{"id":1569,"date":"2010-09-15T16:39:20","date_gmt":"2010-09-15T20:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1569"},"modified":"2010-09-15T16:39:20","modified_gmt":"2010-09-15T20:39:20","slug":"smudge-ism-blurred-to-perfection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1569","title":{"rendered":"Smudge-ism: Blurred to Perfection"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve all heard of blur.\u00a0 It’s one of those basic graphic effects that every graphics program, and even some fractal programs, automatically include.\u00a0 Most of us though are probably more familiar with the sharpen effect which does the exact opposite which is to get rid of, or at least reduce, blur.<\/p>\n

Few digital artists, and for that matter, few artists of any kind, would deliberately blur an image, especially an entire image.\u00a0 Fewer still would do it again and again pursuing on a large scale such a passive, mild-mannered effect which is usually only employed on a small scale.<\/p>\n

I should point out that the images here are not digital works.\u00a0 They’re combination prints<\/a> which are photographs made by combining negatives to make a single image.\u00a0 It’s just like layering, in fact it is<\/em> layering in it’s original, literal sense.<\/p>\n

The artist who made all of these images is Jos\u00e9 Medina<\/a> and they come from his Transitions series of combination prints made this year.\u00a0 I found these images at cramart.ca<\/a> and since they are all displayed in a flash applet<\/a> along with the works of many other artists it’s impossible to link to them.\u00a0 Strangely, they don’t appear anywhere else on the internet except as these small thumbnails in the flash applet; perhaps they are unique to Medina’s work at the CRAM collective.\u00a0 I first saw the images in a Niagara Region (as in Niagara Falls) travel magazine and was immediately impressed with their strong artistic qualities and unique style.\u00a0 Like the Mandelbox, they just looked so incredibly<\/em> cool.\u00a0 I Googled the artist’s name and found some more wondrous examples on the CRAM site.<\/p>\n

About CRAM:<\/p>\n

CRAM was founded in February 2006 and is located in the heart of Niagara on the second floor of 24 James Street in downtown St. Catharines, Ontario, between Christopher\u2019s Magazine & Smoke Shop and The Office Tap & Grill. The CRAMplex is home to Canada’s smallest art gallery, CRAM Press, and Marinko Jareb’s DJ Service, Fine Art & Design Studio & Collectible Designer Toy Shop.<\/p>\n

CRAM Gallery showcases a collective of professional artists with ties to St. Catharines and Niagara who advocate regional ideas from outside metro and international centres.<\/p>\n

CRAM Press was established as Canada’s smallest independent print workshop in 2009 by Co-Directors Tobey C. Anderson and Alan Flint with the installation of Harold Town’s old etching press. In August 2010 the CRAM Press was expanded to accommodate an American French Tool etching press and, while no longer Canada’s smallest print studio, it remains Niagara’s only print facility.<\/p>\n

from http:\/\/cramart.ca\/about.html<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like I said about the blur effect, it’s hardly new and exciting but these images are<\/em> new and exciting.\u00a0 Like Colombus, I think Medina just sailed a little further than the rest but it was sailing over the horizon.\u00a0 Now, of course it all looks so simple because he’s shown us where we too can go.<\/p>\n

Digital or not, we can all relate to work like this and learn from it.\u00a0 Or just appreciate it, “stumbling in the neon glow” as Aristotle would say.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jos\u00e9 Medina 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

“Less is more.” You’ve heard that I’ll bet but here you’re actually seeing it.\u00a0 That’s the minimalist trick.\u00a0 On the other hand less can also be a lot less<\/em> and even nothing, but done carefully the object in the image become a mystery (mist<\/em>-ery, ha, ha,) and it’s no longer something we recognize, it’s something that may be, or something almost imaginary.\u00a0 Blurring can be transformative –in a good way.<\/p>\n

I assume this image above is a lighthouse but that’s mostly because the next image is obviously a lighthouse and most artists work with themes.\u00a0 But it doesn’t matter because the object is interesting even if I can’t say for sure that it’s not a concrete parking barrier or a lawn ornament.\u00a0 And that black crackly thing on the right is almost fractalish even though I suspect it was placed there deliberately to balance the composition which would otherwise be somewhat empty on that side.\u00a0 I think the distant hills in the middle foreground are, ironically, more distinct than the top of the lighthouse.\u00a0 And how about the way the lighthouse dissolves into the sky?\u00a0 It’s almost like a detail view of an old renaissance oil painting with its subtle but careful features.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jos\u00e9 Medina 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

This one has it all: dream-like details; dissolving boundaries; ghost-like horizons; colors that drift across the spectrum; and a few smudgy mysteries.\u00a0 I particularly like the little window halfway up the lighthouse below the balcony railings.\u00a0 I think it’s been deliberately not obliterated.\u00a0 Good artists cheat like that.\u00a0 Photoshop filters never do.<\/p>\n

Although the method used is composite printing, Medina’s images here use that particular method to achieve a strongly blurred style of image.\u00a0 Other composite prints look like normal photographs, crisp and in focus.\u00a0 They just combine features and imagery in the same way we layer images in a grpahics program.\u00a0 But Medina’s composite prints are characterized by a heavily blurred artistic style and that’s the effect that impresses me the most with them.\u00a0 You could say they’ve been post-processed in just the same way we would make a fractal image and blur it in a graphics program.\u00a0 Although, of course, most of us wouldn’t blur a fractal, we’d sharpen it.\u00a0 It might be worth trying the blur thing if we could get results like this.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jos\u00e9 Medina 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

I’m guessing this is the CN Tower<\/a>, Toronto’s great claim to fame for many years which has subsequently been overshadowed by even taller, free-standing, feats of engineering like the Burj Khalifa<\/a> in Dubai.\u00a0 But how many of those have been immortalized like this?\u00a0 Yes, greater than that great icon is this new<\/em> icon by Medina.\u00a0 Towers of art will never be topped.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jos\u00e9 Medina 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

I don’t think a digital filter would produce such irregular blurring here.\u00a0 In places you can make out brick work and in other places the edge of the building itself has dissolved away.\u00a0 This is what I mean about the selective, hand-made blurring effect seen in these images.\u00a0 The rooftops have been quite obviously, for lack of a better word, gaussian blurred as we know in the digital world.\u00a0 I didn’t really notice it until I looked more closely at the edges of the building.\u00a0 Or maybe it just came out this way?<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jos\u00e9 Medina 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

A word about Craquelure<\/a>.\u00a0 Not the French candy, the cracking that old, hundreds of years old, paint in paintings do.\u00a0 It gives an old, worn look which in this case accentuates the blurred, renaissance, faded, dissolving look.\u00a0 I’m sure there’s a filter that does that too, but here there are some finer touches to it.\u00a0 Note the dark “crack” in the lower mid section of this one and the 3D appearance to the other cracks.\u00a0 It’s subtle, but then blurring is all about subtlety.\u00a0 Subtle subtlety.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jos\u00e9 Medina 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

Well done blurring is hypnagogic<\/a>.\u00a0 We are seeing the image as it slips away into sleep.\u00a0 But no, it’s us, the viewer who is dissolving away.\u00a0 I say, “Well done blurring” because blurring is a tricky thing really.\u00a0 It’s hard to straddle that ideal twilight zone of majestic illusion without falling off completely into total attenuation and pigmentary nothingness and at the same time not playing it so safe that we stay well within the everyday realm of legibility.\u00a0 Blurring is a fine art and I show these images here because I think they’re the finest examples of it I’ve seen.<\/p>\n

Is this image a palm tree?\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 But the regularity of the branches suggest something possibly mechanical.\u00a0 Maybe an amusement park ride that spins around with swings hanging from it’s arms.\u00a0 The swings are outside the picture and the chains that connect them are too small and thread-like to show up.\u00a0 Look more closely and I think I see a roundish trunk and the slight presence of sunlight coming from the right hand side.\u00a0 Some wind too.\u00a0 Voices?\u00a0 Sounds?\u00a0 Asleep again…<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jos\u00e9 Medina 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

I think blur is a kind of minimalism; it’s the transition zone between the usual, detail-driven and intelligent focused artwork that most artists make (and most viewers look for) and the incoherence of things like painting with white paint on a white canvas.\u00a0 We can make out water and by deduction coast, possibly sand, a sandy beach, and a few dark objects along it, possibly rocks which would suggest those dark areas inland are trees and that this is a remote or more remote place or is that green haze in the right foreground a well-mowed lawn in a public park?<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jos\u00e9 Medina 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

“Stumblin’ in the neon glow.”\u00a0 That’s the sort of thing I mean.\u00a0 And “purple haze” is not too far off either.\u00a0 They’d make great names for filters that do this.\u00a0 Neither of the authors would object to the use of those titles, I’m sure.\u00a0 Does Jim have email?\u00a0 Or Jimi?\u00a0 What?\u00a0 Jim and Jimi?\u00a0 That’s almost a verbal blur.\u00a0 “Grasshopper!\u00a0 Now<\/em> do you see it?”\u00a0 “I see nothing at all master!”\u00a0 “Good, good.\u00a0 You have done well, Grasshopper.”<\/p>\n

Again, I see water and from water comes shore.\u00a0 The strange shapes in the foreground are rocks and since they seem to clash with the shore I’d say they’re part of a breakwall or shore project to reduce erosion.\u00a0 The trail in this urban project looks familiar and I’m thinking that maybe I’ve even been to this place.\u00a0 Medina is based in St. Catharines which is only 2 hours from where I live and since he seems to have included a photo of the CN Tower it’s possible that he visited the city and took this photo at one of its many lakeside parks that are characterized by these urban garden-isms.\u00a0 On the other hand, it could easily be Cuba.\u00a0 Blurring gives anonymity to things and yet the result is we claim them as our own.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Master and his Iron Photoshop, Jos\u00e9 Medina<\/p><\/div>\n

Sure, it’s an Iron<\/em> photoshop.\u00a0 Just look at the roller in his hand.\u00a0 I think there’s a roller tool in Photoshop.\u00a0 I’ve never used Photoshop actually.\u00a0 I’m guessing that it’s the same as the Gimp and it has a roller tool and a smudgy finger tool and of course, several kinds of blur effects.\u00a0 Gaussian is nice, but it’s not as sophisticated as the blur effect in the images here that I suspect have been done by hand, selectively, more in some areas and less in others.\u00a0 Of course you can do that too in a graphics program.\u00a0 You’re just using numbers instead of using your hand.\u00a0 Not as much fun as working with the Iron photoshop, but then you’re not working with zero levels of undo like they are in the Iron<\/em> world.\u00a0 (And when have you ever gotten your clothes stained with fractal ink?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve all heard of blur.\u00a0 It’s one of those basic graphic effects that every graphics program, and even some fractal programs, automatically include.\u00a0 Most of us though are probably more familiar with the sharpen effect which does the exact opposite which is to get rid of, or at least reduce, blur. Few digital artists, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/1.png?fit=257%2C336","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":173,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=173","url_meta":{"origin":1569,"position":0},"title":"I am become Klimt!","author":"Tim","date":"25 March, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"When Robert Oppenheimer witnessed the first nuclear explosion, a project which he personally managed, he apparently said, \"I am become Death, the destoyer of worlds\".When I first tried out this photoshop filter, I said, along the same lines, \"I am become Klimt\". I didn't say it out loud, just like\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=173#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":324,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=324","url_meta":{"origin":1569,"position":1},"title":"Layering the Lily: Ultra Fractal 5","author":"Tim","date":"30 June, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\"See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.\"That Biblical quotation is where the expression, \"gilding the lily\" comes from. To \"gild the lily\" is to obscure\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=324#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":344,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=344","url_meta":{"origin":1569,"position":2},"title":"Image Of The Week: 20080224-01","author":"Tim","date":"11 September, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Hey, that's the name Paul DeCelle gave to it. I kind of like the serial number, date-stamp theme. Didn't many of the great classical composers give their works names like, \"Symphony #4 in A minor\"?This recent work by Paul DeCelle (Feb. 24th, 2008, maybe?) is exceptional in many ways. First\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=344#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5912,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=5912","url_meta":{"origin":1569,"position":3},"title":"The sudden coincidence of art and fractals: a review of recent artworks","author":"Tim","date":"10 January, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I'd given up blogging about fractal art and the sight of this image reinspired me. It was the art, not the fractals. It's all geometry and nothing but geometry and yet there's nothing square about it.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/boxFoldp2V3-eee2-by-mclarekin-Fractalforums.jpeg?fit=500%2C375&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":345,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=345","url_meta":{"origin":1569,"position":4},"title":"An Eniwetok Atoll of the Mind","author":"Tim","date":"18 September, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"icecap02.looIn Mandelbrot's greatest scenes we seem to seethat stunning moment in whichmathematics becamefissionableThey pour upon the monitordice roll symphoniesparameter poweredplutonium geraniumsperfect in dirtless realityI have seen the brightest minds of my generationmouse-click crawlingdown the spiral streets at dawnlooking for that heavenlysomething that isn't self-similarThe spiral twists and tricksus into twisting\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":335,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=335","url_meta":{"origin":1569,"position":5},"title":"Image of the Weak: Fractal Art","author":"Tim","date":"28 July, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to go hunting for exciting new images. Now I'm content if I can just find something that looks different. I don't care if it's great or not.The Golden Age of Heroes is OverGuido Cavalcante summed it up quite well two years ago while writing on a related topic,\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=335#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1569"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1584,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions\/1584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}