Padding Up

The images shown here were produced on an iPad as part of a little personal challenge, related to the school field trip to Birmingham I accompanied a few weeks ago.

All Images: iPad Image, (Manipulated Photographs), June 2016

It’s one of the paradoxical aspects of history that those who live through momentous change are sometimes less aware of the drama of it all than those who rationalise accounts of it from outside or after the event.  Individual lives tend to be lived on a domestic or routine basis, to a day-to-day rhythm - rather than than in big chapters of underlined significance.  My formal education sketched in the transformative upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, and even some of the twentieth century turmoil that shaped the society we were born into.  However it’s easy to forget that we are currently living through a period of possibly even greater societal, environmental, and above all, technological transformation.

Don’t worry though, I’m not about to embark on a major dissertation on the way digital technology is altering all aspects of human life; but rather just a briefer discussion of one new way it has recently touched on my own practice.  To return to that original thought for a moment though – it is now possible for those of us of ‘a certain age’, to actually gain a little perspective on the massive changes that have occurred, even over the few decades of our own span.

As a child, I remember my father occasionally discussing ‘The Machine Room’ at the local Bank where he worked.  It was, I like to imagine, a room occupied by one or two primitive calculating engines - possibly housed in wardrobe-sized cabinets, not unlike those employed by archetypal Bond villains in their flip-top volcanoes [1.].  I also remember, at the age of seven, watching grainy monochrome footage of Neil Amstrong fluffing his lines and bouncing around on the Moon, - his ever utterance punctuated by an electronic ‘bleep’.  Journalists and Historians never tire of telling us how the computing power harnessed in that achievement was no more than that of the scientific calculators we wielded as GCE O-Level students, less than a decade later.  And it was, of course, a tiny fraction of that packed into the domestic lap-top device on which I type this, or the pocket gizmo on which you may well be reading it.

So far - so familiar.  Such technological advancement over half a century may seem impressive - but already, not as surprising as it once might.  None of the school children I encounter daily at work can have any real concept of a world in which their every task isn’t electronically assisted, or most of their social interactions aren’t digitally networked.  And the graph of exponential change accelerates ever more acutely.

For an admittedly arms-length, late adopter - like myself, each new attempt to up-skill myself often involves investing considerable mental effort to learn something that, it turns out, the cool kids all regard as last year’s news [2.].  Even in my mid fifties, I can’t help wondering at what point I’ll just have to sink back in exhausted bafflement - finally resigned to letting it all pass me by, as the robotic Care Assistant patiently spoons lukewarm soup into my mouth.

Well, I’m not quite there yet.  Indeed, if anything, my current attitude is one of slightly more enthusiastic embrace of the new toys, and not least, of the ways they might aid and abet my creative practice.  I’ve talked a lot in recent months about my urge to incorporate different or new media within my overall ambit, and (more relevantly here) - a desire to acknowledge some sense of Process, and the inescapable influence of The Digital Realm (note the portentous capitals) within my own work.  I’ve often mentioned (probably to the point of tedium) viewing Tate Modern's impressive ‘Painting After Technology’ display - not least because it was one my most influential gallery experiences of recent years.  It is possibly no accident that many of the artists on display there were of a similar vintage to myself [3.].

Anyway, in an attempt to embrace somewhat more of, what some in educational circles term a ‘Growth Mindset’, I have started to compile a scratch wish-list of technological devices or methods with which I have yet to interact meaningfully [4.].  Baffling though that may be to many who regard them as old news, Smartphones and Tablet devices are high on that list.  I’ve carried a Smartphone for a couple of years now, but without really unlocking its potential much beyond texting, emailing and taking the occasional shaky photo.  My experience of iPads, (other electronic tea trays are available – obviously), was even more limited before I made these images.  Somewhere in my mind, I’d created a false division between those gizmos you pilot with a keyboard/mouse combo, and those with greasy screens that you rub with your fingers.

Anyway, it’s clear the novelty of mobile (soon to be wearable or surgically implanted) technology isn’t wearing off anytime soon, and, more to the point, that many folk have already been using them, in numerous creative ways, for a long time.  Thus, as our students clicked away with a variety of cameras, (and, comfortingly, - also drew in sketchbooks), I braved the ignominy of being “one of those twonks who wave iPads around”.  I deliberately set about collecting photos that could then be manipulated in a fairly immediate manner, on the same device.

The results are probably pretty trite and, whilst resolutely urban, don’t particularly relate to much else in my current work.  In some respects, they’re little more than those never-ending, neon scribbles we all made back when the possibility of making any kind of image on a computer screen first suggested itself.  I did enjoy making them though - not least for their rapid immediacy, and the potential for a kind of photographic/digital sketchbook, to which they point.  I relish the idea of combining a photographic moment with a more organic intervention, made at the speed of thought and gesture of a swiped finger.  I was also pleased to discover that the cut-down version of Photoshop I used, (something I believe the young people are calling an ‘App’ – imagine!), offered just enough of it’s big brother’s potential – particularly in the interaction between layers, layer modes and filter effects.

Strangely, I can even imagine that working like this might even encourage me to draw more than I have done of late, and for images to evolve with more spontaneity than has sometimes been the case.  The other point worth making is that, as with all digital ways of working, the scope for versioning and variations on a theme is pretty limitless; and that’s something that’s been clearly preoccupying me all year.  

Will I be doing more of this kind of thing in the near future?  Like a lot of stuff recently, these images merely scratch the surface of something novel (to me), but they do seem to suggest considerable possibilities.  The trick, as ever, will be to work out how to integrate that into my wider practice.  Or, for now, it might just imply loads more fun playing around with something new.

[1.]:  This is probably over-romanticised fantasy.  I never saw the fabled Machine Room.  In passing, I did however visit my Dad’s workplace on a couple of occasions when he was summoned to open the branch for the Police - because the alarm had gone off after hours.  It turned out to be simply a new alarm system bedding in, but how was a schoolboy even allowed to accompany adults into the scene of a possible bank robbery?  I can only conclude it really was a different world, (never mind being locked in the car outside a pub with a packet of crisps!) 

[2.]:  That glib reference, is in itself, quite illuminating.  The large comprehensive secondary school I attended in the 1970s possessed only one or two primitive, student-accessible computers that I’m aware of.  Only the elite Mathematics and Physics students inducted into the lunchtime Computer Club used them.  Those of us with aspirations to attend Art College, or go on to study English or Humanities at University would chuckle at their briefcases and mystifying punch cards.  The ‘Cool Kids’ - they definitely weren’t.  (To be honest – neither was I really, but I did feel like I was destined to breathe the same air as them).

[3.]:  I’ve queried before, whether younger folk might themselves regard all this self-reflexive focus, on the novel characteristics of technologies they just take for granted, as slightly quaint.

[4.]:  Loth though I am to credit Donald Rumsfeld with anything good, I do find his oft-derided concept of ‘Known Unknowns’ surprisingly useful.  In fact, the most superficial research reveals that, perhaps not surprisingly, he didn't originate the idea at all.