tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19416913321250755032024-03-13T05:55:34.108+01:00En route to SingularityUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-62630540612816762282011-05-05T15:39:00.005+02:002011-05-15T13:57:06.170+02:00<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b> </b></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2007</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3.3 billion</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3%</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">80%</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">graduation project </span></span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My graduation project focuses on the following streams of events.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wish to raise questions about the dominant roll of urban environment in our life, as it is an altering factor to our natural awareness and I reflect on the influence of the ongoing technological- information evolution, within these urban settings, in relation to the consumer society.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As an artist it is my aim to call attention to the underlying patterns of these complex issues to stimulate the viewer's perception.</span></span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since 2007, for the first time in the history of human civilization over half of the world’s population lives in cities, which are responsible for 75% of all the energy consumption and 80% of all the pollution. 3.3 billion people occupy 3% of the Earth’s surface. Modern cities are slowly turning fiction into reality as our urban environment starts to resemble more and more the scenery of movies such as </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blade runner</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mnemonic_(film)"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Johnny Mnemonic</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Futuristic ideas dated in the past are our present in the now. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the human proportion is diminishing in these 21</span></span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">st</span></span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century metropolises man trades in nature and the native natural states for streets crowded with alienated individuals moving about in a maze of concrete blocks rising in some cases hundreds of meters above ground level. Locked in our new digital world of social networking society, observed and tracked by network providers and satellites we live in our synthetic freedom.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The major metropolises are overpopulated urban environments. They are the Atemporal battlefields of a decaying consumer society, which fights an already lost battle for survival in a state of crisis capitalism, like a terminal patient fights cancer.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The sight to the open sky, which once guided sailors and connected man to natural phenomenona is disapearing and our awareness is changing with it.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One might interpret the broken up sky as a metaphor for the loss of our first nature, which builds upon compassion, joy, wisdom, while some others might see it as a shimmering light of hope to find our way back.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my photo series I chose for a visual language, which is echoing Malevich’s “Black square” and Rothko’s “</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seagram Murals”, to mark the present turning point in our visual culture and to reach out for the basic human emotions. </span></span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I reposition myself as a photographer in the image capturing process by working with Google’s streetview. I place the mechanically made images in a new context after applying an inversed perception to them, which emphasize meanings that were even though embedded as potentiality within the original imagery, were also in some ways suppressed by the informative nature of the intention with which these images were taken.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div></b></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-73096451399503208762011-05-04T09:35:00.006+02:002011-05-15T14:01:17.525+02:00<div class="MsoBodyText2"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Artist’s statement</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I welcome the new possibilities, which the digital era of the 21</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">st</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century has opened up for artists. It granted new digital platforms for the photographic image to shift from one-way narrative story telling toward an interactive communication channel. The creative potentials, which came with digital photography, allow a greater artistic freedom to visualize conceptual ideas and they offer the possibility to engage the public directly by letting them interact with the images. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Time as an abstract paradigm and the relationship between technology and human perception, is the unifying thread within my conceptual work. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As an artist I am interested in </span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">finding simple ways to reflect on these complex ideas</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wish to encompass digital media as an exploratory application of science and technology in order to push the boundaries of photography and human perception in order to construct visually immersive computer generated art. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am reaching for a deeper level of consciousness to obtain full creative power by placing my focal point inbetween the physical reality and the intangible abstract world of ideas.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our eyes enable us to see the world around us and wat we see we believe, in general. But in fact the only thing we see when we view photographs is the portal of the unescapable maze of our own mind that builds upon our unique experiences of the world.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I see the urgency in developing a view that approaches the underlying structures and ideas of our visible world from an unexpected angle. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s like looking at the world, with the experience of an adult, but through the eyes of a child, where fiction and reality, individual and the world are no longer separated. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our reality is an abstraction, which is based on paradigms and on conventions. Questioning the obvious helps me to see and reflect on the world around me from a new perspective in my photography, which is a synthetic process. By this synthetic process I don’t simply mean the nature of the digital medium. It is the synthesis of concepts, form, and thoughtful choice of the selected medium, tools and visual language. Together they have the power to raise even the simplest subjects to a higher level, where they gain a greater level of significance.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When confronted with an image it must intrigue the viewers and reward them with something as they look at it. It should either give them a deeper understanding of a subject, or allow them to appreciate a common fact in a completely new way, to let them see the world anew.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I find, that in my photography the important thing is to see whether I can reinterpret the common way of looking at things by filtering an idea through my own mind frame.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Good art isn’t pre-digested. It raises awareness through its intangible statements and leaves you with a broader perception of reality.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hence my conceptual work offers multiple access points to enter them on the cognitive level, as it is my aim to stimulate mental dialogues between the viewers and the image or to trigger questions. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Commercial photography, by now, has grown out to be the right hand of the advertising industry as they have the ability to tap straight into the heart of consumer society’s addiction for images. I call it the sinister industry because, based on marketing researches, they target the most vulnerable spots of the consumer’s mind, with pinpoint accuracy. They are mainly promoting the pursuit of momentary pleasures and feeding an infinite desire for cliches.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I oppose to strategies, which are using pre-digested media campaigns in order to generate profit. They stimulate greed and vanity, resulting in deformed self image, which is also one of the main reason why </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">human intelligence is not really advancing at the moment. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Commercial platforms as channels of communication have a greater potential to reach and influence the social-behavior of the public these days than galleries or museums. Therefore besides art-galleries I’m interested in these platforms to promote a view that aims to fight back consumerism with its own weapon. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><span style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“ In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable, and help to change it.” / Ernst Fischer /</span></span> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-24063146474994938282011-05-03T14:21:00.002+02:002011-05-15T14:19:20.340+02:00<div class="MsoBodyText2"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Augmented realities </span></span><o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The meaning of augmented reality is computer-assisted extension of the way we perceive reality. This technology has grown out of research labs quietly into the public domain. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AR as an emerging technology was new about 4-5 years ago.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now it’s a gadget for smart phones mainly, with a lot of undiscovered potentials.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s an extra artificially added layer carrying information. This information can be anything from simple data to animations, or like in Adobe’s Photoshop an extra, but this time to the naked eye invisible layer above the image.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are in the early imature phase, it’s still relatively unknown, brute since we still need all kind of extras; applications, headsets, things which are not very obtainable for the masses. The further development of this technology is once again driven by the commercial interest of advertising through applications for smart phones. Layar, a Dutch company, is one of them.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s a new information toy-tool which feeds on our inpatience and addiction to instant access. In certain ways it is a manifestation of the present days atemporality merging the past, present and future in one single vison.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It will take a few more years before AR can reach a matured state where we stop seeing it as a new tech gadget and it will be integrated in our daily visual culture. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s a pre-sign of the future which actually has already started. Small steps like the integration of digital tools such as Photoshop are introducing us to this new era. This is the language of a multi dimensional networking society.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Futurity and this multi dimensional networking society is also a main topic in Michael Najjar’s photographic work called “Augmented Realities”. He describes himself as a Hybrid photographer. In search for material for his unsettling visual experiments he chooses some particular locations, like neurology labs or the Cryonics Institute in Detroit. We stand face to face with over sized photographic prints of storage tanks in which dead bodies are flash frozen in nitrogen with hope to be reanimated somewhere in the future when technology is ready for it. There is a plain simplicity in these pictures. In a way it is a modern documentary of the future which already exist within the present. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Najjar’s vision of the future confronts us with unnerving directness. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His series titled Netropolis is a portrait of the future City, which is a material depiction of information density. He has photographed mega cities such as New York and Shanghai from the highest vantage point of each city. He took pictures of the view in all four direction of the compass. He used computer algorithms to calculate the density of each picture before superimposing them as layers on the top of each other. The result is a seemingly chaotic view of what the mega cities of the future might look like. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-4789216517720342832011-05-03T14:19:00.005+02:002011-05-15T14:20:34.327+02:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don’t want my work to be justified by some sort of a product.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Controversy belongs to art.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every time you offer another perspective you produce a controversy.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A lot of people don’t want to move their point of view; they don’t want to be disturbed by a new vision. People don’t like diversity.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, every time you offer diversity you get into trouble.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> / O. Toscani /</span><o:p></o:p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-61961669037398541452011-05-02T10:41:00.002+02:002011-05-15T14:23:56.515+02:00<h1><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Atemporality and the creative mind</span></span><o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, we are living a unique chapter of history in the present in which we are confronted with problematic post-industrial societies, with an era in which run-down political – economical systems and new inventions as digital social networks are simultaneously present alongside a fast paced developing technology. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We gradually grew into this present situation, in which we have a growing global disorder, a potentially failed global economic system, a world blinded by surreal advertising utopias stimulating the pursuit of some sort of material happiness, a transition to nowhere. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Human intelligence is not really advancing at the moment towards the summit, a definable advanced peak of civilization. Not yet, but I believe that this phase will pass and a new system will emerge from this atemporal social network culture. We won’t really have a choice.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our world is changing and these changes are on autopilot. Systems controlling and driving systems and man needs to figure out the rules and values. We have to see where we are and where we are going. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our discontent with the right now and right here brought us Atemporality where the past, present and future collided into each other, revealing time’s true nature as an abstract absolute paradigm.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some people choose to dig their head in the decaying present to avoid unpleasant confrontations with reality and many are stuck with an antiquated analog mind frame as they try to hold on to a sentiment about past structures. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“History is not a science; history is an effort in the humanities. It’s about meanings, values, language, historical identity, institutions, culture. “</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">( Bruce Sterling on Atemporality at </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKqFFkmHbCM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Transmediale</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> 10 in Berlin, 2010 )</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we want to understand the dynamics of the Now and predict the trajectory of the social-technological expansion in the future accurately, we have to look at the events and their dynamics at the previous states. History is no longer a linear journey from point A to point B. The emerging network societies are expanding, mutating in all dimensions as the intricate system of information is becoming knowledge, which in return generates even more information within the same network.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, what is Atemporality? And what does it mean to me as an artist?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Quoting Bruce Sterling one more time:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“</span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Atemporality</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> is best defined as a problem in the philosophy of history.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What we can know about the past, and about the present, and about the future. How do we represent and explain history to ourselves? What are its structures and its circumstances? What are the dynamics of history and futurity? What has happened before? What is happening now? What is really likely to happen next? “ </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“ What is really likely to happen next?” I find this question fascinating in regard to photography and art.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seth Godin in his book, "Linchpin" suggests that information technology and globalization will lead to creative jobs being the only ones left in advanced economies.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“This is the giant unwritten headline of our post-industrial economy. If your job isn't creative/interactive or local, it's probably going to go away.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Crowd founding financed photographer Aaron Huey’s documentary project “America’s native prisoners of war” and he is using billboards and other advertising platforms to call attention to the problems of indigenous people in the US and around world. Projects such as this are a good example of dealing with social- economical crisis’s in the present by using contemporary methods and media to target unsolved issues of the past. Which, are still creating tension within societies in the present and with that delaying progress towards new, more improved systems.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, more than ever before the creative power within photography must be exploited to reach and engage people and to stimulate the mind, instead of keeping it hooked on the delusive quest of pursuing happiness. As this project also proved: commercial platforms can act as unexpected channels of intellectual value.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoHeader"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Digital photography as a medium is not just a temporal, fashionable, choice of the time for me. It is a lucid language, which let’s me visualize conceptual ideas based on an atemporal mindset. Photography and especially art has gone through enormous changes in the past, but it always had the human mind as a constant creative factor at the base. Now, as we are discovering the potentials of the digital era the human intentionality is getting reduced or completely taken out of the process. Generative art and computer assisted digital photography is based on computer software, on operating systems. As you learn about the new generation of programs they also learn about you and about your methods of work. Ridiculous as it may sound, but we are on the way to humanize the computers and software we use.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If I have a question these days, I use search engines which are also becoming more and more personalized. There are intangible algorithms embedded already within Google, Youtube and Facebook, which are keeping a close watch at my behavior and silently learning about my habits and personal interest. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Art, and in some ways photography, is no longer about having talent or an eye for aesthetics. These days everybody is an artist or a photographer. Websites as Flickr have became visual data banks of the world. By now practically everything has been photographed. Talent and the idea of the artist in the traditional manner is the past and I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A creative society is the gateway to a future where a dynamic equilibrium between man and technology is maintained by a constructive society.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Practically everybody has a chance to participate. The tools are there. The information and knowledge is available, but even more importantly the freedom is there for the individuals to create, to express themselves in any which way. As for professional artists and photographers it all comes down to the content, to the underlying philosophy, intentions and the context within the work is presented. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By now we are accustomed to the once shocking visual language of art forms such as Surrealism from advertisements. We are no longer shocked by the ferocity of violence in the media or in computer games, let alone the imagery of wars in far away foreign countries. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my opinion, right now, photography as a form of art matters more than ever. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is no longer about simple one-way communication or about mirroring reality.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s just not enough. There is a need for good, non </span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pre- digested </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">art and for open artworks conceived by creative curious minds, which stimulate the situation awareness. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s this creative curious mind, which knows no limits and has the ability to look beyond the awe of the future that can help us to understand what’s going on in the present.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The digital age we live in has changed not only our image culture, but also challenged our perception of reality. We are freed of rigid structures and solid empirical reality. The digital medium is an adequate tool to reflect this new age, as photography has become a synthetic process again. Besides the decisive moment and the non-cropped frame of reality in front of us, now we can also present a constructed, synthetic reality, based on gathering and compositing information in the form of binary codes. This is an augmentation of photography with new multiple choices and not a limitation. </span> </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-24516612353316239922011-05-01T11:02:00.002+02:002011-05-15T14:26:18.117+02:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reality and the digital photograph</span></span><o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our experience of time and matter is simply an illusion and our </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">perceptions are based on assumptions. Yet, we still believe what we see and we believe our interpretation of what we saw. We don't even know that we are making an interpretation most of the time. We think this interpretation is reality, but in philosophy it's called naive realism.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Philosophy has rejected naive realism in every century since Plato and yet most of the people still act on the basis of naive realism.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We guess at our best knowledge based on our paradigms, but as a matter of fact we are trapped in a shadow world. At the end our reality and our attitude towards this real world still resembles Plato’s cave with the only difference, that our shadows have depth, an extra spatial dimension.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Photography projects reality onto a two-dimensional plane. The resulting three-dimensional objects, the photographic prints, are showing us the two-dimensional projections of a three-dimensional world that exists in the fourth and higher dimensions.</span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, the digital image, without printing it out, is virtually non-material since these pictures are based on electronic fluxes and on abstract binary codes running in the background. Our visual perception is behaving in a very similar way;</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our visual system allows us to assimilate information from the environment. The act of seeing starts when the lens in our eye focuses an image of the surroundings onto a light-sensitive membrane in the back of the eye, on the retina. The retina is part of the brain. It is isolated and it acts as a converter. It converts patterns of light into neuronal, electric, signals. The lens of the eye focuses light on the photoreceptive cells of the retina, which detects the photons of light and respond by producing neural impulses.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><h1><span lang="NL" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></h1><h1><span lang="NL" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I guess, based on the non-material, binary character of digital photography we could theoretically say, that the digital medium is a more accurate representation of our visual perception and reality than analog photography. Where complex chemical processes were involved in creating a print of colors and forms, which themselves are simply different wavelenghts of electromagnetic radiation and vibrating particles.</span></span><o:p></o:p></span></h1></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-24644445319179110692011-04-30T10:00:00.002+02:002011-05-15T14:27:56.676+02:00<h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Situation awareness</span></span><o:p></o:p></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Man appreciated and feared all the power hidden within nature for centuries. Didn’t understand much of it, but what they did understand was a humble acceptance of the world, which wasn’t created by human hand, which needed to be guarded and taken care of. The imagery and its symbolism through out art history talks about this fearfulness, awe and hope. This was the state of natural awareness.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The discovery and stimulation of science and the birth of technology of the 18</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and 19</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century has transferred us towards the 20</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century modern, industrial and post- industrial society, which gradually moved away from nature and granted us the technical awareness. Meanwhile, man exhausted nearly all the natural resources by the end of the 20</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the arrival of the second millenium, the exponentially accelerating technology brought us the digital age, the last stop before reaching the Post-human era and singularity. This jump from analog to digital awareness means that there is no distinguished line between nature and technology anymore since they are both recognized as equal methods to create organic and non-organic matter. The characteristic of this period is that nearly every natural phenomenon can be explained by scientific models and can be replaced by a technical device.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Computers are becoming organic systems, which are no longer simply programmed, but are also self - learning. Microchips are using neuro networks to transmit information and, - to execute commands. The augmentation of human body, which started with adding simple, external hearing aids, eyeglasses and prosthetics to replace missing body parts, has continued with the experiments of implanting </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">neuroprosthetics and with the usage of nanotechnology. The highly complex merger between technology and organic life forms has triggered a new step in human evolution.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are becoming integrated with technology, beyond the medical needs to restore a healthy state, into enhancing our general capacity.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first humanoid automata have been created by </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jazari"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Al-Jazari</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in 1206.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nearly 800 years later, since the early1960’s, industrial robots have been part of our life. But, the sci-fi concept of humanoid robots with artificial intelligence capable of learning, making decisions on their own, only appeared just now at the beginning of the 21</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">st</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century. These robots resemble humans in a very precise manner. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a way the futuristic concepts of the past are becoming a reality.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Technology is granting us - with the dream or nightmare depending on the individual’s standpoint – God- like powers. Man is becoming able to create life from dead, non-organic matter. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Photography’s popularity, our addiction to family snapshots and our desire to be The Photographer created a market for mass-produced consumer cameras. The manufacturers picked up on the popularity and the democratic nature of the medium because it meant profitable investment. And with the aid of colorful commercial photography they sold us the dream. The plan worked and the consumers wanted more, so the camera manufacturers invested even more in the technology, which has stimulated research and development in media technology. At the break of the new millennium it became clear that digitalism is the way of the future, so we entered the next level, the age of digital photography, which ironically rendered analog photography obsolete.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The transition from analoge to digital image corresponds to the changes in our consciousness. It shows similarity to the changes that are happening right now as we are stepping over from an analoge awareness to a digital orientated mindset. To the analoge awareness the world really existed, for the digital consciousness the world means overflowing information provided by search engines and interconnected social- network societies. It means non material, online cyber-realities, which are in every bit mirror copies of our physical reality. Lovers now sit at seasides in a binary world to watch a computer generated sunset while believers can visit the 3D model of their church in </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Second Life</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to confes the sins they commited in the material world to a computer program, to an avatar of a priest.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gradually we reached the extreme opposite of a state of natural awarenes.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Technology is here because through evolution we learned to use our hands, which gave us freedom to manipulate matter. Our techno journey began as the early humans started creating tools based on their needs, but by the 21st century this process has been reversed. Now we create new tools for which we are generating needs.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We can find purpose for them, we can learn to use them, but these new tools are no longer based on our needs and most of the users have no idea how their new digital devices work or how they were produced.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the early 21st century the financial interest, the greed of a junkie is the drive behind developing the new tools. The multi billion dollar industries investing in research and development of new technologies are feeding on man’s desire for long, pleasurable life and on man’s vanity. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The question isn’t anymore whether technology is good or not, but how can we upgrade our awarenes to match up with technology and to maintain a positive status quo.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The situation has resemblence to driving on a raceway. We can’t stop anymore, because if we try to do that the system will become completely unsustainable. Human population has reached a magnitude by now, that has led to the point that our civilization could no longer be sustained without technology.</span></span> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-17081941809000630552011-04-29T12:04:00.004+02:002011-05-15T14:29:15.033+02:00<h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alive in death</span></span><o:p></o:p></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, the point is, that even though analog photography was invented in the mid 19</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century, it had to go a long way before it became the “modern medium” we usually mean when talking about photography these days.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The reason for this is not so much technology, but man’s awareness. People couldn’t relate to this medium for long time. It opened up an unprecedented world. It was magic, it was a shocking reality sometimes and it showed corners of the world, previously unseen by most of the people alive at the time.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It wasn’t only the piece of paper, the print itself, that they had to comprehend, but a whole new changing world. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Film-based photography has produced some amazing work and photographers during its lifetime, but in a way it was short lived since by the beginning of the 21</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">st</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century it was also more and less declared dead.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course photography as a medium lived on in the digital age too, but there was something really different about it. Somehow the magic was swapped for nostalgia.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Analog photography has grown to occupy a very important place in our culture and in our hearts, regardless whether it did or did not tell the truth. It established modern visual communication and has aided fine art to break free. It gave us the image that after centuries descended to the people. It meant the emergence of the millions of grainy family photos and the birth of the myth of the Photojournalists, as </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Capa"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Capa</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cartier-Bresson"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Bresson</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. It has created the cult and glamour of fashion photography with names as </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Newton"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Helmut Newton</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Avedon"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Richard Avedon</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. These less than hundred years gave myths, glamour, adventure, and emotions to us, which have become in a way more important than the truth. It was something far away, out of reach, yet really close. These sentiments of the analog era are beautiful, but only one side of the medium however, because the very same photography was also the stimulating force for the advertising industry in the 20</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century which moved our society towards the unreal Barbie world of Holland’s Next Top Model in the 21</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">st</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is nearly impossible to imagine from our point of view in the present, what the world would have turned out to be without photography. Within less than a hundred year this medium, which still struggled to be accepted at the beginning of the 20th century, had in a way more impact on shaping our culture than the past centuries of art and this is especially true when we look at the first decade of the 21</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">st</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century, since its “death”.</span><o:p></o:p></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-39410923455402575002011-04-28T08:57:00.003+02:002011-05-15T14:30:45.840+02:00<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 14pt;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shifting qualities</span></span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Painted art has existed parallel to human civilization for long time, but it has been mainly the domain of the ruling classes, Catholic Church and,-aristocracy. The general purpose of paintings was not so much to mirror reality, but to create narrative illustrations of historic and religious events, of characters or to strengthen the position of those in power. Their composition was based on academic traditions, gaining meaning through their implanted symbolism. Their creators had been praised for their talents of mastering the medium; paint, colors, light and forms, but in fact, with today’s terms, they were the means to promote, to create a mystified brand identity for the elitist system. They represented some sort of manually generated reality. Paintings were composed in a memory state, based on the visual experiences of the real world, usually in the artist’s ateliers. They had been assembled as a composite of sketched up memories, the artist imagination and talent to organize the elements.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Photography as the newborn medium of the late 19</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century, had to face up against more than 1800 years of tradition in image culture.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first daguerreotypes were cheaper and faster to make than paintings, hence they became widely accessible and immensely popular among the general public whom couldn’t afford a painting before this invention came about. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the first time in history even the members of the working class could keep a visual memory of their ancestors, thus those who passed away could remain in a closer proximity of the living ones. In a way these personal photographs, through their emotional charge, could occupy a higher importance in the average family’s life, than some of the important public figures that had been portrayed in paintings. To us, living in the present, this might seem obvious, but these changes have brutally interrupted the traditions of seeing and depicting the world and of,- reading images. The general importance of the subject matter started to dissolve. The human eye, which has learned through thousands of years, to look in awe at art with embedded meanings, had to come to terms with the image that mirrored the world frozen in time without any particular importance, just as it was.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the fundamental characteristics of photography was that it directly dealt with reality. The mindless, soulless mechanical device, as it had been seen at its birth, did record, without any prejudice whatever had been put in front of its lens. As it seemed at the time, unlike what was the case in paintings, there was nothing more to it. Potentially everything and everybody had become an equally interesting target for the camera.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The classical methods of composing a picture have changed directions as well. Instead of working outward from the center toward the edges, with a conscious composition of all the visible and meaningful elements in mind, now the frame of the image guided the photographers. They were isolating a fragment of reality, based on a subjective selection, as they were recording an already existing composition presented by nature. The leftovers, the visual noise of the world falling outside of the selection around the edges, previously only known from Japanese prints, was disapproved by the conservative art world, which opposed against the photographic image as they saw it as a threat to the higher values of classical art. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Around the same time as photography started to fight for acceptance in the art world and as it started to mutate into new forms such as portrait, documentary photography, art and street photography, the world of fine art has also went through a major shift.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the birth of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Impressionism</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in France, painters left their ateliers to work in the open air as an attempt to accurately and objectively record the visual aspects of reality in terms of evanescent effects of sunlight.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These French artists, Monet, Manet, Pissaro, Degas and Cézanne among others were no longer satisfied with neither the rules, which the academy were trying to impose on art, nor with the topics they were expected to depict. The importance of the traditional subject matter was downgraded and they shifted their attention towards manipulating colors, tones, and textures as ends in themselves. Manet treated the subjects of his paintings as means to create compositions of areas of flat color. The perspective depth was reduced so that the illusory three-dimensional space of the painting wouldn’t distract the viewer from looking at the surface patterns and their relationships of the picture.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the late 1860s, the impressionists started to paint landscapes with the main interest to record colors as they were in the natural environment at any given moment of the day. They abandoned the traditional landscape palette of darker colors and instead painted in lighter, sunnier, more brilliant tones. They began painting the dynamics of light and the reflected colors upon a variety of surfaces. They tried to reproduce the animated effects of sunlight and shadow as well as of direct and reflected light, which they observed. They abandoned the use of grays and blacks in shadows as they saw it as inaccurate and used complementary colors instead to reproduce the instant visual impressions as registered by the eye’s retina. Artists as Seurat and Signac started to build up their paintings out of discrete points of pure harmonizing or contrasting colors, thus evoking the broken-hued brilliance and the variations of hue produced by sunlight and its reflections. Forms lost their clear outlines and became dematerialized and vibrating in their pictures, just as they saw them in the actual outdoor conditions. Traditional formal compositions were abandoned in favor of a more casual and less contrived disposition of objects within the picture frame. The Impressionists extended these new techniques to depict scenes in a fashion that began to resemble the photographic vision.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoHeader"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fine art broke completely loose of the burden of narrative story telling in the following decades and in fast progression, paintings had exploded into abstract forms and colors, introducing a vehicle for a greater amount of self-expression than ever before.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, the newborn photography, even though it had all the potentials we came to discover later on through the 20</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century, had to suffer decades of identity crisis. The early practitioners, in their attempt to gain recognition for the medium, copied the old standards and techniques known from academic art and graphic prints.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The general belief was that photography could exist only as an extension of painted art, as the true value of the medium was not yet fully discovered.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It wasn’t until the turn of the century that photography really started to find its own identity. It took another 15 years before photographers started to move away from the early artificial aspects of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictorialism"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Pictorialism</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and proceed through </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_photography"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Straight photography</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to a mature state with distinguished forms. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nearly a hundred years after Nicéphore Niépce has taken the first photograph, photographers finally wanted their work to look like photographs in their own right, instead of mimicking paintings. They started to value the qualities that were unique to photography.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, the era between the two World Wars produced another turn.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The emergence of Constructivism and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Bauhaus</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> introduced an entire range of new directions for photography. Photographers as </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%87szl%97_Moholy-Nagy"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">László Moholy Nagy</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> started to manipulate their images and experimented with developing and printing processes, with multiple exposures in such a fashion that these photographs started to resemble abstract paintings.</span> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-12785513845105982622011-04-27T13:40:00.003+02:002011-05-15T14:32:19.583+02:00<h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Pre- digitalism </span></span><o:p></o:p></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first decades of the photographic image falls in a socially instable era. The </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_of_Nations"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Spring of Nations</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> was on the horizon with revolutions rising against European monarchies and a multitude of modifications transformed the foundation of European society during the first half of the 19th century.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Liberal </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">reformers</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radicalism_(historical)"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">radical politicians</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> started to turn their attention to revise national governments. Popular press expanded the political awareness and at the same time the technological changes revolutionized the life of the working classes. New values and ideas such as </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">popular liberalism</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">nationalism</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">socialism</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> appeared.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Modern society owes its social background to the great political and economical disruptions that had been taking place in the 18</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th </span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and 19</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century. These movements were the continuum of a transformation running through this age, which since the Renaissance and the Reformation created a path of development differentiating the West, from the rest of the world.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The rise of science, as a practical approach, has its roots in individualism and secularism. These new ideas climaxed in explosive events toward the end of the 18th century. Individualism cultivated the ground for political revolutions, while secularism stimulated a positive environment for technological innovations at the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As mankind proceeded through the Age of Reason and the Age of Enligthment towards Modernism, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">during the period of 1842–43, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Ada Lovelace</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> – the daughter of Lord Byron- translated the Italian mathematician, Luigi Menabrea's essay on the English inventor </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Charles Babbage</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'s </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Analytical Engine</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. She added an extra set of notes to the article, which had eventually become longer and in time more significant than the essay itself. It described an algorithm for calculating a mathematical sequence ( Bernulli numbers ) with Babbage's invention. The world's first computer program had been written and Ada Lovelace is credited as the very first computer programmer. She was ahead of her time, since electronic </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">computers</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> haven’t been developed until the mid-20</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century. Unlike her contemporaries she maintained a vision, that one-day computers would exceed the simple task of calculating and they would become a tool of creation and be an essential part of life.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even though pinhole cameras were mentioned already around the 4</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and 5</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> centuries BC, by the Chinese philosopher Mo Ti and by the Greek mathematicians Aristotle and Euclid, photography as medium has been invented only in the early 19</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century. Nicéphore Niépce took the first photograph ever with a camera obscura in 1826 and the first photograph showing a person in the picture appeared twelve years later, in 1838 made by Daguerre.</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;"> </span> </div><br />
<h1><br />
</h1><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-17584738106535214752011-04-20T21:27:00.003+02:002011-05-15T14:33:54.163+02:00<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2010.12.31</span></span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A</span></span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">s a first step I look back on the evolution of the photographic image in relation to traditional paintings. There are some intriguing parallels between man’s response towards the emerging new medium of the late 19th century – analog photography- and the digital media of the early 21st century. There are also some similarities between the climate of the social, cultural environment of our times and the era which followed the Enligthment and gave birth to photography and to a New World order.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the end of the first decade of the 21st century advanced media technology completely reshaped our understanding and expectations of visual communication, while science, the cradle of this digital age has layed down the foundation of an entirely new course for human evolution towards an non organic life form.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There were in both of the above mentioned periods two major forces advancing side by side, but at different speeds. Technology and humankind’s awareness of the new reality that was upon us.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the digital revolution – late 20th, early 21st century- the previously known activities of photography - creation, distribution and experience - has been stripped down to the basic concept of camera obscura. The application of micro-chip technology, which has made it possible to replace the light sensitive film with </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">an array of light sensitive electronic sensors to capture the subject, </span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">has converted the photographed image into the new, non-material world of binary codes. One of the new features of the dawn of cyber reality was the unlimited, identical photographic reproduction of any given place and moment in time which could be viewed by millions instantly and simultanously, continents apart.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mass production and consumption of digital cameras has democratized photography to the point where, there was an overload of imagery. This amplified deprived responsiveness towards deeper, embedded meanings in the synthetic digital images, which created a new dillema, a conflict of the mind. The new digital image largely surrendered to the never satisfied consumer mind and became the glamorous slave of narcissism.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s this never ending chain of desire, the endless pursuit of happines, that the new imagery fed. The synthetic imagery of commercials sold us a perfect hyper reality, which brought man further away from his natural states.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since the very beginning of the digital era the validity and position of photography has been questioned as no one really knew what to trust anymore. Image manipulation became a child’s toy and at once the fundamental belief, or misbelief if you like, that the photograph, the straight medium is showing an unaltered reality, has been at last shattered for good. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once we think about it, I believe anyone could come to the obvious conclusion, that at the end, the reason why photography has lost its credibility has very little to do with digital cameras or software developments, or with technology itself.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is a cliche, but it is not the tool we should blame, but the hand that uses it. To be exact, it is the human mind, the state of human consciousnes where the problems lie.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In their day to day lives the individuals of the consumer societies of the 21st century around the world had been too pre-occupied with their lives and had little or no interest at all to develop the vital understanding of all the technology they used and on which they were becoming increasingly dependent. This shortsightedness created a </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gap</span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> between man and technology, which resulted in a highly instable status quo between the mind and its creation. Tension was building up all around the world. Fear, greed, narcissism, intolerance towards each other’s beliefs, violence were flourishing in this environment and I think this has created an interesting paradox.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1991 the world has been connected more than ever before by the means of internet and by the fast growing mobile communication. The fast information exchange has greatly boosted up all the scientific researches and has put technology on steroids. The world was just a mouse click away as computers were everywhere. New fields as nano technology, neuro science, robotics and Artificial Inteligence were no longer far away science fiction terms. They were announcing the arrival of a new era, the Post-human digital age.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has never been easier to obtain any kind information for individuals, regardless of skin color, age, sexual preferences, religions or geographical locations and yet instead of getting closer to some sort of an Utopia where people are becoming more inteligent and tolerant, use their technology in harmony with nature and to the benefit of the world, mankind did what mankind usually does; It found new ways to misuse the new tools in the old fashion and then blamed technology and science for all the trouble. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In early December 2010 Wikileaks opened up Pandora’s box by uploading some classified diplomatic correspondence between foreign governments and diplomats. These information leaks did not change the world, not on the surface. They caused a great upheaval, but the significance of this event for me within the framework of this thesis is not in the sensation of all the secrets that surfaced, but in the strategy, in the infinite power of the World Wide Web to store and distribute information.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The US acted on the most predictable and the most outdated manner. The ferocity of their reaction and the decision to wage the first Information War on the Internet was the sign of the pittyful agony of an overgrown system, crashing under the weight of its own bureaucracy.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoHeader"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, this is in my opinion an interesting phenomenon which builds on the original concept of internet; decentralised fast information exchange, which is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoHeader"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One must see the irony of all this, since the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">roots of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the US military invested into the robust, fault-tolerant, and distributed computer networks. The funding of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_backbone"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">this network</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> by the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">National Science Foundation</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, as well as by private funding for other commercial interests, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and to the merger of many networks. The </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercialization"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">commercialization</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> of what was by then an international network in the mid 1990s, resulted in its popularization and incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life. Since 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population used the services of the Internet.</span><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, news reporting has began to shift towards an interactive and semi-public domain. Published throughout the World Wide Web, based on the Wikipedia and Facebook formula. News items were edited and updated by a mixed team of progressive journalists and by the public. The frequent use of Twitter and other web based blogs has aided the development of a more participatory, interactive form of news reporting. Eventually, as the digital awareness spread all around the world, more and more news agencies had adapted and updated their core activities. Ipads and all sorts of other pc tablets and mobile communication devices were taking over the traditional newspapers by 2011. The information within the news items gained extra dimensions by this shift. News reporting was no longer a one way communication. The articles, which were published online, became hubs of interactive links to online communities, chat rooms and connections to online databases and media servers. The inviduals or participants of any events could give live updates by uploading video footages in real time to these media servers, using services such as youtube and vimeo effortlessly from their smart phones.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The toolkit of professionals also has been reduced in size. There was no longer any need for an entire film crew to be present nor for editing studios.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reporters carrying a laptop, a digital camera as the Canon 5DMII and an Iphone had everything that was needed to do their job faster and with the same or better quality, than before. This increased their mobility and allowed them to get closer to the action or to build a more personal contact with their surroundings.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1941691332125075503.post-47062527704026273682011-04-14T08:56:00.003+02:002011-05-15T14:35:39.929+02:00<h1><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">INTRODUCTION</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeader"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeader"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeader"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeader"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div class="MsoHeader"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I progressed with my research on digital media and media philosophy I came to see the intricate network of technology, media and society. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Looking back on the recent years, even though the making and distributing of the actual photographs has become relatively easier and in a certain way more democratic, it has also become more difficult to produce an image that has the potentials to intrigue and engage the public.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoHeader"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To understand this paradox better, I would like to investigate our relationship with the digtal medium and our attitude towards technology. I’m aware that this investigation raises questions, which are pointing beyond the capacity of this thesis, but I am not searching for deffinitive answers just yet.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoHeader"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The issues and the unanswered questions about media, technology and the human consciousness stand at the very center of this thesis. I find it important to shift mentally towards an atemporal, non-linear thinking process, which permits us to see a broader spectrum of the undelying patterns and structures. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are participating witnesses of an exponentially accelerating technological evolution, which practically can not be stopped anymore. Not without dramatic consequences.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Applied science is constantly provinding us with newer, better solutions that offer the potential to improve the quality of our life and to bring civilization to another level. Yet at the same time it is also highly instabile as the human mind doesn’t have the capacity to develope at the same rate as technology does. Therefore I find it essential to observe the world, the dynamics of history and our activities in the present with an open mind, so that we can look ahead and extend the path of developments into the near future. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The structure of my inquiry into contemporary photography is inspired by John Szarkowski’s book; The photographer’s eye. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span lang="NL"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This reference stimulated me to study the differences between digital and analog photography, but it also showed noticable similarities in our ways of dealing with a new medium in the past and in the present.</span></span> </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com