FIELD NOTE 1 OF 3
Date: February 10th, 2019
People Involved: Jesus Cisneros Estrada, Casen Matthews
Location: Casen Matthews’ Home – Bed
Reconstruction conditions:
Cold Room, Immediately After Wake Up, Lawn Mower Sounds, Dogs Barking, In Presence of Casen Matthews.
Time and duration of reconstruction:
Morning, Immediately After Wake Up 10:37 AM 35 Minutes
Equipment and tools used:
Loose Leaf Paper
Laptop
#2 Pencil
Ink Pen
Ball Point Ink Pen
Colored Ball Point Ink Pens
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
When I printed out the picture it was very hard to see all of the lines, so I decided to instead trace the images off of my computer screen as the light from the laptop could help show the lines better. Due to the lack of tape ,that I should have used to keep my paper in place, and the way I had to maintain the paper on my laptop, I had misaligned my tracing and my images were all off from the original. I had to free hand many characters as they were very blurry in the zoomed in versions of the drawings. The screen was sleek and the paper had a laminated edge where the holes were. The pencils had many edges and felt smooth. The ball point pens all had a gel over the point which varied from rough to gooey.
Prior knowledge that you have:
I have been learning Mandarin for the past year, and I have always been interested in East Asian culture. It is one of the reasons all of my drawings are what I thought were Chinese tracings. My current learning in the language really made me want to understand what these drawings are bringing to the reader and so I have looked up phrasing that I can actually decipher from non-blurry characters. They did turn out to all be Japanese illustrations. I also have some strong urge to only write the tracing characters in ink, because I feel that it beings some form of officiality to the document, but I am unsure if that is some type of calligraphy generalization or some deeper normality within anime, c-dramas and k-dramas.
Reflection on your practice:
This image was used to depict what was found in the first dissection of a human body allowed in Japan. It was credited to Toyo Yamawaki, but in reality he was in too high a class to be associated with the desecration of another human body so his assistant did it. I wonder what class is defined to be able to dishonor themselves by ruining a dead body? I personally do not know Japanese taboos, but how spiritual or deep is this one? The final product would look like a finely hand colored woodcut book. The sketches would be reproduced by wood block printing. In this instance they would need the experience of the doctor and additionally, for the government to give the approval to dissect the body of in this case an executed criminal. All of these carvings and etchings were referred to as elementary enough to print. So after the initial creation I would assume that they would use the of the era techniques to wood block print copies of the work. With all of these works somethings that may not be available could be the ink in which case we could use paints of sorts and if we did not have a Bauer then we could find other sources to create pressure to allow for the printing. With upgrades in technology and even policy we can examine cadavers and create more detailed images of body parts and of all parts of the body rather than only the limited and very restricted images we would be allowed to visualize. It took me a bit longer than I would have liked to find a method that I liked for recreating this print. I had tried to print out the image so that I could trace over it but then the image itself was too rich and dark to easily trace over it. I would end up having to look over the paper consistently in order to more accurately draw what the image looked like. I then opted to free hand it, but then believed that I was not being as true to the artist as I could be since I was trying to recreate a work and not an original concept. Ultimately, I decided on tracing the image off of my laptop screen so that I could have the most amount of light going through the image and the paper I was tracing on so that I could accurately draw the image. I had less errors and had a clearer picture, but the characters were still blurry on some of the areas and the image was still moving a lot so it was not as even as I would like it to be. If I was to do it again I believe I would like to use tape or some kind of paper holder to keep the paper from moving and also a better light so that I can see the picture even better. I feel that going over this piece many different times and just learning more about the artist’s style really allowed me to see how they organized their work for others to see and learn from it. I really appreciated the title and the clearness of the messy descriptions I tried to translate. I did find it peculiar how the genitalia was drawn as it seems to contrast a lot of western drawings with the male genitalia being depicted as superior to many other organs. We see that in this work it is more life sized. I truly wanted to try using other media, but after looking at the costs I would have to assume in perusing woodblock printing, I decided against it, and with the fear of not being able to conduct a reduction reaction correctly I also opted against trying a different style of science to create the image. Instead I unfortunately, resorted to medium that were readily available to me. I did use pen so that I could incorporate the use of ink as wood printing would use and to keep track with the if errors occur there is no fix. I did opt to trying to create different environments so that I could see if that would alter how I think about the work I am creating and how the artist may have interpreted their feelings or comfort into their work. I did find that I feel this image shows that I was excited to be doing this work, but that I was also lost in what exactly I should be doing. That is due to the time and effort I put into correcting errors and lining the characters, but also how things are off centered or not as pristine.
Photos/video documenting process:
Questions that arise:
Why is the image not as complex as other detailed views of the body? How was the image organized? Did the author intend to share this with specific types of audience and did they take that into account when they structured the piece. Was this carving based on layers of the body? Did they restrict themselves from being very detailed drawings due to the material or due to social reason as it was the first allowed dissection of a human bod for science?
Before you start, provide answers to the following:
- What is this image for?
- The Title Characters Seem to Mean: Figure Abdomen Chest Stripping So I assumes it is a chest diagram
- It showcased the first human dissection in Japan.
- Where is the image coming from? What do we know of its source? Its audience?
- In reality it is from a 1754 edition of a book, zozo. It is from the first dissection performed by Toyo Yamawaki in 1750. It was for the purpose of science and was the dissection of a criminal.
Materials & measurements
- Can we identify all the materials needed to make it?
- Through research we can find the typical tools used to make such illustrations.
- Are there multiple varieties of tools used to make it?
- Depending on how they colored the wood they would need varying types of coloring tools. They would need tools to cut the wood, and also preserve the image.
- What is the stability of a material over time?
- Considering we have images of the illustrations I would say that it is stable. Which would make sense as it is a carving and that is much more resilient then a drawing or digital copy may ever be. However, conditions such as humidity could worsen life of the material as it could lead to rotting.
Tools & equipment
- What tools are necessary?
- Craving knifes, Wood Cut Outs, Folding Leaves, wrappers, block printed title labels, new stitching, brayer, ink, baren,
- What are the best ways to replicate the effects of inaccessible tools?
- For carving you could use a knife or scalpel depending on its durability. Additionally, you could use different things to add pressure to add color to the cut or just use a different method for coloring the print all together. You could use different types of paints and apply pressure to them to try and recreate the effect of wood block printing.
- How do technological changes impact our interpretation/expectation of the image? (e.g., engraving, woodcut, silver chromate)
- With advances in tech we assume for images to be more detailed and be able to give us more description of the anatomy of the body.
FIELD NOTE 2 OF 3
Date: February 12th, 2019
People Involved: Jesus Cisneros Estrada, Casen Matthews
Location: Casen Matthews’ Home – Living Room
Reconstruction conditions :
Warm Room, Post Dinner, AC Sounds, Music varies in calm, rap, fun In Presence of Casen Matthews.
Time and duration of reconstruction:
Night, Immediately After Meal 08:30 PM 25 Minutes
Equipment and tools used:
Loose Leaf Paper
Laptop
#2 Pencil
Ink Pen
Ball Point Ink Pen
Colored Ball Point Ink Pens
Phone
Tripod
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
It smelled of eucalyptus mint bath and body works candle. The paper was still loose leaf and had a laminated sleeve. I placed the tripod on the table in front of me. The paper was smooth and soft. My hands felt a little sticky from my dinner. The pens that I had not used still had the gooey bit on them. Casen Matthews would sing and destress me. I dropped my laptop and it would move a lot.
Prior knowledge that you have:
In class when we saw how the eye was drawn we saw that it had a focus with the rest of the head. In addition, the descriptions that we read were very detailed, but in references to analogies. So they describe the color of the eye grease and even how webby parts of the eye are spiderweb like. In this illustration, from the translations I could sketch into google translate, it seems that at this specific era they were not looking to be very detailed in these first sketches.
Reflection on your practice:
This image was based off the work of a monk who became a doctor who helped create and progress the field of ophthalmology in Japan during the 16th and 17th centuries. I believe that the image is for mapping general anatomy of the eye as it is broad in the term such as calling the inner eye the small heart. The final product I would assume looks much like other woodcut books that are able to be print with wood blocking techniques. Much like we have previously discussed we will need ink, the mechanisms to complete the woodblock printing a device to press the ink, and I would assume the medium that we would be pressing onto. I have previously mentioned finding others ways to create pressure or provide some sort of pigment, but if nothing for this production is available than one may just try to free hand a reproduction of the work by paining. With technology improvements, we seem to have lost some of the image which is unfortunate as the other portion may have provided more information as to what the purpose of the work was. In addition, it also has allowed us to create more detailed images of the anatomy one may decide to study. At this point I had decided to use my laptop to have its light be my main source of assistance as I do my tracings. I opted to choose three pieces that all had different gravities of difficulty. For example this would be the easiest and the last would be the most detailed. I wanted to know how the varying intensity of the work would alter how deeply the artist may work on their piece. This piece really spoke out to me because I contemplated many works but this one seemed incomplete in a way and that led me to search of the complete picture. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the other side so I decided that perhaps this is all that remained and I wanted to get a feeling for what it felt like to make something and not truly have it completed, because perhaps that is what happened to the artist. I found it rather peculiar that this work was so detailed. I found myself in a lax state as there didn’t seem to be too much care for the piece. Well that was my first thought, until I had looked back at the work, and realized that I had truly become too comfortable in what I had been doing. I then proceeded to go back and erase a lot of the work that I did because I saw that the piece itself actually had a significant amount of detail found in the veins of the eyes. I Felt that the image needed color, so I began shading in the sections and then also felt that the light shading did not give the image the full attention it needed so instead I went back and actually shaded in color and tried to be truer to the original work. I also found myself very perplexed by the work as the orientation of the work had me confused. I found myself unaware of what these characters were. I had tried reading them and found that all the images of the work had a poor orientation. I was then able to find that this was in fact not some random language but Japanese (I did think it was Chinese). I found it very weird still that I could not read the characters in the box as they were very odd, cut off, and grouped weirdly. If I could find the picture I would truly like to go back and finish the entirety.
Photos/video documenting process:
Questions that arise:
Why is the image cut off when I look for it? Why is it so surface level? When I first looked at the image I was trying to decipher the characters and it was apparently just that I had the orientation of the image wrong so I was just confused. So I suppose what language or dialect is this? Why are some of the descriptions in boxes and why do some of those boxes have descriptions on the outsides of them?
Before you start, provide answers to the following:
- What is this image for?
- The development of ophthalmology in Japan.
- I assumed it was for basic anatomy of the eye.
- Where is the image coming from? What do we know of its source? Its audience?
- It is from the 17th century. It is a document based off the work of a 14th century monk turned doctor Majima Seigan. Who in legend is said to have found a book with medical advice that allowed him to be a great doctor that cured many eye diseases.
Materials & measurements
- Can we identify all the materials needed to make it?
- Through research we can find the typical tools used to make such illustrations.
- Are there multiple varieties of tools used to make it?
- Yes similar to the first one we would need to look at methods to paint the illustrations as well as to carve it.
- What is the stability of a material over time?
- Since we are assuming that with this work similarly to the others that during these era’s they mainly used wood printing for these illustrations. They should last long in drier conditions, but the paint may fade or lose some color.
Tools & equipment
- What tools are necessary?
- Craving knifes, Wood Cut Outs, Folding Leaves, wrappers, block printed title labels, new stitching, brayer, ink, baren, Pigmints
- What are the best ways to replicate the effects of inaccessible tools?
- For carving you could use a knife or scalpel depending on its durability. Additionally, you could use different things to add pressure to add color to the cut or just use a different method for coloring the print all together. You could use different types of paints and apply pressure to them to try and recreate the effect of wood block printing.
- How do technological changes impact our interpretation/expectation of the image? (e.g., engraving, woodcut, silver chromate)
- With advances in tech we assume for images to be more detailed and be able to give us more description of the anatomy of the body.
- Additionally, with technology we can translate the ideas that people were trying to describe, and share that information and view with a variety of people.
FIELD NOTE 3 OF 3
Date: February 12th, 2019
People Involved: Jesus Cisneros Estrada, Casen Matthews
Location: Casen Matthews’ Home – Living Room
Reconstruction conditions :
Warm Room, Post Dinner, AC Sounds, Music varies in calm, rap, fun In Presence of Casen Matthews.
Time and duration of reconstruction:
Night, Immediately After Meal 10:00 PM 45 Minutes
Equipment and tools used:
Loose Leaf Paper
Laptop
#2 Pencil
Ink Pen
Ball Point Ink Pen
Colored Ball Point Ink Pens
Phone
Tripod
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
It smelled of eucalyptus mint bath and body works candle. The paper was still loose leaf and had a laminated sleeve. I placed the tripod on the table in front of me. The paper was smooth and soft. My hands felt a little sticky from my dinner. The pens that I had not used still had the gooey bit on them. Casen Matthews would sing and destress me. I dropped my laptop and it would move a lot.
In addition, it was later and I had gotten hungry. I was a little irritable from the hunger. I realized I forgot to add color to the second drawing. I decided to do a time lapse for my final video, unlike the previous two that I just recorded everything. Do I have the correct colors for this recreation?
Prior knowledge that you have:
From class we learned that many different culture had previously divided illness causing substances into varying categories for example when I first looked at this image I tried to correlate the black, yellow, green, and red to the four seasons and types of people we discussed in class, as it may relate to what kind of illnesses one is prone to or to what organs those traits relate to.
Reflection on your practice:
This image is also based on the work of the monk turned doctor. I find that kind of surprising as he studied vision related diseases. This image does not truly seem to relate to the eyes at all as there is not indicator or path following the face or eyes, in fact it seems to signal organs or places where specific ailment may effect which could just be more information that doctors may have had during that era. Much like the previous works, we will need wood block printing material, but due to that unavailability, I have decided to not pursue that very interesting path. I would in the future if ever possible like to try recreating the same work through a variety of media so that we could learn more about what the media means to the artists and what value the media brings to the audience of the work. Without ink one could possibly try using natural ingredients or in a modern age use things like makeup, paint, food, or anything with pigment to add color to a print, in addition, like previously stated one could find a substitute for pressure to add ink to the print. Modern devices allow for us to try to interpret this image as a canvas with no story. We use the information we have to try and add meaning to it from how I view aesthetics at play in the work to how the size of things in the work determine their value. A modern lenses allows us to generalize what people of an era did and felt, but is this a drawback of our modern time? Can we just generalize the views of an entire era of people, without knowing all of the individual tales? Like the previous two, I used my laptop lighting for the tracing and pens and paper for the cost, safety, and availability of the material. It would honestly be really cool if we could learn how to wood print or do a carving of some sort in class sometime, but I do not know how reasonable that is. I selected this image for the sole reason that I was mesmerized by it. I felt that it was complex and truly tried to give the reader more than just a surface level view into the body. I also love how it allows for the us to bring the grouping of people into it as I personal viewed the piece as assigning the different human fluids to organs as the four colors seemed to resemble, black, green, yellow, and red. Please excuse the purple as I could not find a dark yellow/ brown pen to create the same vibe, so in my mind purple was the best substitute. I feel like that may be due to it just being a complementary color, but it could also be due to the feelings I picture when I picture the original yellow-brown shade and this purple shade. I feel like this kind of work in a wood print situation would take significantly long and that is why the details are truly something to marvel at because this much simpler endeavor took a relatively long time, but I know with previous simple carvings I had done the time commitment was immense. I would love to do a long term project to complete drawings and carvings like this to truly feel how the artists of the era felt as they or their assistants did this work. I also found that this work bewildered me as I am not entirely sure what the extension of these indicators are supposed to do. Some of them pause at specific points on the body, but we see that they do not all do this. I feel like this may be an abstract interpretation of some potentially religious or maybe even way of expressing not knowing. From what we had learned from our readings on aesthetics I feel like it may even be the artists romanticization of the body and the functions that they believe could be going on within the body. I feel that it may be true as there is no indicator in the direction of the flowy white part next to what I assume is the heart. What was truly ironic was that after searching for more background information I accidentally found a random picture on Pinterest that would resolve my confusion with the eye piece and this full body piece. In this complete image, I saw how the orientation of the eye was relative to the body as it boxed out things in a very long print. These extensions then potentially show how it relates parts of the eye or the sense of vision to the health of the body. I find this truly funny when we relate it to the noblest of the senses and we observe how even in non-Eurocentric writing there may have been views that vision could be seen as a superior sense and how any ailment to the body may be related to a failing sense or how damage to a sense could cause for the body to malfunction or become ill. I am still confused on how these paths relate to one another, but I feel like if I had full translations I could get a better grasp. I truly wonder how long these scriptures are because it seems as though this one is also not the complete illustration due to the cut off characters and red lines on the edge of the left side of the work? I wonder what kind of structure the artist was feeling and whether it was organized like this or if he just went as he progressed and added things as he chose. Which would help with explaining the extra details outside of the boxed information on the complete picture, and also on the first one where there are descriptions squeezed into areas that are close to the drawing.
Photos/video documenting process:
Questions that arise:
Why is the view from every indicator angled in a circular way? Why is this orientation different than other Japanese figures? Why does this one use more colors? Is it due to class or price or is there a spiritual or cultural significance with each color. Why do these lines end and what are they supposed to relate to? Is it ok that I used a different color form the original? What does this white flowing space indicate?
Before you start, provide answers to the following:
- What is this image for?
- The development of ophthalmology in Japan.
- After looking at google translate again I assumed it was for detailing what different organs could effect, such as minor injuries or maybe even purpose of organ as some seemed to maybe mean extra.
- Where is the image coming from? What do we know of its source? Its audience?
- For all of my illustrations, I had decided the images that I wanted to recreate before finding out about them. Surprisingly, I discovered that both this piece and the second piece are based of the work of the 14th century monk to doctor Majima. I found this very peculiar as both of these images seem to have very different portrayals as one is significantly more detailed than the other and that this piece’s perspective is circular unlike the others more rectangular view. They both do have semi-odd perspectives however.
Materials & measurements
- Can we identify all the materials needed to make it?
- Through research we can find the typical tools used to make such illustrations.
- Are there multiple varieties of tools used to make it?
- Yes similar to the first one we would need to look at methods to paint the illustrations as well as to carve it.
- What is the stability of a material over time?
- Since we are assuming that with this work similarly to the others that during these era’s they mainly used wood printing for these illustrations. They should last long in drier conditions, but the paint may fade or lose some color.
Tools & equipment
- What tools are necessary?
- Craving knifes, Wood Cut Outs, Folding Leaves, wrappers, block printed title labels, new stitching, brayer, ink, baren, Pigmints
- What are the best ways to replicate the effects of inaccessible tools?
- For carving you could use a knife or scalpel depending on its durability. Additionally, you could use different things to add pressure to add color to the cut or just use a different method for coloring the print all together. You could use different types of paints and apply pressure to them to try and recreate the effect of wood block printing.
- How do technological changes impact our interpretation/expectation of the image? (e.g., engraving, woodcut, silver chromate)
- With advances in tech we assume for images to be more detailed and be able to give us more description of the anatomy of the body.
- Additionally, with technology we can translate the ideas that people were trying to describe, and share that information and view with a variety of people.
- In Addition, I feel that with modern tech we tend to generalize or define things that reoccur. So when we see that the same characters are used in various parts of the illustration I believe we would nowadays interpret that as poorly labeled, in some situations.