A fox II

Oh, a fox, I thought II
(scroll down to view the start of this dialogue) 

After processing the first image of the fox, and subsequently modifying it, I decided that there was scope for a better rendition. A return was a suitable response. To try again. This is different from a re-visit to make a time-lapse image of the scene, as I have done with other sites. 

So I headed back out. By placing the camera on an extended mono-pod and thrusting it up into the air I was able to make a composite image.

This is the result;

Oh, a fox, I thought version #2

A fox

Oh, a fox, I thought

Some time has past since I did this work, so this commentary has both the advantage and disadvantage of some time to reflect. The disadvantage is that I no longer feel connected to the experience, those fleeting and nuanced intensities of concentration and feeling that constitute the experiences in the field. The advantages of time passed are gestation and analysis. By leaving this and concentrating on the rest of life the work, the processes and experience are digested. Time and space have changed.
Checking my field notes, there is the following text written after the discovery of the fox;

Gunshot in the distance, on the other side of Shomere. Makes me wary - danger of being mistaken in my movements for prey, makes me extra vigilant, less confident or comfortable here edgy, just as I had been all day. Light is fading but I continue on looking for more possibilities.

A fresh cartridge and a scatter of feathers, no corpse. I do two more linear pieces crossing the edge of the flooded wood, the water/ground edge as it is now. Stillness. Now the wind. 

Across the edge #1

I give up and move back to the track out of the wood. Dark skies as I walk, glad to be on my way and I nearly miss the fox, lying on the side the track, Dead. Small, unmarked. There for a short time. Oh, a fox, I thought.

At these moments I know that these are composites of a set of circumstances;

1st- The Object, I recognize something that resonates with the In Flux project. 
The fox. - is a suitable subject/object.
A second object, behind is a tree-fall, this layers the image.
An earlier manifestation – the image of the corpse of a dog (is it a dog?) a temporal reminder, spatially different, but this time connected through object.

- Fox as both a cultural and environmental object/subject, also suitably multiple in possible audience responses.
- Time of day- dusk is suitable, matches the object.
 
I struggled with the light and some strange colour shifts occurred but succeeded.

Almost dark when I got back.

That was the end of a long text and a long day, as I remember it. This was my first visit to the fox. This is how the image turned out in the beginning;

Oh, a fox I thought Version  #1

 




































 Returning to the text from my field notes, it never occurred to me that the fox might of been shot by the gun in the distance. I think the fox had been dead long before. There was no sign of why it died.

The making of this and the subsequent fox images is a good example of how perception, engagement and experience in the environment works. It also raises some interesting questions about the cultural environment too.

Firstly in the text I start talking about subject / object, it is obvious at this stage I wasn't sure which term to use, but what is it I'm alluding to?

Object suggests objectivity and would offer a detached assessment of the fox, as a species, a biological entity (Vulpes vulpes, to give it it's Latin name). This generalizes the thing before me, rather than considering the animal itself as a recently deceased creature. My prior knowledge can and does augment this understanding. I know a certain amount of information from two distinctly different positions, learnt knowledge and previous experience, (encounters with other foxes and associations of triggered memories). At the point of the first encounter and the making of the first image this is all I have to go on, but further research alters my subsequent responses. A set of subsequent actions have been set in motion.

As I have suggested above, one aspect of learnt knowledge comes from science, from biology and ecology. A further learnt aspect, that I would describe as cultural (science is cultural of course, but it is always an attempt, based on facts and evidence, to create a trans-cultural position, or a communicable truth). The scientific knowledge I bring to this encounter is limited to my own understandings, and different from the understandings of others. There is, therefore, no reason for me to explain what I know, in that this is not available in the subsequent works.

When I encountered the fox, I did not consider it in a scientific way, as an object of study, primarily my response was twofold, the anticipatory excitement of finding something to make work about and a sadness, a melancholy, experienced on encountering the corpse,of a life cut short, the life of a young fox, recognised as an individual. The object of interest, then, is more a subject.

When considered as a subject, in this case it is the subject of a photograph, or the subject of interest as what I am drawn to as I work in the environment, I move from a state of simultaneous perception, a state in which I am taking in all the stimuli of my senses simultaneously, wholly as a constant temporal experience of the entire environment as I encounter it, to concentrating on the subject of interest. In this project I then have to work out how I want to make a composite image of the scene, as a piece of work. To do this I have to work back toward simultaneous perception, to observing the scene in front of me as an environment including my subject of interest. As my field notes above state, there is a second subject included in the scene, a tree-fall, the subject of many other works in this project. So from only having one subject there are now two, both of which indicate changes to the land as I continue to encounter it. Part of the decision making process that is going on is about how to include this in the composite image. The fox, as the main subject is at my feet and easily included, but I must proceed to position myself (and therefore the camera) in a position that will include the tree-fall. 

There is a tension between the two elements in the as yet unformed composite image. They vie for my attention at the expense of all the other elements of the scene. The fox is the strongest element. The one that elicits a strong response in me,  the tree-fall is something I consider useful as a potential reference to other works in the project. A thematic repetition, different from temporal repetition, but repetition none the less.

Once in position, then the extent of compositing is my next consideration, What are the edges of the image? As I look there are no edges to what I see, I only need to move my eyes, my head or my whole body to broaden my visual perception of the scene. This is also continuous, not static, in the way that photography seems to still time. I start the compositing with an idea of the scope of the scene to be depicted, but I rarely find that the computations that follow in post-processing the image correspond to how I see it in the scene, but this is hardly ever exact.. Repeated practice has meant that I have more control of this than I had in the past with earlier images. Additionally, even if I have established theoretical boundaries to the compositing process I do often decide to extend the edges, either on the basis of further interesting content lying just outside the conceived edge, or because I am not certain that I have captured enough shots to form the edge, and hence over compensate.

In the case above, I was unhappy with the aspect ratio of the result, not expecting it to be so high in relation to it's width, I decided to crop the image;

Oh, a fox, I thought Version #1 (cropped version)

I also stretched the image downwards to take away some of the distortion to the body of the fox, a result of post-processing. 

More on the fox in my next posting.

Out in snow

Extract from my Field Notes ;

"January 2013                                                                                                                 Allfield

DE - DE - DE

DE - DE - DE

DE - DE - DE

  .  .  . 

    (Like morse)

ON WOOD

=

Lesser spotted woodpecker

(Heard and not seen)

I venture out for the first time this year, late January. Snow diminishes, water and temperature rise.
Too hot in all my clothes walking to site, out, escaping into the light. sunlight, occasionally, nearly, for the first time this month, year.
I wade through the flooded road halfway up my wellies. Fields are white, dripping, Slush and ice, water, mud; brown, black,white. I exile myself from indoors and the screen. Breathe, heat even sweat. Sound of the soft compaction on the remaindered snow, off the road into the wet wood, green emerges, shoots show through mushed leaves, green on brown. Life awakes defying gravity. The ground is soft and flattened, the wood, though wet, is easy to move through. Without wellingtons I would not venture, as I move the water is rising, snow diminishing.
I consider one tree-fall, near Shomere, I've seen it before, never imaged it. Maybe on my way back - perhaps I always think this here, keener to get to somewhere I am going although I am not sure where that sums up to be. I intuit to a point of satisfaction. Far enough in to start. I intend to make one work and return. Before, and sometimes still, I venture to push all effort beyond my limits of pleasantness. Sometimes fruitfully, but not on this occasion.
Time compacts again as I see the way to where I was last time here. Flashes of memory and remembered images. Memories embody movement and effort as well as vision. The trigger is the way up I came down. I could meet myself here.
I turn deeper into the marshy woodland, off human paths to the fox and badger trail - no human prints here. The trail is obstructed only above the height of the mammals that nocturnally traverse them. They will know I've been here, smell my alien scent and manufactured belongings. Considering, looking, moving, stopping, listening. DE - DE - DE         DE - DE - DE. A rustle above. the squirrels are still in the ivy here. The camera is still on my back. the drips enhance my spatial awareness loud and quiet to imperceptibility. Near drops loud.
Familiar sites are passed on. Then I know. I've been here before and suddenly it fits. Another tree-fall, out in the water. Instantly, nearly, perhaps I simultaneously see the object and remember the image I made hear last, subtracting all the other potentials and the environment to inhabit this space. One I have constructed before.

Tree-fall #5 Version #1

I relate much quicker, less to take in, revel and revealing change.

The water is higher (and rising). Frozen slush breaks as I immerse my foot, halfway up the boot. I move in and think, not the same position. Initially I think it is too hard to get to, the water too deep. Potential of cold not heat now. I move back to the bank put down my bag and the rods. Take off my coat (will it rain?)

I  decide to pause


Then I place the ranging rod near the tree-bowl, not like before. Out into the water. Why is the best position often mediated by my overall (physical, not conceptual) approach? I decide the position I reach in the water, close to my initial look is the one. Difference is good. This is not the same place as it was the last time I was here, so I need to emphasise this in my work. I push the extended tripod down into the mud below the ice and water and work. Difference is what I hope for, with inevitably recognisable similarity. I vary my position as my feet get colder. Three pairs of socks are nearly not enough. At the end I remove the camera from the tripod and shoot around the edges of my composite environment hoping that more kind errors will occur in processing.

 It's done. Unlike the Canine bones image, I do not have a transformative experience ( in terms of my awareness of the space) whilst in the process of making, rather this began when I entered my own comfortable space here, The reciprocal place I know much better than the bones site ( I guess I'll never go there again).
The inhabiting process is  transformative because I desire it more. I realise I need this for my well being. Therapeutic.









Having done, do I make more? Bodily not cold (my feet have warmed since leaving the water). Also not too tired. Hunger makes me desire leaving.
I look at the ground and up to the canopy above and I am reminded of images made by geographer Oliver Rackman in Ancient Woodland: Its History, Vegetation and Uses in England, 2003. He made circular images looking up into the canopy to record change. I also think of unsuccessful composites made in the summer of the ground and think also of long images made in Field -Walk that were successful,

Long Skull from Field Walk

 I decide to amalgamate these things.

THESE THINGS;

1. Immediate perception and a desire to make work.
2. A reference to work by someone else.
3. A re-working of work of my own.

As I walk out of the wood I  make a series of three views; Ground, Horizontal and Canopy, at various spots. I play loosely, thinking of perception + object - environment, trying not to make this transition but inevitably making decisions - not snow - running water yes! - add a tree-fall - use a ranging rod. A constant decision here, yes, no, not close to the holly, yes looking into the chilled water.

I move out back to the trail home. Finally I do stop and photograph the tree-fall near Shomere, but badly - satisfied that I have done enough today.

The fields have turned green as I exit the woods. Still patched by white and brown. I struggle through the flood using the ranging rods to look for shallow ground, slowly moving on tiptoe, so as not to allow the wave, so near the top of my boots, from washing over. Ahead three dogs, Jess, Kasha and Granville wag in anticipation and my wife wishes she had her camera. Still waters rising, but I made it without spilling down the inside of my boots."

The resulting image;

Tree-fall #5 Version #2

Here are a two results of experiments of perceptive perspective as described above;

 What role this approach plays in this project is yet to be resolved.
  

 
 

Photographing texts - text in Image

A recent image has brought up some questions about the content of my works and the content of the entire body of work;

No Development

The Return

Lying in my files there are a number of images that are waiting to be processed, or re-processed and added to In Flux. Each image can take between two hours and three days work to bring to fruition in a combination of manual and automated digital processes, hence they take much more time to construct than they do to gather (I would spend up to two hours making a single work on site). The role, or effects, of these pauses in the working processes are increasingly becoming a source of interest in this project, as each temporal aspect is analyzed it is becoming apparent that many different states of awareness and intensity come into play in the making of works.

The most obvious temporal gap is that between visits to a site. In the interim I have almost always made the work I am about to remake and when I return do not  feel that I am revisiting old ground, but that the temporal shift makes the space a different space in time. This difference shapes the repeated works in In Flux. The processing of work after a visit fixes the result in my memory. A memory I use to make the new works on subsequent visits.

The first visit

I have found that often it is the first visit I make, with the intention of making work, that often achieves strong pieces. This is partially as a result of the new potentials encountered adding new elements and broadening the content of the body of work. I am also aware that the experience of a new place is perceptually novel. I have open perceptual expectations and a higher degree of anticipation that is no longer as intense on the second, or third visit. By visiting a new site I am inducing a heightened awareness and an active effort to seek out something of interest is easier to maintain in the unknown space.

Blue Land #1 Version #1

 This is the piece that typifies a successful work made on a first encounter. On the same visit I made a further work;

Earthwork #1

Initially, at least, I was not satisfied with this piece and decided to do it again on my next visit. Subsequent re-working from the original files may of resolved this, but the experiences on the later visits prompted this re-working.

The second visit

I have known places to be hostile on a second visit, as this one was when in another season I was attacked by mosquitoes and bitten 14 times.The effort to make work in those circumstances was doomed to failure. In the end the works could not be processed satisfactorily - largely due to being attacked persistently, I could not concentrate or get in the right mindset, but I definitely felt a mind, body and environment connection and was painfully reminded that connections to land are not always pleasant.  I learnt to not go against the experiences I was having in an environment on that occasion. Hence the second visit was valuable, even if no work was successful.

The third visit

The beginning of the autumn saw the end of clouds of mosquitoes and the site allowed me back.  Only now have I managed to process it from the archive. In book or exhibition these images would not be displayed on the same page or side by side. Rather I would guide the viewer to use his or her memory, or re-look at the images in their locations, mirroring my temporal and spatial experiences of the site in the sites of discourse.

Blue Land #1 Version #2

In the case of Blue Land #1, the third visit yielded a reasonable second rendition of the scene, building on what went on before, but again, Earthwork #1 was not successful. I have subsequently left this effort for the moment, allow further time to resolve this, or to abandon the attempt in the context of the overall work.

Over time and with successive visits better knowledge and experience begins to build on what went on before. To encounter again builds up layers of memory. Remembering past encounters and particularly actions helps to build a complex matrix of movements around a site, I cross or repeat earlier walks along animal paths or through dense vegetation. Access changes with seasonal change and climatic change, in the case of this site I have learnt to abandon hopes of access through the summer months due to the high density of mosquitoes  and have had further difficulties, or altered intentions, due to flooding. 

By re-visiting sites a matrix of spots of interest is built upon, I may pass one spot on the way to another, contemplate it and leave it for another time to make a work. These spots are the sites of action in a location, they offer elements to head to, as well as providing structure to the work. They are play a key role in the formation of my connection to and understanding of the site as a place. It is a process of place making for me, the individual involved.

Chasing Fog

I had no intention of making these images, but when I awoke to find a dense fog on the morning of the winter solstice, I knew that a rare opportunity had arisen to add to work made in fog.

I always  get that sense of urgency with fog, almost a responsibility to work, at least as far as this project is concerned. Chasing fog can be a photographic nightmare. 

Early morning effort to get to a site, prompted as soon as you see the fog, only to find that  when you get there it has lifted, is frustrating and time consuming. So when there is success there are often more instances of failure behind it than is normally the case.

Elusive as it is though, it has particular relevance to In Flux. Transient and ephemeral, it serves to highlight the changes that weather brings to land. It also functions as a way of investigating perceptions of the individual  in environments.

 A modified diary extract follows about the experience of  fog;

In the late autumn and winter a fog occasionally descends on the land. I was drawn to this phenomenon and wanted to experience inhabiting a study site during a fog and making work.
My motivation was to encounter a site in a changed state, other than when conditions were “normal” in terms of my visual perception of the space. I also wanted to experience a familiar space  in a new way, to renew my experience and create another layer of understanding and interpretation  of the experience of land.

The fog envelopes and hides the artist, making work, from outsiders. The space is visually enclosed and with distance the haze intercedes. Spatial awareness is dimmed. Vision may actually be closer to perception in a fog, particularly one which shifts in density, mimicking or mirroring the way our attention shifts from the near-middle and strains to see the distant.There are fewer possible interactions with the distant. No dangerous or pleasurable encounters possible. No resources to hand. Distant perception is less important, except for orientation in the wider landscape. We look to the distant to either see where we have been or may wish to go in the future. Therefore distance has a temporal quality, implying the past or future of the actor, whereas near equates with the now, with inhabiting space, identifying objects and spaces between objects. Photographs in this kind of fog tend to illustrate the perception of the distant as less relevant, literally  obscuring the far and enclosing that which is closer.

 




























When the middle ground is visible the fog encapsulates the individual inside a mobile hemisphere that follows where he or she moves. Encased it can be a comfortable space, offering silence, stillness and privacy. The lack of detail allows for ambiguities of perception in a literal sense, the degree of fog is connected to the degree of ambiguity. My experience of  inhabiting a site in fog usually falls into this category. I became fascinated by the margins of my vision, the transition between the known and the unknown and unseen. I see this as  an opportunity to make works that take advantage of marginal ambiguity presented by the fog. It is a way of investigating the perceptions I experience of the near and far directly through visualisation, using fog and it's qualities to mirror perceptual experience.


In a dense fog there is an unsettling disorientation that brings fear, of getting lost and vulnerability from the unseen foe. We are visually disconnected from the landscape, cannot interact with it and therefore cannot be comfortable in that space, in a way that we are usually accustomed to.  Our visual sense is impaired by external forces in a similar way to an actual bodily impairment. Encounters like this are very rare in my experience and yet to be worked in.

These are all the works made on this occasion. I will edit them for In Flux. The final two images below represent an interesting combination of one of the images from this shoot and an earlier experience. Placing these two unconnected locations together offer some further readings through similarities of composition and conditions.

Forms of comparisons, particularly spatio-temporal ones, between sites, time, conditions and different methods of photographic construction, offer opportunities to  bring the flux of In Flux to light for the viewer, either of a book or exhibition.

Later additional notes on 5th July 2013

These works are all no longer part of In Flux and have subsequently formed part of another body of work, entitled Hinterlands.

Welcome to In Flux

I am constantly asking myself questions that I investigate and communicate with through visual arts practice. This is one project of many and what is presented here was preceded by approximately three years of experimentation, one of which was undertaken as part of a Practice as Research Doctoral investigation through mainly photographic practice into relationships with land that is understood as sites in a constant state of change, In flux. 

There is no doubt that there is much contemporary anxiety about the environment, many questions are  being asked about the role of humanity in areas such as climate change and environmental degradation. Many photographers deal with these subjects in their practice. Investigating the ways that this is undertaken and subsequently framed by critics and theorists, I detected what I see as an underlying question that is not being addressed, fundamentally, how do we understand the environment as we encounter it in our everyday lives? How does the individual perceive and relate to the environment, to land? This relationship became, in this project, a question of what are the perceptual mechanisms of experiencing land. 

Key to this is understanding is the formation of connections to land that are developmental processes, constantly occurring through time. Increasingly contemporary life styles do not allow for these processes, as lives are lived away from the land, in built environments, inside and through the screen in various forms. Direct engagement is relegated to leisure time, when all to often the individual is a visitor, an outside observer, rather than one who engages in the environment through action on a regular basis.

 Land is not static, except when considered cartographically, as a point on a map, but is constantly changing. The individuals inhabiting it are also changing, moving temporally and spatially in the course of increasingly multi-centred lives. Human and non-human life, the animate and the inanimate, all impact on land and our understanding of  it in a complex matrix of interactions, all that form the essences of place and space. 

This research began by investigating the terms place and space in the work of cultural geographers, principally Tuan and Massey but also the  work of the archaeologist Tilley. This progressed to a grounding in the philosophy of phenomenology, through Husserl and Bergson to Merleau-Ponty, in an investigation of the mechanisms of perception as it relates to the environment as a temporal experience and the interpretation of it through photography and visual art. This, in turn has led to current interests in the view of relationships to the environment from an anthropological perspective drawing on the work of Ingold and of perception from a psychological perspective in the work of Arnheim. There are many other influences and sources in this research, that is ongoing. 

The purpose here in the context of this blog is not to present this background research, this is being dealt with elsewhere, but to present and discuss the practice that arises from and interacts with ideas and contextual research. It will on occasion discuss ideas drawn from research, particularly how it has formed and influenced the strategies of  creative processes.

Tree-fall #1 Version #1