Test Bed 5

Making Things Strange

I have been looking at various ways to defamiliarise images by making their content and structure strange. I want viewers to be directed towards the essence of my work, and not be diverted by explanations that tell them what they are supposed to seeing.

I avoid reading exhibition captions and catalogues, which explain what it is that I am viewing. When I look at images I try go with what is before me, and do not let descriptions sidetrack me. Instructions about how a picture is to be viewed takes away my entitlement to observe it as the producer of its meaning. This does not mean that a picture cannot have a title, and other information for cataloguing. It is a distinction between impact and account.

An image loses something, and the viewing process becomes incomplete, when we rely upon directives. I often use a technique that disrupts the familiarity of a picture, to such an extent that the beholder is forced to dwell longer on the visual form before making any sense of its possible meaning.

The Russian Formalist concept 'Ostranenie' best describes this, and in 'Art as Technique', Viktor Shklovsky writes: "The purpose of art is to transmit the sense of a thing as seeing not as recognising; the device of art is that of 'making things strange' and of making form difficult, increasing the difficulty and time taken to perceive since the process of perception in art is an aim in itself and must be prolonged: art is a way of experiencing the making of a thing and what has already been made is of no importance."

The idea of holding the viewer's attention and involvement for as long as possible, delays the need for explanation, but suggests that inscribing difficulty to extend perception might be problematic. If there is no faculty for understanding, there is unlikely to be any persistence, and distancing will occur. This is most commonly seen in the fields of abstraction and non-representational art, but can be avoided by introducing elements, which register a point of recognition before engaging the strangeness of the context.

An Escher staircase, is a staircase, 

but although it does not behave like a normal staircase, 

it acts like an abnormal staircase.

Visual conundrums are useful because they arouse curiosity, and hold the gaze. Similarly, puzzles that tip the balance between what is likely, and what is not, do not necessarily demand solutions; they just register as oddities. The photograph below looks normal, but also seems unlikely. I employed my composite photo-time-lapse technique to create a scene that had a scintilla of strangeness, while clearly representing a recognisable situation. The viewer sees the picture of people walking on a hill, but there is something that does not quite square with reality. This is not a misrepresentation, nor a unique congregation, but a stimulus to work out why it is odd. The second photograph uses the same technique, but here the setting has an immediate logic of being an event that could really happen, but what is it? There are degrees persistence made by strangeness, from the obscure to the possible.

I am not going to unpack these two pictures, because I feel genuinely that they convey the idea of creating impact without the need to present contextual explanations.

Working with semi-representational images is another matter.

The next two images occupy a halfway house. They are representational, but use abstracted substitutes to connote the referents. In the first picture we see a dog that alternately looks backwards and forwards. It is a graphical interpretation that relies on this movement to push the interpretation further. If you don't see it immediately, the stylisation might feel like whimsey, but if you anchor on the optical effect it will continue to persist by looking beyond what might be apparent to something different.

The second picture is a foreshore, where sea bed organisms float (improbably) above the water. They are rendered to represent the ecological properties, which thrive in these conditions, but have to be given prominence to emphasise their importance. This is an example of foregrounding an idea by visual construction, not possible as a fact, but real in the sense of its significance.

Both pictures use identifiable transpositions to enable interpretation.

Finally, abstraction and non-representational forms can be defined as A) being based on things we recognise, but stylised and not absolutely representational (abstraction), whereas, B) being confronted with contrivances unconnected to our visual experience (non-representational) means they are already strange, but not as unfamiliar as we might think. Abstract art makes connections with everyday visual references, and non-representational work uses (unemotionally) things we are familiar with when used in schemata.

An abstraction of a recognisable thing immediately refines our interpretation of its meaning, while a non-representational image, in common with (say) a diagram, distributes components that create qualities and quantities, which can harmonise, show opposition or produce disparateness, but do not necessarily mean anything in conventional terms. It might be argued that this takes us directly to a stage where our evaluations might have encountered similar peculiarities previously. The consideration of these visualisations are, however, often fraught with difficulty when the viewer seeks some resemblance with realism. The only genuineness is in the appearance and arrangement of the substance, and this in abstraction is more identifiable than in modes, which engender purely subjective feelings.

The first image is an abstract, and has enough similarity with foliage to raise fewer difficulties in its reading. The second image is an emotional moment that communicates directly to our senses without resorting to a negotiation with verisimilitude.

I would maintain that the second picture has more traction than the first, because it takes us down a road that does not create ambiguities because nothing is competing for comparison. It produces a raw sensation that allows our instincts to frame emotional responses.

The abstraction, on the other hand, stays within the bounds of its depiction, creating a stylisation of things familiar, and connotative ideas, which reflect our individual predilections.