developing the work that i began last year which looks at my relationship to the landscape (landscape and body), i have been using predominantly lens based methods such as video and print. the main questions that i have been looking into recently through both my making and reading relate to landscape and lens-based processes.
conscious decision making: my questions usually tend to focus on the content of my work but more recently, i have begun to question my methods of making and how i make work in relation to content – am i always conscious of the choices i make? are my choices informed by an understanding of the media? more specific questions include …
the lens?: how does lens-based work relate to real time experience of landscape (landscape through the body/landscape through the lens)? these questions have lead me to explore new methods of capture such as 2 camera or stereo lens work and compound eye methods combining various points of eye-contact, scales and distances etc. these questions have also led me to research reading on phenomenology and cinema or lens based work such as ‘The Tactile Eye (Barker) and The Address of the Eye (Sobchack). these questions are also initiating new ways of working with still and moving landscape imagery, such as split images on different planes in my print work. so one possible question for discussion, which could also extend to its post production spectatorship …
is the lens a distancing or intimate point of contact?
analogue versus digital lens based work?: i tend to use digital methods of capture. is this because they are convenient and immediate and close to the real time experience? as a past avid analogue black and white developer, i am now also asking questions about the potential of analogue film/print methods. would analogue methods offer a more ‘haptic’ visual experience closer to the experience of the landscape? would it bring a materiality to the visual? would there be a way to combine both methods as a way to say something about experience and representation of experience in relation to landscape? i fear to go down this method of enquiry might be time consuming but would it pay off? so another question for discussion, which probably only i can answer through making (and extends to print?) …
digital and/or analogue – what is the potential?
meta-questions: there are many other questions that are formed and half-formed which include my tendency to question, juxtapose, combine or blur any binary that comes my way – digital/analogue, visual/touch, brain/body, experience/representation and all those associated with gender, the landscape etc etc. and least i forget … WHAT LANDSCAPE? ANY LANDSCAPE? WHY THIS LANDSCAPE? but perhaps the biggest question that is occupying my mind almost everyday is how can i make this happen? how can i carve out sustainable time and energy for my practice? how can i give it more? because i want to. so last question for all?
time, energy and commitment – how do you make it work?
elaine crowe 