All that is here [earth] comes from here.
But here is coiled with there [cosmos]
- where ‘is’ is not only embedded
but also embodied.
THE DARK ARTS
Photography is a medium of the Dark Arts. It manipulates and influences how the transmutation of ideas, time and materials are remembered and lengthened, whilst entangling presence and absence like shimmering spectres. This ghostly trope is foundational to the practices and illusions of photographic image production and experiences. Whether using a digital or analogue camera, a room or a shoe box, to capture light one must begin within a territory[1] of darkness. It is this constructed darkness that permits a measured amount of light upon the sensitive edges of the dark territory’s architecture to conjure up an image. Photographs are ontologically, geologically, and cosmically haunted[2] by the scaffolding of their maker’s dark chamber, where the elements and minerals laboured from the earth are treated and transmuted into a camera, a cosmic contraption.
How can the awareness of specific periodic elements within a digital camera realign the practice of photography to a cosmic, geologic, and ecological haunting?
HAUNTING ELEMENTS
The material and electronic structures supporting the territory of darkness within a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera are comprised of many cooperating mechanisms that signal together in harmonic agreement and flow. The Nikon D70s (pronounced D-70-ess) is a digital media device containing over twenty-five[3] elements that are extracted from the earth to assist humans in recreating and manipulating methods of seeing.[4] These elements range from silicon, silver, xenon, to carbon and are sourced through complex systems, unjust labour and deep time-to-crust extractions from various locations around the world.
From the moment of extraction from the earth, every component of the camera echoes a chemical, geological, bio-political, social and ontological transformation.[5] One component crucial to the territory of darkness, and to the exploration of images in this project, is the Charged-Couple Device (CCD). The CCD is a thin etched integrated circuit made up of minuscule pixies that convert light into an electric charge, manifesting a digital image.[6]
The principal element in the CCD is the semiconductor silicon (Si). Elemental silicon is a lustrous metallic appearing solid but very rarely presents in such a form. It is readily found within the earth’s crust as the compound silicon dioxide/silica in sand and rocks. Silicon ‘is produced commercially by the reduction of silica (SiO2) with coke in an electric furnace, and the impure product is then refined’,[7] and is most commonly produced in China.[8] The CCD also contains other elements such as boron, phosphorous, aluminium and the material photoresist.[9]
Image recording process with the CCD occurs when incoming light touches the silicon substrate on the CCD through the photoelectric effect[10] where electrons are displaced from the silicon. These electrons are collected in wells in the substrate, the charge from these displaced electrons is then moved from the wells to the edge of the sensor where it is readout as a voltage.[11]
Significantly, the digital camera’s image sensor does not only convert external information such as light and cosmic rays into electrons in the image making process, but is also influenced by internal signals from electronic interference and a specific kind of noise known as dark current.[12]
DARK FRAMES
‘Dark current arises from thermal energy within the silicon lattice comprising the CCD. Electrons are created over time that are independent of the light falling on the detector. Said electrons are captured by the CCD's potential wells and counted as signal.’[13] This storage of electrons within the CCD together with the Photoeletric effect could be considered as quantum discontinuity,[14] where the displaced electrons from an exposure mingle within the silicon substrate entangling various spacetimemattering[15] tracing back, for example, to the specific site of sand extraction and the ecology it is and was a part of.
Image noise increases the higher the ISO and longer exposures. There is a technique aimed at reducing this noise known as a single dark frame correction, where after the initial exposure a subsequent long exposure image is captured with the lens cap on.[16] This approach is applied to a post-production subtraction method to reduce the dark current signal (extraneous electrons) that would affect what is seen in final image. Eliminating this dark current (along with other electronic noise) is of significance to the field of astrophotography, where accuracy is necessary for discerning objects at great distances to precisely see celestial bodies in low light.
Ironically, when creating these light-less dark frames the visible noise in a digital image resembles a cosmic vista. The noise and hot pixels from the silicon array evoke an uncanny play of scales between the distant cosmos, the CCD material in the camera (a proximal cosmos) and the visual experience of the light-less image (an embodied cosmos).
This project conceptually enlists aspects of the dark frame process to illuminate the haunted entanglement of elemental matter and
light to
the compounding of time-site through experimental image making.
Close eyes -
Without light, without lens, an optical murmuring shifts under skin/
celestial minglings of a dark granular array
The architecture of vision pulses for light/
toward this in-finite noise display
ECOLOGICAL ELEMENTS
Endeavouring to picture the effects of dark current noise from within the camera body {as analogous to refocusing and observing under the lid of one’s eyes} could provide a way into seeing the varied and disjointed cosmic scales of human and nonhuman bodies and experiences. The process of making dark frames—particularly considering the minute haunting of displaced electrons—beckons Karen Barad’s notions of quantum discontinuity and intra-action, where the ‘past and future are enfolded in matter’[17] and matter is ‘constantly exchanging and diffracting, influencing and working inseparably’.[18] These entangling notions could be a way of approaching the practice of digital image making as geologically and cosmically enmeshed, where the elements of the camera continue to intra-act from earth to image, thus seeing ecologically.[19]
MODIFYING THE TERRITORY
Three Nikon cameras were used in the making of this project - the documenting D800, the performing D70s, with a supporting role by the D700. This project actualises the darkening of the D70s’ interior territory through the application of alternative enclosing materials—a palm, an open eye, sand, and a D700 camera—by observing how those materials might affect the dark frame[20] image output. The D800 was used to document the D70s’ encounter with each of the four materials to capture a dark frame. At times, these materials did not completely enclose the D70s’ opening, leaving a small gap for photons to enter the darkened territory, thus interestingly affecting the CCD behaviour and image of the attempted dark frame. The D800 documentation images of the D70s’ encounters are presented in this project with the dark frame image captured by the D70s in that same moment through a hover dissolve function.
//Scroll down for the SUN and MOON collections.
ALCHEMICAL PHASING
Under the illuminating conditions of our closest phasing celestial bodies - the Sun and the Moon - this work offers two experimental collections of the D70s subject. With the D800 the Sun Collection was documented in direct afternoon light and the Moon Collection was documented at night, with a longer shutter speed and high ISO. Documenting in low light at night provided an opportunity to capture the D800’s own successive dark frames of the long exposures capturing the D70s with the materials. In the Moon Collection, the D800 images have been overlaid with their own dark frames in post-production, aesthetically differentiating them from the Sun Collection.
Photographing at night allowed for a long exposure and high ISO, which instigated the application of a grainy dark frame of noise upon the D800 Moon Collection images. This decision was to further the convolution of internal and external perspectives and positions, where the visible noise of the D800 documentation could arouse awareness of an internal gaze upon the D70s while it too was capturing a dark frame.
The grainy Moon Collection is a subtle reminder that the D800 is a kindred object to the D70s with its own haunting of time-site, internal noise, and displaced electrons intra-acting throughout this project.
ENTER THE SUN COLLECTION
ENTER THE MOON COLLECTION
OUROBORIC GAZE
Conjuring minus-lens and light-less images with the concepts of the dark current and dark frames illuminates the silicon organ of the camera’s embodied multi-sensorial composition and renders them visible to the human eye.
Agentic, the camera’s body expresses visceral images of its internal noise that appear interstellar in depiction - almost as if it were remembering its cosmic elemental haunting through a embodied gaze - cutting across a scaling of dark territories.
TERRITORY OF DARKNESS
BY DEVIKA BILIMORIA
Devika Bilimoria is a multidisciplinary artist whose image making, performance and live participatory work contribute to the shifting convolutions of bodies, sociocultural territories, and technology. Trained in photography, film and Bharata Natyam in Narrm/Melbourne, their practice sensorially approaches the charged body/earth nexus, engaging with ecological and post-human discourses to frame the intricacies of human and non-human reciprocity. This work was made on Wurundjeri Country of the Woi Wuurng peoples during the second wave of COVID-19 lockdown 2020.