Category: coursenotes

from lectures and presentations I’ve taught

Discourses on Art

Posted on Posted in art school, coursenotes, meaning, studio table, Theory

Book by age, or by contents. How do you choose the text for your table? Mine is filled and emptied by whim; by wandering among the stacks. Like a sleepwalker without slippers. Old books are kept not maintained. They become overlaid with marks upon readings. Reynolds is an old text without many current readers. I never spend more than a frew minutes with it, although it draws me in enough times over the years to remain on in the main stacks.

Joshua Reynolds. [1723- 1792]

Further:

Additional ballast from the “other”:

  • The ONLY ABSOLUTE TRUTH is that there are NO ABSOLUTE TRUTHS (Feyerabend) 
  • I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives … (Jean-François Lyotard)
  • Finally, if nothing can be truly asserted, even the following claim would be false, the claim that there is no true assertion. (Aristotle)
  • If anyone thinks nothing is to be known, he does not even know whether that can be known, as he says he knows nothing. (Lucretius)
  • And isn’t it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are. (Plato)

Index Prints

Posted on Posted in coursenotes, Getting Stuff, labnotes, visual mindTagged , , , ,

The idea print. Collecting visuals. Stages of the darkroom process. Beyond the wild guess. Looking more than once, while looking at more than one. Building the comparative response.

This index is from the librarians, not the linguists. /’ that it contains so much contradictory information that a verbal message is needed to fix its meaning ‘/ 

The key point of this post is using “jigs” as aid to determining exposure of a print. They provide an efficient way to make several attempts, or tests of settings in making darkroom prints. Typically, they are used to determine exposure setting, however, they could also be used to test changes in contrast filters, or color balance filtration, since while the “flaps” are closed, enlarger settings may be changed.

These devices are the commercial form of what was frequently a kludge made by the printer from cardboard, tape, or, perhaps, scavenged sheet film holders. My initial, 1960s version was made using scrapped film holders. These were sold by the cardboard box full at the surplus stores.

The start point. finding a way in the dark. What is the exposure setting for darkroom materials. Color or black-white paper exposure must be tested; determined by making trial exposures. These are called “test strips” — strips, small samples of the material you will use to make your print.

Durst Test Print Tool
Ways of making test strips.

Drawing patterns, making conclusions.
Index prints are also known as “contact sheets,” or “proof sheets.” Most uses of these are as first edit device for selecting among negatives/slides. The exposure, contrast and processing controls are sometimes lax. I try for a first best use setting for the most interesting of the negatives. This sheet serves as my point of search into my file of pictures. Rather than shuffling through the negatives, I shuffle through my index prints. These prints, in some cases, provide my an easy notepad of what was printed and when. The details of the printing will be in a print/darkroom notebook.


What is the start point of making a darkroom exposure

By using test jigs, I was able to characterize film for making separations for dye transfer in as few as 6 sheets of film. A morning’s work. It was sixty years later that a boastful amateur told a student of mine that wasn’t possible.

Good to know. #OIC