Response: Introduction to the Book Digital Resistance

I was continually reminded of the ideas behind the graffiti and street artists that we researched earlier in the class. I feel that their purpose of displaying their art was a beginning step in the march towards the idea of by any media necessary. Graffiti art in its beginning was mysterious and in your face. Businessmen and walkers alike would notice graffiti on their way to and from work, it consumed their visual sphere. Today, internet hackers and street artists alike are consuming the visual sphere with a more intellectual and thought provoking direction. A virus. A flashing video. An ephemeral installation. All in the public sphere. All meant to convey the artist's idea.

I just recently saw a video on vimeo where in which the artists intention was to incorporate traditional portraiture with video. He thought that combining the two would make for a visual and psychologically stimulating spectacle. Though the artist does not stray far from the use of camera, his application of it goes along the lines of any media necessary. The article states, "the digital model, like the analogic, contains both apocalypse and utopia, and the applications constructed now will in part determine the directions in which digi- tal processes will later flow". Still and moving portraiture is comparable. Portraiture began with the paintbrush and a canvas, and of course some paint. But now as I said before, the artist had meant to bring portraiture to the realm of video. In doing so, it created a more effective and powerful product. Still and moving portraiture is not the concern, the idea behind the portrait, the individual is. HEr lips, her eyes, the space she inhabits, etc. The portait is only emphasized more through the video.

Keeping up with the digital age is exhausting but necessary. With the amount of youtube hits each day this idea of portraiture might suffice for the next accepted canon of portraiture.

LINDSAY LOHAN from V Magazine on Vimeo.

But as the video world is introduced, it becomes much more psychological. It becomes more than the portrait. It only furthers the romanticized in a realm of a spectacle. It references aged techniques with a modern approach. It is traditional with a post-modern aesthetic. The still image becomes real. You see her skin. You notice the flutter of her eyes. You become not only aware of her but the psychological warfare within. And before, you imagined this all yourself. The level of control by the artist, which has been introduced by the invention of technology is what furthers this idea of any media necessary. The introduction of new media gives the artist more control of what he or she wants to say. Where Van Gogh may have wanted to convey what he saw in the streets of paris, he could have done with his HD DSLR. A moving image. The flutter and control of the lens, maybe a filter to really make the stars yellow.

Whatever it is, the introduction of the digital age and new media explores what the artist is able to do and what the artist wants to do. It no longer restricts the artist to an intimate space, but explores and also encourages a more public performance.

Infernal Noise Brigade Response

The northern western US loves their marching bands. Not too long ago I saw a marching band from Portland Oregon called the March 4th Marching band. Though they do not play in order to protest, they reminded me of the Infernal Noise Brigade.

I found it interesting in relating the Infernal Noise Brigade to our daily walks. Though we're not in protest, their is a definite power in walking. It allows you to experience the world outside yourself.

Jennifer Whitney said that the protest in NY was one of the first times they had ever felt that free. Free from the politics, free from the world, etc. They were free because they were breaking both the physical and social rules in the world. Their music, filled with trumpets, snare drums and bass drums, filled their natural auditorium. She stressed the importance of the disrupt. The importance of their presence.

Though it may have been stated, I wasn't sure exactly what it was that they were protesting to the WTO. The video and the article both vaguely stated the actual purpose of the march. I may be completely wrong. Was it to do with deforestation? Was it to entertain? In Wikipedia, it states, " Christopher Frizzelle, in an "obituary" for the band in the Seattle-based arts weekly The Stranger, remarked that their "most important and dramatic public events were standoffs with cops" and that they "can be credited for keeping WTO protestors energized, focused, and photogenic… What their parties and their protests had in common was intensity, vividness, and a fun, frightening sense that anything could happen. They were lessons in liberation."

I believe it is important to notice the combination of fear and excitement that the members were reportedly experiencing. She states, "all of us

wanted something meaningful and fun to do during the actions". I'm not trying to be facetious, or rude, but I've always been a skeptic when it comes to marches like this. Do the people involved find themselves feening off the energy like drug addicts? Why in the middle of the street? Do they think about the others who are affected who aren't involved in global politics? I've always thought that there were important questions to be raised when regarding work like this. I know in my own account that I become consumed by the energy and I loose myself in large groups like this. Maybe thats the point. Maybe its not. Is there a goal in mind? Is it to stop something? Is it to raise questions of their own that don't exist? Is the group looking for something that isn't there. I only ask this in complete sincerity because I find it very confusing.

I had a friend of mine the other day, a pretty successful rapper, signed with a major label and all (I will not disclose his name), tell me that he had a dream one night that he had seen a war in his mind. He then came down, floating or whatever, and stood in the middle of this war and started to play his music. The war stopped and it was all over. I remember, he started telling me that he felt like he could stop a war with his music. I thought he was crazy, and yet also engraved with the ideas of the past (John Lennon, etc). But then I started to think about his conviction and what he truly BELIEVED. It made sense in a perfect world, but the amount of extenuating circumstances makes it all that more unbelievable.

Just as much as one person, or one collective feels that they can bring control to the world, another collective comes in and does the same.

In the 2nd article, it states,"This is aesthetic politics—not necessarily because of the directly expressed content of the work—but because of the role it plays in drawing lines of flight away from staggering weight of everyday life, in hybridizing sounds and experiences to create space where other relations and possibilities can emerge." I guess you can say that this is where the collective, or the Infernal Noise Brigade was going. The Infernal Noise Brigade drew lines of physical and social awareness. News reporters and journalists frothing at the commotion, but what are they reporting? Business executives and the daily grinders halted before they go to work. All asking themselves probably the same questions I am asking myself. They came outside their daily desired lines and met in an ambiguous space where everyone could meet both socially and mentally.

Imaging Place MOV

Imaging Place reminds me a lot of the Google application, Google Maps. I remember the first time I ever looked at the Virtual Map I was intrigued. Sites, houses, spaces that I hadn't been to were at my fingertips. I could now investigate my new house for the next year without having to actually see it before I signed the lease.

It also wasn't too long ago that I noticed a Google car driving around with a camera on the top. It was very strange. I only believe that this is the beginning of something extraordinary and also detrimental to society. The idea of the virtual world scares me yet also intrigues me. But there is such a disconnect to what you are seeing and what you are experiencing. It is exactly why some photographs are such sensational photographs simply because the space you are in has taken the fear out of it. For example, a documentary photographer taking a photograph of a war first hand. The photograph is of a soldier. Perfect light. Perfect backdrop. Perfect Picture. But what is left behind is the experience. The fear. The smell. The noise. The uncomfortable.

Taking walks twice a week has really allowed me to notice that the experience is far more sensational than the photograph, and I always thought otherwise. Strong contrast or a particular light really brought it all together. But collectively, organically, the experience makes you realize you are human. It unveils the mystery behind the camera.

This is why I find imaging place to have that particular dichotomy within my psyche. I feel that the camera has both destructive and constructive properties. It can unveil truths, and yet fabricate others at the same time. It is only a matter of time that small projects like this will be driving and navigating how we think of ourselves as a society. It is as similar as our newfound navigation through our social sphere, (facebook, twitter, etc.)

Project: Typologies of Walking and Not Walking

I remember my grandfather sitting in a chair, staring at me. I never found it odd, but when I was younger, I always found it mysterious. This man, looking down at me, all that wisdom, all those years. There was something mysterious that the chair, in cooperation with his body, did to the space around.

The chairs are meant to act as a wall. Not a wall that is there to stop you, but question you to the ambiguities. I do not only think of just a chair, but of whom was sitting in the chair. The body that is meant to inhabit it. The lack of the body asks both the lack of a body and gives power to the viewer to inhabit the chair with their own imagination. There is a story that each viewer brings to each confrontation. Let it be the fear, the mysteriousness, the love, the romance. But it is not just the singularity of those feelings that I wish to enhance, but melt. I believe that beyond and within the mystery of it all, there is both a fear and a love for the unknown and the odd things in life. I'm not here to address a change or to point out a flaw, but to ask a question.

If done properly, I would have had many chairs lining the streets. Not half-hazardly, but intentionally.

Reading Response: Michael Bull, Sounding Out the City

Ever since I bought my first Ipod mini in my freshman year of high school I have been consumed in the act of listening to music. I like the feeling it gives me. I like the transitory nature of the music. One minute I can be sitting at a park bench, listening to the gardener, and then in a second, I'm looking at the leaves as if they had brought the music with them.

Michael Bull says, "Users describe these experiences in terms of the strangeness and dreamlike quality of the urban. This disjunction of the outside can sometimes result in greater concentration in which the awareness of their inability to hear commonplace occurrences such as traffic noise or announcements is described as making them more visually attentive."

I do have a greater concentration when listening to music. I believe there is a strong resonance between the energy around us and the music in our ears. There are specific colors and feelings that go otherwise unnoticed when listening to the interrupting sounds of the world. I'm not sure if the sound of a lawn mower is the best soundtrack to the person sitting on the park bench.

Bull says, "Personal stereo use enhances experience providing the mundane with an exiting, sensual or spectacular soundtrack."

When I'm driving in my car, the relationship between time and space becomes ambigious. If i'm driving down the California Coast and I'm listening to the beach boys, my mind quickly becomes aware of the memory of the space. Quickly, memories, fond memories transcend my mind, and only seconds later do I realize that I'm driving.

However, the powerful and transcendatle nature of the Ipod both captivates me and concerns me. I find it disconcerning that my mind longs for a soundtrack. There are points in the world where I do enjoy the soundtrack of the space I am around, however, whenever the world gets busy, whenever the world gets awkward, whenever I want to impose a physical and metaphorical level of control over my world, I do so. And that, is what concerns me. Because so much of the time, like any drug, can become easy to use when available.

I can, however, say that some of my best work as an artist has come from the use of my Ipod. There were two specific occasions, maybe three, that I remember creating work that was beyond my own understanding. I can really attribute the photographs to the music, I don't think I could have done it without the music. One time in New York. One time in London. And another in Dublin. Here are some of them:

In the article, people were quoted saying that they had another sense of confidence. They believed that their gaze could go unnoticed because they weren't really there. They were not participating with the outside world because they were not listening to the outside world. Looking at other people listening to Ipod's, I've always viewed people like that in the same manner how I feel like that. I can view them in their own world. "What are they listening to?" To me its a secret, a secret world that I am excluded from. And in knowing that from a viewers perspective, I guess it makes me more confident in the security of its ability to dissociate myself from the outside world.

I really enjoyed the author including a quote from Don Delillo. I've referenced him a bunch in my writing. Dellilo is a great source for dissociation and the power and mystique of the physical and metaphysical world.

Walk #3 Mapping Social Territory in Place

I always knew I was near the beach when I could see stickers pattered to the back of anything. The salty ocean air usually signals the coming of the ocean, but I'm generally reminded by the disregard for public domains near the beach.

Foot steps painted into the cement by an cold and eager surfer running back to his car.

The cigarrette buts left behind.

It was odd seeing a lock on the cigarrette but holder. It reminded me of Don Dellilo and his descriptions of our waste and our need to protect it. Even to the point of no return does our waste become protected. Maybe they're scared of the curious or rather destructive individuals taking the ash and spreading it throughout the site. It just seems strange to me.

Advertisements of an exclusive warehouse sale. In high school it was a big deal to know about the next sale.

In Orange County we have the luxury of the surf brand warehouse sale. A majority of the brands set themselves in Costa Mesa for cheap rent and hip location to put their company.

And palm trees.

I'm not sure if they grow there naturally. They're as strange as the mediteranian olive trees that I see purposefully placed in the upscale quarters of Tucson. Palm Trees. Just another indication of the genre that we like to create around the beach.

Walk #4 Cocooned vs Engaged

Listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgP5Q9vZal8

I took the following with my IPhone

Trestles.

I pressed play.

Jonsi- Indian Summer

I walk this trail a lot. It's one of my favorite places, if not my favorite place to surf. However, this spot is ridden with people, its an extremely popular place to surf. The waves are great and the walk down puts you into another world. Much of it is unchanged from even 40 years ago when people first started surfing the break.

While I listened to my song, it was hard for me not meditate. I really blocked much of everything out. A small lizard even hit my foot as I turned the corner, I was really in my own world. The terrible thing is that I usually like to do this. Plug in the music, zone out and watch the world. Whenever I'm photographing by myself I tend to listen to music. When I was in Europe last summer its half of what I did.

The world looks different. Physical colors begin start conversation with the music. I find a strong connection to color and tonality, music tonality that is. Greens and blues generally put me in a meditative state. I guess that's why I find a lot, and why a lot of other people, fine solace in the ocean.

Jonsi is an Icelandic artist and is inspired by the Grandeur of Iceland. It translates. I begin to look up. I see the open air and the ground that is dwarfed by it. I'm reminded of my brother in New York. The skyscrapers, the lack of natural grandeur. The steel. The smelly smell. Though it is not the golden hour. My music puts a strong filter to the mid day sun. My eyes see what my brain feels. Blue, Green, Brown with the filter of a warm Van Gogh yellow.