Hi this is Mike,
Thanks Hal for setting this up. Seems the easiest way. As you may know (I don't remember the email trail, the rest of group 5 discussed our prelminary ideas after class Wednesday. One prospect I am considering is a multimedia presentation on my father's relationship to images as objects to covet in and of themselves, and a similar, yet notably different relationship I have with image-objects. I figured I'd post this here, as in some ways it is a draft of a potential, essay part of the project.
My father is a pack rat who, over a ten year period after his retirement, filled his five-bedroom house with a cornucopia of objects and media -- from magazines and newspapers to random clothing and stuffed animals he bought at church sales, to beer bottles, boxes and boxes of tapes he recorded of NPR shows. As part of his "the undocumented life is not worth living" philosophy (his real words, not mine), he felt compelled to take Polaroid photos of many of the objects he bought at church sales. Collecting them once somehow did not suffice. He felt obliged to duplicate them in two dimensions. Frequently, he would label a Polaroid with information about the object, such as where he bought it, price, etc.
Over a period of many months in 2003-2004, my sister and I cleaned out dad's house(he is ill and lives with her now). During the process, there were often times when one would come across a clutter of objects (dishes, cups, whatever) in one room, only to find Polaroid photos of the very same objects as clutter in the next.
The sheer volume of things in the house was rather overwhelming, and while we sold, donated, gave away, and threw away thousands of pounds of material, the one collection of otherwise useless objects we chose to keep was that of the Polaroids. There was art in the madness, though it wasn't quite intentional. Anyway, that collection would be one part of the presentation.
Another element would be a digital photo collection of crap that I myself accumulated over time. Though more discerning than my dad, I too have a penchant for collecting and recording certain artifacts. But, having witnessed an accumulation of objects that ultimately contributed to my father's mental breakdown in 2002, I knew I had to rid myself of these things.
Lucky for me, I live in the digital age and was able to bring my collection to a logical conclusion that Oliver Wendell Holmes predicted back in 1859. I concluded that I really didn't need to keep many of the objects in my collection because, really, only their "skins" had value to me. Rather, an ethereal, digital photo collection of the collection, housed on a remote server would suffice. So, I scanned and photographed a most of the items in the collection, discarding many of the originals as valueless.
I also have video from 1995 of my father's house that I hope to incorporate. There are dozens of unedited hours that I don't think I'll have time to edit together, but I have somewhere an edited segment about 5 minutes long or so, that includes close-up shots of Polaroids as clutter, and a scene in which paper from the photocopy machine in his house was on and spilling over -- i.e. a veritable waterfall of paper poured over the side and onto a floor already cluttered with papers.
This would actually be a good practice run for a much larger project that my sister and I always envisioned: an installation that would include "the Wall of Polaroids," hours of continuous video from my dad's house in 1995, digital photos of his house during the clean-out, and a video interview with my father (from 1995) in which he explores the origins of his relationship with what most of us would call "trash."
For presentation in this class, I will probably just put the dad Polaroids in pile on a table (it was their "natural" state anyway) next to a laptop with my digital photo collection, and invite class members to come up and rifle through it all (hopefully while showing the 5-minute or so video). In addition, I'll either present whatever this writing becomes in its final stage, and/or hand out copies of the same.
--
Tamara, as it happens, is herself working on a collaborative art project outside of class that involves documenting a pack rat. We talked briefly about possible joint project, but I'm not sure if that will ultimately take place in or outside of class.
OK, rant over.
Thanks Hal for setting this up. Seems the easiest way. As you may know (I don't remember the email trail, the rest of group 5 discussed our prelminary ideas after class Wednesday. One prospect I am considering is a multimedia presentation on my father's relationship to images as objects to covet in and of themselves, and a similar, yet notably different relationship I have with image-objects. I figured I'd post this here, as in some ways it is a draft of a potential, essay part of the project.
My father is a pack rat who, over a ten year period after his retirement, filled his five-bedroom house with a cornucopia of objects and media -- from magazines and newspapers to random clothing and stuffed animals he bought at church sales, to beer bottles, boxes and boxes of tapes he recorded of NPR shows. As part of his "the undocumented life is not worth living" philosophy (his real words, not mine), he felt compelled to take Polaroid photos of many of the objects he bought at church sales. Collecting them once somehow did not suffice. He felt obliged to duplicate them in two dimensions. Frequently, he would label a Polaroid with information about the object, such as where he bought it, price, etc.
Over a period of many months in 2003-2004, my sister and I cleaned out dad's house(he is ill and lives with her now). During the process, there were often times when one would come across a clutter of objects (dishes, cups, whatever) in one room, only to find Polaroid photos of the very same objects as clutter in the next.
The sheer volume of things in the house was rather overwhelming, and while we sold, donated, gave away, and threw away thousands of pounds of material, the one collection of otherwise useless objects we chose to keep was that of the Polaroids. There was art in the madness, though it wasn't quite intentional. Anyway, that collection would be one part of the presentation.
Another element would be a digital photo collection of crap that I myself accumulated over time. Though more discerning than my dad, I too have a penchant for collecting and recording certain artifacts. But, having witnessed an accumulation of objects that ultimately contributed to my father's mental breakdown in 2002, I knew I had to rid myself of these things.
Lucky for me, I live in the digital age and was able to bring my collection to a logical conclusion that Oliver Wendell Holmes predicted back in 1859. I concluded that I really didn't need to keep many of the objects in my collection because, really, only their "skins" had value to me. Rather, an ethereal, digital photo collection of the collection, housed on a remote server would suffice. So, I scanned and photographed a most of the items in the collection, discarding many of the originals as valueless.
I also have video from 1995 of my father's house that I hope to incorporate. There are dozens of unedited hours that I don't think I'll have time to edit together, but I have somewhere an edited segment about 5 minutes long or so, that includes close-up shots of Polaroids as clutter, and a scene in which paper from the photocopy machine in his house was on and spilling over -- i.e. a veritable waterfall of paper poured over the side and onto a floor already cluttered with papers.
This would actually be a good practice run for a much larger project that my sister and I always envisioned: an installation that would include "the Wall of Polaroids," hours of continuous video from my dad's house in 1995, digital photos of his house during the clean-out, and a video interview with my father (from 1995) in which he explores the origins of his relationship with what most of us would call "trash."
For presentation in this class, I will probably just put the dad Polaroids in pile on a table (it was their "natural" state anyway) next to a laptop with my digital photo collection, and invite class members to come up and rifle through it all (hopefully while showing the 5-minute or so video). In addition, I'll either present whatever this writing becomes in its final stage, and/or hand out copies of the same.
--
Tamara, as it happens, is herself working on a collaborative art project outside of class that involves documenting a pack rat. We talked briefly about possible joint project, but I'm not sure if that will ultimately take place in or outside of class.
OK, rant over.
posted by Vinyl Head at 7:33 AM
1 Comments:
Mike,
This sounds like an amazing project. I think it would make for a great doc as well as a multimedia installation, seeing as how you have archival video. (Did you videotape the process of cleaning out the house too?)
Anyway, I think it might work for our class as well, provided we could 'write' something that makes links to our course material and the project. I have an essay from walter benjamin on the short history of photography (not included in our readings) that I think would be good to add to our research. I'm at work now but will think about this more later and post up again.
thanks mike for offering up your personal life to be 'exploited' for our class.. i do think we have something here.
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