This blog is for anyone thinking about revisiting and developing creative work from their archive, and explores how Orpheus in Homebase & Other Images came into being.
It has been argued that our conception of time and the supposed inevitable progress that accompanies it is habitual and structurally internalised (McLuhan, Deleuze, Solnit and Kirby, for instance). This linear view suggests that creative work ought to follow a similar trajectory – that we move from old projects to new ones, leaving our archive behind. I’m not so sure that is necessary or desirable. What’s more, contemporary technologies (regardless of what you think of them), undermine such a ‘common-sense’ view along with a host of others that we hyper-individualised, atomised and understandably capital-driven moderns accept as natural.
My latest zine, which had the working title of The Circular Life and Death of Images, plays with notions of more ‘curly’ and messy notions of time, history and progress (personal and socio-cultural). It is an attempt to enact a less rigid understanding of time that draws on depth, sedimentation, non-linearity and constant shifts including internal collapse. I also flirted with the rather too obvious title Made with Artificial Intelligence when I started playing with these old pixels, alluding to the utterly ridiculous name we have chosen to give this technology, as if we were not artificial in any way whatsoever and that our supposed human intelligence was somehow superior. (This really depends on what form of intelligence one is referring to – Katherine Hayles (2017) argues that ‘cognition’ might be a more accurate term to use across a range of different forms.) At one point, I tried to shove the whole lot in, so the title ran on like an opening chapter!
Eventually, at the suggestion of Maria Ahmed, I settled on Orpheus in Homebase and Other Images, the first half being the title of a written piece I began in 2019 during the final stages of a part-time degree, and which is included in the latest publication. Maria’s was a good suggestion as it expanded the breadth of the work, drawing on various seeds rather than the core project that I worked with for much of its development. It is also a little more ambiguous, perhaps enticing, and seems more playful.
Without too much explanation, here are links or fragments of my old projects that contributed to the Orpheus publication (that I am aware of).
- The Art of Photography Colour Assignment 2014 (Click link for full project)
Initially, I blended images and the above ‘colour’ maps, made in 2014 right at the start of my photography studies, using 2024 generative technology, using a variety of platforms/programmes (It truly doesn’t matter which or how).
The above are just few images made while playing with concept of blending the old and the new. None are in the zine although likely to be included in the special edition which include a handful of loose images (each of the five editions contains different prints, however.)
2. Girlhood was a project I worked on when first learning photography, I was lucky enough to be able to photograph the daughters of friends as part of that project. I grew tired of searching for whatever it was I trying to find in their gazes so after two years, the project came to a halt. However, I see a hint of it returning in the Orpheus zine.
3. I started writing for the final body of work for that degree (2019/21) with the encouragement of my tutor Ruth Maclennan but eventually dropped those scribbles in favour of a conversation with a bot. When I started playing with the old colour project, one of those pieces came to mind. It also reminded me of the Flusser passage below. A developed version is included along with another text written last year.
4. As mentioned, I was reminded of a passage by Vilém Flusser from his book Writing which I had started reading towards the end of making In Pursuit of an Apparition, Hands Can Miss the Object (2024) with Maria:
If we compare our situation with the one that existed before the Second World War, we are impressed by the relative colorlessness of the time before the war. Architecture and machinery, books and tools, clothes and food, all of these things were comparably colorless. Our environment is filled with color, which, day and night, in public and in private, sometimes loud and sometimes quiet, demands our attention. Our socks and pajamas, cans and bottles, displays and posters, books and maps, beverages and ice creams, films and television, everything is in Technicolor.With these things we are dealing not simply with an aesthetic phenomenon, but with a new “artistic style.” The red traffic light means “Stop!” and the obnoxious green of peas means “Buy me!” This explosion of colors means something. We are exposed to a constant stream of colors.We are programmed by colors. They are an aspect of the codified world in which we have to live (2005[1978])
I am certain, there is more that lies dormant or that I drew from. But that is probably enough for the moment. I have to say, it was far harder than I initially imagined it would be to bring the old and the new together, hence the erratic publication (I made three different proofs, hoped to have ti ready in May but pulled it as was not happy with choices or outcome. I think it’s just about there for now… ).
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I reject the split between theory and practice entirely. My work is theory and practice. Neither leads. Rather, if one insists on some form of separation, they dance together, allowing one or the other to lead as and when the work demands. I have written about some of the key theoretical concepts for the Orpheus zine here.
Orpheus in Homebase and Other Images is available as a limited edition zine on my website.. This is the first in a series of zines that will, I hope, function as a set. The next one will be informed by my Sense and Reason project.
Refs
Flusser, V., Ströhl, A. and Eisel, E. (2005[1978]) Writings. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press.
Hayles, N.K. (2017) Unthought: the power of the cognitive nonconscious. Chicago (Ill.): University of Chicago Press.