This project’s backstory, and my process of making these photographs, is a major part of this piece, along with the archival elements, such as the photographic prints, the NFTs, and the book. All of this, along with the project’s original films are the bits and pieces that make up the series, thus becoming the project’s physical proof.
How LAGTIME Came About:
This project has had me working with the concepts of time in physical space. It began with my investigation into the idea that all events in the past, present, and future exist in the same moment.
LAGTIME began one evening while streaming media over a really slow internet connection. Occasionally the connection would lag, the moving image would stop in a blur. After the fourth image stalled and blurred, I began shooting these stills that were on my laptop screen, in a sense beginning to capture time in the abstract.
The original LAGTIME project started out by streaming commercial films and I soon realized that I did not want this project to be derivative of, or depend on, commercial film projects. Because I wanted to make my exploration of the ‘archaeology of time’ site specific, I chose to use San Francisco as my first site location to create my own films. It also became my proving ground for initially producing the project because it is close to where I live and has a larger than life linear history. Working this way has only strengthened my desire to have the opportunity to work in other site specific locations for this project.
Technicalities:
Understanding the difference in moving film and moving digital images helps to comprehend this project:
Celluloid film moves through a projector one frame at a time. Basically it is a series of 35mm still images that when shown through a projector, create the illusion of moving images. If a film got stuck in the projector, it would project a focused clear image because it would stop on a frame, or if it stopped in between frames there would be a marker of a black line between the frames. There is also the chance that the film would break and there would be a torn image or no image at all.
When watching the very same ‘film’ in a digital format, all of the images are still there, but the images kind of slide from one to the next. Only the pixels from the last image that need to be replaced are replaced in the next. So that every time you see a ‘frame’, in the abstract it isn’t a whole image different from the last. Some of the pixels may not have moved for the last one, two, twenty, or more frames. When the digital film lags, or stalls, or even blurs due to bandwidth issues, or pausing the film, you are literally sliding between the frames, between the images, and, between time.
Imagination:
Through this project, I began to imagine that there is no time other than the present, that all things, as well as all of history, exist in what we refer to as now.
I’ve always thought that this project would be successful if it got the viewer to think about the concept of now, what it is, when it is, and to think about the big picture of our existence. To think about what is visible and what isn’t, to contemplate that place in between things.
In working with the images to create the initial book and begin to ready the images for creating the prints and then the NFTs, I began to rethink my ideas behind the project. As I looked through them, I began to wonder, where did that image come from? Where is that object? Really? It must exist somewhere, because I’ve taken an image of it, but where is it? It obviously is not in the third dimension. Is it in 5D? In another dimension altogether? Another universe?
From my perspective, this project has turned out to be a visual meditation, a contemplation of my real place, and my very existence, in this universe.
Will it do the same for others?
View LAGTIME-SF:
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Hard Copy Book and Digital PDF Preview/Purchase: L A G T I M E : San Francisco
Purchase open edition, unsigned prints, various sizes available, of the series at SaatchiArt Online.
Gallery/Museum limited edition prints are not yet created.
Note: When I think of music to accompany the images played in the background during an exhibition, other than silence, I often think of The Sounds of Jupiter, NASA recordings by Voyager.