[ - the waters of aventura - ]

[ CPP Project example -- Fall 1997 ]

 

This is a part of an ongoing & experimental photo project of mine entitled "Corpse Photo-Poetics." (The particular piece was composed by myself & Melina, my former fiance, and was included in the Florida Emerging Artists exhibit @ the Arts On the Park Gallery in Lakeland, 1998).

 

CPP was first conceived of as a sort of abstraction a Surrealist game (known as "EXQUISITE CORPSE") while driving the lonely stretches of the 95 through the old American South (rural Georgia) in the spring of 1994. The project languished, a bit, for a while, but has been conferred new life due my ability to connect with other kind, creative souls here on Flickr! ^_^

 

I can't locate my formal description of the project, but I'll try to succinctly state its simplicity:

 

With E.C., partipants divide a piece of a paper into thirds or quaters, choosing, for instance, the human form. Each participant chooses a section of the form to complete, covering their work, leaving only lines to give the next player a starting point for the next section of the piece. The result can be something quite surprising and, sometimes even good! ;)

 

I chose to use double exposure photographs. The CPP images have mostly been produced directly in the camera (35mm). With no fixed form in mind, participants grab an image to be integrated with the photograph of another in the camera, and hopefully the result is just as surprising and, even good!

 

This is a randomly chosen example -- I have very few digital copies at this time, but will try to change that soon. I'm working on new methods and am always looking for new collaborators.

 

Let's see, thank you for taking a look, reading about this crazy project, & please LMK if you are interested. ;)

 

OK. Here's further description that I e-mailed to one recent participant, the amazing Ms. LaDonna Chaos:

 

Let’s see… I'll do my best to b-r-I-e-f-l-y describe the project off the top o' my chaotic head here.

 

Firstly, I've hand-picked only a few collaborators for this admittedly odd little project. I plan future gallery shows (a close friend is currently shopping it around NYC, for instance) and even [gasp> a coffee table book.

 

OK. But first, here' how it started:

 

In the 90s -- yes, WAY BACK THEN -- I began d-a-b-b-l-i-n-g in photography, and became QUICKLY fascinated w/ multiple exposures when an old Arette 35mm I tried had a broken winding mechanism, producing these wonderful, almost halucinatory double & triple exposures.

 

I began to then INTENTIONALLY use the double exposure technique (with a properly functioning camera this time) in my compositions.

 

OK. One day, whilst traveling the long, lonely stretches of the 95 through rural Georgia, it occurred to me to try abstractly applying the dAdAists' and surealists' exquisite corpse game to photography.

 

With my game -- CPP: Corpse Photo-Poetics -- two photographers each contribute a photo or exposure w/o knowing what the other person had done to see what kind of final composition or new form, if you will, they end up with.

 

Here's how we'd do this: I'll take a roll of pictures (none of them needing to be complete compositions, not necessarily), and when I'm finished, I'll rewind leaving the film leader extending from the roll so that it can be reloaded into another camera.

 

THEN, you'll indeed (or so I hope that you’ll want to =) load the roll into your camera and shoot over my set of images, producing (no doubt ;) some AbFAB double exposure photographs -- CPP's!!!

 

OK. I hope that made SOME sense. ;)

 

One thing to keep in mind is that many of these won't work out, but there will NO DOUBT be GEMS, my dear.

 

Well, I t-r-e-m-e-n-d-o-u-s-l-y look forward to discussing this further and to working with you on this!! I AM QUITE honored by your interest!!!

 

Incidentally, this is the primitive, FUN technique, but I will soon move to enact some refinements to the process. In any case, I just thought that we could have some fun for now in this still early stage of things. What do you reckon?

Done