Back to the grindstone

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused. E. Hemmingway

I’ve come back to this quote time and time again. Usually after an extended hiatus from writing. This time is no different. Since my last post, I’ve moved back to Canada and have endured seeing sickness and death in my friends and family and have celebrated the recent family addition of my first daughter. Emmanuelle came to us like an angel on September 19, 2011 and as I write this entry with one arm I hold her sleeping in the other.

Becoming a parent has made me more efficient with my time and eager for these moments when I can do some writing and reflection. Kids force you to live in the present moment, which is the gift they give their parents. For that, I have become clearer in my writing and more fervent about my research.

Also since the last post, I managed to have another exhibit at Propeller Gallery (Toronto) and get my research paper, Digital Art in the Third World Context, published by CHArt.

Thanks to the brilliance of the recently deceased Steve Jobs and the ubiquity and ease of use of his iPhone, I am writing this post via my iPhone using a neat little WordPress App.

There is a lot more I will write about regarding the proprietary Mac App World, the more open Android App World and the counter culture of jailbreaking but I am happy for now that I at least got a few words down today.

My wife, a novelist, has taught me that words come to the page in small consistent and planned spurts. If I can write a page a day I will have my thesis by next year. Simple math

Goldsmiths Digital Studios Feedback

Today’s fortnightly meeting was a planned discussion around a text I chose by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. There was a modest turn out today and I am assuming it was because of a conflicting colloquium at the Memorial Scrolls Trust  Museum in which a few of my colleagues were making presentations around the topic Between Narrative and Embodiment: Materializing Identity. The discussion  turned out to be quite focused on the development of my work and was in effect a follow up, feedback dialogue around the project presentation I made last week at the GDS.  Thank you Janis, Anastaious and EunJoo for the insightful feedback and direction. Essentially, two major points emerged from our discussions. The first was a change in approach to the argument of my thesis and second was a slight revisiting of my proposed Literature Review.

I now feel I want to revamp my current thesis argument which operates in an ‘us’ versus ‘them’, ‘inside/outside’ logic. Granted this has been a well researched post-colonial argument from E. Said to G. Spivak but things are changing and even theorists like Spivak are acknowledging the other facets of the argument in her revisiting of the subalten through an analysis of the identity-less notion of Asia in Other Asias. It would serve me better to shift my emphasis away from the binary argument that the traditional art canon has gaps that need filling (ie. work from the Philippines, its diaspora and the Global South). As Janis put it, we all know there are gaps, it has been clearly pointed out over the last few decades of post-colonial and feminist critique but at this point who cares? It’s their loss!

The point she is making is that the ‘centre’ as a point from where others may find themselves on the periphery is invented. There actually is no single centre, only networks and connections. It is from this logic that I can make a more dynamic argument by developing or showing the existence of an alternate equally viable and valid centre. Other texts and theoretical directions recommended to me today include theories from Said (Imagined Geographies) and Hobsbawm (Invented Traditions) in relation to Anderson (Imagined Communities) and Rushkoff (Open Source Democracy). For this I will most likely revamp my Literature Review to place less emphasis on a binary argument that actually validates an exclusionary hegemonic centre, traditional ‘hi-art’, which after the last Thursday Club Meeting and discussion with Christaine Paul clearly is delegating New Media Art from even the ‘First World’ to a periphery status as well.

In concrete terms, I will start by establishing my personal position to my research. Much like the some of the writings of Mandan Sarap, I feel it is important to contextualize my position as a Philippine-Canadian artist. This is particularly relevant in describing by visit to the Archives in Seville and it’s subsequent significance to my art practice and research. In the description of my research trip I hope to sift out all the poetry and random memories that were triggered by being in Spain’s colonial capital and seeing the first ever drawing of the Philippines.

Ultimately over the next few weeks I must write, write, write! One must start with bricks before thinking of building a castle… in this case, given the fact that I am planning an extended visit to Canada which means an international move, I would be happy with a well constructed nipa hut.

Pure Data meeting with Dr. Grierson

I’ve just had a less formal tutorial with Mick where we briefly discussed the upgrade viva planned for next year and what will be expected of me in regards to written and material and artwork. Mick is confident in my theoretical background and ability to create a critical argument in writing and now wants to focus on my computational art practice. He presented another option for viva package that includes a well developed art piece, and a body of writing that describes my analysis of the work and its success as a researched art practice. This is a bit different from my initial plan of creating a well researched thesis argument with an art-practice that reflects the research. Both would work but for now before deciding, Mick has suggested to get my hands dirty with the programming.

We spent a good part of the extended meeting to hone some of my computing skills in Pd. Breakthroughs include the creation of ‘inlets’ in my programming by which I have now started to create an array of interlinked patches. This in effect allows me the ability to create mini-programs that I can call upon from one master program. For example if I want to move a series of images on the screen I can create a movement program for each visual element then compile them together on one master patch where I can then control each of the mini programs.

I am now working creating an array of patches that will create interactivity between the visual elements in my ‘El Alcazar’ piece previously exhibited at the Propeller Gallery.

Tutorial Synopsis

I’ve just returned from a very fruitful tutorial with Mick and feel motivated to reign in all the potential ideas and imaginings I’ve been accumulating and to have them all work together towards a tight and focused project.  At the worst of times, I fear this is getting overly ambitious in the scope of my project but this is the plan anyways. That said, after today I feel a bit more assured that it possible

Mainly, I gave Mick an intensive briefing on all the work I have done to date and more importantly, where I see the PhD project going. This is timely as I am due for a first term report. Things discussed include:

1. Recent work done at the Archivo General de Indias and the resulting online release of a portion of their digital archive.

2. My current exhibition at Propeller and how it connects to the project.

3. Where Pd fits into all this?

4. My work plan.

Although I’ve planned on developing a visual aesthetic influenced by my research, incorporating my research into the image-making had to be an organic, less calculated process. I knew I wanted to crop and montage in a style that was a connected progression from my past work but I could never have guessed as to how I would achieve this.

Serendipity had me going to Seville and chancing upon the 16th century images of the Philippines. It really all started from combining a family vacation with the possibility of interviewing Ocampo. The vacation happened but meeting Ocampo didn’t.

Luckily my time at the Archivo General de Indias proved to be very fruitful. After my time in Seville both in the archives and taking photographs of the old colonial buildings, I started the process of distilling my visual findings into the pieces that are now on exhibit in Toronto. The result was a pleasant change addition of what Mick refered to as ‘noise’ in my current work. This can probably be attributed to all the imperfections that I was exposed to when viewing the archived maps.  I like the resulting contrast as digitality can often come off as very slick and sterile. It works well on many levels as the ‘rougher’ imperfections to the work is consistent with the organic aesthetic coming from digital artists in the Philippines

(insert telegarden versus SABAW pics).

After our meeting I realized that I have to better consider where interactivity and moving image fit in all of this. Along these lines, Mick will be taking me through some Pure Data tutorials which will hopefully beef up some needed skills.

 

Work Plan

Project Work Plan, Jan 2011

Group Show at Propeller Gallery

It has truly been a busy time. I have been invited to do a group show at Toronto’s Propeller Gallery and I will be showing a few of my recent pieces inspired by my research in Seville. Please see below for my Artist’s Statement and a sample of the work that will be on display.

The pieces for exhibit at the Propeller’s Salon V Group Show are part of a larger series of work entitled Mapas y Planos (Maps and Plans) inspired by my research at Spanish colonial archives.

These pieces combine some of the first drawn maps of the Philippines from the Archivo General de Indias with images of current day Seville, Spain. Seville was the capital of the Spanish Colonial Empire when the Philippines was first formed in the sixteenth century. The archived images that I use date back to as early as 1555 and represent the first visual imaginings of South East Asia by the West. The process of making these works combines mixed media techniques of painting, photography, digital manipulation and printing.

La Catedral. 2011. Giclée on canvas. 34 x 22 inches.

El Alcazar. 2011. Giclée on canvas. 34 x 22 inches.

For more information one can visit Propeller’s website or my Facebook Event page.

Inspiring New Year!

Just got back from a very fruitful time in Seville and a very recharging holiday season with family and friends in London.

Notable steps forward with the PhD project since the last update include excellent finds at the Archivo General de Indias. Although I did not get a chance to meet up with Manuel Ocampo this time around, I made major breakthroughs at the archives in Seville.

The Archivo General de Indias was established in Seville in 1785. It is the custodian of the archives produced by the institutions created  by the Spanish central administration for the government and administration for the Spanish territories created overseas… It is a continental archive which sections occupy almost 49,000 sets of documents and 9 kilometres of shelves.

As to what can be referred to as a the chronological scope, there is more than four centuries shown in the pages of its documents : from 1492, when there was the first contact with the new world, until its independence in the first third of the nineteenth century. There are also fonds which are conserved that reach to the second third of the nineteenth century which concern the Philippine and Cuban Islands, as these were kept as provinces of Spain until 1898.

Lazaro, Pilar (2010). The General Archive of Indias. Secreteria General Tecnica: Ministerio de Cultura, Spain. p. 9.

I researched the entire Philippine  ‘Mapas y Planos’ collection of the Archives, 387 documents in all, and managed to get through a tenth of the general drawings. In all, I have looked at, and loosely catalogued over 500 documents from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. A majority of the archives consist of city and building plans of Manila and surrounding area. Also included in this collection are some early navigational maps by Spanish explorers and even some Chinese maps of the area. Other interesting images I have found include some drawing of the local people and visual interpretations of the oddities the Spanish seemingly encountered.

More importantly, I have started a working relationship with the Seville archive and as a result they have made more than 15% of their archived maps and images of the Philippines available online at: http://www.mcu.es/index.html. This could have proven  to be a complicated task of cutting through red tape with the Spain’s Ministry of Culture but I am indebted to the efforts of Senor Antonio Sanchez and Senora Reyez who’s help and guidance made it possible to navigate the extensive archives of Seville under the time constraints of my visit and have a good number of maps and illustrations of early Philippines available online.

Old Maps, Oranges and Ocampo

I have been battling with a terrible virus that has left me with paralyzed with migraines, head congestion, fever and cough for the last week and finished off with a lovely stomach wrenching flu finale for the last four days! I’m not sure if I contracted two different bugs but either way have been pretty devastated.

On a positive note, I’m on the mend and am headed to Spain to fill up on some much needed vitamin C and sunshine.  We leave tomorrow for Seville for both leisure and research.  When I’m not gorging on tapas, oranges and sherry I intend to spend some time in the Archivo de Indias and hopefully get in contact with Filipino-american painter Manuel Ocampo who is currently based in Seville.

I have emailed both Ocampo and his gallerists at Tyler and Rollins in New York a month ago to set up meeting. I hope to interview Ocampo regarding his newest, rather dark  works, An Arcane Recipe works. The exhibit is described by the gallery as “more mysterious yet emotionally charged (with) motifs that evoke an inner world of haunting visions and nightmares.” This series is a considerable which change from Ocampo’s transgressive postcolonial commentary of the 1980s and I hope to get his opinion on the state of Philippine art today and his views on the postcolonial artist.

I also hope to do some primary research at the Archivo General de Indias which hold some of the first documents from the Spaniards in regards to the Philippines. This will help in my thesis introduction where I aim to map out a visual history/narrative for the Philippines in regards to disapora and art.

Seville was the capital of the Spanish colonial world in the sixteenth century and was the transnational hub of the empire when the Philippines was first colonized. As a result, the initial seeds of the Philippine nation and its roots in colonialism can be traced back to Seville. I hope to locate any documentation pr better yet images of the Philippines from that time period and incorporate it into my research.

Fingers crossed!

Visualizing the ‘Big Picture’

I am trying to wrestle with the enormity of work ahead of me and have come up this informational diagram to help me break up this PhD into smaller more manageable parts. For a detailed view of the diagram please link here: Project Diagram 1.0

Tools of the trade. Settling on a citation system.

As an academic who is still relatively ‘wet behind the ears’, I saw this as great opportunity to really build a good foundation for my research and to start things ‘right’. I have always felt that scholarship in its essence is the contribution of critical thought to a vast and ever-growing canon and as such researchers must deal with volumes and volumes of texts, articles, art works, etc. What has always intrigued me is how one stores and organizes all this information as I don’t buy that just because one has their PhD they have the genius capacity to store all the data to remain ‘informed’… well at least at first.

As a result I have been in search of a citation system that would fit nicely into my research process since 2009. I was looking for something simple, portable and would last the test of time and software updates. In my search I have talked to professors, tutors and postgraduate researchers and discussed their personal methods of managing their information. I have received many useful suggestions but was surprised to find out that most scholars I have spoken too at OCAD, Harvard, Camberwell and Goldsmiths still collect their data the old fashioned way of either writing down/typing each item. The system that I have seen most commonly used involves the organization of text files in folders saved (and religiously backed up/printed out) on one’s hard drive.

Systems of storing these files were either done by theme (problematic when there is cross-over in themes in certain texts), by date (only useful if historical chronology is relevant to one’s analysis) and by writing project (useful if one has plenty of articles/essays/books under their belt of which they could use the attached bibliographies as organized resources according to the title of the project). Some scholars both senior and junior have used good old fashioned paper. Notebooks, file folders, clippings, and photocopies etc. This method seemed to be the most flexible as it could incorporate all the said electronic techniques but it was very far from being portable.

As a technophile I was looking for a digital answer. I like the idea that libraries of texts can be accessed from the palm of my hands anywhere in the world without ever having to worry about losing it, and I wanted to incorporate this in my methodology of data collection from the start of my postgraduate research. I was referred to the Endnote , the reference management software by Thompson Reuters, but was told by many that it wasn’t as portable as I may think. EndNote is a program that can pull complete citations form electronic library searches and add them to your personal online database. This database is then made accessible by Microsoft Word and as a result gives the writer the flexibility of changing citation styles with just a few clicks of the mouse. It allows for the storage of extra notes, multimedia files and tags to help organize the information. It seemed to be the perfect fit only the longevity point that was being made to me was the fact that the personal database one created was only accessible so long as you maintained your annual user fee. I could certainly get this waived so long as I was at Goldsmiths (as my tuition fees include an EndNote package) but the entire database I created over my time at Goldsmiths would be inaccessible once I left Goldsmiths! This was not a feasible option.

Grab from zotero.org

In keeping with the Web 2.0 ethos of free and open source software (FOSS) I decided to look for a FOSS version of Endnote. What I found was Zotero. Below is an interesting description of the birth of Zotero pulled up from the ever trustworthy (and also publicly collaborative and thus ubiquitous) Wikipedia:

Endnote/Zotero legal dispute

During September 2008, Thomson Reuters, the owners of Endnote, sued the Commonwealth of Virginia for $10 million and requested an injunction against competing reference management software.^[4][5] George Mason University‘s Center for History and New Media developed Zotero, a free/open source extension to Mozilla Firefox. Thomson Reuters alleges that the Zotero developers reverse engineered and/or decompiled EndNote, that Zotero can transform proprietary EndNote citation style files (.ens) to the open Citation Style Language format, that they host files converted in this manner, and that they abuse the “EndNote” trademark in describing this feature. Thomson Reuters claims that this is violation of the site license agreement. They also added a restrictive click-thru license to their styles download web site.^[5]

George Mason University responded that it would not renew its site license for EndNote and that “anything created by users of Zotero belongs to those users, and that it should be as easy as possible for Zotero users to move to and from the software as they wish, without friction.”^[6] The journal Nature editorialized that “the virtues of interoperability and easy data-sharing among researchers are worth restating. Imagine if Microsoft Word or Excel files could be opened and saved only in these proprietary formats, for example. It would be impossible for OpenOffice and other such software to read and save these files using open standards — as they can legally do.” ^[7]

The case was dismissed on June 4, 2009.^[8]

So long story short, I am using a mixture of a Zotero database connected to my Firefox browser in combination with a collection of carefully foldered and sub-foldered pdfs and text files. I am also currently recklessly tempting fate as I have yet to back anything up.