Phantasm

Light

Photo:

Word-forming element meaning "light" or "photographic" or "photoelectric," from Greek photo-, comb. form of phos (genitive photos) "light," from PIE root *bha- (1) "to shine"

All visual Arts depend on one thing, that thing is light. without light, there are no colors, no lines, nothing. Everything we do requires light and photography is a medium that is completely dependent on that single element.

The word "photography" was created from the Greek roots φωτός (phōtos), genitive of φῶς (phōs), "light" and γραφή (graphé) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing", together meaning "drawing with light".

Light is a phenomenon that can be very hard to explain because it acts both as a wave and as a particle, it travels faster than anything else known. No matter how complex and mysterious  the physics behind light can be, the beauty of photography lies in the simplicity of capturing light.

McCloud talks about how illustrations become a comic book when they are placed next to each other in certain order. In order to capture light it is necessary to understand some basic principles of photography and how the camera works, when setting an ISO, aperture and deciding how to expose the image, one is controlling the light that passes through the lens and gets recorded in the camera. Light also gives us the ability to see color, depending on the object's physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra.

For this project, I decided to explore light and movement  and capture it through long exposures. I used a technique known as light drawing (light painting) that consists in using a source of light and a long exposure in order to freeze movement. Artist like Man Ray, Barbara Morgan and Pablo Picasso among others, have used this technique.

The absence of light and the excess of it creates images such as the ones represented at the beginning and end of the series. A complete black image and a bright white image are the two ends of the spectrum while in the middle there are countless possibilities.

The inspiration behind the project came from a combination of light paintings and the word phantasm that comes from phantasma "image, phantom, apparition; mere image, unreality," and from phantazein "to make visible, display," stem of phainein "to bring to light, make appear; come to light, be seen, appear.

Photography captures still images but because cameras can be set up to have a slower shutter speed, movement can be captured and thus it creates the illusion of movement.

Everything that appears on the images was captured on camera with no external manipulation whatsoever. And it is an exploration of how photography is the art of capturing light.

La Soldadera

"La Soldadera" Script

One Hundred years after Mexico’s Independence from Spain, the people was angry because they were being exploited by the government, there were only a few rich men who had control over the entire land and the rest of the population was living in poverty. President Porfirio Diaz refused to give up power and stayed in the presidential chair for 35 years. The revolution started in 1910 and concluded in 1920.

Francisca Zorrosa Diaz was born in Oaxaca in 1911 and moved to Mexico City after the revolution, she is my grandmother and “Las Soldaderas” was inspired by her. However the story is completely fictional and draws inspiration from many stories of the strong women called Soldaderas. 

        During the Mexican Revolution many women were involved in the action, whether it was through force, or by free will.  Fighters such as Petra (Pedro) Herrera, Maria Quinteras de Meras and Angela (Angel) Jimenez were some of the most notable women who fought in the war and were actually part of Pancho Villa’s army.  Inspired by both the true stories of these women who fought in the revolution and the story of Pepe’s great-grandmother, we put them together to highlight roles of women in the war.  Francisca, the main character, represents not only the women that became soldiers, but also how she was forced into it through the need of protection, which also applied to the women who left with the rest of her male family members to avoid being left behind alone and vulnerable to attacks.  With Carmen’s character, we wanted to portray how women also played a part in the war through their medical support.  This was especially important for the revolutionaries, because during the war, the Red Cross refused to help the revolutionary soldiers. 

        There are many stories about the Mexican revolution, the book Los de Abajo (The under Dogs) gives the revolution a less heroic treatment and portrays soldiers raping women and braking into civilian houses. This book was one of the first sources of inspiration, and after some research we found an article that quotes the work of Gabriela Cano called Soldaderas y coronelas this was one of the major sources of inspiration, learning about this brave woman gave the main character more realism and a purpose and also helped us set the environment in which the story takes place. 

Creating the dialogue was the most challenging part, we wanted to keep it simple and authentic, we decided to use some Spanish words and phrases that helped us give a foreign feel to the story. 

        We wanted to be as accurate as possible in regards dates and places. We wanted to use real battles and that’s why we wrote about La toma de Zacatecas, one of the fiercest battles of the revolution, but also one of the most important. According to the chronology published by the Mexican Senate in 2010. After the victory over Zacatecas, Villa went to Mexico City in December of 1914

Process Piece

A Wedding.

A Wedding, By Camden and Pepe.

We considered that the best way for us to approach the piece was by telling a story, and that way explore sound as a storytelling device. By creating our own process we wanted the audience to imagine vividly the situation we were portraying.

Human behavior can be very unpredictable and there are times in which emotions take over entirely, to the point that someone can be irrational. A wedding was a perfect environment for a man to get completely blinded by his emotions.

We are all familiar with weddings, and most people understand the process. Of course it is a different approach according to the culture, but in our globalized world everyone knows and understands the methodology of a western wedding.

The way we created the setting was by using the common and well known elements of a wedding. To create this environment we mixed sounds of crowds in different spaces and then by adding Mendelssohn wedding march it becomes clear that the setting is a wedding.

Another important part of the process, is the couple walking down the aisle which was easy to achieve because once the setting is well put together everything else comes into place, by adding the sound of steps we described this micro process. It is easy to imagine a couple walking down the aisle of a church, people whispering in the background and the officiating clergy standing at the end of the aisle ready to receive the couple and start the ceremony. The first part of the process wasn’t hard to do because everyone completes the story with the images of what they have seen before, adding the priest commencing the ceremony follows the expected pattern of the process.

Weddings are one of those moments in which people tend to have high expectations. Turning this happy occasion into a disastrous event was our way to experiment with the power of sound to create a new world in which everything can happen. The wedding was interrupted, we used our own voices to create different characters and added more background sounds to rise the tension and maintain the environment. The interruption is the catalyst for everything that happened later. We used our voices not only to create the main characters, but also to give personality to the audience. The unintelligible sound of the crowd is mixed with some audible voices and eventually the ring falling becomes a tool for the protagonist to make his intentions clear, once he explains what he wants, we get to the climax. By the end, the story has a little comedic twist, this made the process somewhat unexpected and entertaining.

Silent cinema tells stories with moving pictures, when the audience receives those images their minds can add the sound that the picture lacks. Sound can also be structured in a way that has the same effect as a moving picture, we only need to provide the sounds, the brain creates the images.