Skyler Liu's Documentation Blog

A. Artist’s Name, Name of Project

Skyler Liu, Call of Cthulhu 

B. Concept

I want to present the attraction of something evil through this diptych. The first image is a mask lying on the platform; it seems to wait for someone to pick it up, then, in the second picture, we see a hand holding the mask, with tears of blood falling from the corner of the mask’s right eye, and there’s is a kind of reality distortion and illusions occurring, which seems to rise a call to another world. My inspiration was from the mask I have which is in relation to the Cthulhu mythos written by Lovecraft. In the mythos, Cthulhu is one of the “great old ones”, which is waiting to arrive on the earth and dominate the world by attracting enough followers. 

C. Process

1). Describe your process in staging and photographing part I.

I want to have a dark atmosphere and give the audience an oppressing sensation, so I used a high shutter speed of 1/800, however, I didn’t notice the exposure was improper, which made me have to manipulate the image’s luminance after when I saw the actual effect was too dark on my laptop.  I used my dark grey curtain as the background, putting the mask on the platform of the bay window. To express the attraction’s evilness, I designed the element of the tears of blood from the mask, which was made with watercolor paint (I mixed multiple kinds of red colors to make it more like blood). Because I needed to spare one hand to complete the scene of one hand reaching to the mask, I had to operate the camera with a single hand. It made the work much harder for me. For several steps, I had to shoot several times to reach a satisfying effect.

2). Describe your digital process in creating part II image.

I selected the hand holding the mask from picture one, then pasted it to fill picture two’s background to create a sense of illusion. In the beginning, I didn’t know how to select the part I want accurately, thanks to Iris’ and Leon’s help, I did it in the end. I also added a half-transparent blue square with the liquified effect on the corresponding part of the background to create a sense of reality distorted by another world.

D. Conclusion

If I had more time I would absolutely add more details to the collaged image. It was a regret for me because I didn’t have time to optimize the background to look more like an illusion. Also, next time I’ll start with the proper ISO to make the original images have enough luminance.

E. Image of Diptych

The picture with original quality can be found here.

I think, when it comes to “sonic memory”, the first sound that occupies my mind is probably the deepest sound in my memory. That is about the sound of my childhood, about the first house I lived in, about the kitchen and my mother. When I was in elementary school, I would ride home alone after school at noon every day, and when I arrived at my unit, I had to walk up the stairs on the fifth floor. Because of a lack of physical strength, I always walked slower and slower, I remember my more and more procrastinating footsteps. When I reached the door of my house, I would rustle out the key from my schoolbag. With the creak of the door opening, I could hear the familiar sound of cooking from the kitchen.

I liked to go into the kitchen and watch my mother cook. First, there was the sound of flames from the gas stove, and then the sound of oil being poured into the pot and being heated. When the ingredients entered the pot, there would be a crackling sound that instantly burst apart, then there would be a sound of shaking the spatula; the spatula rubbing against the bottom of the pot. As the friction of the spatula became slower and slower, and the cry of the flames became smaller and smaller, I knew that lunch was about to be prepared. With the sound of food entering the plate, I would trot with the prepared food and tablewares to put them on the table, turn on the TV, and adjust the channel to CCTV1. With the background sound of the news or the program Law Today, lunchtime was going to start.

The most important feeling that surrounds this sonic memory is warmth, which is one of the few most relaxing and warm moments in my childhood. So I decided the image of going into the kitchen to be the starting point for my piece. In this piece, all the sounds are very lifelike, and their precise spatial positions are deeply imprinted in my memory, so I think the sense of distance of each sound will become an important means in my expression. The sound of cooking is very close, because when I was a child, I always stood as close as possible, staring at the food coming out of the oven with my full attention. I want to make my audience feel the warmth—even a little hot; there is also a kind of expectation in those sounds. The distance of the footsteps is moderate, just like the height of a kid. And the sound of the TV is the farthest because when I was a child, my mother always told me to watch TV from far enough, for protecting my eyesight. My piece will end with the sound of just turning on the TV and sitting at the dining table, because the sound of TV and taking a seat brings a kind of new expectation: the expectation of the upcoming lunch accompanying the TV show. Warmth and expectations, are the essence of the piece of memory.

1.) What does Ritchin mean by the “fluidity of the digital”? Give an example of digital imaging/digital photography that exemplifies this.

“Fluidity of the digital” means the digital photos are easy to be manipulated, which decreases the authority of photography. As Ritchin says, “[i]ts ephemerality on the screen, are some of the profound differences from the paper-and-film-based photograph”,  he emphasizes the rapid change of digital photos, and that’s why “the fidelity of mechanical age” is replaced by the “fluidity of the digital.”

For example, it reminds me of a piece of recent news: young actor Hongsheng Huang accidentally died at home and his lifetime friends attended his funeral, however, famous singer Weiqi Fan was reported smiling at the funeral. There were photos proving that and they look authentic. In a while, Weiqi Fan was crazily attacked on the internet, until days later, some people found the wrong details of the fake news, finally proved Fan’s innocence. Photos can be manipulated and used as a tool for some publishers’ certain interpretations and mislead the public. Weiqi Fan was not the first victim, and would not be the last one, either. If the public cannot raise the awareness of the”fluidity of the digital” and learn to investigate reality by themselves, such things will never end, and someday, it might cause more serious losses.  

 

2.) Reflect on the extent to which photography is capable of capturing reality; and compare it to other media (technology) (e.g. text, video, virtual reality, books).

I think documentary photography is more capable of capturing reality, but the publisher’s honesty is always the most significant factor. 

I read Walter Benjamin’s A Little History of Photography, in this article, Benjamin states that “the lessons inherent in the authenticity of the photograph” cannot be circumvented only by an unsuccessful commentary. So he suggests combining the inscription and the photograph to make the photographic construction more clear. I think Benjamin’s theories make sense, but I noticed nowadays there are often inscriptions becoming a central visual focus, and I have seen excellent photography reviews more than once, however, the photographs beside them are unremarkable. So it worths thinking of how to make the text and the photograph best coordinated as for every photographer.

 

 

We decided to explain the principle of how a mirror reflects objects to aliens.

First, we’ll take a mirror with us to meet the aliens, and show them the phenomenon in the mirror – the equal true reflection of objects can be seen from the mirror. Then we’ll use the Pioneer Plaque to explain the principle of the mirror to aliens. On the plaque, we would draw a human figure on the left side with solid lines, and an equal human figure on the right side with dashed lines; in the middle of the two figures, there would be a vertical solid line representing the mirror. There would also be two straight solid lines on the left side to repent the incident light and reflected light; on the right side, we would draw a dashed line whose track is symmetrical with the solid reflected light and centered on the middle line, connecting the solid incident light and dashed human figure. As we already know from the reading, the aliens can understand the chemical symbols, so we would write the chemical formula of the mirror under the middle line which represents the mirror.

The discussion above gives the basic idea of how a mirror is going to be presented in front of aliens. We have to go a little further into how it works in the way aliens think. From the book, we have already understood that aliens know that lights only go in straight lines between two points because lights choose the line with the smallest distance and time. The law of the mirror is that when lights hit the mirror, they bounce off the mirror into a new straight line. Lights that strike the mirror travel in a way that the two angles between each beam are equal. Suppose there are two points on one side of the mirror; one is an eye and the other one is an object. If there is a beam from the object and aim to travel and go into the eye with the help of striking the mirror, the shortest distance contains two parts, one before the striking and one after the striking. When there is an artificial point of the object constructed on the other side of the mirror, the shortest distance will be a straight line with the same distance on both sides. Again, the shortest way to make the eye see the artificial object on the other side is still a straight line that connects the eye and the artificial object, which makes the statement that the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection are equally true and understandable for aliens. The artificial object is what the eye perceives in the mirror. Though the aliens may not know how to distinguish the meaning of solid lines and dashed lines, as we already show them the real phenomenon in a real mirror at the beginning, we suppose they can understand what each line is representing to on the Pioneer Plaque. Therefore, this is how aliens would understand lights go to the mirror in such a way that they come into the eye at least time and shortest distance.

Co-written with Joy, Zhu