Revisited: Sketches of A World
Summer 2022: Mid-course Correction, Toronto CA
With a few expletives then a deep breath in, I reluctantly plunged into revising this project again. Or more accurately, entered a controlled decent into madness. You would've thought I would've given up by now.
After stumbling upon new information, I found my previous understanding was incomplete. Because of this, some of the original photo ideas don't harmonize with the overall theme of presenting an alternate view of the popular portrayal of different species (possibly or not our interstellar neighbours) cannibalizing humans. The project acknowledges this violent vision (there are many first-person documentations of predator vs prey encounters) but that will not be its focus.
The last thing I wanted was to go back to the drawing board. I just want to get to the fun part of photographing and printing. But I've learned once information/idea is made public, it's difficult to change/correct and using flawed evaluations can lead to a long period of erroneous actions, for which no resolution can be gleamed. Every craftsperson/artisan knows to live by the adage: "measure twice, cut once". In the case of this project, it's measure 10 times...Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!
Maybe the completion wasn't forthcoming because the wrong story was being presented and that still may be the case until new/more revelations. Since I wasn't around to witness what occurred during historical times of archaic languages, I cannot be certain. I hope this is the last iteration; it's been 4 years. It feels like a self-invited house guest who has outstayed its welcome.
That being said, the image in the March 2021 post has been deleted, to prevent getting into muddy waters. I first saw this triangular formation back in high school in one of my photographs. I thought it was related to the markings and parts on my Spotmatic and disregarded it as a subconscious influence from using the camera. But when I took up art again, it started to sneak into my drawings and paintings.
Since I've had nothing but time recently, I started to watch TV programs and spend more time online and have seen various depictions of this symbol on shows, movies and software graphics - the "share" icon. It doesn't seem to have any relation to my hypothesis; although, it looks like a derivative of the Rune alphabet. Anyway, there is a difference between inspiration and influence, and this seems like an intrusion.
On a more positive note, I suppose if it weren't for the frustration from delayed access to a darkroom, I won't have needed to fill in the space with doodling which led to creating many other projects. I now have plenty of ideas (typically difficult to come by) to keep me busy with photography for years and answers, finally, to decades of questions.
why are we enemies,
CS:128
PS - As mentioned in a FB post, I'll be starting a Q&A series ("Satisfying Your Curiosity") in September 2022 on 8x10 Dot Photography's Facebook page, about questions I'm asked in public, not on this website. I figured a social media platform would better fit the content... I may later collate them into a FAQ feature on the website, as originally planned.
The original Sketches Of A World post (March 24, 2021) is here:
2021: Processioning & Waiting. Fruition
Having spent the winter cozied up inside sketching and world-building was another dream come through. A couple months ago I finished the drawings of the photography project% mentioned in the last post and was waiting until I had photographed and developed a few pictures before writing about it, but again, who knows when that will be. The old Spotmatic will have to hibernate a bit longer.I have a list of props that need to be acquired/made before the shooting can begin; it's all just one big waiting game right now. Being an artist is frustrating. It turns out building a spacefaring robot and having it land on another planet has become easier than assembling a photography project - yay! Mars Perseverance Rover. Of course I watched the landing live stream - thank you NASA for allowing us access. I felt honoured to be able to share the emotions of the mission control crew; to experience years (decades for some) of hard work come to fruition is the best feeling in the world. And it seems the Mars crew and I share a love of peanuts ; )
Anyway, back to this project that doesn't want to get completed. Gotta keep the dream alive and it came alive in my sketches, so much so, I ran out of paper and ink. There were many iterations of this series of photo sketches. In the process of drawing and describing the various images, I found some of the images were repeating and I had to rethink the process which led to processioning the entire series… Good thing I had extra time, because it also allowed me to create an artist statement for each photo, plot out the shooting mechanics of each image, their potential installation setup, and rethink/redraw/tweak, once more, some sketches.
This process worked so well for me that I've begun plotting out other series in the same manner. Executing a dream is intense, surprisingly, exhausting work. I didn't realize I could feel mentally drained after days of sketching and planning; this has led to me scheduling in a couple of "recovery days" after each project segment. For me, in our current situation, "recovery" means bingeing on YouTube travel videos.