Embodied Camera In the photograph, the event is never transcended for the sake of something else: the photograph always leads the corpus I need back to the body I see; it is the absolute.                             —Roland Barthes

Course Objectives

Perceptual differences in methodology have historically kept the sciences apart from artistic practice. Artists and scientists who inquire self-reflexively: How am I observing? and What is doing the observing? probe the edges of 17th century, Cartesian boundary lines in a conscious, humanistic way. By transforming issues of methodology into a serious biological question: What is the Tri-Cameral-Brain doing?— we come closer to discerning the potential of our creativity.

The camera, when used by the artist, often serves as an extension of the human body's ability to see and preserve memories. In science, it is a device which makes visible the invisible structures and cellular forms of the body. Embodied Camera investigates the original human camera, the Triune Brain. It relates human perceiving and receiving as one whole perception. It tracks a wide range of syntactical and technological devices that are employed to visually express artistic conceptual notions or scientific discoveries. Select readings and discussion will illuminate how historically, photography's technical processes have constructed and recorded the interplay of verbal and visual communication between subject and object since its invention.

We'll look at contemporary projects by artists whose intuitions are visually bound from experiential forms of observation—embodiment—containment—interiority— versus the hegemony of ocular vision, which "progress" in technology has brought. In its scientific employment, we will look to new imaging technologies (ie: MRI, CT scanning and other digital recording devices) used in medical practice for examination of the body. While discerning a corporeal understanding of photography, a research/lab journal becomes the repository for observations and potential projects. By juxtaposing and tracing the relationship between body and camera, the artist tempers a stance between the physical body (experiential practice) and mind (scanning of systems and theories).

Trajectories

This is a project-based concept course, in which students make work that is informed by our research, manifesting in your choice of media. Selections from the Embodied Reader support short exercises. Experiential documentation of praxis in relation to materials and methods is encouraged. Journal sketches document your findings—as a lab notebook might be for the scientist or technician. Final projects will morph directly from the evolving shape of your journals, assigned readings and written essays.