Olivier Culmann

"He travels the globe to take photos of people watching TV. Culmann’s mind-numbing portraits show each person transfixed by the telly, sometimes bearing hilariously dazed expressions. Taken out of context, you would think the images were a detailed study of worldwide ennui and existential angst. Culmann didn’t take snaps of his subjects until he was sure they had forgotten he was there."

All images and text from here.

Good Old Film

How many times have I opened the back of a film camera that already had film in it? Countless times and I thought I've learned from every one of these experiences... but obviously I didn't. I did it again today. That feeling is indescribable. It is a mix between stupidity, self-hatred, disappointment but also it questions your ability to be able to ever learn, in fact the trust in yourself thing is a little shaky for a moment. The good thing about it? At least I still shoot film and have not given up on it! And probably never will. Maybe it is exactly because of these risks and the uncertainty of film that keeps me coming back to it over and over again. It is just not that easy if compared to a digital system. I'm not saying I'm against digital cameras, what I'm saying is that don't shoot hundreds and thousands of jpg's or RAW's, keep it within limitations. If I give myself between twenty and thirty images that I can shoot for a specific brief, I end up with better images as I spend more time on them and compose them more carefully than if I would just be shooting away and later have to go through hundreds of files finding 'the one'. This works for me, it might not for you.

Maybe I should buy red tape and every time I load a camera with film tape it closed. Or should I feel that feeling over and over again? It might stop eventually? But am I really willing to loose so many images? No.

Here an image I took on a 35mm Rollei Redbird. Unedited.

By Karolina Rupp Photography

A thought. A metathought.

It amazes me how many people are on this planet. How all of them somehow make it happen. Make themselves happen, even if it is just surviving. I am thinking of all the people in so many different countries and landscapes and cityscapes somehow all living together intertwined. But one thought about this whole idea bothers me. Who does the world belong to? One would say 'It belongs to the people'? But frankly, it does not. If it would, I could visit any place on this planet tomorrow without having to get a visa etc. But this is not what I mean, what I am in fact referring to is the idea of does this world not actually belong to our minds? Because yes we can see bodies walking and talking but without a mind there would be none of the latter. Say we agree. This earth is cramped with minds, thus with thoughts and all these thoughts if they would be floating around freely could be seen as the collective consciousness. So imagine you have to give this bubble of thoughts a name that actually does not refer to what it is seen as (collective consciousness) but to what it means, to what the mother-thought is all about?! I believe it is tricky. Obviously. But the thought made from the collection of thoughts I would call 'The Metathought' for the purpose of this blog. Imagine you would be able to access this metathought and throw it around like a ball, swim in it, burn a part to see how it heals itself again and cut it in half to be able to say that you were the one who experienced half of it. 

I wonder if your thoughts are still part of it if you're the one playing with it? 

This is it. A random thought for today.

 

John Baldessari

Knosing

The need to be creative is a wonderful one, but if you feel uninspired it is terrible. Sinful in fact if that is what you strive for. You start questioning things around you. An experiment one can do which fascinates me is the following: Close your one eye and look at your nose. It is in your sight from the top till the bottom but you can't see it in its full form or shape. Does that mean that your nose is only half a nose? Yes sure look at it with both your eye, squint, and you will realise that it is blurred and exists even less as a shape as it is not as defined. The point I'm trying to make is that your face grows out of your head, out of your mind, so if you interact with someone face to face does that mean there is only one face in the conversation or two? You are only able to see the one you are looking at, not your own. Also, within that interaction, don't you feel you are in the space between you and the person? You are throwing words at the other persons face which only start existing within the space between you and her/ him and then the other person takes them in.. or not. Your mind seems to thus not exist in your head but in the space just in front of you, hovering there, ready to interact and explore. Tough it carries a wall either to the left or the right (depending which eye you close) of your vision. Therefore we know that our nose can be observed from either side and that it is big, forming a little arrow pointing us in a direction. Let's call it the nosal compass of our mind. As someone pointed out, people are counted or seen as noses, for example 'there are ten noses in the room' or as one would say in the German language 'zwei Euro pro Nase' which translates to 'two Euro per nose(person)'. Does this mean that the reason we count or see noses is the fact that it is the closest thing to our mind (physically) that we ourselves can observe and thus we being there becomes real? 

Being led by our noses, exploring the world around us being aware of the nose in the corner of our eye creates a very different experience of our reality as it makes us perceive it out of a third party perspective. How wonderful! This allows us to observe the observed behind the shield of our physical being which is protecting our mind, for now. 

The conclusion here, what does facing yourself mean?!

Is choice good?

This is a very interesting talk by Barry Schwartz! It questions the idea of choice.