In Defense of the Poor Image```
The reading followed a list of points to create a new perspective to the reader on the "poor image". Despite how ironically condeluded the reading was, the author was able to show a six different reasons we should look at the low quality picture with appreciation. The main points were to recognize an image past the point of only capitalist utility and to see how significance can be brought through process and intention. A picture is not just what you see, but it can also be what you don't see, and to ignore that is to erase a whole world of exploration in photography.
What I found most interesting in the reading was the connection of image quality in art to capitalism. I think this made me reconsider how different art forms are considered in value and why. Even more it made me wonder if our judements of value are just and if any judgement of a piece's value could be just. I do wish to explore this connection further as I find it my due diligence as an anticapitalist artist myself. I think exploration of this topic could lead to some really interesting commentary art as a satire on how art is typically capitalized.
I found the paradox of the poor image and its relationship to capatilism to be specifically allusive. The author describes it as a tension between rejecting the practice and being intrinsically driven by it, but his description on how the image does so is too pixelated in concepts for me to see the picture.
Thomas Ruff, jpeg rl104, 2007.
Chris Marker’s virtual home on Second Life, May 29, 2009.
I find the contrast between these two images above, both considered a "poor image", to be quite interesting. To me the first picture, by Thomas Ruff, is what I find to be the standard imagination of a "poor image". The one following however, by Chris Marker, is more so simply abtracted and blocky to me. The rendering of the island and clouds are perhaps rudimentary compared to modern technology, but I would not refer to it as a "poor image" necessarily. What is interesting in comparing these two images is that the scope of what a "poor image" is according to the author is expanded from the standard definition of just pixelation and grain alone.
Here the focus was on how time and motion can be communicated across media, regardless of if time and motion areaspects of the media. Futhermore it discusses how even in condusive medias to the subject time and motion can be distorted for specific points and messages. I found this second concept most clear in the examples of video, like the timelapse film Fashionably Late for the Relationship by Lian Sufuentes. In the film people pass around Sufuentes as after images due to the time lapse as she appears to move normal as she slowed her movement down in real time. This creates a dicotomy of time which appears both fast and slow. I found this contrast to be very intriguiging and something only a time centered piece could achieve.
From the reading I learned that the ephemeral nature of time and nature is something that can be very valuable in communicating messages. It is also something I find 2D art can easily forget until they have to comminicate time, however from the reading I learned that is a waste. Leaving how time or motion would be perceived as an afterthough would be like leaving proportions or color theory behind, mayb intentionally it could be additive, but mostly it will leave the piece flat and amateur.
I would certianly be interested in learning more about using time lapses, more specifically how to plan with them. How slow does one have to move to appear normal? How can you calculate how the video will be compressed? And for the inverse, how do these questions apply to slowing a video?
