your weekend. I hope you stay tuned for more developments both with this series and with my other work.


Comments, questions, thoughts? You can find me on Twitter or via e-mail.

Mechanism – The Video

Now on Vimeo is a video presentation of selected images from the Mechanism series, with a soundtrack assembled from audio recorded as part of the process.

Mechanism from matthew robertson on Vimeo.

The audio track doesn't reward ambivalence. Played at a low to moderate volume it will simply be an annoying drone, but at a higher volume there's subtly and nuance that can be appreciated. The base track is a combination of recordings of the motor in the flatbed scanner that captured the Mechanism images, and they have been layered, shifted, and stretched to create interference and sounds that didn't previously exist. Also layered into the base is the underlying rattle from an industrial heater in a parking garage, which what what started me down the path that has brought me to here.

The sounds that are woven into the soundtrack include eastbound and westbound traffic recorded from between their respective express and collector lanes of Highway 401, subway trains, both curving between Spadina and St George stations and passing overhead on the Prince Edward (Bloor Street) Viaduct, the lunch crowd at a local food court, concrete pumpers building the foundations for the future One Bloor condo tower, the rattles of a 72A Pape TTC bus on an empty run downtown, and the late-night footsteps of people walking past in the long hallway of Spadina subway station. As with the images in the series, the sounds are an expression of the city that I live in.

It can also be found at vimeo.com/matthewrobertson/mechanism

The images used in the video are also in Mechanism – The Book, which can be ordered from Blurb either as an 8x10 softcover or as an electronic download.

A number of large prints will also be on display as part of the Annex Patio Art Show, this coming weekend of July 13 and 14, 2013.


Comments, questions, thoughts? You can find me on Twitter or via e-mail.

Annex Patio Art Show • July 13 & 14

The Mechanism series will be on display as part of the Annex Patio Art Show on the second weekend in July.

Over forty artists will be taking part in this event that puts art, and its creators, directly on the street in my own neighbourhood. I can't think of a better place to show this work, which is itself built on my experience of the city.


Comments, questions, thoughts? You can find me on Twitter or via e-mail.

Mechanism Forms

As an experimental and process-driven series, it makes sense that the Mechanism images are made with a scanner – which is, really, just a specialized kind of camera. It captures very high resolution images, but only one line and one colour of pixels at a time. Scanning clear plastic lets me choose different surfaces and shapes to image, and the way they're moved during the scan changes the line and form. Every result is unique.

The detail from 'Structure and Voice', above, shows only a fraction of the full image. At the moment the Mechanism series exists as display prints that are approximately 16x20", and their final format has yet to be decided.

Given their provenance and individuality, it's unlikely that one consistent physical form will suit all of these images. As a finished work some could be injet on paper, with others printed on acrylic or metal; I've always wanted to use vinyl and the 'Continuation' family might finally be my chance. Others might never have a physical form, and be projected or displayed electronically. Collaborations also interests me: creating the physical object specifically to suit the space it will exist in. And given how intertwined this series is with the sound of the city, some form of multimedia presentation seems inevitable.


Comments, questions, thoughts? You can find me on Twitter or via e-mail.

Things II

The thing itself is not the subject: there's no requirement for the physical thing that's photographed to also be the subject of the photograph. A photo of a plastic cup could be about that plastic cup, but it could also be about consumption, disposability, the shape of the city, or any number of other things that have absolutely nothing to do with plastic-cup-ness at all.

The subject of the Mechanism series, among other things, is loss, desire, sound, communication, hope, anxiety, discord, anger, stasis, collapse, and redemption. It's about feeling unheard and out of place in the environment of our own creation; it's the effort and striving of connecting and communicating across the din of our surroundings. It's about how the essence of sound lies within noise, and that to listen to noise – to pay attention even when there's no locus of interest – will reveal pattern and value.

The fact that all of the Mechanism images were created with disposable plastic cups might mean something, but it doesn't need to. The thing itself is not the subject.


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Mechanism: Background

"Mechanism is a series echoing our built and acoustical environment."

I've been thinking a lot about sound recently.

I've owned a decent hand-held audio recorder for some time, and since the start of this year I've integrated it into my creative life. Using it is all about process, not any end result: my goal is simply to pay attention and find new ways of experiencing my surroundings. This, incidentally, is exactly what drew me to photography, and then as now I have no idea what the practical application of my efforts and interests will be, should one even exist.

So I was immersed in exploring audio when I started using a very rudimentary process to capture experimental images. Specifically, I had spent a couple of hours in a parking garage, recording the motors and rattles of ventilation fans and space heaters. An industrial, gritty environment was foremost in my mind, along with the tremendous resources that we yield to cars even in Toronto's downtown core. This kind of thought, of urbanism and sound and the spaces it occupies, is the core of Mechanism.


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Mechanism: Artist's Statement

The longing of patterns, the outcry of voice against interference, steadfast endurance through inexorable collapse: Mechanism echos our built and acoustical environment as we communicate through the overwhelming surroundings of our own creation.

The Mechanism images are products of the tools of our age: disposable dollar-store plastics and commodity electronics that are cheaper to replace than repair. What we see is the movement of these trivial objects recorded with light across time; the diversity of shape, colour, and line are the artifacts of an imperfect process that itself reflects the transience of both our efforts and their results.


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Titles

Sometimes titles are very easy. Many of my favourite photos are ones that I knew the name of as soon as I took them; occasionally I'll know the title first and need to create the photo that goes with it. Usually the title and image evolve together, and in rare instances they defy reconciliation.

I'm primarily drawn to words. When I turn the page in a book of photography, I will have read the complete caption before I even see the photograph that accompanies it. I grew up reading the writing on the back of shampoo bottles; I can even read through most of an artists' statement or the first few paragraphs of new camera press releases. I think in words, not images.

Having the right title for a photo or series is very important to me. A title is a way of summarizing the content, highlighting what's important, directing attention, or guiding the viewer's interpretation. I recently did a quick series of photos of the structure and light of a vast space; calling the series "Cathedral" perfectly sums up my feeling about being in this place, despite it being the underside of a highway bridge. It may be something of a cliché, but it communicates what I want the viewer to know.

My most recent body of work is almost entirely abstract, and finding a name for it has had me stumped for two months. But that usually tells me that I don't understand the work well enough yet. Perhaps it's because the series itself isn't as finished as I'd like to think that it is, or it might be because I need more time to understand what draws me to it… but to be honest it's almost certainly a combination of both.

Time will tell, as always.


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Things

The idea that I've been working through recently is the relevance of the thing that's being photographed to the photograph itself.

Of course the photograph of a thing is not the thing itself – you can't drink from a photo of a glass of water. This is both obvious and easy to forget as we live surrounded by photos that represent products and places we can relate to or imagine existing. Even in the realm of art – Art – there's an inclination to look at the thing and assume that it's the subject of the photograph.

My current series, which remains nameless, has almost no connection between the thing that's creating the image and the image that results from it. There are times when the thing can almost be distinguished, but it's not ever important to the subject of the photos themselves. In fact, it may even be detrimental to the image, because it's tempting to reduce understanding and interpreting down to a technical problem-solving exercise.

And that's my dilemma now. Art shouldn't need to be clever to work, but sometimes the process can add to the message, if they're complimentary.


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Technical Paths

In a recent Lenswork blog entry, Brooks Jensen writes: "I find more and more that artmaking has become an attempt to answer the simple question: In order to achieve my desired result, which technical path is best?"

I have to say that my efforts can certainly be described that way.

My typical approach is to decide what sort of results I want and then work backwards – forwards? – to determine the best tools to create them. Focal length, digital or film, shift lens or standard, large sensor or small, tripod or not: it's a problem-solving exercise designed to achieve the results that I've already thought of. I'm quite happy with my success rate with this approach, but it limits my scope for experimentation and play.

My newest portfolio project breaks that pattern while conforming to it. I'm back to using time and motion to capture images of things that don't really exist, guiding a process that depends on a certain unpredictability. The creative process is playful and unpredictable, but the results are processed, curated, and collected to form a distinct body of work. I choose and guide the results to look the way I want them to, even though the idea started with spontaneous play.

I'm incredibly lucky to have a lot of creatively exciting things going on right now, to the point where I'm gathering media and material far more quickly than I absorb it. That's not a bad problem to have, even though it plays havoc on my blogging time.


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