The Oscure Image
Simba Ncube
Simba Ncube
How can the obscure forms of an image challenge our conceptions of current mass media, though a contemporary lens
[ Reference Point ]
A statement from Benjamin’s insight here is that each human sensory perspective is not completely biological or natural. It is also historical. The ways people perceive change with social changes, or changes in ‘humanity’s entire mode of existence’. This sensory perspective can be challenged by forms of mass media thought history the evolution of mass media as resulted in a collective development on humans sensory perspective of mass media. It is important to understand and highlight that these developments are strongly influenced by cultural conversations and in terms of Benjamin's perspective it highlights film, radio TV, books and painting.
Benjamin continued to further highlight how the cultural conversations have resulted in new technologies changing our new sensory perspective and modes of thought, Benjamin describes us a “distracted masses”. I think this to be true when looking at our current day and one of the main forms of media consumption is the phone. Philosophize this breaks down this idea of distracted mass by Benjamin stating that “He actually talks at one point about how art that requires us to be absorbed into it to have an aesthetic experience is kind of an aggressive move by the artist, if you think about it. The artist is essentially holding the aesthetic experience hostage.” Further describing the distracted mass as people that absorb the wroks of art. In much of theses descriptions there is tensions between ideas of destruction and concentration as modes of thought when thinking about human forms of sensory perspective in how we position ourselves to absorb mass media.
Hito Steyerl has ideas of the poor image with I feel describe a methodology I can use when exploring the Benjamins philosophy on mass media. Her ideas give context to current day and how we can look to understand how Benjamins writing manifested itself in current day. Hito describes “poor images, imperfect cinema diminishes the distinctions between author and audience and merges life and art
Most of all, its visuality is resolutely compromised: blurred, amateurish, and full of artefacts.
[ Methods of Practice]
It's the idea of poor images having artefacts is something I would like to explore when exploring the modes of thought and sensory perspective.
Within this project, I will look to use the phone as a lease and the concept of building an obscure image in comparison to Hitos poor image. Looking at colour as something that will influence the process
The phone being a sketchy book was where I would experiment with my images and how I would capture the images, I was able to develop a process for achieving the aesthetic over time, as I was able to see a pattern of zooming in to the images and cropping and cutting the images. I will continue working with this method and adding further refinements throughout the project.
I want to look at expanding the image/film and its experience. I'm interested in the sensory experience and how this can influence a mode of thought when, A stares, dissect and shift into a contemplative state. I will continue to investigate this obscure image and where this is relevant in contemporary visual communication.
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