corpora callosa

Audience

2009-06-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

If it isn't clear, my intended audience for this blog is you. Yes, you.

A Test of Faith

2009-06-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

Rene Magritte, 1928-1929, The Treachery of Images.

I don't recall my dreams very often nor do I think much about religion. But recently things have been a little different.

In early May, I had a dream that began rather abruptly. I was driving off a cliff into a gorge. I remember going over the edge, the car falling out from under me as it traced a slightly different arc in space. I was able to grab the steering wheel just before impact, just as a storm of images assembled itself like cobblestones beneath the tires. The car righted itself and my free-fall turned quickly into a climb up the opposite wall of the gorge. Pictures paved the way. Each image full of faces and places I had never seen before.

Several days later I dreamed that I was shuffling through the prints I had chosen for my graduate exhibition. In the blink of an eye they became oily to the touch and the inks that had once described the things I photographed began to move across the pages. I picked up one of my favorite prints for closer inspection, lifting it by the top-left corner. The image slid in a series of eddy-filled streams off the sheet onto the floor. There was nothing left to see but paper and a puddle of ink.

In my mind, the two dreams capture the essential characteristics of imagery. On one hand, images have utility. They allow us to be transported or transformed, to imagine possibilities. They focus attention and sensation. On the other hand, images are little more than arrangements of materials. They are subject to the forces of nature and will inevitably become dusty, scratched, or faded.

Because of this tension between imaginative possibility and banal physicality every image invokes a test of faith. Do I believe in transubstantiation, here and now? Can this thing escape the limits of its own body and become something divine? Gods and Devils both have something to say about it and recently their whispers have been turning into screams.

An Open Letter to Google #2

2009-06-17T21:05:00.000-07:00

Dear Google,

If I weren't around to suggest it, do you think you would ever pair that picture I sent you with this one?

I worry you might not, even though they do belong together. See.

Concerned,

Justin Schuetz

An Open Letter to Google #1

2009-06-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Google,

I am writing to thank you for reading this, even if nobody else does. OK, maybe you aren't reading it right now but at least you have it stashed away under your bed or in the lower left drawer of your desk, ready to pull out at a moment's notice. Either way, it makes me feel good that you think it worth keeping.

Best wishes,

Justin Schuetz

P.S. I have also included a picture that I took the other day. Some trees outside my window at Friday Harbor Labs in Washington. I thought you might like it.

Science and Art-Part II

2009-06-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

(A response to my father's letter)

Dad,

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you with a response. Your email was full of good questions but none of them are very easy for me to answer. The short answer to the big question of how science and art can interact with each other in a meaningful way is: "I am still figuring that out, and probably will be for a while".

The key areas of overlap that I see are related to process. Maybe surprisingly, both fields typically involve identifying a "problem" or question, extensive experimentation or structured observation, and critique by peers.

The differences between the fields can be pretty vast, however. The most significant for me surrounds the fundamental issue of representation: scientists are obliged to generate representations, or models of the world, that capture some aspect of its reality; artists are not at all obliged to do so, though some choose to try.

The result of that difference is that the products of science (i.e. models of the world) can be evaluated according to how well they explain observations. The models can be right or wrong, or right in a specific context, but not in all contexts. (As you know, the source of the hormones that induce egg development in starfish can be identified for one species but that does not mean it is the same for all species.)

The products of artistic endeavor are not subject to that same sort of evaluation unless they make specific claims about reality. Typically, it doesn't mean anything to say a piece of art is right or wrong. But works of art can engage the sensibilities of viewers more or less convincingly, and ask them to consider the values, priorities, or perceptions that structure their life. Georges Braque was not right or wrong to paint "cubist" structures but it did influence how people considered the nature of space and perception.

With respect to my work, yes, number, sequence, and characteristics of the images were all really important. In the process of making a final edit for the show it was amazing to me how switching the order or identity of just one or two images changed everything quite dramatically. Apparently small things do matter.

And, yes, I struggle with how much I want to explain the imagery. I realize it may not be immediately accessible and I think it is actually a hard group of pictures to negotiate but it becomes something else altogether, and less alive in my opinion, if it has too many words trying to define it.

You mentioned at one point during the weekend that it was like a puzzle. That is exactly right. I want people to look and to think. I want people to feel some underlying structure in the images but maybe not quite be able to define it. Isn't that part of the sensation that scientists feel when approaching a new study site or study organism? Isn't that part of the allure? Maybe I am just trying to replicate it in a way. That approach seemed more provocative to me than producing images that have a single "answer".

The work is not to everyone's taste. I know that for sure. But I think it has been born, somewhat uniquely, from my backgrounds in science and art. I am not sure if any of this helps, but I hope so.

Love,

J

Science and Art-Part I

2009-05-29T15:14:00.000-07:00

(A letter from my father shortly after I finished my MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. He is a retired embryologist and endocrinologist.)

Justin:

I have been giving some thought as to what took place in San Francisco last week particularly after viewing the Fine Arts Exhibition and the means by which "Science" and "Art" communicate to the onlooker in a meaningful, insightful and convincing manner.

As you know, new scientific information and ideas are generated by the use of experimentation- design and execution which involve a hypothesis, controls, experimental variables, replicates, statistics and levels of significance. This information is typically published in journals after appropriate review or presented in condensed form in poster sessions at various scientific meetings.

Such posters typically include a series of brief but relevant statements (introduction, conclusions etc.) graphs, figures, photos which help to confirm or strengthen an idea or conclusion. These separate items typically have a title and legend and hopefully serve to convince the observer that the experimenter knows what they are doing. I was particularly struck by the general absence of verbal guidelines in the exhibits and am wondering how you view these issues and how science and art can interact in a meaningful manner.

Clearly, there are elements of science and decisions, (vaguely expressed) in your exhibit of 12 items-photos (meter+rhyme). Was their number, sequence and characteristics of crucial importance to you when putting the exhibit together. Would be interested in knowing the route and method since the eyes of this beholder are at times a bit foggy.

It was a super time in San Francisco-the weather, events, graduation and meeting friends and associates. Hope things have settled down a bit by now. Congratulations and all the best for the summer and the future at FHL, the Wisconsin reunion, and life.

Dad

Time Traveling in the New Millenium

2009-05-26T08:56:00.001-07:00

Photographs are time machines of a sort, capable of moving our minds around the universe without concern for its physical structure or direction of flow. For 170 years they have allowed us to tell stories about the past and the distant with a voice of specificity and authority. And we continue to rely on them, maybe never more conspicuously. So why do I now feel less willing or less able to time travel through the photographic image? I think there are a couple of reasons for it. (You probably know them too.)

First, it is increasingly difficult to identify the context in which photographs were made, and whether they were made in a "traditional" sense at all. Despite time stamps on digital files and, in some cases, geographic information, making a mental leap through time and space requires something else: belief in the "reality" of the destination, or at least its "integrity". Indexicality (i.e. the direct link between image and imaged) is no longer an assumption of photo-based work (at least not the way it used to be, before Photoshop) so destinations pictured within photographs hold less and less promise for real habitation. Why should I travel through time and space if there is a chance, upon arriving in a foreign land, that I won't have any air to breathe or ground beneath my feet?

Second, the number of photographs now in circulation is essentially infinite for anyone with a computer. Committing to the time-traveling potential of any one image requires an investment that I find increasingly difficult to make. It used to be different. I remember being easily projected to other times and places when absorbing the archive of photography meant visiting museums and slowly turning the pages of book after book. And I remember wanting to know details about people and processes. How did Carleton Watkins haul his huge glass plates around Yosemite and Mariposa Valleys back in the 19th century? What was Cartier-Bresson doing in India and China and Mexico and how could he be so quick? Now, I have a harder time with details (I almost resent them) and I just can’t fathom visiting all the times and places that currently compete for my attention. I resist being transported by images because their demands, like their numbers, are essentially infinite and feel like an invitation to annihilation, a total loss of self. I still want to live my life, here and now.

Carleton Watkins, 1866, ‘Yosemite Valley from the Best General View’ No.2

I am moody, however, of two minds, and on another day I might argue everything differently. Time traveling through photographs has never been easier. Maybe the uncertain contexts associated with today's images actually invite imagination, allowing us to move through mental time and space faster than the speed of light. Maybe the vast seas of imagery that now flood our shores will turn us all into time-traveling sailors, thus beginning a new Age of Exploration. I don’t know which set of interpretations I like better or which is more accurate but I do know that my moods about photography are becoming simultaneously darker and brighter.