The First Death of Photography 1895

Searching my archives today I came across the book, Photography: Artistic and Scientific by Robert Johnson and Arthur Brunel Chatwood, Published 1895. I reproduce here an extract from the Introduction. There is something slightly timeless about the sentiment expressed even if the language and the grammar are a little dated.

Introduction.

The strides that photography is made during the last few years, due to the patient and earnest work of a large body of experimentalists, have not been an unmixed blessing; the production sensitive plates and other materials at cheap rates, and the possibility which exist today of buying everything ready prepared, having induced thousands to take up photography as an amusement, not as “hobby.” The result has been that the quality of the work produced has deteriorated. We do not say that the photographs are no t[sic] produced today far excelling those of the wet collodion period, but we do say that if the whole of the plates exposed in any recent year could be collected, the average quality of the results, whether from the technical or the artistic standpoint, would be found much lower than that of 20 years ago.

In the days of wet collodion, only those who were prepared to take great trouble, to exercise much thought, and to do serious work, were attracted by photography. The enormous amount of impedimenta that it was necessary to carry about deterred the half-hearted; the trouble of preparing plates caused every effort to be put forth to make each plate serve a useful purpose, and the fact that the negatives were developed on the spot, gave every opportunity for correcting by a second exposure, the errors of a first.

“Some years ago,” says a contemporary magazine, “when amateur photography was in its infancy here, as well as in other countries, a soulless corporation extensively advertised a camera which only required a button to be pressed and pictures were made. The idea soon took root that there was nothing in photography, when it merely required the pressing of a button. It was apparent that any fool could do that. And when these cameras where purchased and tried, the result convinced the owner of the fact, not only that any fool could do it, but that he was a fool a good many sizes larger for doing it. The feeling of disgust and disappointment was created, and there is little doubt but that photography was taken up by thousands and dropped again when it was found out how it had been misrepresented to them....

...Photography is considered by very many as an art, and photographers, consequently, as artists; nothing could be further from the truth. Photography is purely an interesting science; it records with greater or less fidelity the scenes and incidents presented to it; and this record is governed by scientific and mechanical principles alone.

Art consists of the representation of a conception formed in the mind of the artist in such a way as to be appreciable to other minds. And the photographer becomes an artist only in so far as his work shows that he has the mind of an artist.

I particularly like these two final paragraphs, they sum up quite concisely the paradox of photography which persists even to this day, technology v aesthetics. The change from the wet collodion process to dry plates was the first technological turn in photography. Similar sentiments have been expressed when other technological turns have influenced the popularity of photography, namely the introduction of the Kodak Brownie, 35mm photography and of course the biggest technological turn of them all the digitisation of photography. On each occasion the cognoscenti have thrown their hands in the air and claimed that the end of photography is nigh.

You can view the book on line here

 

How to Notate or Mark-up a Book

I started a new book at the weekend and it is so interesting and relevant that I found myself marking up virtually every word. This morning I stopped my self and thought, there has to be a better way to do this. Then I thought, in 4 years of study know-one had ever shown me how to mark-up or notate a book correctly or efficiently, may be a better word. So the inevitable Google lead me to this short and to the point article on A Wordsmith's Studies blog, How to Notate a Book, I hope the author will forgive me for re-posting the article in full...

How to Notate a Book

 When skimming a book, you are looking for answers to the questions of what kind of book is it? what is it about? what is the structure of the book?  Make note of the answers to these questions on the contents page or possibly the title page.

When you go back and re-read the book (if you believe it is worth re-reading), here are some suggestions for note-making:

1. Underline or circle major points and important or forceful statements.
2. Use vertical lines at the margin to emphasize something you’ve already underlined or to mark a passage too long to be underlined.
3. Use a star, asterisk, or other doodle at the margin to emphasize the 10-12 most important passages in the book.  If you either bookmark the page or fold down the corner of the page where you’ve made the mark, you’ll be able to take the book off the shelf and flip right to it.
4. Write numbers in the margin to show a sequence of points in the author’s argument.
5. Write the numbers of other pages in the margin to show elsewhere in the book the author makes the same points or places he contradicts himself.
6. Write your thoughts in the margins: questions, answers; a summary of what the author is saying; the sequence of major points in the book.
7. Use the endpapers at the back to make an index of the author’s points in order of appearance.
8. When you’ve finished reading the book and making your index on the back endpapers, then outline the book’s structure in the front endpapers.

After you’ve finished reading the book, if you decide to move on and compare that book to others you are reading, then you probably will need to make those notes on separate paper.

–adapted from How to Read a Book

I make no apologies for reposting the article referred to in the first chapter Skimming a Book which is also a useful reference.

Skimming a Book

Whilst reading up about how to Notate or Mark-up a book, I came across an associated article on The Wordsmith's Studies blog, Skimming a Book, which I hope the author will not mind me re-posting here in full...

How to Skim a Book

(Also known as “Notes from How to Read a Book.”)

1. Read the title page and preface, looking for the subject of the book and the author’s special angle on it.
2. Read the table of contents for a general sense of the book’s structure.
3. Scan the index and estimate the range of topics covered and the books and authors referred to.  If some of the terms seem crucial, look up some of the places they are cited in the book.  Those cites may include the book’s central premise or the key to understanding it.
4. Read the blurb on the dust jacket or back cover (if it has one).

If the book doesn’t seem worth reading, put it aside.  If you want to read it more carefully, then continue on:

1. Look at the chapters that seem to be pivotal to the book’s argument.  If there are summary statements in their opening or closing pages, read those carefully.
2. Thumb through the book, reading a paragraph or two here and there, sometimes several pages in a row (but never more than that), following the basic argument of the book.  Always read the last two to three pages of the book (not counting the epilogue), because usually the author will sum up what they think is new or important about their work in these pages.

After the hour or less that this process takes, you should know whether or not the book in question is worth more of your time and attention.

What is Chiasmus?

I am currently reading or should I say trying to read Originary Technicity The Theory of Technology from Marx to Derrida by Arthur Bradley. Needless to say my vocabulary is expanding significantly. Every now and a gain a word jumps out at me and I need to know more. The word this morning was Chiasmus, it sounded familiar but I did not know the meaning so for my satisfaction and as a memory jogger I post a reminder from one of a number of websites I came across that offered an explanation, this was the one I preferred, drmardy.com I hope he will forgive me for reposting an extract from his explanation here...

What is Chiasmus?

It's not necessary to read any of what follows to savor the many chiastic quotes that appear on this site. However, by continuing on for a few moments in this section, you'll deepen your understanding of chiasmus and heighten your appreciation of chiastic quotations. If you're a bona fide word, language, and quotation lover, I think you'll find what you're about to read, fascinating.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms by Chris Baldick provides a more extensive description:

chiasmus [ky-AZ-mus] (plural -mi), a figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. This may involve a repetition of the same words ("Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure" —Byron) or just a reversed parallel between two corresponding pairs of ideas … . The figure is especially common in 18th century English poetry, but is also found in prose of all periods. It is named after the Greek letter chi (x), indicating a "criss-cross" arrangement of terms. Adjective: chiastic.

As you can see, the proper adjective is chiastic and not "chiasmic" or "chiasmatic," as I've heard some say. Technically, the plural is chiasmi, (as with hippopotamus). However, saying chiasmi can come across as pretentious, so you'll want to do that rarely.

According to the OED, chiasmus made its first published appearance in English in 1871 when a British scholar named A. S. Wilkins wrote about an observation from Cicero:

"This is a good instance of the … figure called chiasmus … in which the order of words in the first clause is inverted in the second."

The word goes back to the ancient Greeks and their fascination with language and rhetoric. The "chi" comes from chi, the letter "X" in the Greek alphabet. The word itself comes from the Greek word khiasmos, meaning "crossing." Khiasmos, in turn, is derived from the Greek word khiazein, meaning "to mark with an X."

"To Mark With an X"

One of the most fascinating features of chiasmus is this "marking with an X" notion. Take Mae West's signature line, "It's not the men in my life, it's the life in my men." By laying out the two clauses parallel to each other, it's possible to draw two lines connecting the key words:

It's not the men in my life X it's the life in my men.

The lines intersect, creating an "X." This quote, and all the chiastic quotations you've seen so far on this site, can be "marked with an X." Here are two more examples:

Home is where the great are small X and the small are great

One should eat to live X not live to eat

If you're ever wondering whether a particular quote is chiastic, simply lay it out in this manner. If you can mark it with an X, it is. If you can't, it probably isn't.

The ABBA Method

One other interesting way to view chiastic quotes is the ABBA method. Let's go back to the Mae West quote. If you assign the letters A and B to the first appearance of the key words and A' and B' (read "A prime" and "B prime") to their second appearance, they follow what is referred to as an ABBA pattern:

A   It's not the men   B   in my life   B'   it's the life A'   in my men

Here's how the other two quotes would be laid out:

A   Home is where the great   B   are small and   B'   the small A'   are great

A    One should eat to   B   live, not   B'   live A'   to eat

Chiasmus can be achieved by reversing more than two key words. This observation from the 18th century English writer, Charles Caleb Colton, is a good example:

"How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising
that past age which our fathers abused,
and as constantly abusing that present age,
which our children will praise."

Laid out schematically, it looks like this:

A   How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising
  B   that past age
    C     which our fathers abused,
    C'     and as constantly abusing
  B'   that present age,
A'   which our children will praise

Another good example comes from Genesis 9:6:

A   Whoever sheds
  B   the blood
    C     of man
    C'     by man shall
  B'   his blood
A'   be shed

Technically, it doesn't make any difference how many words are reversed. Some scholars believe that a chiastic structure can be found in much larger passages, including entire sections of the New Testament and other ancient sacred writings. But that's getting ahead of ourselves. Here, I just wanted to show you how the order of words—any number of words—in the first part of an expression can be reversed in the second.

For a the full article visit drmardy.com

Dictating with your iPhone and Dragon Naturally Speaking

I use an iPhone4 app called iTalk to record conversations with my supervisor and other audio material.  I also use Dragon Naturally Speaking 12 (DNS) to dictate my work into Word. I wondered if it may be possible to get iTalk to link to DNS. I found a tutorial video which explains how to do it wich you can view from here.

The procedure is quite straight forward, it just needs the .aiff file from iTalk to be converted into a .wav file which is easy enough with the free software Audacity which you can download from here. If you have not come across Audacity before it is a good general purpose audio editor.

The process makes use of the transcription option in DNS. Although this technique will work with mixed voices the translation can be a bit bizarre. I am going to try it with just my voice only as a test and see if that is any better.

Our Helpful Brains

Our helpful brains

I have referenced this anecdote about how wonderful our brain is on a number of occasions. Just stumbled across it again on the blog at ChangingMinds.org and have borrowed it:-

You know we have wonderfully helpful brains. Just chuck it a bunch of mismatched information and it'll somehow manage to make sense of what you give it. For example you can jumble up the letters in word letter in a sentence and still make sense of it - just as long as you preserve the first and last letters. (jsut as lnog as you psrevere the fsirt and lsat ltretes).

This works for words too. Caldwell-Harris and Morris (2008) presented subjects with pairs of words in reversed order, such as 'card credit' and 'you thank'. Even though these are obviously the wrong way around, many people reported them as being the right way. Their subconscious brains heard the words and corrected them on the fly before presenting them to their conscious, which of course has only a few moments to make sense before the next thing in the stream of consciousness comes along.

The brain also helps you see things you think you should see and ignore things that do not make sense. And when it comes to memory, it gets worse as we easily forget things we just perceived (like people's names) and will swear to things happening which did not.

The bottom line is that what we think is true, even if we have just experienced it, is not necessarily so. If in doubt (and maybe if not), always look twice.

Reference:
Caldwell-Harris, C. and Morris, A. (2008). Fast Pairs: A visual word recognition paradigm for measuring entrenchment, top-down effects, and subjective phenomenology. Consciousness and Cognition, 17 (4), 1063-1081.

Source: http://changingminds.org/blog/blog.htm

How NOT to write a PhD thesis

In a Times Higher Education article, Tara Brabazon gives her top ten tips for doctoral failure. As I complete my first, not very good essay, I am only too aware of how prophetic the advice in this article may prove to be.
From the article:-

...I understand the angst, worry and stress of supervisors, but I have experienced the other side of the doctoral divide. Examining PhDs is both a pleasure and a curse. It is a joy to nurture, support and help the academy’s next generation, but it is a dreadful moment when an examiner realises that a script is so below international standards of scholarship that there are three options: straight fail, award an MPhil or hope that the student shows enough spark in the viva voce so that it may be possible to skid through to major corrections and a full re-examination in 18 months.
When confronted by these choices, I am filled with sadness for students and supervisors, but this is matched by anger and even embarrassment. What were the supervisors thinking? Who or what convinced the student that this script was acceptable?

Therefore, to offer insights to postgraduates who may be in the final stages of submission, cursing their supervisors who want another draft and further references, here are my ten tips for failing a PhD. If you want failure, this is your road map to getting there.

1. Submit an incomplete, poorly formatted bibliography
2. Use phrases such as “some academics” or “all the literature” without mitigating statements or references
3. Write an abstract without a sentence starting “my original contribution to knowledge is…”
4. Fill the bibliography with references to blogs, online journalism and textbooks
5. Use discourse, ideology, signifier, signified, interpellation, postmodernism, structuralism, post-structuralism or deconstruction without reading the complete works of Foucault, Althusser, Saussure, Baudrillard or Derrida
6. Assume something you are doing is new because you have not read enough to know that an academic wrote a book on it 20 years ago
7. Leave spelling mistakes in the script
8. Make the topic of the thesis too large
9. Write a short, rushed, basic exegesis
10. Submit a PhD with a short introduction or conclusion     

The article contains very sound advice from an informed viewpoint. The follow up comments also contribute some sound advice and information...

Read more here...

Reference

Brabazon, T. (28 January2010) How not to write a PhD thesis. Times Higher Education. Available from: <http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=410208> [Accessed 9 February 2013].