Recycled Images - Post

Another night in the CU darkroom.
My intention with this film was to combine all the techniques covered in class thus far (subtractive method, additive, magazine transfers, COLOR) in some sort of visual exploration of the confusion I've been feeling lately... mainly towards my education at CU. I've been attending classes seemingly varied (physics, film, writing, history), but more so than learning the material, (which I'm trying to do as well) I've been studying how different departments convey their material to the student.

Hand processing film ain't really a new thing for myself, but magazine transfers are. This is my first attempt at this technique and in keeping with my theme of conveyance of material, I chose to transfer both the schematics of a darkroom set-up and explanations on how light functions physically. I've never cared for self-reflexivity in cinema work, but for some reason, I feel this approach is applicable to what I'm indirectly referring to with this loop.

Anyway, enough with the typing... y'all just want to see some photos right!? Here it go, goes.



Tricks of the trade, eh? My plan was to take Hi-Con film, spool it up into a cylindrical form around a core (you know when it's 4 in the morning the night before a project's due and you're trying to coil your film around a core, and all you end up getting is cone made out of film, instead of the nice, neat, project-able spool? Like that...) and solarize the film for a brief second. I wanted to do this to mimic the effect given by a burn-in on film... a burn-in is merely light interacting with the emulsion, right? So that was my jumping off point, almost using the film in a resist-form with itself, as light had to past through the film to expose the underlying film.

I then processed the film as a negative. Hi-Con's great because you can process it either as a negative or as a reversal stock... and you can work with safe-lights. The photos in the darkroom didn't turn out (yuk yuk yuk), so I just have from the dyeing process onward.

Stuff works like a charm. My friend Jake called me earlier in the week, right after we'd gone over adding color to film in class and asked me if I wanted RIT dye his work was getting rid of. Talk about timing! Shoot!



(Anyone else read the bit about processing film with piss in Recipes for Disaster? Tempting... haha.) But seriously, the dye kinda looks like stale urine, huh? Well, my friend Sarah said so anyway...



... so some tangerine got added. I was hoping to only dye selected parts of the film between the burn-in's I'd made, without any sort of resisting aides. Easier said than done.


I got some pretty interesting looking burn-in/resists embedded within the film...



Time to try out this "selective dyeing" bit. Worked pretty well actually! But I got some help...



... from the clothes-pins. It's good to have another set of "hands" when you're trying to document and work on a project.



Well, I dyed the film for about 30 minutes, and pulled the sucker out to dry. The tangerine turned out well!



I spooled up this bad boy after it dried and headed home for some warm-water... both for some tea and some magazine transfers.



I tore the schemata into strips and began to soak in his hot water, ridding it of the paper backing it once had... I thought about this action figuratively as well, taking a formulation and in a sense, cleansing it, and reapplying it to another form. Transformation of ideas and presentation abound... or something to that degree.



I let the magazine soak in the water for about 5 minutes and then plastered it onto spots that had become clear out of a burn-in.



About bed-time? 8am class? 2 exams? About bed-time.

More magazine transfers to continue!