Contact
sheets are when the photographer first takes a roll of film and
develops multiple little pictures on a sheet in order to choose which
ones to make into larger prints. No, I have no idea what they are.
But that is my theory. About what they are. Yesterday I was at an art
gallery in lower Manhattan where I was confronted.
The
gallery had stuck a bunch of little
wooden boxes on the wall. And put out these little
magnification cones you could use to look at the contact sheets. Or
anything I suppose. They didn't specify. Anyway it was nerdly fun to
actually get involved like that rather than just drift past whatever
large thing is on the wall like usual. Perhaps making a face or two
as my contribution. Or maybe trying to impress someone? Probably
myself? Perhaps recognizing one or two of the photos, out loud, from
across the room. Even if I’m wrong, I can always walk up to the
placard and go, “Oh yeah, of course, so and so.” It's a victory
if I feel like it is.
But
no, this do-it-yourself arrangement was even better than all that.
What did I do with this new opportunity you ask? My first achievement
was convincing a pair of (ethnicity withheld) tourists that what I
was looking at was extremely interesting. I did this by emitting a
variety of murmurs of ecstasy/delight/bewilderment while gazing
intently through the little cone and thinking of some happy (albeit
fabricated) memory from a childhood. Other memories
would allow me
to make a tiny old art crone pivot in place. A bald guy with a
frontal fanny pack smile (though I cannot prove he wasn't smiling for
some other reason; you can't prove anything; you weren't even there I
was). And I think I may also have been the cause for a very pointed
muttering. Very pointed.
Of
course I immediately wanted to do something like that on the website,
so other people could have the same fun time as I just did. But it
wouldn’t work. You can’t look at a monitor through a cone and
expect anything great to happen. They’re just aren’t the pixels
for it. And plus nobody is walking around beside you. And this is
what frustrates me so much about experiencing art, or anything, in
life. Not everybody else gets to have the experience. Those people
who couldn’t or wouldn’t or for whatever reason just didn’t go.
So
my next plan was to send everyone I know a ticket to come to New York
and see this thing. Which I did. But it still didn't work because I
forgot that it dumped rain on us that day. Which forgot to recreate.
So it just wasn’t the same.
New
plan. I could get a contact sheet of my own and a magnifying lens.
Then mail it to someone. They could have the experience, then mail it
to someone else. And so on. Forever. Until somebody broke the lens. I
told my lady friend who is sitting across from me in the coffee shop
about this five seconds ago, and she has just reminded me how much
everyone hates chain letters. Yeah. That’s true.
August
2007
“And when you realize that
their activities are shabby, that their vocations are petrified and
no longer connected with life, why not then continue to look upon it
all as a child would, as if you were looking at something unfamiliar,
out of the depths of your own solitude, which is itself work and
status and vocation? Why should you want to give up a child's wise
not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since
not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas
defensiveness and scorn are participation in precisely what, by these
means, you want to separate yourself from.
Think,
dear Sir, of the world that you carry inside you, and call this
thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or
a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is
arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive
around you. What is happening on your innermost self is worthy of
your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it, and not
lose too much time or too much courage in clarifying your attitude
toward people.”
—Rilke
yes
but i argue the DVD is a mistake then. if it is worse than vinyl then
we should not have switched.
and
then once we have switched. we must work with the tools of our time.
if
not because they are better
but
because that's what's available
and
good luck finding everything you want on real film... or vinyl...
?\!?
i’m
repeating myself
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