A technique for removing the pre-conceptions of vision.

Max Ernst spoke of 'direct, true seeing', of 'obstinate seeing', and of 'le regard irrite', by which he seems to have meant techniques 'to bring within reach of our senses abstract forms capable of the same intensity and distinctness as others, and while depriving us of any system of reference, to put us out of place....to break loose some day from the law of identity...'

These led him to 'the sudden intensification of my visionary capacities' and a 'hallucinatory succession of contradictory images superimposed one upon the other'. One of the techniques he developed to help this process was 'frottage', similar to brass rubbing, where he laid paper over surfaces such as wood, and rubbed it with black lead, or graphite. (All quotations are from Mark Levy, 'Technicians of Ecstasy', 1993, pages 50 - 65)

I have tried to develop techniques of 'digital frottage', based on photographs of surfaces, which are then digitally distorted in ways which remove their primary meanings and references. You can no longer look at them and say simply, 'oh, that's a tree trunk, or a loaf of bread'. Instead the abstract image produced stimulates your own imagination, which can roam over the surface free of pre-existing allusions.

Oatcake Moon is a small area of an Oatcake, magnified 250 times but not otherwise distorted, on a dark blue gradient.