Sunday Ramblings
Just a couple of quick notes...
First, I should mention that I have a photo in the new issue (#101) of Shots. Once again joined by some fellow Filmwasters: Rebecca Pendel, Aline Smithson, and Susan Burnstine.
And while I’m talking about things in print, I also wanted to mention a book I found recently called “The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon” by David Sylvester. It’s out of print, but seems fairly widely available. Regardless of what you think of Bacon’s paintings this is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in art – of whatever kind – and, more importantly I think, the nature of the creative process.
This last point is something I started to think a lot about through playing music, and particularly when doing a lot of improvisation. Often when improvising things happen that seem to arrive from nowhere – and often things emerge that you can’t possibly imagine doing or having thought of. And, yet you did do them…
In photography I have tended – at least recently – to have some very clear ideas of what I was trying to achieve, and yet often it’s the random events in the process of making them that seem most significant. I’ve also often been struck by the idea for trying something that, if I stopped to consciously analyse what I was doing, would seem probably very silly, and yet after the fact it’s these things that seem right somehow, and tell me more about what I was trying to do than anything I had really actively planned. I don’t have any answers or grand theories about any of this, but it does fascinate me.
(As an aside, when I googled for more info on the book I found it recommended by Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame…)
Also, I plan to see the new Bacon exhibition at Tate Britain next month, so I’ll report back on that.
I’ll also briefly recommend Dr Ben Goldacre’s new book “Bad Science” – not only for its frequently hilarious debunking of various popular health scares and pseudo-scientific charlatans – but also for its excellent chapters on the placebo effect (which is weirder and more interesting than anything new age lunatics can dream up) and statistics. Not the most exciting sounding, that last one, but I tend to think that if as a citizen in the modern world you don’t understand the rudiments of the scientific method and how numbers are used and abused you’re leaving yourself wide open to all sorts of exploitation and bullshit…
First, I should mention that I have a photo in the new issue (#101) of Shots. Once again joined by some fellow Filmwasters: Rebecca Pendel, Aline Smithson, and Susan Burnstine.
And while I’m talking about things in print, I also wanted to mention a book I found recently called “The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon” by David Sylvester. It’s out of print, but seems fairly widely available. Regardless of what you think of Bacon’s paintings this is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in art – of whatever kind – and, more importantly I think, the nature of the creative process.
This last point is something I started to think a lot about through playing music, and particularly when doing a lot of improvisation. Often when improvising things happen that seem to arrive from nowhere – and often things emerge that you can’t possibly imagine doing or having thought of. And, yet you did do them…
In photography I have tended – at least recently – to have some very clear ideas of what I was trying to achieve, and yet often it’s the random events in the process of making them that seem most significant. I’ve also often been struck by the idea for trying something that, if I stopped to consciously analyse what I was doing, would seem probably very silly, and yet after the fact it’s these things that seem right somehow, and tell me more about what I was trying to do than anything I had really actively planned. I don’t have any answers or grand theories about any of this, but it does fascinate me.
(As an aside, when I googled for more info on the book I found it recommended by Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame…)
Also, I plan to see the new Bacon exhibition at Tate Britain next month, so I’ll report back on that.
I’ll also briefly recommend Dr Ben Goldacre’s new book “Bad Science” – not only for its frequently hilarious debunking of various popular health scares and pseudo-scientific charlatans – but also for its excellent chapters on the placebo effect (which is weirder and more interesting than anything new age lunatics can dream up) and statistics. Not the most exciting sounding, that last one, but I tend to think that if as a citizen in the modern world you don’t understand the rudiments of the scientific method and how numbers are used and abused you’re leaving yourself wide open to all sorts of exploitation and bullshit…
posted by David Bennett at 9:20 pm
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