Category: Uncategorised

An App is a Method.

A Tinder-inspired framework for responsive and interactive cataloguing.

Users’ interactions are used to create a responsive catalogue that sorts my chosen set by number of swipes received in either direction. The below spreadsheet auto-updates according to the app prototype.

Expermenting with GAN – Using the Set to Widen and Dilute the Set.

Searching for the Grammar of Set.

I feel there is much to be gleaned from the set, with set patterns and an emergent grammar becoming apparent the closer I look. The collection of photos is rather homogenous, with a limited set of fashion styles, poses, subtle gestures, and even facial expressions to discern. Indeed what is perhaps most notable about the set’s codes, is the lack of great variation between subjects. Such homogeneity speaking to the harsher emphasis on conformity in a historic period marked by a stricter levels of social conservatism.

This being said, I do not believe a visual analysis of the set and the codes it represents provides fertile ground for reconfiguration. I feel any deeper understanding I may gain is contingent on, and applicable to, a set that is both small and spread out over a number of decades long since passed.

I feel the knowledge I would gain from reconfiguring and cataloguing the set in such an analytical way would be insubstantial in nature; speaking of the set itself, in a limited manner that does not shed any further light on the process of cataloguing.

I am happy with the direction that my Methods of Cataloguing project is taking and feel their are multiple routes I could pursue moving forward. I am naturally tempted to follow a path that narrativises my chosen set, but on Abbie’s advice I am first going to re-attempt to analyse it more deconstructive and purely visual terms.

A Counter-Catalogue.

Taking Fisher’s ideas and running with them, to the point of grotesque exaggeration and absurdity, a counter-catalogue is formed. In this catalogue, all artefacts are presented grouped together in a state of chaotic equality.

Subverting the Catalogue Using Facial Recognition.

Fixing the problem of dourness by using FaceApp to bring a beautiful smile to the face of each subject. In doing so, a new catalogue of my images has been created which is out of my control. This raises question as to the purpose of cataloguing in the modern world, where such collections are stored, and what their future use could be. Indeed, the act of cataloguing has become more pervasive, politically-charged, and supra-national in nature as the century wears on. This tension between the right to privacy and the advance of such technologies is often glossed over in a maelstrom of hyper-convenience and rib-tickling face-filters.

Sorting by Emotion Using Facial Recognition.

The above portraits have been arranged using Amazon’s Rekognition API. The arrangement reflects the percentage to which each portrait is “Not smiling”. Using facial recognition technology introduces novel metrics which can be used to catalogue sets in interesting ways.

Taxonomising by Frame Style.

Sorted by Age / Testing Video as a Medium for Cataloguing.

But by 1870, a non-taxpaying, unlevyable ‘Cochin- Chinese’ woman could live out her life, happily or unhappily, in the Straits Settlements, without the slightest awareness that this was how she was being mapped from on high. Here the peculiarity of the new census becomes apparent. It tried carefully to count the objects of its feverish imagining. Given the exclusive nature of the classificatory system, and the logic of quantification itself, a ‘Cochin-Chinese’ had to be understood as one digit in an aggregable series of replicable ‘Cochin-Chinese’ – within, of course, the state’s domain.” (Anderson, 2006, p. 118)

Whilst cataloguing my chosen set, I find myself drawn to the above except from Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities : Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2006). I agree with Anderson’s emphasis of census-making as an intrinsically ideological process. Indeed, the act of cataloguing itself may be seen as a reductive practice by nature. A practice which necessitates the minimization of innumerable complexities to glib, simplistic data-fragments in the name of efficiency. Reflecting on Anderson’s writing further, I am reminded of Mark Fisher’s pointed critique of museums as vectors for the degradation of the sacrosanct towards mere profanity. Writing in terms of the omnipresence of modern capitalism and its effects, Fisher (2009) invites readers to

“Walk around the British Museum, where you will see objects torn from their lifeworlds and assembled as if on the deck of some Predator spacecraft, and you have a powerful image of this process at work. In the conversion of practices and rituals into merely aesthetic objects, the beliefs of previous cultures are objectively ironized, transformed into artifacts.”

It is this assemblage towards the artifactual that interests me as I sort through my chosen set. Each photograph represents a very real person, who lived, died, loved, suffered, and rejoiced; yet looking back on the set as a whole, it is very hard to grasp any of the common humanity that links us. By virtue of being catalogued as a set, each subject seems to lose something of their individual humanity and becomes but mere component to a whole. No doubt the vast gulf of history also plays a role in this, with the difficulty of identifying with historical figures being a well-documented phenomenon. Moving, I would like to explore ways in which this catalogue might be reconfigured and recontextualized to play with this gulf and help establish a dialogue between past and present.

Anderson, B. (2006, p. 118) Imagined Communities : Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. (Accessed: 2 November 2021).

Fisher, M. (2009, p. 4) Capitalist Realism. Winchester, UK : Zero Books.