Development
Of
Photographs
Is the environmental impact of film at odds with this practice?
how do we archive our selves our actions taking only from connected abundance?
The luminous film is amorphous in the light revealing different parts of itself as your awkward hands try to keep it still and focused
trying not to smudge
holding it with a kind of reverence
with the incredible longevity of film they will be handed down to my grandchildren, they become small windows into other times
thumbling them into a temporal presence
this element of Collaborative Stream Building explores the re-localization of photo making
researching the coating of the negative to the processing and storage of the negative or photograph
looking to find ways of producing images of archival quality that are environmentally benign and build connection to place
this project is open ended in nature and will continue to build nuance in a generational speed
(Specific)
Cafenol as a replacement for a developer seems the lowest hanging fruit and I have had great success. from my understanding the caffeic acid in the coffee dissolves the silver that hasn't been touched by light into the mixture, the washing soda and vitamin C clean and play with the PH level.
First Cafenol Experiment
Mix Developer: Coffee(light Roast) 1Tbs - Washing Powder(Sodium Carbonate) 1.5Tbs - Vitimin C powder (Ascorbic Acid) 0.5Tbs
into
500mls of water
Mix Stop (Ilform Stop) 10mls
into
500mls of water
Mix Fixer (Ilford rapid fixer) 100mls
into
400mls
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------outcome---------------------
1. water wash 2mins
2.Developer 15 mins (aggravate for 20secs ever minute)
3.water wash 1min
4.Stop 1 min
5.Fixer 6mins
6.water wash x 6
Second experiment with Rosemary
Mix Developer: Rosemary Tea strong 300ml - Washing Powder(Sodium Carbonate) 1.5Tbs - Vitimin C powder (Ascorbic Acid) 0.5Tbs
into
500mls of water
Mix Stop (Ilform Stop) 10mls
into
500mls of water
Mix Fixer (Ilford rapid fixer) 100mls
into
400mls
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------outcome---------------------
1. water wash 2mins
2.Developer 8 mins (aggravate for 30secs ever minute)
3.water wash 1min
4.Stop 1 min
5.Fixer 6mins
6.water wash x 6
Film photography in its inability to be mass produced means it’s perfect for a kind of human scale archival technique.
Film photographs work well as personal archives, but as we can see in the development of the internet and the use of data to organise our lives, it’s the infrastructure of contemporary archives that allows us to communicate so efficiently and enables the generation of ubiquitous knowledge.
The caring classes and planned obsolescence
Using the provocation of the rise of the caring classes, a term developed by David Graeber in Bull Shit Jobs.(David Graeber, Bull Shit Jobs, 2018, Simon & Schuster) I would like to rift on the intersection and relationship between the caring classes and the infrastructure embedded with planned obsolescence.
Could carers of infrastructure as it begins to fall apart take it and collectively repair it to develop more robust infrastructure owned by the community where it’s discarded.
Perhaps this could be an extension of the op-shop, The Bower in Sydney, Australia comes close to this model using the energy and skill of the community to repair broken things that get donated.
(specific)
We could reuse CD computer drives alongside the development of glass CD’s using the developments in what are called 5D storage units. Composed of what would look like a regular CD however is made of Silica so is crystalline in structure rather than polycarbonate. The lift time then changes to millions of years rather than disposable plastic discs.
The researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK have developed this pitted glass CD with 500 Terabytes stored on it. Could we however develop a more arcane version with less sophisticated technology that could be read by our computers.
A CD works similarly to a record on a microscopic scale:”During manufacturing, this plastic is impressed with microscopic bumps arranged as a single, continuous, extremely long spiral track of data...Once the clear piece of polycarbonate is formed, a thin, reflective aluminum layer is sputtered onto the disc, covering the bumps. Then a thin acrylic layer is sprayed over the aluminum to protect it.”
“The elongated bumps that make up the track are each 0.5 microns wide, a minimum of 0.83 microns long and 125 nanometers high. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.) Looking through the polycarbonate layer at the bumps, they look something like this”
Aaron Cohen, High-Speed Laser Writing Method Could Pack 500 Terabytes of Data into CD-Sized GlassDisc,2021
Marshall Brain, How CD’s Work, 2021
There are instances of communities around the world building their own internet, despite the vast majority of the internet becoming large corporate entities, the very nature of the internet being a network means anyone can hold space within it using a server they have potentially salvaged or developed through non-extractive means.
Here are some examples of folks in NYC and Detroit caring for internet infrastructure so that it’s in the communities hands.
in(ter)vention
It's an opportunity for connection and where one knows the movements of material and persons that come to coalesce into an objects or a system.