Aditya Mandayam
Notes de mon entretien avec Aditya Mandayam, le 25 octobre 2010, à Paris
Studied maths, group theory.
Photos for fun from age 8.
Habit of breaking things.
Messing around with what I have.
I get bored very quickly.
Camera is a mental machine.
Did edible camera, edible film.
Simplicity of the pinhole camera.
Bedroom is also a dark room.
Surrounded by screens.
Magical effect of room-size camera obscura.
Mostly for fun.
My home is like a Polaroïd, all inclusive (picture taking, development and printing all in one box/home).
The performance is the configuration of my home.
Photography is a brutal act.
Photographers are sadist: when developing, they wait for something to appear, then capture it, stop it, freeze it (like the bonsai trees). And they are masochist, inflicting themselves these long processes.
Every new technology has changed the performing dimension of photography.
Made self-portrait with sensitive paper on the LCD of the camera.
Trying to make a galactic camera.
Flusser: yes, always break the rules
Journal of Flusser Studies, in Lugano, will show my laptograms.
Other influences: John Berger, Italo Calvino (serendipity), Julio Cortazar
Valentino Breitenberg (neuroscientist, Vehicles, 1970, experiments in synthetic psychology) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentino_Braitenberg>, <http://www.kyb.mpg.de/~braitenb>
Wolfgang Lefevre, essay on Camera obscura. <http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P333.PDF>.
Philip Steedman, Vermeer’s camera.
Martin Kemp (Oxford).
Ando Gilardi, Italian photographer; his archives in Milan <http://www.fototeca-gilardi.com/>