It is with pleasure that I present to your attention my discovery of visual storytelling encrypted within many late 19th and early 20th century paintings. Museums who own masterworks by Picasso, Braque, Man Ray, Magritte and others might have the ability to reinvent the attractiveness of their assets by promoting them in a totally fresh way – promoting access to their “true content” - through interactive and educational tech. While I am still processing through artists who used this technique, my case has been proven and now: if you have 19th Century and/or early to mid-20th Century paintings, they are storytelling machines with answers to what you never asked.
To prepare you, the subjectivity in the viewing relationship still exists, but as it is more collaborative with the artist, let go of what you currently believe to be the role of subjectivity in the viewer’s relationship to paintings. Also, there are themes about late 19th century and early 20th century events that are hard to recognize by sight, without context, and so information is necessary to provide in tandem to the visuals: I will show you annotated visual examples. There is also some very, very rude storytelling in the same paintings, and while I apologize in advance, I am also telling you: there is something for everyone here.
Part One Camera Lucida Used To Encrypt Imagery and Text
It is well known that for many centuries, the Camera Lucida and other lenses have been available to assist artists in drawing from life via projections. Some artists used the same device to encrypt imagery into paintings, and the same device can find the imagery again, turning the works inside out and into story telling machines. The image is projected twice – once correctly and once inverted, and then these crossings are progressively layered and registered to reveal the true content as it emerges in optical illusions. Upon the first crossing, registration marks will come forward, showing optional paths towards a story. Animals, spiders, portraits and text come forward as the layers slide into place, sometimes the progression is like watching a film. Some registrations are to adjust to a new center, some are to adjust the image itself, others layer composition result into “interference fields,” where a person stands there and crosses their eyes to see many optional optical illusions come forward. This experience and the optical illusions are the true content of the paintings. Because the content is specific and empowers the viewer as a participant, albeit in a different way; this revelation will attract unlikely interest from those who never felt invited to the museum before.
Part Two Tech Application For Contemporary Interaction
An app can be developed to provide a viewer this interaction through video, digital screen or projection. The app would show the image, its counter, options to center, and the result of that choice; and so forth until the end of that registration path. The app would show layering of the same image and its inversion up to 500 times. Ideally, the app would register the layers by visually sliding them against one another to show the story in between the registrations. The app might offer two modes a.) assisted selections b.) self guided. Assisted selections would be prepared registrations that could bypass rude imagery. The counter option would be the preference of PHD students and dirtballs. The organization might offer access to the app to schools, other museums, airport museums, and private individuals as part of community outreach. While this enables distance from the original work, it also reveals an entirely new magic about the “mark of the hand” and thereby makes more valuable visiting the original work through that reverence.
Part Three Historical Annotations
There appears to be an overlap between French Wars and photography and those being involved through this process with modernist and cubist paintings. I believe this is attached to Jean-Baptiste-Luis Gro, 1793-1870, French Diplomat and Senator – plus, Artist and Photographer. He was an advocate for the Second Opium War (which is a theme featured in more than one artist’s work) and in general, war illusions include explosions, portraits, architecture, landscapes, machines and caricatures. Excepting the caricatures, the allusions to the war seem suspiciously drawn from photographic reference. In fact, Braque’s original composition of Violin and Candle shares so many contours with a drawing of the sacking of the Old Summer Palace, I wonder if both used the same photo reference. Few would recognize the image source stories without information accompanying the experience of finding them. This is why the “assisted selections” method is the most robust presentation of these stories.
In addition to the Second Opium War, I have uncovered images from the French War in Vietnam, the French War in Algeria, the Russian February Revolution, the Mexican revolt against Maximillian III, Emperor of Mexico. It might be that images are passed organically from artist to artist, or that photo sources are sold to artists through connections. It is especially the revelation of photographic-quality rendering that causes reverence from the viewer to the effort of genius in the artist. Get ready to actually experience the genius, it is mind-blowing.
Part Four A New Relationship To Classic Paintings
Refreshing the relationship to empower the viewer to interact with the imagery in search of something specific somewhat inverts what had been most recently taught as how to appreciate these masterworks. For instance, heretofore the viewer has been asked to suspend disbelief in the artist’s suspension of classical, technical mastery – which rightfully sounds suspicious to the non-art lover. While many methods of appreciation lean into the artist’s personal history, speculation about the title, and personal sensory reactions to colors and shapes; almost none of that applies as largely to this concept. Presenting the work as a storytelling machine with an accompanying technology to enable access is a far more attractive way to understand the artist’s choices than the viewer’s own sensory reactions to the original work. Being led towards beautifully rendered, even photographic imagery is an attractive cause and as such in this case, a bait to education. Through this concept, the museum’s assets are the new Netflix of schools and PhD programs – expanding beyond art, the storytelling intersects with histories of politics, revolutions, technology, machines and wars. There is also a lot of erotica.
Part Five Which Artists Which Paintings
The earliest work I have tested is Titian’s Annunciation of San Salvador, which multiplies into erotica. The circular composition of the original layered against itself makes a beautifully symmetric lesson in female anatomy. Multiplied out eight times, winged phalli flirt with more anatomical close-ups, and as the layers slide together, optical illusions emerge of red phalli and of a baby being born. This feels like a straightforward storytelling machine and that a collector would pull the projection device out to discuss his painting with his buddies – or maybe admire it by himself – and I am convinced it is intentional in entirety.
It is the turn into the 20th century that the imagery begins to feel drawn from photograph, which I consider to be a significant turn. Not all of the imagery feels this way, and plenty of themes are obviously drawn from life or inspiration.
Part Six Picasso
Some Picasso works have literal text that comes forward through the layers. One must believe this to be the truest message of content, from artist to viewer. However, the text might not be in a dialect known by the viewer! This is another reason for assisted selections, to help the sentences come together as intended, and then to translate them for the viewer.
An example of how Picasso used text in this illusionary process is on my video page, showing mid-story how the characters come together through the layering. Many dialects of Arabic might be represented within and between registrations. The sentence emerging as structurally viable is a strong clue to the artist’s true content and message. The text rides within an illusion of four pairs of soldiers storming a beach, their figures are reflected in water; as the layer slides, the soldiers run through explosions, then they hop onto horses and race away from a mushroom cloud in the far background. This is Picasso bringing up the French War in Algiers. Alternating with the soldiers is an illustration of a glistening spider, with many eyes. Picasso’s signature layers with the scrawl of the date and compounds into two more lines of Arabic text for us.
Part Seven My Services
I wish to analyze Museums’ masterworks and present a fresh and larger understanding about the artists’ embedded messages and the asset’s true content. The service I offer is the analysis, and the presentation of results will be in writing, still visuals, interactive visuals and video. Requirements from the client would be a high quality source image of the painting; upon receipt, a timeline projection can be assembled and delivered within two days. Remuneration would be per diem, with 10% of the projected timeline due as retainer. Start dates for processing would be scheduled.
I seek a partner organization to work with me and develop an application, using my process as a guide to the mode and experience and the analyses from me as assisted registration content. Classic masterworks in Museums’ collections will be debuted as storytelling activities, which will expand interest, promote the organization as something between a recreational and an educational resource beyond the walls, and potentially galvanize into a brand the application and my services as a product for other organizations to rediscover their own assets.
Part Eight Outstanding Mysteries
I don’t know what the device looked like that I believe was used to create these embedded messages, so its reinvention is open. I don’t think I need it, though, the case is proven. Understanding the device would open understanding to the history of this process and insight into standards of procedure.
Video editing software has been the gentlest to this process, but the depreciation is still high and the ending results (of 500 layers!) become pixilated. What combination of software will be the best and gentlest to the compounding image? Do I investigate printed images? Projection?
Whom do I seek more enthusiastically, the Museum or the application developer? If the Museum can afford to assign development of the app to a person already on staff, then propriety of idea must be negotiated before the start, with the application necessarily acknowledging the tie to my process and the assisted registrations I create. The developer will receive my analysis images and video to use at the owner’s discretion. The app will use the source image to follow my assisted registrations.
How difficult would processing be for another person? Would they use the same procedure or improve it? Would it be easier and faster to process in pairs?