1 00:00:00,380 --> 00:00:02,000 [Greenpoint, Brooklyn] 2 00:00:03,640 --> 00:00:04,140 [DOOR SLAMS] 3 00:00:04,420 --> 00:00:04,920 [LIGHT SWITCH FLICKS ON] 4 00:00:06,280 --> 00:00:07,680 [SOUND OF COMPUTER STARTING UP] 5 00:00:07,680 --> 00:00:09,260 [New York Close Up] 6 00:00:11,960 --> 00:00:14,220 ["Lucas Blalock's Digital Toolkit"] 7 00:00:16,640 --> 00:00:17,620 This is "The Smoker". 8 00:00:17,620 --> 00:00:18,890 [SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING] 9 00:00:18,890 --> 00:00:22,260 That picture started off by me wanting to make a picture of a smoker. 10 00:00:22,260 --> 00:00:26,420 It sort of relates to this Magritte painting from the late Forties. 11 00:00:27,740 --> 00:00:29,540 I was going to have an exhibition in Brussels 12 00:00:29,550 --> 00:00:30,700 and Magritte is from Brussels. 13 00:00:30,700 --> 00:00:35,280 It seemed like a suitable environment for this, sort of, game. 14 00:00:35,280 --> 00:00:36,420 [SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING] 15 00:00:58,020 --> 00:00:58,540 [SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING] 16 00:00:59,460 --> 00:01:01,260 [Lucas Blalock, Artist] 17 00:01:02,050 --> 00:01:04,939 I started using Photoshop when I was still in undergrad. 18 00:01:04,939 --> 00:01:06,549 It was just, like, a procedural tool. 19 00:01:07,220 --> 00:01:09,460 Like, it was a replacement for the dark room. 20 00:01:11,280 --> 00:01:13,460 It felt like special effects for a long time. 21 00:01:13,470 --> 00:01:15,600 It felt just like something after the fact— 22 00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:17,780 that it was, sort of, making up ground for a picture. 23 00:01:17,780 --> 00:01:20,340 It took me a long time to get to a place 24 00:01:20,340 --> 00:01:23,240 where I understood how I might be able to use it. 25 00:01:25,490 --> 00:01:29,070 Around the time I read Bertolt Brecht's book on theater— 26 00:01:29,070 --> 00:01:31,659 he was talking about bringing the labor 27 00:01:31,659 --> 00:01:35,310 that happened offstage—in a theater production—onto the stage. 28 00:01:35,310 --> 00:01:38,930 I started to think about the kinds of labor I was hiding. 29 00:01:39,520 --> 00:01:43,179 There are all these ways to, sort of, hide your labor in Photoshop. 30 00:01:43,179 --> 00:01:46,310 And I'd been really interested in, sort of, undermining those things. 31 00:01:46,310 --> 00:01:48,749 There are a lot of things the computer will do for you 32 00:01:48,749 --> 00:01:49,880 that don't need you, 33 00:01:49,880 --> 00:01:52,259 and those have never been tools that I've been particularly attracted to. 34 00:01:52,259 --> 00:01:55,840 Like, I'm attracted to the ones that are sort of the dumbest tools in Photoshop. 35 00:01:55,840 --> 00:02:00,200 And I tend to use them in the most blunt way. 36 00:02:00,760 --> 00:02:02,540 [1. Eraser Tool] 37 00:02:03,300 --> 00:02:05,880 One of the rules of photography seems to be that 38 00:02:05,889 --> 00:02:07,429 the photograph needs to be homogeneous-- 39 00:02:07,429 --> 00:02:10,610 it needs to be one thing. 40 00:02:10,610 --> 00:02:12,670 Usually that's one view. 41 00:02:13,750 --> 00:02:18,450 I was really interested in how I add levels of labor to photographs 42 00:02:18,450 --> 00:02:20,510 without losing that sense of photographicness. 43 00:02:20,510 --> 00:02:23,050 And the cutting through was part of that. 44 00:02:34,260 --> 00:02:36,420 [2. Masking] 45 00:02:36,420 --> 00:02:39,260 In commercial practice, masking is a way to 46 00:02:39,260 --> 00:02:42,790 select the sky in a photograph and make it a darker blue, 47 00:02:42,790 --> 00:02:45,900 or to select someone's eyes in a photograph and sort of brighten them up. 48 00:02:45,900 --> 00:02:51,760 And for me, masking has sort of opened up possibilities of drawing out relationships. 49 00:02:52,080 --> 00:02:55,960 Like, when I saw this bag, it looked like a human torso to me, 50 00:02:55,960 --> 00:02:57,580 and when I took its picture, 51 00:02:57,580 --> 00:02:58,880 that's sort of what was on my mind. 52 00:02:58,880 --> 00:03:02,150 When I got the negative back, I started to look for opportunities 53 00:03:02,150 --> 00:03:04,950 to sort of enhance that relationship. 54 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:15,960 One of the tools that I've used a lot is the clone stamp-- 55 00:03:15,960 --> 00:03:16,620 [3. Clone Stamp] 56 00:03:16,630 --> 00:03:19,170 you would use to take out imperfections, 57 00:03:19,170 --> 00:03:22,730 or you would use to remove a lamp post from a street. 58 00:03:24,200 --> 00:03:27,180 I think something with the clone stamp particularly that I'm really excited about: 59 00:03:27,180 --> 00:03:30,640 it's an activity that can be either additive or subtractive. 60 00:03:31,590 --> 00:03:33,210 So you could cover something up-- 61 00:03:33,210 --> 00:03:35,370 say, take an object out of the picture-- 62 00:03:35,370 --> 00:03:37,200 but if you did it poorly, 63 00:03:37,200 --> 00:03:41,660 it would leave this, kind of, interference pattern in the background. 64 00:03:49,220 --> 00:03:51,380 There's been an anxiety about, sort of, you know, 65 00:03:51,380 --> 00:03:52,520 [4. Brush Tool] 66 00:03:52,520 --> 00:03:53,960 "Why would you make another picture now?" 67 00:03:53,960 --> 00:03:54,560 "What's the point?" 68 00:03:54,560 --> 00:03:56,290 "There are pictures of everything already." 69 00:03:56,290 --> 00:04:01,370 I really had started to think about photography as an activity of drawing-- 70 00:04:01,370 --> 00:04:05,750 as a way to try to understand the world through making a picture of it. 71 00:04:05,750 --> 00:04:09,480 And this seems to be a continuation of the historic activity of drawing-- 72 00:04:09,480 --> 00:04:10,680 like, drawing with a pencil. 73 00:04:18,370 --> 00:04:19,590 When I started, what I was doing 74 00:04:19,590 --> 00:04:22,580 was sort of making a burlesque of commercial practice. 75 00:04:22,580 --> 00:04:25,490 Because, really, these were the only people who were using 76 00:04:25,490 --> 00:04:27,250 digital effects in their pictures. 77 00:04:27,250 --> 00:04:31,240 And so, I use all of the tools that I use 78 00:04:31,250 --> 00:04:33,110 in a really similar way. 79 00:04:33,440 --> 00:04:34,040 [SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING] 80 00:04:34,040 --> 00:04:36,240 They're all, really, this shovel, you know? 81 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:37,650 They're this extension of the finger. 82 00:04:37,650 --> 00:04:38,430 [SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING] 83 00:04:39,120 --> 00:04:41,510 Being sort of stuck into space, 84 00:04:41,510 --> 00:04:45,240 it's an entry into a space that I couldn't enter any other way 85 00:04:45,240 --> 00:04:46,780 but through Photoshop. 86 00:04:48,280 --> 00:04:51,320 Humor, for me, has been an important thing in my work 87 00:04:51,320 --> 00:04:53,750 because it's a way to, sort of, bring people into the room. 88 00:04:53,750 --> 00:04:54,750 It's literally disarming. 89 00:04:54,750 --> 00:04:55,650 Like, Buster Keaton, 90 00:04:55,650 --> 00:04:56,790 or like, early cinema-- 91 00:04:56,790 --> 00:04:59,070 it's people who were incredibly effective 92 00:04:59,070 --> 00:05:02,880 at drawing our understanding of the cinema. 93 00:05:02,880 --> 00:05:06,660 Buster Keaton's gags give us a way to enter movies. 94 00:05:07,680 --> 00:05:09,600 Humor for me is about relationships. 95 00:05:09,600 --> 00:05:12,680 It's about an invitation to relate to the objects in the pictures, 96 00:05:12,690 --> 00:05:15,810 and I think that more and more, as time has gone on, 97 00:05:15,810 --> 00:05:19,120 it's been also about relating to this sort of 98 00:05:19,120 --> 00:05:21,380 ambiguousness of photographing digital space 99 00:05:21,380 --> 00:05:24,240 and the way that it's now being construed. 100 00:05:24,870 --> 00:05:27,950 I believe in art because art makes new spaces. 101 00:05:27,950 --> 00:05:31,020 Aesthetics is a way of, sort of, proto thinking-- 102 00:05:31,030 --> 00:05:33,570 of thinking before you can think these new thoughts. 103 00:05:35,490 --> 00:05:38,210 Even in the goofiest, most ridiculous way, 104 00:05:38,210 --> 00:05:41,450 aesthetics is a way of, sort of, unpacking possibility.