blacksteps (art, writing and more)
Stephen Black’s blog
Category Archives: Photography
AR photo exhibition: Ipoh by Bubiko Foodtour
Thank you for your interest in what may be the first ever AR photographic exhibition.
Bubiko Foodtour, the world's first AR superstar, is a chef who loves taking pictures of food, travel and culture. Here she presents her iPhone photographs of Ipoh, Malaysia. Full of natural beauty, great food and a fascinating history, Ipoh charmed Bubiko completely.
Ipoh: 88 iPhone photographs by Bubiko Foodtour ebook on Amazon
(THIS POST IS A PLACEHOLDER AND LINKS TO BUBIKO'S PHOTO EXHIBITION ARE SCHEDULED TO APPEAR HERE ON OCTOBER 13, 2017. THERE WILL BE LINKS TO iTUNES AND GOOGLE PLAY.)
Posted in AR, Contemporary Photography, Photography
Tagged AR, fine art photography, network art, Southeast Asia
IPOH SING: New works by Stephen Black and Bubiko Foodtour
Visual art, video art, haiku and photographs of Tiong Bahru Singapore and Ipoh, Malaysia. Stephen Black: artist, producer, author of the bestselling book, i ate tiong bahru. Bubiko Foodtour is AR's first indie superstar! Aroi mak mak!
Tiong Bahru Mouth by Stephen Black
Ipoh in August by Stephen Black and Bubiko Foodtour
This post is a response to the Singapore/Ipoh Causeway Exchange Project
https://www.facebook.com/tiongbahrumouthhaiku/
Support:
22 Hale Street Heritage Museum
Stephen Black is now completing an ebook of visual imagery called iPoh, iPhone. If you would like a free copy, send a reason why to bubikofoodtour atmark gmail.com. Bubiko is on Facebook.Share this:
Black Tofu Soup and The Reality of a Late Afternoon
I’m multi-tasking; this short piece of writing hops across topics like Southeast Asian cuisine, Bubiko Foodtour, self-promotion, AR, VR, branding, racism, philosophy, and the meaning of life. In short: I’m rambling.
We get out of a Grab car in front of a McDonald’s. A young Malay is standing and eating soft ice cream. We ask where the police station is. He doesn’t know, but asks an elderly Chinese, who does. Both men are friendly. We quickly set off down the covered sidewalk. Our destination is the cart of a vendor who sells kidney bean soup and almond paste. The internet says he is near the police station and he sells out by 5, sometimes earlier. It’s now 4:30.
VRLab! I didn’t know there was one here. This morning I had exchanged emails regarding an interview with Dato Jack, VR Lab’s founder. From outside, I can see two women signing in. I enter, explain my connection with Dato Jack, and am allowed to watch. After a thorough explanation and simple instructions, the two women put on headsets. First, they move their heads in all directions, then they slowly manipulate their hands and arms, acquiring the skills to become virtual archers. I study all this because I am writing a book about VR and haptics, as well as planning an AR startup that will eventually expand to VR.
The TV screens in the room show me what they are seeing: a castle under siege. Suddenly, an axe-thrower attacks so suddenly that the woman with braids jumps. Her headset falls off. I leave after a few minutes, by which time they are fully immersed: crouching, cautiously turning and laughing. They are killing people with arrows.
We rush back outside. The sky is soft and complex: rain clouds/blue sky/sunlight/evening. The atmosphere is fresh and I’m glad to have a camera. We find the soup vendor. He’s surrounded by people, all of whom seem to have placed large orders to bring back home. Nearby is a truck stall selling assam laksa. The aroma is uniquely seductive, like a tart, mysterious fruit beckoning from a bed of homemade noodles.
We are soon seated at a rickety table, experiencing multiple foodgasms from the assam laksa, the kidney bean soup, the almond paste and a plate of perfectly fried kway teow that we couldn’t resist. We finish and head into the U-shaped market. In an hour it will be packed.
Ears of sweet corn! I can honestly say I am a farmboy from Ohio, with many memories of corn fields and corn roasts. However, the corn I picked and the cows I milked were actually in Michigan. (OK, full disclosure, about the cows: There was only one. I was a five-year-old visiting a farm with my family. And, yeah... I was too shy to squeeze anything.)
A sign for Pun Tofu! Word play that is not wordplay. I write, often about food. Eight books. One, i ate tiong bahru, is a national bestseller in Singapore. Stories about my IT/VR/AR adventures in Hong Kong and Singapore will soon be a series on Popularium. This trip to the market is research for the text part of Bubiko Foodtour, an AR project. A stall sells kuehs and this is good: I heart kuehs.
The sky is peacefully exploding. Sharply outlined clouds, bulging with water vapor, dissolve into darkening, ragged zones of blue and orange. More generators are started. The lights of the night market come on as the moon rises in a kaleidoscopic sea of twilight. We eat black tofu. This same stall had intrigued us at another market, but we hadn’t tried it. We watch it being made and find a table. Surprisingly, the chicken soup served with it has the taste of green tea. The news of the day encroaches unexpectedly: skin color and Charlottesville.
I remember an article I found while doing research. In a city in Malaysia, over an unspecified period, the police took action on illegal street vendors. The breakdown: 158 actions against Chinese-based businesses, 103 against Malay businesses, 31 against Indians and 13 on other races. The harmonious flavors in the black tofu soup are wonderful , but not enough to take me away from thoughts about Nazis, Communists and the White House.
We step into the crowd one last time, studying foods like nasi lemak, Vietnamese pizza and salt-baked chicken. Five blind Chinese, all elderly, sit on red plastic chairs and sing Chinese songs. A man plays acoustic guitar, a woman taps a tambourine. There is a bowl at the woman’s feet. We listen as we watch Murtabak Sam make pandan pancakes with bamboo charcoal flour. We call a Grab and wait.
Now, here on Medium, are some of my experiences, my reality at that market. As I wrote this I remembered scenes, recalled what I was thinking and added new thoughts. I input my data into the internet, and now it is all over the world.
…one kind of wonder after another kind of wonder, all in something wondrous...
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Toyo Project 3 (KL presentation)
I am doing a presentation in Kuala Lumpur about Toyo's work. The location is Tandang Records/The Zhongshan Building at Kampung Attap.
This link explains my relationship to Toyo.
This link goes to a series of posts about a photographic collaboration with Mee-Young Arkim. The posts outline some of my ideas on the art of photography.
The Japanese photographer in Bali Wave Ghost..
FA-Q was an artist with impact and a friend of Toyo's.
The Guardian on "the art-punk firestorm".
Rivington School: 80s Underground, book launch at Printed Matter
Special thanks to OUR ArtProjects and CC!
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Bubiko Foodtour: AR superstar, chef and… photography guru?
OK… Bubiko does not yet exist in AR. She is now a project-in-the-making. Soon, however… What does is exist is a lot of groundwork related to the possibilities of AR cinema.(Secret Donut World, I’m looking at you). Bubiko’s blog is here. The beauty of this stage of not-yet-spending-money development is that everything is beneficial, yet nothing really matters. To me…ba da da dum dum…Mama!(sorry)
The point is that putting a photography lesson on a food blog is harmless, beneficial and may reveal something that is useful later on… We are thinking about, and playing with the idea of, Bubiko’s voice, her speech patterns.(The following text is quite clearly not Bubiko’s, a bit of fourth wall experimentation.) Bubi’s catch phrase is Aroi mak mak! She is a little chef from Thailand. Details and developments to follow.
For now, without further ado… the same photography lesson/test that is on Bubiko’s Foodtour’s blog. Comments of any sort are welcome…And AR people… please get in touch so we can show you our top secret startup plans…
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The best things to eat come from the Earth: fruits, salt, spices, the ingredients of bread, vegetables and more. These wondrous substances receive energy from the sun. The sun gives us light and heat.
Light…
Photography is a combination of two Greek words: ‘photo’, meaning ‘light’ and ‘graph’, meaning ‘drawing’. Photographers create with light. Regardless of subject matter, a photograph is a recording of light. The different amounts of light energy recorded in one scene, one moment. The absence of light.
To become a food photographer, one must first be aware of the relationship between food and light. Light reveals the photographer’s thoughts about the food.
The photograph above is a recording of a very even light. The exposure was made in the late afternoon. The camera determined the exposure automatically.
I prefer this photograph, which has been modified a small amount, with a free software called PicMonkey.
The photograph above is a recording of a very even light. The exposure was made in the late afternoon. The camera determined the exposure automatically. Below is a composite of the touched and unretouched photos.
In the above image, I increased the size of the unchanged images to make it easier to see the differences. I will explain the changes in my next post. If you have any questions about anything related to food photography, please ask. I have a degree in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology and have documented a few very well known chefs.
The Bubiko photos are all taken with an iPhone 6s.
Simply: learn to appreciate light and your photos will be stronger. The gear really doesn’t matter. It is about what you see. And your vision.
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Toyo Project 2
Toyo Project 1 is here
Again, I am in Kuala Lumpur, it is 2107 and Toyo is messing with my mind.
Seeing the picture in the first post was a shock. That night: Walking around the Lower East Side with some people on a lot of broken glass and we went to a bar first and the streets were all bodegas and Korean florists and guys selling drugs or dime bags and everything was fun, burnt out and/or threatening when we walked in the music was on and we were overlooking things and there were pipes and sculptures all over.
I took this photo of Toyo that night. Or so Toyo tells me.
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Hi Steve, sorry I couldn't serect any of Photos yet,? I have some question to ask, do you have an idea of Title of this book project? And where is Forcusing of my photo work? Like which period?like 80s Ny or NoSeNo 99 night event? You are thinking combining your NoSeNo Video, means you are more detail of your project , let me know wher to forcus my photos?!
WED 12:26PM
Hi Toyo...
Photo book.. no title yet...
Subject is simply ten photos. Up to you, but I hope I can decide 2 or 3. The point is to put together something that is interesting and full of information and stories. SO it could be anything... but maybe it is good to have only a few from No Se No, because that is so famous already.. As for teh video... I am not sure how it will work yet... I am thinking that my black and white videos will be the heart of the project. And some things, like No Se No, you also have... But the final result cannot be predicted right now. I am just wondering if you are interested or not. If you don't want, to.. I understand... If you are interested...for now that is good enought. I can include you as a possibility in my proposal. Then when I start to see my footage, I can better understand what can be made. For example, I videoed you talking... that must be interesting. Is all of it interesting? Is the tape damaged? Maybe you talk about something and you have a photo of it.. I remember you were speaking in Japanese... but you said "Don't carry mugger money" Maybe you have a photoof that. Maybe I have a photo or video of that... Konokanji... these kinds of questions... I am sorry I am not clearer...but I hope it will be an interesting experience and video.
Book again... if you have a theme or topic or title, I am happy to use it.
Steve Thankyou your reply, I'll talk to you later I gat go dentist appo again. Ok?
Ha ha ha... Japanese joke. I hope the dentist is Ok for you...
WED 4:44PM
THU 3:51PM
Hey Steve, yeah I get something from your comment, about forces! You are not forcing me and my photo so as you are not forucing you and your video,you are interested to make interesting book!? Combination of my photos with your video work and with some writing (story). I'm interested your Idea Steve! You are good writer that you showed me in Facebook. You have something in your head! Like christa G and Stelarc. .. Etc . That we can talk about or tell story about ?! I don't know now we should think and talk more ok ? I'll send you something later
THU 9:52PM
Toyo.. Please do not worry about the story.. The starting point is the photo. It can be a not famous person or a landscape or teh snow on cars. Anything! A tree a show a performance, teh sculpture garden The question is What is in your heart that you want to share?
8:50PM
Toyo... what do you think? Maybe we do one photo a week, or one photo a month? It is important for me to create a blog post that introduces the 10 photos...
Steve I'm sorry not moving our project well, I'll try to serect few tommrow to send you . All period of photos are from my heart.anyway imgoing to start early Ny snap shot, ok? I send you one special for you!
Toyo... No problem at all!
Now we have a start! I know every image is from your heart! I will show you the blog post in a day or two.Then if you think is OK, I will share with people slowly... Yoroshiku onegaishimasu. T H A N K Y O U
(TOYO SENT THE PHOTO THAT IS IN TOYO POST 1) Toyo... who is that singing?
Alright you see image ijust send? You are with microphone got it!
?????!!! Is that 8BC? Where?
Is that an image you want to use in the book maybe? I don't remember that event right now...
haha if you want we can! That was Jhon Sanders( sculptor) Party scene 1983 or 84. Many NoSeNo performers are there, the Brond lady is Shrin Take (Electra in a Bill's play Sharon Take next block from NoSeNo on Rivington st Basement studio
A SAturday night... Many pipes in teh ceiling.. a basement I was there only one time!
Idont know What Day night?! But you found your memory!yes? I too only went once Jhon was friend of Ray. Ok I send you one more image you took tho photo from my camera? I think,are you ready?
(TOYO SENT THIS PHOTO 
)
John , and me and other Brond girl!
wow
wow
wow
Chat Conversation End
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Toyo Project 1
ANYONE CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THIS PROJECT. But yeah, you probably had to be there: LES in the 80s.
I have videos of No Se No performances and Toyo talking about life in the Lower East Side. (Thank you, Cowboy) If anyone has ideas on how to transfer Beta (Beta, not Betacam) tapes into today's technology, please get in touch. Thank you.
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I started this to bring attention to Toyo's photographic work and to see what would happen. Yes, I can write, but maybe I don't need to write anything. There is already one book about the Rivington School. Probably other people have more interesting things to say. Toyo's own memories and stories are treasures. I entered into this thinking that if I did write, I'd write about Toyo's images in a very impersonal manner, to counterbalance his intimacy. Topics like dates and short biographies, how Toyo constructs images, the challenges of film. Then, out of the blue... He sent some picture of me.
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OK... Let's get something out of the way. This series of blog posts is not about me. The first three introduce Toyo and myself, but after that... who knows? I graduated from RIT with a BFA in Photographic Illustration, with a minor in Film and Video. I graduated early, in March 1983. I was having a party and I told a teacher about it. He said where you going? I said New York City. He said what are you going to do and I said I don't know. He showed me a fax. Call them. If you work there, you get access to equipment. That's what it's all about. That was on a Friday. They wanted me to come in on Monday. I arrived in Brooklyn, sat by the river with my good friend Pat and wondered about the Manhattan skyline. We were waiting for another good friend, Ben to show up. We were going to stay at his loft.
The next morning Ben's girlfriend took us on the subway to Rivington Street. It was cold but there was a street market in the park we had to cut across. I imagined fruits and vegetables, maybe cooked chicken or something. We got closer, we were in the middle of it. The ground was completely blue, covered with empty syringe wrappers. Heroin. My interview was just on the other side. We walked through, I went up the stairs, started work the next day. That place was called Young Filmakers/Video Arts. The address was 4 Rivington. Later I moved right around the corner, onto the Bowery.
No Se No was at 32 Rivington Street. I left for a two week stay in Japan in October, 1984. The energy of what I experienced--and so much more, bursts out of every image Toyo has created. I am writing this from Kuala Lumpur, on July 18, 2017. I am seeing some of these pictures of myself... for the first time.
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Toyo Project 2 is here.
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With Bubiko Foodtour at the I Love Penang Festival in KL
July 2, 2017. The I Love Penang Carnival, held in Central Park, Bandar Utama near Kuala Lumpur... Besides sampling food, the excursion was a way of uniting three projects of mine. First, Bubiko Foodtour tests were conducted for AR models and photos taken for her blog and Instagram accounts. Secondly, I created images with an iPhone, continuing a lifelong interest in conceptual fine art photography. Finally, the total experience will be the basis for a story or essay in Touching JB, my latest book project.
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Posted in Bubiko Foodtour, Contemporary Photography, Photography, Stephen Black
Tagged food, network art, SB projects, Southeast Asia
Foreign Search Engine
F: The laboratory Qvinde will be hardcover, which is necessary to hold the richness of the cognitive content to present to our referee. One requirement is total submergence.
Who stole the veil?
J: This is the only question I can believe in right now.
D: I want to emphasize this is NOT a floor about China. Dorya is in Academy Award winner Oscar Wilde, cyberspace, Belgium, the hereafter, outer space and streams.
We have danced a tango.
image by Filip Naudts
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Posted in Art, Artists, collaborations, Contemporary Lens-Based Imaging, Contemporary Photography, Photography
Tagged art, artists, authors, collaborations, experiences
Cameras Are Keyboards
This post inspired by two thought-provoking articles; both about Snap/Snapchat. On February 13, 2017, the New Yorker featured Why is Snap Calling Itself a Camera Company? a piece written by Om Malik.
Snap Makes a Bet on the Cultural Supremacy of the Camera, written by Farhad Manjoo, appeared on The New York Times website on March 8, 2017..........
This 90 second video summarizes Snap/Snapchat:
………………………
‘Sexting,’ a word which originated in 2002, symbolizes the evolution of photo-based communication. First popularized by Snapchat, sexting exemplifies how photography’s purpose has expanded beyond documentation. Photos are now components of digital conversations; the equivalent of words or phrases.
Photo-based visual culture is transforming our relationship with the world, from the personal to the political. Cameras have become the new keyboards.
Snapchat exemplifies the triumph and importance of this new photograph-based visual culture. This visual culture also includes drones, emojis, selfies, QR codes, GIFS, very small action cameras, the role of cameras in self-driven vehicles, AR, VR, the possibilities that exist between photographs and search engines (such as Lens by Pinterest), and the relationship between photographs and products on smartphones. It’s understandable why cameras are being referred to as “third arms”.
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Snapchat’s recent IPO touched 24 million dollars and was the talk of Wall Street. Snapchat, or Snap as it now calls itself, has one hundred and fifty-eight million daily users generating 2. 5 billion snaps per day. Its S.E.C. filing included the phrase that “images created by smartphone cameras contain more context and richer information than other forms of input like text entered on a keyboard.” Snap calls itself a camera company, but its first cameras, called Spectacles, were released in 2016, five years after the company began. Snapchat was initially known for allowing users to easily send photos that would soon disappear; ie. user-generated ephemeral content. Snapchat made its mark with sexting.
Now, Snapchat is expanding into areas like content production, a promising development now that millennials have left cable.
From Farhad Manjoo’s NY times article, the following pieces of information
-Gretchen McCulloch, a linguist, is writing a book on how the internet is changing language.
-Phatic communication, a raison d’etre for emojis and more
- Oren Soffer: Snapchat brings us back to a time before the printing press/the mass usage of text and writing, when information was disseminated orally.
Snapchat.
Photography.
Data.
Search.
VR.
AR.
Images.
Ideograms.
Kodak.
About me: I am completing a business plan for an image-based VR startup.(WordPress seems to always mangle my nicely formatted posts. This layout issue doesn't happen with my books...)
……………………………….
Snapchat’s recent IPO touched 24 million dollars and was the talk of Wall Street. Snapchat, or Snap as it now calls itself, has one hundred and fifty-eight million daily users generating 2. 5 billion snaps per day. Its S.E.C. filing included the phrase that “images created by smartphone cameras contain more context and richer information than other forms of input like text entered on a keyboard.” Snap calls itself a camera company, but its first cameras, called Spectacles, were released in 2016, five years after the company began. Snapchat was initially known for allowing users to easily send photos that would soon disappear; ie. user-generated ephemeral content. Snapchat made its mark with sexting.
Now, Snapchat is expanding into areas like content production, a promising development now that millennials have left cable.
From Farhad Manjoo’s NY times article, the following pieces of information
-Gretchen McCulloch, a linguist, is writing a book on how the internet is changing language.
-Phatic communication, a raison d’etre for emojis and more
- Oren Soffer: Snapchat brings us back to a time before the printing press/the mass usage of text and writing, when information was disseminated orally.
Snapchat.
Photography.
Data.
Search.
VR.
AR.
Images.
Ideograms.
Kodak.
About me: I am completing a business plan for an image-based VR startup.(WordPress seems to always mangle my nicely formatted posts. This layout issue doesn't happen with my books...)
