Philosophy: Pay Attention
An unauthorized photograph
I was wandering through the furthest end of the public skyway system downtown when a voice came on from an unseen speaker questioning me, and later chastising me for taking pictures. This was after being chased away from an enclosed mall for taking pictures of shop fronts. You can’t take pictures here!
I’m very interested in the issues surrounding photography in public places, and this latest instance of photographic prohibition is not a civic/governmental intrusion, but rather a power-play by a small time security company. I have no compelling need to photograph in the skyway system, but it bothers me that this avenue of examining things might be closed off. Unlike the subject of the linked article, I was chased down by three guards and interrogated— for taking pictures nowhere near the new stadium. To his credit, the senior guard sent the other two away and seemed to sense the ridiculousness of the prohibition. He told me precisely where to go to obtain a "permit" to photograph.
I think that one of the most powerful things that photography can do is allow us to examine things that flow past all too quickly as we go about our daily lives. I wasn’t going to say anything about this relatively inconsequential prohibition, but I was reminded of it when watching a series of videos from Aperture featuring Richard Ross:
Posted by Jeff at July 31, 2008 2:10 PM | Comments (1)
Strange and Wonderful
Krista found this card while we were in California, I think, and gave it to me in celebration of a comment in Art’s seminar on ethics (years ago) from Zoe regarding the particulars of my thought processes (paraphrased): “Your mind is a strange and wonderful place, but for the rest of us can you unpack that a bit?”
It’s difficult to do that, because I most often operate on feelings that tend to make leaps that are impossible to explain or retrace. My friend Kenny gave Krista a copy of his dissertation a couple of days ago, but was really hesitant to let me read it—but it was a huge gift to me. In the first chapter, there was a distillation of his thoughts that brought years of office conversations we had into sharp focus.
We’re both “visual rhetoric” guys that are not interested in interpreting visual artifacts. What we find interesting is the process that allows us to use vision as an epistemic tool for socialization. I have struggled for a long time to come up with a defensible rationale for that path, and Kenny has made a lot of progress not only in exploring it, but also in being able to discuss it. I’m really going to miss him, and will have to get over to visit him at his new home at Case Western.
Posted by Jeff at July 13, 2008 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
You can't seem to get rid of it
Nice to find the complete set of "visual thinking" clips. I've been using the later version of this (visual thinking #2) in class for the last couple of semesters. I find it useful, especially when cautioning people not to use Microsoft wizards as a shortcut in document design. Bad things happen.
Posted by Jeff at March 9, 2008 1:36 PM
Psychedelic, man
Posted by Jeff at December 30, 2007 2:05 PM
Interface
I’m still working through thoughts about the relationship between visual art and narrative, but I want to record some observations about the present and future of interfaces, music, and paintings occasioned by Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings (now in its second edition) and an Edward Hopper retrospective at the National Gallery of Art. Oddly enough, both involve music—and unusual interfaces. But the central concerns of these two exhibitions are different, as is the web presence used to market them. I’ve written briefly about Eno before, but the Hopper thing is relatively new to me.
To begin, Brian Eno is alive. He can speak for himself, and does so on YouTube, in galleries, and even in Second Life. Hopper’s dead. He won’t be getting any more paychecks from his work. Eno’s monetization scheme is pretty traditional, i.e. limited editions:
My copy came from the first edition (just barely, from the numbers on the case). The normal concept of a “limited” edition is that the price is driven by scarcity—but Eno does not use any sort of DRM to keep you from installing the software on multiple computers. The success of the concept (into a second edition) allows him to improve or alter the software for newer machines, to expand the book (I can’t tell for sure, but the Amazon page suggests that the second edition is better than the first) and generally to surpass the original. Not to mention the fact that the software is meant to generate a nearly unlimited number of original works of art (hence the title, of course). Why the heck is the software’s package attached to the ploy of a “limited” edition? Seems absolutely the conceptual opposite of the package’s contents.
Posted by Jeff at December 27, 2007 12:32 PM
Curiosity
An alternative view from James Burke:
Posted by Jeff at December 23, 2007 6:28 PM
Like finding a clue
Posted by Jeff at December 19, 2007 11:07 AM
Storytelling (2)
In the nineteenth century, a number of technological innovations forever altered the way we conceive of stories and the way that we tell them. These innovations can be placed within the context of a much older story—the history of writing technologies—but doing that tends to occlude as much as it illuminates. To speak of the impact of visual innovation on print technology (perhaps becoming the central change of the eighteenth century) generally positions the role of alternative information sources as servants to alphabetic literacy. In reality, there were entirely unique modes of circulation and valuation for prints that operated independently of the venues for books. This observation seldom occurs in most scholarship outside of art history. Then, as now, there were literacies that were cultivated apart from the venues of verbal riposte.
Literacies beyond spoken and written language were fundamentally altered by the process of technological change. These literacies might better be considered independent rather dependent on the comfortable cohesion that the unquestioned centrality of language provides. But there’s the rub—language is the only communicative meaning that is extensible and generalizable in a way that can hope to capture the nuances of such changes in the form of critique. In fact, language is commonly believed to be commensurate with thought itself so much so that images and/or experiences can be dispensed with entirely. Witness this bit from a preface to a recent French art history text translated by Art History Newsletter:
Posted by Jeff at December 18, 2007 9:36 PM
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