audrey penven

I am in love with the process of making art. I come up with a process without knowing what will to come out of it. At times, it's a game - stacking as many variables or complications as I can, wondering what will happen at the end of it. Will be be good? Will it be a disaster? Either outcome is *interesting.* Either way, I've learned something. The final piece is incidental. It's an artifact of a conceptual process. So far, I've happily embraced this concept.

Then, something happened. I started working on Syzygryd. The look of the piece is pretty much fixed. Instead of knowing the process and working with it until something interesting falls out, I'm working towards a very specific endpoint. The method of getting to that endpoint is what's undefined. The path is what needs to be figured out. And it doesn't really matter what that path is, as long as it works. After diving into Solidworks (CAD software) and that sketchy space between CAD and reality, I remembered the divine thrill of necessity-driven quick learning. With the dusty deadline coming closer, there's no time to wait until I'm fluent in the software. No second-guessing. No space to feel like I should hand this task off to someone more competent. There are no experts - no one's ever built Syzygryd before. This is at once reassuring and terrifying.

I used to cling to the belief that if I knew the outcome, I wasn't interested. What I'm learning is that the path to a known end can be just as fascinating as the exploring a fixed path to an unknown end.

Once Syzygryd is done, and I've washed off the (nimby or playa) dust, I'll try adopting a similar technique photographically. I can't wait to see what happens.

Things happened today! Today is the day that I accidentally joined the Fabrication Team for Syzygryd. I also took photos.

This is a tube being cut by a large bandsaw.

This is the shop full of tubes.

This is NIMBY being very full of projects.

This is Slim doing one of the curved cuts on the tube with the plasma cutter.

The rest of the photos for the build so far are here.

Unwoman just released her new album, Casualties. This is super exciting for a few reasons. For one, her music is awesome. I’ve already listened to it a bunch of times, and I love it so much. On a personal note, I’m thrilled to see my photographs on the CD packaging. And, the liner notes feature photographs by the super talented Neil Girling. My first album cover! Hooray!

So, I’ve taken a few photos of this object. Here they are:

I also want to share the lighting setup I used for this. About halfway through turning my laptop on its side, I realized that what I was doing was slightly ridiculous. It totally worked though. One side lit by a pile of christmas lights, the other by a blank white photoshop document.

I last wrote on New Year's Eve, in Berlin, before the exploding fireworks reached their climax. To say that Journey to the End of the Year was a success, is certainly an understatement. We started off with 250 manifests, and handed out every single one of them. The crowd listened to the rules, including the precautions that yes, in fact, cars and buses are still real and can still kill you even though you are playing a game. Fin and Valerie took turns with the megaphone, eventually letting the players loose in Berlin. They scattered in all directions, many of them second-guessing their direction, spinning in confusion before bolting off from the base of the tower.

The party ended at C-Base. Midnight came in a fresh wave of explosions. Hackers launched bottle rockets, and anything else that would blow up, over the river. We danced with sparklers. We danced in the snow. Friends and lovers kissed, welcoming the new year. The party persisted all through Berlin, through dawn. As a group of us finally made it home, sometime during daylight. A comment on the quiet was met with something blowing up in the distance. So much for that. White snow had turned into a red paste of explosive debris.

Over the next few days, we gradually said our goodbyes. As with every Congress so far, I've gained more friendships without necessarily knowing which country (or continent) my friends live in. Rubin, Slim and I hopped on a train to Praha after a few days. I've only got a few digital photos from there, and none are yet online. The batteries don't like the cold, which really just turns into an excuse to only shoot film. Rubin has since made his way to Wien, spending some quality internet time at the Metalab, uploading some of his photos taken in Berlin and Praha.


photo by Rubin Abdi

I'm in Amsterdam with Slim as I write this. We arrived yesterday, and spent most of the day hanging out with friends (Alex, Agnes, and their son), talking about art, motorcycles, hacker culture, memetics, performance, and costumes. We shared photos and stories until it was time to sleep, and then of course, continued in the morning. Tonight we're checking OT301 for vegan food and art before meeting up with some more people in that part of town. I have just a few more days before returning to San Francisco. Though I'm loving it here, I'm excited to come home and run with all the ideas in my head - new ones, and refined versions of older ones.

Much more to write. Much more to share with you. But for now, there is more city to run around in.

xoxoxo
- Audrey

In Berlin, in a room packed full of friends. Making the final preparations for Journey to the End of the Year. A plan that formed at the end of the summer, with Slim and Valerie at the top of Thunderdome as the sun was rising. It's happening tonight. The city is already echoing with fireworks. The snow stained with red powder. Join us tonight, running around the city! But remember, don't die. That's depressing when it happens in real life.

Afterglow of my talk yesterday, to a full room at 26c3. A huge thank you to everyone who attended! That was wonderful! It was so exciting to share this with all of you!

Snow glittered in tungsten light. A snowball fight in the street. At C-base later, talk of photography, of inspiration, of sharing techniques. Dancing in the space station. Speaking abstract concepts with our hands and bodies. Throwing snow with bare hands. Back to the dancefloor. Reluctance to say goodnight meant that it took several hours. Just one more song. And then the music gets glitchy. How could we possibly leave now? Our night ended at 6am, still a bit early. Tonight doesn't have to end so soon. We'll sleep sometime next year.

The sound of my hands moving across the keys. The glow of my laptop screen. Things are happening. I keep reminding myself of this, even though it's not tangible yet. Email. Talking. Planning.

Another New Year in Berlin. I've completely lost track of how many people we've convinced to join us. A plan formed at sunrise, Tuesday morning at Burning Man, on the top of Thunderdome. Journey to the End of the Night was an amazing way to experience the two cities I've played in - Oakland and San Francisco. An unfamiliar path through a familiar city took me to places I hadn't seen. I found connections I didn't know before. The game redefined what counted as a way out. I wrote about the Oakland game in June, so I won't retell the story here. I craved this experience in other cities. I wanted to play in Berlin, in Wien, in Praha, in every other city I might travel to someday. Once these thoughts spilled from my lips, they were on their way to becoming real. Slim, Valerie, and I in the quiet of dawn, before sleep. I'm not sure which one of us said the words. It had momentum before I had decided for sure to go to Berlin again. So this is what happens now!

Ok, so I've committed to going to Berlin again. That means, of course, going to 26C3. This year, I'm giving a talk. It's called "Photography and the Art of Doing it Wrong." One of my tasks for the next week is finishing the paper for it. If you're coming to Berlin, come listen to my talk! It's happening at 2pm on December 29th, in the big room! I hope to see you there!

Praha, for more than a day and a half. Perhaps the train will not catch fire. And this time, the stories and memories won't just be mine. More photographs of the city at night - some for a sculpture I'm building for Burning Man next year.

Speaking of Praha.... This game, Machinarium was made by the Czech based Amanita Design. It's the most beautiful game I've ever played. From the first screenshots I saw, I remembered walking the streets of Praha in January. The story is told without words. Puzzles are often solved in delightfully janky ways. It is charming and wonderful, and my words are not adequate for what I want to express. Play it. Do it now. You'll be happy you did.

This will be my third winter in Europe. I'm very excited to play a more active role this time, instead of just attending the Congress. I love listening to other people's talks. I love the experiences and games set up by others. But, I'm happiest when I'm creating also. The balance is important here. I'm so excited!

"Our intention is to generate society that connects each individual to his or her creative powers, to participation in community, to the larger realm of civic life, and to the even greater world of nature that exists beyond society." - from What is Burning Man?.

It's a great sentiment. But, I'm a photographer, and there's rules against people like me. By attending the event, I must agree to be bound by these rules. Photographs are for personal use only. If I display any photographs taken at the event in a public forum, the Burning Man Organization can claim the copyright. The photographs I create in the desert are not mine.

Before going to Burning Man for the first time in 2007, my friends explained the photography rules to me. I was crushed. I brought a few cameras with me anyway, but I lacked the self-confidence to challenge the rules at all. Asking for permission to use my own photographs seemed really hard. It would really hurt me if they said no. So, I continued to feel like an outsider. They spoke the words of being inclusive and encouraging creativity, but I didn't feel it. I shot a few photos when I was there, but I doubt I even finished one roll of film. I wasted more effort on making sure that no strangers happened to be near my lens than I did composing the damn photos. Feeling the weight of restrictions, my heart just wasn't in it. To this day, very few people have seen the few photos that made it through the editing process. My crap-ass rangefinder is covered in playa and still has a half finished black and white roll in it from that year.

I'll be going again this year, with cameras that I intend to use - for real this time. Art forms are languages. Often I feel that I speak more fluently in the language of photography than spoken English. I have no memory of when I first held a camera, when I took my first photograph. But, there isn't a whole lot I can remember before the age of three or four. Because it feels so natural to me, I used to overlook the value of it - to myself and to my community.

Burning Man's photography rules fed this insecurity, and gave it much more validity than it deserved. Photography was not being seen on the same level as the other art that's out there. Conversations sparked by the EFF vs Burning Man issue emphasized these patterns of thought. People commented about photographers exploiting the participants and artists at Burning Man.

Yes, I understand that some people with the intention of exploitation will be pointing cameras at things. I'm sympathetic to the desires of the Burning Man Org to protect the privacy of its participants. Part of creating a safe space is ensuring that people don't feel vulnerable to possible exploitation - whatever that means. The presence of cameras can make people feel inhibited. They'll feel less free if they think their every move is being recorded. People expressed concerns about commercial uses, about privacy, about misrepresentation.

I don't know what the answer is, but I resent that just because photography is my medium, I'm being grouped with the ones who are Doing It Wrong. Photography is the best way I've found to contribute to my community and culture. It's offensive that my contributions should be looked at differently just because I made them with photons and film. I'm leaving names out of this, but someone was equating the length of time spent on a piece of art to its value. Just one of the lovely things brought out in this discussion. I'm sure *that's* not shaping any of this... Sure, a photograph is created quickly - it has to be (unless it's a really long exposure, but that's not what I'm getting at). It certainly takes less time than building a massive sculpture. But, it's only through years of training and practice that I am able to create a photo in that fraction of a second with the necessary level confidence. In some ways, it's analogous to a dance performance. The routine is developed and practiced ahead of time, but the piece is created in the moment. Every movement is new and belongs to the moment. And we don't see performances being so devalued, just because they happen quickly. The metaphor may have gotten a bit sloppy, but essentially what I'm saying here is that every photograph is the result of an entire life of work. Don't tell me it lacks significance just because photons were only smacking against the film for 1/60th of a second.

Where I am mentally right now, I know that I am not the only one who values my work. And the old tired arguments about photography not really being art are irrelevant - seriously, this conversation happened a hundred years ago. Aren't we done?

I'm not really worried about Burning Man claiming my photographs. If something stupid happens, I'll deal with it when we get there. The real reason I wrote this thing is for my self of two years ago and others like her. If the goal of Burning Man is to encourage participation, they are wrong to have such a heavy-handed restriction on photography. For some of us, the primary mode of participation is through photography. Our voices matter too. And wouldn't it suck if no one took photos at all?

I finally turned off the automatic preview on my digital SLR. It was crippling me, and I didn't realize it. The photos are better now. At least, to my eyes.

I've been photographing on film longer than I've known how to read or write. Expressing myself in English feels so clunky compared to what I can do with a camera. I suppose that's my way of apologizing for the possible sloppiness of the words to follow. I've been using the delete key far too much in this blog post. That relates very much to the concept I'll eventually get to.

I hate certain aspects of digital. Instant gratification is great. The ability to review what was just done and use that information to adapt is wonderful. In theory.

For me, photography has always been about the quickness of the mind, creating an image in a thin slice of time. Once the shutter goes, it's permanent. Sure, I can manipulate the image later, but I can only really refine what was done when the photons hit the film.

The lesson of painting class was that I am not a painter. As long as I could continue fucking with the image, I would do so. It would turn to mud. The turning point happened when I struggled with a still life for weeks. There were points in time when it was good, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. It was imperfect, and maybe, just maybe, if I pushed some more paint around, it would get better. In a fit of frustration, I pulled out my camera, photographed the still life and ran off to the darkroom. I glued the photo onto the canvas, sloppily dripped some paint on it, kicked it around on the floor of the studio, and called it done. My professor responded better to that painting than anything else I'd done that semester.

I know my tendency to get caught up in analyzation. This doesn't work when using film. It doesn't work with anything really, it's just easier to pretend in some other contexts. Film camera in hand, I need to trust that I know what I'm doing, so I do. By the time I can check up on it, that moment is long gone.

And there's the danger with digital. When the LCD screen flashes the photo before I can move the camera away from my face, I look at it. I break my connection with what I'm photographing. I am no longer creating - I've switched into analyzation mode. It may only be for a second, but reestablishing a connection takes longer than that.

At Sand by the Ton, I caught myself compulsively looking at the screen as trapeze dancers performed above my head. What? With something so dynamic, what information could I possibly gain by staring at a little screen? The time for review is later. It's like trying to run while watching your feet. I looked away from the performers for a few moments more. The preview had to die, immediately.

The first few shots after that were kind of scary. What if something was set wrong? What if I could make it better somehow? To comfort the screaming, insecure thing in my head, I grabbed the familiar Contax film SLR that hung by my right hand. Oh right, I do this all the time. Shut up screaming thing.

All the film I put online on Saturday has been sponsored, and I can’t believe how fast they all went! Seeing this, and hearing the excitement in your voices makes me feel more motivated than ever to work on my photography. So, thank you! The film is at the lab right now. I can’t wait to share it with you!

hand in hand, we walked down toward city lights.
17th and Mars – how did we get here?
it was only minutes ago we were somewhere familiar.
the glow of moonlight and tungsten
we wore flowers in our hair.
pale pink with vivid edges for her.
a black stick with new red leaves for me.

memory triggers
a bicycle on the wall
train tracks
shapes of shadows
texture of walls
I squeeze her hand and start to say, “remember when…”
but the stories are of another continent
another time
another friend at my side.

it overlaps more than we think.
come with me, I’ll try to show you