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Category Archives: Observatography
Star Shots And The Ghost Tape by Raven Moore
Raven Moore, a newly formed artist duet of sound artist Marta Zapparoli and visual artist Kathrin Guenter join for the first time their particular artistic approaches and backgrounds to interrogate, manipulate and remodel the conspiratorial, dark side of the paparazzi and celebrity phenomenon.
A vast collection of original audio and visual footage of so-called “trainwreck” celebrities and pop stars like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan or Lilly Allen, to name only a few, is the source and starting point which the artist duo immerse themselves in.
Audio, text and visual archives are carefully dissected, manipulated and finally reinterpreted by the artists to show how the perfectly calculated and constructed image and sound mask of the star or celebrity slowly cracks, breaks and changes under the constant pressure of public observation and perception.
This mask evidently cracks open, freeing a dubious doppelganger moving about in space incognito, syncing and miming a variety of mutilated, erstwhile catchy tunes which slowly vanish into a ghostly silence.
The first layer that will be presented is an audio-video installation introducing Raven Moore and their mysterious manipulations and mutilations of pop and paparazzi phenomena.
Star Shots III: The Go-Between – Double
Some subtle exposures of a certain phantom family appeared in my celebrity darkroom the other day…
Effluviographies
In preparation to my upcoming workshop in FFM I returned to the developer tray in my darkroom. On the menu today: 2 cents, 5 cents, 20 cents, fingertips and developer. Counting up to 10 minutes two coins were pressed with my fingertips onto the sensitive side of photographic paper directly in the developer tray.
In another experiment that will be revealed tomorrow, a copper engraving of London was exposed to sunlight for a day, and is now resting nicely wrapped and – hopefully exposing its image – in the shade of two sheets of photographic paper.
Star Shots III – The Go-Between: The Double
Double, etheric counterpart of the physical body which, when out of coincidence, may temporarily move about in space in comparative freedom and appear in various degrees of density to others. The belief in the existence of the double, or astral body, is age old, its acceptance as a working hypothesis solves many a puzzling problem in psychical research.
Nandor Fodor, Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science 1966
Image from the series Star Shots III – The Go-between
Star Shots III – The Go-between
Of what is called spirit photography it is impossible to doubt that such photographs have been honestly produced or obtained by Sir Wm. Crookes, Mr. Traill Taylor, Mr. Glendinning, Rev. Stainton Moses, Madame d’Esperance, and others. They are of three main classes: (1) Portraits of living discarnate beings or spirits; (2) Pictures or effigies or lay figures, often very incomplete, and not necessarily human-like; (3) Reproductions of physical pictures, or other objects.
(D.B. M’Lachlan, in the Journal of the S.P.R., Feb. 1900, p. 185)
Excerpt from: Photographing The Invisible – Practical studies in supernormal photography, script, and other allied phenomena by James Coates, 1911, p. 16
Of what is called paparazzi photography it is impossible to doubt that such photographs have been honestly produced or obtained. They are of three main classes: (1) Portraits of living discarnate beings or spirits; (2) Pictures or effigies or lay figures, often very incomplete, and not necessarily human-like; (3) Reproductions of physical pictures, or other objects.
Below are some of quite a few exposures achieved in my darkroom experiments over the weekend. For now, I will call them The apparitions of Vic.
Star Shots III
The subtly exposed apparitions on my baryt paper prints are very difficult to scan, especially without being properly dry pressed. But still – it is possible to discover some flimsy silhouettes dwelling silently in the darkness.
The Fog II – Odic negative
Another series of experiments using the little water mister. With an exposure time of 1 hour focusing the ever ascending mist into the sunlight, several layers of photographic paper ( I mounted 2 x 4 sheets on top of each other at the back of the pinhole camera), revealed after processing the imagery below.
Freeze Me!
During an exciting week of the infamous Crystal World Open Laboratory hosted by CTM at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien Katier got invited and inspired to join in with a new series of experiments.
Several 35mm film roll containers were easily converted to pinhole cameras, loaded with a tiny snippet of photographic paper, and finally injected – through the help of several syringes and lots of patience – with differently contaminated liquids that I found in the huge repertoire of chemicals and experiments of the Laboratory.
Deep-frozen over night, the tiny cameras exposed their glacial contents through the spot light of a traditional photographic enlarger for about 10 minutes.
Alum Mordant
Water, contaminated with cpu’s
Ferrous sulphate
Condensation Experiments: First Odic Fingerprints
Below are the first two subtle fingerprints (at least without any uninvited guests!) of todays 45 minutes condensation experiments described in an earlier post. The first airy exposure faces towards the wall, the second the window front.
