(nɒstældʒə) noun

a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past.

About Nostalgia

The word nostalgia is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning “homecoming”, a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning “sorrow” or “despair”, and it was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties shown by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition- a form of melancholy- in the Early Modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.

Most people would describe nostalgia as something that is comforting and familiar, however it can also be a deceiving illusion. I think this is because nostalgia and nostalgic feelings are based on memories rather than facts, and humans brains seem to erase past feeling of sadness and other negative emotions, therefore things that appear nostalgic may not be completely positive.

Nostalgia is mainly seen as a positive, nostalgic feelings being simply linked with pleasant memories of the past. There are many things that can trigger nostalgia, like music, movies, places, objects and people. I think nostalgia is typically quite a materialistic feeling, since it is typically triggered by solid things, however it also has spiritual aspects as it brings back positive feelings or a longing for the past. Nostalgia also links in with the idea of seeing the past as more positive than the future, so it could be argued to have negative effects since it can terminate the want to change and can even cause ideas of declinism.

Moodboard

Mindmap

Nostalgia – is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Wikipedia

It reminds ourselves of who we have been and what memories we have created compared to who we are today, i cant be triggered by simple things such as  a familiar smell, sound, old photos or by just feeling lonely. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion which is mainly related to happy/positive memories and big life events, which many people use as a way of comforting themselves.

Nostalgia is associated with a longing for the past, its personalities, possibilities, and events, especially the “good ol’ days” or a “warm childhood”. There is a predisposition, caused by cognitive biases such as rosy retrospection, for people to view the past more favourably and future more negatively. http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/nostalgia

Mood Board:

This mood board is based around the theme of nostalgia and also film cameras. I have decided to add in film camera photos onto my mood board as it is something I am familiar with and use regularly. I believe that film cameras create a lot of nostalgia to many older people from an older generation as it was what they used to use when they were younger. It is also a nostalgic process as you take the photo and then you have to wait for the whole roll of film to be developed before you can see it, therefore you are living in the moment more than you would be with a digital camera. However, when I go through with the photo shoot I will probably use a digital camera and use photoshop and light room to look as if it was taken on a film camera. I would do this as it is a faster process and could get the images instantly.

these photo I found on google I choose these photos because they gave the aesthetic of nostalgia these photo kind of remind me of my child hood but not really but they give a sense of going back in time

The exhibition allows the viewer to explore and feel the theme of nostalgia by not only showing it in his work but by having different smells and experiences such as a plasma orb and Atari games set up in the exhibition.

His images were inspired by his memories of fort regent but he used ai to alter the images which represents how memories can skew your knowledge and how things truly were. he would first take a photo of fort regent in the present and alter it using ai to form images of his memories. overal i think the exhibition was a great experience and really allowed you to connect with Lakemans ideas and memories and for older generations may help bring back there own memories of fort regent.

I would definitely recommend this exhibition to friends or family since you don’t have to be a photographer or know much about ai to really enjoy and take in everything.

I recently visited the exhibition ‘Playtime’ by local photographer Will Lakeman at Capital House, St Helier to explore the theme of Nostalgia.

A little about the Exhibition

The exhibition focuses on Will’s personal fixation on Fort Regent, a now disused leisure and play centre in St Helier. During his childhood, Will visited the Fort, like most his age, almost daily alongside his brother Matthew (whose memory the exhibition is dedicated to). Since then, he often sees the old Fort in dreams and sometimes even in hallucinations, but never as it really was, due to the subverted nature of the brain’s subconscious. Therefore, the piece works to exaggerate and enhance the contrast between what he sees in memory and what was there in reality, and this is done through his combining of old archive photographs, his own images of the now abandoned site and the AI images he has made to recreate the subversion of his memory and dreams.

He has also incorporated aspects of sound and smell to the exhibition to attempt to evoke the universal memories in any visitor’s inner child; the sharp smell of chlorine that immediately invites rich memories of the warm haze that accompanied it, the sound of children screaming and laughing in delight, even the quintessentially comforting scent of buttered popcorn. As a very sensory-oriented person, Will feels that this was the best way to recreate his memories as an experience that could be relived by any visitor.

The reason that this exhibition relates to my project of Nostalgia is because it invites the question of whether things are really as we remember or, as the term suggests, whether we cut out any negative aspects of the memory in lieu of a more rosy recollection. Additionally, the fragmented and distorted nature of the AI pieces relates to the same imagery of our memories and dreams, where everything is displaced and misshapen.

My Opinions

I enjoyed the experience of visiting the exhibition because of its multi-dimensional nature and I found that the repurposing of spaces through AI to create a magical sort of parallel world really interested me as someone who visited Fort Regent a lot until it was shut down recently. It was so interesting to see the old and rather empty space be filled with impossibly magical landscapes and fantasy imaginings. I also enjoyed the incorporation of the multi-sensory experiences, and it was inspiring for me as it made me think about the wider possibilities of exhibiting because it can be a much more well-rounded experience than just a visual one. I think I would like to go back and experience it in a more calm and less rushed environment however as I felt that when visiting with school I did feel like I wasn’t there to really receive the art but just to find out information and take images.

” When you revisit an old memory it isn’t important for everything to make sense. Sometimes you just have to enjoy the ride. “

-Will Lakeman

I feel that Will Lakemans exhibition represents the theme of Nostalgia As he explained that when he was creating the images he made them from his memory and his senses. He said that he had a conative issue described synaesthesia (a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.) this makes him get his senses mixed up when he gets over stimulated due to him having autism, This can be seen in his images as they are very bright and unrealistic compared to other photographers. He did this by using Artificial intelligence to give them more of an imaginative and surreal look to them. His AI images are repsentative of dreams as they don’t make much sense to the naked eye without the context behind them. Will talked about how he always wanted to turn his dreams into a visual experience for his audience, as he didn’t like listening to other peoples dreams due to them not making much sense and being boring.

The image above is created by Wills memory of there being a small and dirty pool that customers had to step in to clean their feet before they went into the pool. He created this by using AI to get a realistic look into what he remembered. I thought this image really linked back to his them of nostalgia as he described to us that when he talked to other people about this small pool they remembered it to be brown due to all of the dirt that people bring in with their feet, While having this knowledge Will still decided to give the pool a purple tint to it in this image as he wanted to recreate the way that he remembered it.

Over all I enjoyed his exhibition as I haven’t seen many pictures created by AI. I also Liked how they all where made from his memory even though they are not all repsentative of what Fort regent was actually like when he was younger but yet gives him a nostalgic feeling.

In my own understanding right now of Nostalgia, it is a happy/good sensation that is felt because of memories remembered from in the past, this is sometimes triggered or randomly occur. For example you could be at any beach, and it could remind you of when you went to the same beach or a better beach in the past with all your friends, and you had a really good time there. Most of the time you remembers these nostalgic memories from a very long time ago, years in fact.

Nostalgia relates to, missing something in the past, which could associate with a person, personalities, things, or even how it used to feel. Nostalgia is closely related to how it used to make you feel, and can be seen through a relation of other people feelings, for example watching your or another kid be exited about something, could cause a nostalgic feeling/memory of when you used to do the same thing. People usually phrase it to be a “good time”, or “the good old days”, and can be experienced through everything like music, games, or even places.

Personally if something is nostalgic it is normally a good feeling due to the processing of stimuli, and something that you do want to remember again. Not something that reminds you of a bad experience.

This exhibition was based on Will Lakeman’s memories and dreams of how he remembers Fort Regent from his childhood. In the 1990’s fort regent was nothing like how it was today, there was an aquarium, funfair, mini golf, concerts and many more.

During the exhibition, Will was very open and honest about his Autism and how many people who are autistic become fixated with things like birds or trains, however, he has an intense attachment to Fort Regent and although he hates crowds and unexpected noises, he loves swimming pools, funfairs and leisure centres.

Lakeman further played on nostalgia by placing different scents throughout the gallery. With one end of the exhibition having a outdoor woodland diffuser to re create the smell of the outdoor gardens and the other with a chlorine like smell to recreate the smell of the swimming pool. I believe this is a creative way to add onto nostalgia as many scents hold memories.

Throughout the exhibition, the photos show not just what the fort was like, it captures how Will remembers it in his dreams and hallucinations. Due to his synaesthesia, which is when one sense triggers another sense for example, associating different sounds with colours, or someone may see/ picture colours more vibrant than they actually are.

The image above was created using AI (artificial intelligence), however is based on a memory of fort regents swimming pool, as you had to walk in a foot bath before entering the pool and he remembers it as a vivid purple colour however, it was far from that. Not every image that is put into AI comes out perfect which makes unique, for example, one of the feet above has seven toes.

By using Artificial Intelligence Will has managed to turn a regular photo of how many people may see it and ‘recreate it to the way my mind jumbles things together to create memories’.

Before going to this exhibition, I wasn’t too sure on how AI could be used in photography as it is automatically programmed. However, hearing how Will uses it to adapt and enhance his images made me think differently. When I first initially viewed the exhibition I didn’t particularly like how AI was used as i thought it took away from the reality and truth behind each image. However, after reading and hearing about Will’s reasoning behind using artificial intelligence and how it is personalised to himself and how he remembers Fort Regent made me shift my opinion.

Overall, I really enjoyed the exhibition as I have never seen anything like it and i enjoyed how every image had its own memory and story behind it. I also thought it was very interesting to learn about the history of fort regent as it is a place where almost everyone on the island has been to however, it is no where near as exciting as it was back in the 90’s.

Photos included in the exhibition

Task

Wed: ANALYSIS > review the exhibition and write 500 words incorporating knowledge and understanding from talk by Will Lakeman > 1 blogpost

Writing frame: How does the exhibition make you consider the theme of Nostalgia? How has childhood memories inspired the imagery? Describe photographic techniques used, including AI in the image-making process. In what way are AI images a representation of dreams? Choose one image and analyse in more detail, considering form, concept and aesthetics. Make a final value added judgement on the exhibition as a whole, ie. do you like/ dislike it – provide examples for or against. Would you recommend it to others? If so, why? Include illustration such as installation images from the exhibition. Include also at least one quote from Will Lakeman’s talk or associated publicity material and provide a comment.

Essay

Will Lakeman’s ‘playtime’ project is heavily based around the theme of nostalgia that he felt when visiting Fort Regent as a kid, since it use to be his favourite place on the island. Lakeman’s images try to recreate the emotions and visions he had of the fort as a child, attempting to bring the now run down and abandoned areas of the fort back to the bustling, full of life place he loved. He succeeds at this goal through the help of artificial intelligence and adjusting his images on Photoshop until the image coheres with how he remembers.  

The playtime exhibition makes me consider the theme of nostalgia, since some of the images Lakeman has created make me feel a sense of nostalgia too from spending a lot of time in fort regent when I was younger. For me, I feel as though I relate more to the images of swimming pools or water the most, again mainly due to me swimming often as a young child. For Lakeman, the images he created were all in some way inspired by how he viewed the fort as a child, even stating that one such image was created as a reminder from a time when he had begun to hallucinate by the swimming pool.  

The process Lakeman used to create these images, was to take the photographs in person using his camera and then alter them using ai and prompting the photo to be how he wants it to be. If the images were not going in the way that he wanted, he would edit them in photoshop, enhancing or changing areas before putting it back into the ai. I think that the ai images created feel almost dreamlike, in a sense they’re not realistic but also not too unrealistic. While most images created by ai are colourful and dreamlike as depicted in Lakeman’s project, some ai generated images have the ability to feel almost uncanny in a way. 

Overall, I really like the playtime project since I think the whole idea of introducing ai into our own images is really interesting since it means we can create anything we want in the image. I also think that using ai to recreate past emotions and feelings from childhood is a really unique way to use ai and is something that I would like to see more often. 

Analysis of image: 

This image emits the feeling of being in a galaxy, surrounded by stars with areas of bright colours contrasting against the darkness. I really like this photo, as you can see the resemblance to its real-life counterpart through the lighthouse. The picture also looks more like a painting than a photograph due to the ai altering it, however I still really like everything about it, and I think the painting look just adds texture. I also really like how many details are in the photo, from what looks to be satellites in the top right corner of the image, linking back to the space theme, to the implications of waves at the bottom of the picture using brush strokes. 

Will Lakeman is a Local artist who grew up in Jersey his exhibition which he had created was based on Fort Regent and how he visioned it when he was little, when we went on a class trip to go see it Will explained to us that Fort Regent was a place he went to, to spend time with his brother. Lakeman is a photographer who has nurtured an obsessive interest in ‘the Fort’, and has spent his adult life revisiting weird dreams of this iconic building and its heyday in the early 1990s. It was interesting hearing about how the Fort was when it had things to do and was busy as now more and more things have been taken out of it and each year it is becoming more derelict and is hardly used. He mentioned that part of his attachment to Fort Regent was due to his autism he was fascinated by the pools and funfairs which were there even though he was intimidated and didn’t like the floods of people which the Fort held as it could be a sensory overload he found his passion for the place. The nostalgia which Lakeman experienced whilst making this project bought him comfort as he was able to create the illusion of how amazing he found the Fort even though other other people may have thought he had exaggerated it but that didn’t matter because it was how he saw it.

The images were an attempt to recreate his childhood memories and how he envisioned it, and whilst creating the images the nostalgia came flooding back of his childhood memories, the images are fascinating to look at as they are vibrant and look really realistic.

These photos were created by ai, for the past 3 years Lakeman was working on ai to create these photos he said he liked creating these images however it took him years to master the techniques and he is still learning, Lakeman also used a light-box to frame his images to enhance the vibrance of the colours to resemble how he saw them the ones in the light-box are printed on a special film in order for it to more effective.

I really enjoyed visiting this exhibition as it was something i haven’t seen before and was a different medium of photography and i found that fascinating i loved how vibrant the images were.