WEBVTT 00:00:00.380 --> 00:00:02.000 [Greenpoint, Brooklyn] 00:00:03.640 --> 00:00:04.140 [DOOR SLAMS] 00:00:04.420 --> 00:00:04.920 [LIGHT SWITCH FLICKS ON] 00:00:06.280 --> 00:00:07.680 [SOUND OF COMPUTER STARTING UP] 00:00:07.680 --> 00:00:09.260 [New York Close Up] 00:00:11.960 --> 00:00:14.220 ["Lucas Blalock's Digital Toolkit"] 00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:17.620 This is "The Smoker". 00:00:17.620 --> 00:00:18.890 [SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING] 00:00:18.890 --> 00:00:22.260 That picture started off by me wanting to make a picture of a smoker. 00:00:22.260 --> 00:00:26.420 It sort of relates to this Magritte painting from the late Forties. 00:00:27.740 --> 00:00:29.540 I was going to have an exhibition in Brussels 00:00:29.550 --> 00:00:30.700 and Magritte is from Brussels. 00:00:30.700 --> 00:00:35.280 It seemed like a suitable environment for this, sort of, game. 00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:36.420 [SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING] 00:00:58.020 --> 00:00:58.540 [SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING] 00:00:59.460 --> 00:01:01.260 [Lucas Blalock, Artist] 00:01:02.050 --> 00:01:04.939 I started using Photoshop when I was still in undergrad. 00:01:04.939 --> 00:01:06.549 It was just, like, a procedural tool. 00:01:07.220 --> 00:01:09.460 Like, it was a replacement for the dark room. 00:01:11.280 --> 00:01:13.460 It felt like special effects for a long time. 00:01:13.470 --> 00:01:15.600 It felt just like something after the fact— 00:01:15.600 --> 00:01:17.780 that it was, sort of, making up ground for a picture. 00:01:17.780 --> 00:01:20.340 It took me a long time to get to a place 00:01:20.340 --> 00:01:23.240 where I understood how I might be able to use it. 00:01:25.490 --> 00:01:29.070 Around the time I read Bertolt Brecht's book on theater— 00:01:29.070 --> 00:01:31.659 he was talking about bringing the labor 00:01:31.659 --> 00:01:35.310 that happened offstage—in a theater production—onto the stage. 00:01:35.310 --> 00:01:38.930 I started to think about the kinds of labor I was hiding. 00:01:39.520 --> 00:01:43.179 There are all these ways to, sort of, hide your labor in Photoshop. 00:01:43.179 --> 00:01:46.310 And I'd been really interested in, sort of, undermining those things. 00:01:46.310 --> 00:01:48.749 There are a lot of things the computer will do for you 00:01:48.749 --> 00:01:49.880 that don't need you, 00:01:49.880 --> 00:01:52.259 and those have never been tools that I've been particularly attracted to. 00:01:52.259 --> 00:01:55.840 Like, I'm attracted to the ones that are sort of the dumbest tools in Photoshop. 00:01:55.840 --> 00:02:00.200 And I tend to use them in the most blunt way. 00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:02.540 [1. Eraser Tool] 00:02:03.300 --> 00:02:05.880 One of the rules of photography seems to be that 00:02:05.889 --> 00:02:07.429 the photograph needs to be homogeneous-- 00:02:07.429 --> 00:02:10.610 it needs to be one thing. 00:02:10.610 --> 00:02:12.670 Usually that's one view. 00:02:13.750 --> 00:02:18.450 I was really interested in how I add levels of labor to photographs 00:02:18.450 --> 00:02:20.510 without losing that sense of photographicness. 00:02:20.510 --> 00:02:23.050 And the cutting through was part of that. 00:02:34.260 --> 00:02:36.420 [2. Masking] 00:02:36.420 --> 00:02:39.260 In commercial practice, masking is a way to 00:02:39.260 --> 00:02:42.790 select the sky in a photograph and make it a darker blue, 00:02:42.790 --> 00:02:45.900 or to select someone's eyes in a photograph and sort of brighten them up. 00:02:45.900 --> 00:02:51.760 And for me, masking has sort of opened up possibilities of drawing out relationships. 00:02:52.080 --> 00:02:55.960 Like, when I saw this bag, it looked like a human torso to me, 00:02:55.960 --> 00:02:57.580 and when I took its picture, 00:02:57.580 --> 00:02:58.880 that's sort of what was on my mind. 00:02:58.880 --> 00:03:02.150 When I got the negative back, I started to look for opportunities 00:03:02.150 --> 00:03:04.950 to sort of enhance that relationship. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:15.960 One of the tools that I've used a lot is the clone stamp-- 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:16.620 [3. Clone Stamp] 00:03:16.630 --> 00:03:19.170 you would use to take out imperfections, 00:03:19.170 --> 00:03:22.730 or you would use to remove a lamp post from a street. 00:03:24.200 --> 00:03:27.180 I think something with the clone stamp particularly that I'm really excited about: 00:03:27.180 --> 00:03:30.640 it's an activity that can be either additive or subtractive. 00:03:31.590 --> 00:03:33.210 So you could cover something up-- 00:03:33.210 --> 00:03:35.370 say, take an object out of the picture-- 00:03:35.370 --> 00:03:37.200 but if you did it poorly, 00:03:37.200 --> 00:03:41.660 it would leave this, kind of, interference pattern in the background. 00:03:49.220 --> 00:03:51.380 There's been an anxiety about, sort of, you know, 00:03:51.380 --> 00:03:52.520 [4. Brush Tool] 00:03:52.520 --> 00:03:53.960 "Why would you make another picture now?" 00:03:53.960 --> 00:03:54.560 "What's the point?" 00:03:54.560 --> 00:03:56.290 "There are pictures of everything already." 00:03:56.290 --> 00:04:01.370 I really had started to think about photography as an activity of drawing-- 00:04:01.370 --> 00:04:05.750 as a way to try to understand the world through making a picture of it. 00:04:05.750 --> 00:04:09.480 And this seems to be a continuation of the historic activity of drawing-- 00:04:09.480 --> 00:04:10.680 like, drawing with a pencil. 00:04:18.370 --> 00:04:19.590 When I started, what I was doing 00:04:19.590 --> 00:04:22.580 was sort of making a burlesque of commercial practice. 00:04:22.580 --> 00:04:25.490 Because, really, these were the only people who were using 00:04:25.490 --> 00:04:27.250 digital effects in their pictures. 00:04:27.250 --> 00:04:31.240 And so, I use all of the tools that I use 00:04:31.250 --> 00:04:33.110 in a really similar way. 00:04:33.440 --> 00:04:34.040 [SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING] 00:04:34.040 --> 00:04:36.240 They're all, really, this shovel, you know? 00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:37.650 They're this extension of the finger. 00:04:37.650 --> 00:04:38.430 [SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING] 00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:41.510 Being sort of stuck into space, 00:04:41.510 --> 00:04:45.240 it's an entry into a space that I couldn't enter any other way 00:04:45.240 --> 00:04:46.780 but through Photoshop. 00:04:48.280 --> 00:04:51.320 Humor, for me, has been an important thing in my work 00:04:51.320 --> 00:04:53.750 because it's a way to, sort of, bring people into the room. 00:04:53.750 --> 00:04:54.750 It's literally disarming. 00:04:54.750 --> 00:04:55.650 Like, Buster Keaton, 00:04:55.650 --> 00:04:56.790 or like, early cinema-- 00:04:56.790 --> 00:04:59.070 it's people who were incredibly effective 00:04:59.070 --> 00:05:02.880 at drawing our understanding of the cinema. 00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:06.660 Buster Keaton's gags give us a way to enter movies. 00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:09.600 Humor for me is about relationships. 00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:12.680 It's about an invitation to relate to the objects in the pictures, 00:05:12.690 --> 00:05:15.810 and I think that more and more, as time has gone on, 00:05:15.810 --> 00:05:19.120 it's been also about relating to this sort of 00:05:19.120 --> 00:05:21.380 ambiguousness of photographing digital space 00:05:21.380 --> 00:05:24.240 and the way that it's now being construed. 00:05:24.870 --> 00:05:27.950 I believe in art because art makes new spaces. 00:05:27.950 --> 00:05:31.020 Aesthetics is a way of, sort of, proto thinking-- 00:05:31.030 --> 00:05:33.570 of thinking before you can think these new thoughts. 00:05:35.490 --> 00:05:38.210 Even in the goofiest, most ridiculous way, 00:05:38.210 --> 00:05:41.450 aesthetics is a way of, sort of, unpacking possibility.