#phytogram

Bindis soaked in caffenol (washing powder, vitamin C and coffee)

I noticed talk (on the interwebs) of a new kind of rayogram process discovered by Karol Doing. He spoke at The Shifting Ecologies of Photochemical Film in the Digital Era seminar in June 2021. From that presentation I learnt more about the - how to - of the process: 1. gather plants, 2. soak them in washing powder and vit C, 3. lay them on exposed black and white film in the sun (no darkroom) for some time, 4. wash them, 5. fix the images (with regular fixer), 5. dry and scan. A perfect lockdown recipe. Easy to do at home and outside.

the main attraction by ada calyx

Last week I attended a workshop on experimental 16mm processes in Canberra at the Photoaccess gallery. Techniques explored were direct processes such as painting onto film, bleaching film, drawing onto, scratching into to, adding to or taking away, utilising the frame or disregarding the frame. We also explored the Ray-o-Gram and the similar plantogram technique. All of these processes are a physical dance with the substrate of film. Attendees learnt that the sprocket allows you to count, to frame, to un-frame, to sync, to tape onto, to join and to cut. Louise Curham, who organised the workshop demonstrates cutting long ways into the film strip to insert a beautiful errored leaf, the patterned organic web of veins inserted into plastic. The webs of the leaf are held and embedded into the structure of the film. This act reminds me that film is at the tangible scale of human hands, fingers and eyes. All of these acts are acts onto and into the substrate of film. Film a carrier to look at and to look through. Digital works allow for the act of destroying at another scale. Is scale important? I think it is when it can be matched to the everyday perception and experience of our bodies.

Recent research on pain has found that the brain can hold onto the site of pain long after it is gone. People who suffer from chronic pain are being treated to retain they beliefs about their pain. Therapy involves addressing acuity of touch. People who suffer back pain are known to have poor sense of touch around the site of pain. Therapy addresses a re-training of touch. A therapist uses callipers on the patient back and they must guess if there are being touched by one or two pronged callipers. Early success points to more research to be done in this area. The body remembers. 

To describe darkroom processes one must explain how emulsion works. To expose the film you must shine the light against the emulsion side. Curham explains that to find out which side of the emulsion is on you can wet your finger and feel which side becomes tacky. Doing this engages you in the stuff that is happening directly by touch. This touching the material with which you shoot enables a kind of body memory you don’t forget and is the essence of why I started my doctorate, I wanted to know how this experience of touching film was the ground of my approach to film making. 

I have taught experimental techniques at to students at the Sydney College of Art. A component of this was describing to the students film orientation. Most students I observed learned best by making mistakes. They only truly understood what was happening to their ideas when they plans became unstuck. For example, if they scratched text into the emultion on the wrong side it couldn’t be read because not enough light would pass through the film. Looking at the film without projecting it this wouldn’t be noticed. Some of the wrote text cross the whole frame disregarding the direction of the film or the fact that not all of the film is not normally visible through the film gate they would not be able to read their text as planned. If they intended to animated recognisable shapes but did not draw enough frames the image would disappear before it could be registered. They learnt by failure and by physically interacting with the material. This brings about a respect and knowledge of the technology you use to make the thing your are making. It acknowledges the agency of the material as well as the essence of how it functions.

I’m happy to announce that the film RITUAL will be screened at Frölunda Kulturhus on Friday October 8th at 6 pm.

Vague Research Studios (artists Kajsa G Eriksson, Lena Berglin and Maria Magnusson), announce a screening of the film "Ritual" (50 min). The film explores energy greed as a social phenomenon, ritual as an artistic method, and has been filmed in eleven places in Sweden: Burseryd, Kinnekulle, Sandviken, Hofors, Grängesberg, Njakafjäll, Meselefors, Kallak, Ligga, Messaure, and Jokkmokk. In the selected localities, there exists a historical connection to the extraction of raw materials needed to produce energy. This history is relevant today as we transition to green energy and to the use of renewable raw source materials. The artists have specifically chosen to highlight how urban lifestyles are dependent on the natural environment and people in sparsely populated communities in Sweden.

The artists belong to a generation that has lived with both analog and digital technologies, and the film is characterized by these two different embodied experiences. The film was shot with both a digital camera and a hand-powered camera (16 mm), utilizing plant-based developers. Vegetation, specific to the various localities, has been laid directly on film, creating images known as phytograms.

Vague Research Studios is an independent studio for exploratory and experimental artistic activities. The studio was started in Gothenburg in 2013 by designer Lena Berglin and artist Kajsa G. Eriksson with the aim of performing vague studies in the artistic field and creating new forms of collaboration. In 2019, a collaboration began with Maria Magnusson, artist, photographer, and experimental filmmaker. The project led to the film RITUAL where the studio also collaborates with Klara Andersson, composer and sound artist and Milena Karlsson, graphic designer. The film is produced with the support of Kulturbryggan.

Scanning vs DIY telecine - a short comparison video

This video starts with a scan of a phyto/caffenol-gram of the common Bindi plant which has been inverted and had a fair amount of post production to remove colour, increase the contrast and reduce the exposure. I often use a flat bed film scanner to get a look at short lengths of film soon after developing. It is handy because you get a hi-resolution image and a good degree of control on how the film is processed digitally. The down side is a scan of about 24 frames (1 second) can take about 5 minutes at 3200 DPI. So a pretty slow way to digitise film. After digitising you can then bring the large tiff file into editing software to break down the frames to the desired frame rate in the timeline. Because the Bindi plant is larger than the 16mm frame size I choose not to fill the frame so the shape of the plant is more noticeable. The second shot which is golden and more abstract was filmed off the Steenbeck screen with no post-production except for a speed change to reduce film speed to about 5 frames per second. The shape of the plant is less obvious but the subtle markings have a certain charm to them. The next shot I have placed the scanned image over golden full frame digitised footage. The following shot I have tried to apply the same post-production to the golden material that I did to the scanned image; inverted the negative image, reduced exposure and increased contrast. The full frame material becomes much more grainy which has a charm to it but translates very badly on the internet. Film grain texture is pretty, particularly when projected but filmed digitally off the Steenbeck or off the wall the grain can become pixel chunks which loose there charm for me.

Happy to be apart of the group show: Late Autumn Art Show at Galleri Konstepidemin, (Nov. 28 - 20 Dec.) with: 

Phytogram med maskros nr 1 / Phytogram with Dandelion no 1. 

 Phytogram är en analog och fotografisk teknik där man använder sig av växters och blommors egna kemiska uppsättning och en ekologisk framkallare för att skapa fotografier direkt på det fotografiska papprets emulsion. The images is done camera less and by using The phytogram method, which is a technique that uses the internal chemistry of plants for the creation of images on photographic emulsion. Initiated by Karel Doing.