When you blink at the scanner

I've also made a Flickr set of a series of images that resulted from an accidentally double-exposed film and a scanner that was having a bad day.

Ode to a Scanner

I enjoy scanning photographs, I don't know why. Maybe it's because it reminds me of my early days of photographs - scanning my shiny new prints to upload them to lomography.com, seeing the photographs in a new light. Two new lights really - first you scan them, and they are different, lit up by thousands of little computer screen lights. Then you put them on the internet, and they acquire the veneer of a thing with the potential of being looked at by a huge number of people, visible anywhere and at any time. Suddenly it's not yours anymore. Your physical photographs, held in your hands and seen only by yourself and the person who printed and bagged them, are suddenly exposed and seem different, smaller somehow. I always feel this way when uploading photographs, same with music. There are obviously plenty of printed photos I've not put on the internet, but some prints I actually like I've never even scanned, and I don't think I ever will. I try not to be too sentimental about material objects (which to be honest is very difficult, I'm pretty materialistic), but with these photographs I think I'll keep them precious, visible only in one place and at one time.


With this in mind, I made some music based around the sound of the particular scanner I happen to be using at the moment (I've owned maybe four ever, all but the first one [which was my parents'] of them secondhand). It came from a charity shop and cost me two euros or something ludicrous. It's pretty banjaxed at this stage, and there's the tell-tale white line appearing on one side of the image. But it makes a great noise.

   Ode to a Scanner by DeclanQKelly

That's me, that is.

My name as written by various friends, family and strangers - the starting point for a wider project and that.

156 Pistachio Shells

FACT.

Natural Splicing - John Stezaker - Photomontage - Coincidence? I think not.

A couple of months ago I started looking through used newspapers for naturally-occuring juxtapositions that appear when you take out one sheet and see what lines up at the centre. These are taken from last Saturday's (29-1-11) Guardian.

Emily Aoibheann

Emily's done practically everything. Musician, writer, artist, performer, aerialist (!), actress, model... I met her through her Cixous Ghost incarnation on Myspace a while back. I got in touch when I saw that she was releasing a cassette of recordings -  Pestersome Nichts - made with a previous band named Holy Ghost Toast, a cassette that, along with a Rural Savage CD-R from the first Bethlemayhem, soundtracked many a happy breakfast-time while I was studying in Dublin. Geek Love is my favourite track from that tape; it's a floating wonderworld of a song, the non-percussion bit towards the end is just gorgeous. Thus began my down-the-rabbit-hole discovery of Emily's long list of creations and guises. A few weeks back she wanted a break from work in the large smoke so came down to visit for the weekend, which we filled with a little bit of wandering, raspberry sushi, photographs, face-smushing scanning, Father Ted and facepaint, barefoot snow frolics and chats and chats.

Portrait of a Table Quiz

A grand table quiz and only two pens between four people.

This is mostly what I've been doing these last few days, but especially today.

Here is the reason why:

I'm so tired and excited!