Butts and the Progress of Process
As software eats the world it swallows processes.
I enjoy thinking about and designing processes, but I’m not always so keen on following them. I’m grateful for technology. As software eats the world, it swallows processes.
I’m in the middle of reading Mike Paton and Lisa Gonzalez’s new book Process, so process is on my mind.
One of my processes to come up with ideas for blog posts involves scrolling through pictures on my phone, choosing one I like, and seeing if I can make anything of it.
When I took this picture on the street in Minneapolis, the gorgeous images of old cigarette butts Irving Penn made in the 1970s came to mind. Our subject matter is the same, but our process is wildly different.
My process: I walked up to the smashed pack of cigarettes, composed it on my iPhone screen, and tapped the glass. Later, I opened the file in Canva, clicked the “remove background” button with my mouse, sized the resulting image, and saved the file to my computer. Then I uploaded it here to substack and then again to LinkedIn.
Penn’s process started by gathering cigarette butts off the streets, taking them back to his windowless studio, and arranging them on a white background under hot tungsten lights. He used a large format camera. (The ones where a black cloth is draped over the photographer's head to see the image projected on a sheet of ground glass.)
Focusing a view camera requires looking through a loupe pressed against the glass. A hand-held light meter determines the shutter speed and the lens aperture. Once the image is composed, focused, and the lens set, sheet film is loaded into the camera, and the shutter tripped. The film is then “processed” in a series of steps involving carefully measured chemicals under precise temperatures. After the film dries, the negative image on translucent film is ready to create a contact print.
A contact print is made by sandwiching the negative between a sheet of glass and photographic paper, exposing it to light, and developing the paper to produce a positive image.
The contact print informs the process of making the final print, yet another series of actions that require calibrated equipment, a supply of physical materials, and precise execution.
When the final print is developed and dry, it’s mounted, framed, and exhibited.
(I left out a zillion other details in this process.)
The digital process that produced my cigarettes in 2022 is far more complex than the chemical process Penn followed in 1972 but most of the details and decisions are invisible and automated.
Penn’s process took many hours, and mine took a few minutes.
It cost almost nothing to produce my cigarette image, Penn’s required precious metals.
Penn’s cigarette images are a limited number of rare physical objects, whereas mine is an infinitely reproducible arrangement of 1s and 0s interpreted through complex calculations I’ll never understand.
As technology advances, processes are automated and shielded from view – more of our decisions are made by algorithms and informed by machine learning.
There is a fundamental shift in our involvement in the processes that produce everything we consume and the way we live.
What’s the point? I don’t know. I like thinking about process.
What do you think?