Week 02 | Resolution

New Year's Resolutions are a tradition based in the hope that reflecting on the past and resolving to make a new will simplify one’s life. If you think about the most common resolutions, they are often removing something from the person’s daily life or habits. In doing this, a new person should emerge! (That is if it's kept) Similarly in digital media, the construction of an image can be simplified through the means of resolution. Resolving the image into more manageable parts can reveal a lot about the complexity you began with.

Almost a century ago and without the aid of any pixel-generating computer software, the itinerant photographer Arthur Mole (1889-1983) used his 11 x 14-inch view camera to stage a series of extraordinary mass photographic spectacles that choreographed living bodies into symbolic formations of religious and national community. In these mass ornaments, thousands of military troops and other groups were arranged artfully to form American patriotic symbols, emblems, and military insignia visible from a bird’s eye perspective. Living Portrait of President Woodrow Wilson, for which 21,000 troops assembled at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1918, is the best-known of Mole’s photographs. The image is characteristic of Mole’s work in that it wavers between the compositional effect of the whole (i.e. a portrait of Woodrow Wilson) and the desire to focus upon the obscured individuals who constitute the image, thereby undermining the optical illusion of the totality to a degree.

In our class, resolution also has many meanings. Mainly, we will talk about resolution as the depth of an image. The depth of a pixel-based image relies solely on its quality at the most basic level; here, the image is an unrecognizable pattern of colored squares. When organized into an image, however, these seemingly disparate parts become something much more legible. “Usually we try to produce images that are of sufficient resolution to render these individual pixels imperceptible, but seeing pixels is not necessarily a bad thing. Prominent pixels call attention to the process…”

0 In the last assignment we conjoined five photos to create a unified composition. In this assignment, we are trying to distill that image into a data-driven sequence. Focus on the conjoined intersections marked on Assignment 01; we will be using them as the basis for this assignment.

1 Select a 500 x 500 pixel square around a significant intersection within your ‘conjoin’ assignment. Copy and create a new image from this selection. Save this image as your original. Now, duplicate this image and save it as your index image. You will be working with these images side by side, do not close them.

2 We will use the Pixelate>Mosaic filter on the index image you just saved. Set the mosiac at a 125 square cell size: this will distill the image into 16 colors. Using the Eye Dropper within the Select>Color Range tool (set at a fuzziness of 1-10), we will map (one-by-one) the occurrence of each of these indexed colors within the whole – create a new layer within your layers window and fill your selection with black (this allows you to view the pixels quantitatively). Name each new layer intelligibly to record each of your selections. The final product, then, is a reduction or simpler form of the original–a mapping of that particular intersection.

3 Test this process with several interesting moments from your A01 assignment. You will be using this product in your next assignment, be sure the result is compelling to you, with a strong graphic (not figural) purpose. Remember: there is never one answer to a problem > the resolution often becomes a multiplicity of almost right answers > tests that seek to expose/articulate information in a manner not thought possible beforehand! Continue testing new color ranges until the translation makes sense; that you can fully describe what has graphically been extracted from the image.

One 11” x 17” .jpg construction at 72 dpi in RGB color mode. This construction should contain the following information: A minimum of one original intersection image, one image index, and five selection filter images generated from the image index, notate this page to describe your process and reasons for selection – everything on the page must be thoughtfully composed. The way in which you layout these individual images to form a cohesive construction is critical if we are to understand your craft and process. Use the grid and guides in Photoshop to generate proper alignments and do not use notations or text.

Again, use the filing nomenclature: for student BobSmith, “WS02_Smith_B.jpg.” All .jpg files are due in your backpack by 6:00 PM on Monday 02 February. Late work will not be accepted. Please print your file in color and bring it to class on Tuesday, February 03. Be sure to save the original photoshop file and layers for future use.