Photography - Lady Elizabeth Eastlake

I came across a wonderful monograph on photography which I thought I would share with you. Written by Elizabeth Eastlake in 1857 for the London Quarterly Review . Elizabeth Eastlake was a writer, critic and historian,  the wife of Sir Charles Eastlake the director of the National Gallery. The article paints a vivid picture of photography in its hey day, just 18 years after is announcement to the world in 1839. Here is an extract, I think you will find it fascinating...

Photography 

From the London Quarterly Review, April 1857,
pp. 442-68 

It is now more than fifteen years ago that
specimens of a new and mysterious art were first
exhibited to our wondering gaze. They consisted
of a few heads of elderly gentlemen executed in
a bistre-like colour upon paper. The heads were
not above an inch long, they were little more
than patches of broad light and shade, they
showed no attempt to idealise or soften the
harshnesses and accidents of a rather rugged
style of physiognomy--on the contrary, the eyes
were decidedly contracted, the mouths expanded,
and the lines and wrinkles intensified.
Nevertheless we examined them with the keenest
admiration, and felt that the spirit of Rembrandt
had revived. Before that time little was the
existence of a power, availing itself of the eye of
the sun both to discern and to execute, suspected
by the world--still less that it had long lain the
unclaimed and unnamed legacy of our own Sir
Humphry Davy. Since then photography has
become a household word and a household want;
is used alike by art and science, by love,
business, and justice; is found in the most
sumptuous saloon, and in the dingiest attic--in
the solitude of the Highland cottage, and in the
glare of the London gin-palace in the pocket of
the detective, in the cell of the convict, in the
folio of the painter and architect, among the
papers and patterns of the millowner and
manufacturer, and on the cold brave breast on the
battle-field.

The link to the article on www.photokaboom.com here

Practice-led PhD: What do the Examiners Expect?

This is a question which has troubled me since I started my PhD in January 2013. I have searched for advice on the subject of What do the Examiners Expect but with little success. I eventually came across an interesting paper by Dally et al, Assessing the exhibition and the exegesis in visual arts higher degrees: perspectives of examiners, which appears to offer fairly succinct advice on the subject (Dally et al., 2004).

The authors interviewed by means of in-depth telephone conversations, 15 Visual Arts examiners from 10 Australian higher education institutions. I get the impression that the authors were somewhat surprised to discovered that their sample of examiners appeared to be relatively consistent in the criteria they employ to judge a Visual Arts doctoral thesis.

There was a consensus that the exhibition was the most important element. Candidates should demonstrate a journey indicating the development and successful resolution of their research question, demonstrating exemplary technical skill as well as an ability to represent and communicate new, fresh, imaginative, innovative ideas. There was some disagreement as to whether these should be original ideas. The exhibition should clarify where the student is and where they have been. When asked what they considered to be an unacceptable standard the examiners where consistent in their opinion that a lack of research basis was one of the most frequent reasons for dissatisfaction.

Examiners felt that “the exegesis would position or contextualise the work within its field, explain the research process and/or clarify the contribution and significance of the project.” Examiners expected “the artwork to 'speak for itself' while at the same time anticipating that the exegesis would continue the conversation.” In conclusion, “examiners expected to see clear evidence of a relationship between the written and practical components, with the artwork primarily seen as the defining element in determining whether or not the degree should be awarded.”

The paper is available under a number of citations and titles, my reading is based on the HTML version, the title of which is quoted above and is available from the link below.

Reference

Dally, K., Holbrook, A., Graham, A. & Lawry, M. (2004) The processes and parameters of Fine Art PhD examination. International Journal of Educational Research, 41 (2), pp.136–162.

Link

http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol3/kdfull.html

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.