The Haptic Optic

How do you record an object properly? Is it always pertinent to photograph, or draw something, for example? How about something which is similar to both, but is really neither?
A while back I began to explore the possibilities of making rubbings of three dimensional objects. These images are of one I made of the adapted cabinet that Daphne Oram used to house the oscillators and wave-shaping units in the Oramics system, working on it with the lid and doors open, and as carefully as I could to avoid any damage of the circuitry. I developed my own materials which would mark without the need for graphite etc, so that I could use just my fingernails and a specially made tool. The finished piece is painted black on the reverse to bring out the marks...






For some time I've been mulling over the sort of world the Atomist/Epicurian theory of vision conjures up - where seeing consists of the apprehension of a succession of 'skins' which fly lightning fast from the surfaces of objects and into the eye - ancient cinema. As I've mentioned previously, this fantastical space seems to me to somehow articulate the in-between-ness, or irrationality of transcribing light into sound. So I've begun to make 'spectres' (eidola, simulacra) from machines which deal with light and sound as materials. You could even call them wave-fronts perhaps...
The finished piece is redolent of a technical drawing, dislocated and contaminated with noise, or a map of a war-torn installation produced by proto-photographic means. Every fold in the material shows up as a white mark as it is manipulated into position, so an odd record of movement and registration is generated, all by intimate touch.
Next, will be the contact printer that used to belong to the London Filmmakers' Co-op.

Spectra

This is a project I've been working on for a little while with Mick Grierson, whom I first met in the guts of the great organ at Goldsmiths college in London's New Cross (on Watling Street for all you psychogeographers). Anyway, we discovered shared research interests, and began following some of them up practically, eventually resulting in this method of what Mick terms audio-visual phase distortion. You'll find a video of it here.
'Spectra' and 'specter' are both rooted in the Latin for 'apparition' or 'vision', and most importantly for my purposes here, the Epicurian or Atomist theory of vision, which stated that images were atom-thin 'skins' (simulacra) which flew off of objects and entered the eye. Ghosts were errant simulacra, cut loose from their natural paths. I first came across this in Dario Gamboni's extraordinary book on visual ambiguity, 'Potential Images', and later on in David Park's 'A Fire Within The Eye' - both of which I can recommend.
Anomalous theories about perception can sometimes seem to provide us with the right instruments to examine experiences created by media, which might seem irreconcilable in the rationalist domain...