Speckled light

The camera is a product that captures an image using visible light onto a two dimensional light sensitive surface. Before this light sensitive surface or film was invented the humble act of drawing was the mode of reproducing a seen image. The human eye capturing the three dimensional world onto a two dimensional surface using the hand was no easy feat. Light translating three dimensionality onto a two dimensional surface is about investigating the evolution of cameras but also our desire to capture moments. With this comes our desire to observe. As designers the sensitivity of our observations and what we do with them make who we are and inspire what we make.

The camera obscura was one of the first attempts to translate forms outside into shapes on a flat surface. A dark room with a small hole through the centre of a wall projected the image of what was outside onto the opposite wall. Its simplicity was ground breaking and roads leading to new practices, like photography, will radiate from it. Some of the first recorded camera obscuras were in 1021 from the Eighteenth Century Book of Optics of an Iraqi scientist, Ibn al-Haytham. Leondardo da Vinci also used this as he studied the visible world. Studying the visible world was one of the roads paved and travelled by many artists. The hole was the first idea of the lens. Daniele Barbaro was the one who added an actual glass lens replacing the hole which enabled one to control the size of the projection. Barbaro’s invention of the lens, or innovation of the hole (you decide), was another road that may have ended up with the development of cameras.

The development of cameras is parallel to our history and process of capturing ideas. The camera obscura takes what is outside inside. Similarly, we take in ideas and observations that we experience outside our minds into our minds. The next development of the camera was the camera lucida invented by William Hyde Wallastron in 1807. It consisted of a suspended glass prism that was at eye level over drawing paper. This was a way of tracing and training the eye. Many travelling artists used this tool. After observing we review and recall in our minds and sometimes replay and relay these experiences to other people in the same way tracing an image reproduces an observational experience.

Telling stories from a vacation is similar to sharing a photograph. Louis J.M. Daguerre and Joseph Nicéphore Niépce developed a method of capturing a projected image permanently on a flat surface. They used a coated copper plate with silver halide particles treated with iodine vapour. The vapour was light sensitive. Daguerre further developed the photoengraving technique with his partner, Niépce, and called it heliography. This was the first practical application of what we now know as photography because it allowed prints to be fixed and reproduced. After experiencing something we have a desire to share it to others or keep it for ourselves to remember later. No matter how articulate one is, looking at a photograph from a friend’s vacation in Hawaii will produce a clearer idea of what it was like than if we were to just listen to stories. I think we work in the same way photographs do where we need to produce proof in forms of stories to validate our experience.

Does the accumulation of photographs or experiences go anywhere and how can we make sure we do not forget to capture any? The invention of the portable camera like the Kodak Brownie and then the Leica made this urge to capture everything much more viable. Moving forward from the parallelism between the camera’s evolution and our process of experience and sharing we can visit the idea of accumulation. The camera’s humble origin of studying the visible world has grown to become a medium.

Using the camera as a medium can be for the purpose of self-expression, communication or documentation. How a designers observes the world around her affects her and what she makes. Documentation is not limited to her swollen sketchbooks and journals but the documentation she has been exposed to: family photographs to literature to the media. These things will affect the connections she makes between issues and conversations she has with people and how she will remember them for later. As designers they say we solve problems so school equips us with tools. Let us pull out our box, lay each tool down, line them up and blow out the dust.

Looking at photography and the history of the camera from this stratospheric perspective makes it easy to see how it compares with our own idea-gathering systems. What are our tools that make this system work for us? What documentation methods do we prefer and do we even value it? How do we divide our days and time? Work time; personal time; family time; homework time; play time; free time: these are all ways in which we categorize our time. What about present time like the camera? How do we arrange these images in our photo albums- Chronologically or categorically or maybe even randomly? Having experiences and being able to gather infinite amounts is a wonderful thought. Retaining it is a challenge. Relaying them is another step.

To translate or interpret is one thing. Let us discuss the other side of the conversation. While listening to a friend’s experience in Hawaii we strive to be open minded in order to take in as much without clouding her story with our assumptions. The goal is to get as accurate a description of the story as possible. Similarly, this is like seeing and through drawing, attempting to be as loyal to the truth as possible. Perspectival drawing is a perfect example of literal and direct translation of the three dimensional space as seen by the human eye to a two dimensional surface. The camera was a wonder because it did it in a matter of minutes and now seconds or less.

We all have our own systems and need to re-evaluate them returning to the camera’s development which was a striving attempt to sharpen the way we see.