...or captured from multiple stopping points across South Africa and the western United States, then stitched together to create a gigantic hi-res zoomable 360-degree panoramic. Wired Magazine reports on the work of 28-year-old astrophotographer Nick Risinger, who starting from March of 2010 began a trek with his father across approximately 60,000 miles to gather the images. (37,000 total for the final result, using 6 astronomical cameras.)
His final result is kind of like a Google Earth celestial umbrella hat. And also much brighter than previous sky surveys; Risinger's cameras shot between 20 and 70 exposures, rotating with the earth, that captured in three color wavelengths, compared to prior surveys that only shot in red and blue.
View the zoomable version here), and, if you're even remotely interested in astro-capture, expect to lose about half an hour clicking through obsessively.
Pop Photo
has a posting up about a talk that Erik Johansson gave at TED last year; I missed the video when it came out, but this artist completely rocks me. (See my story on him from last year.) It's the combination of insanely inventive ideas, meticulous assemblage, and the fact that they weirdly all look so real. And I am in awe of his work process -- it takes a seriously smart eye to craft photos and image-editing in the way he does, not to mention ones as complex as cars passing in two dimensions.
Anyone else who is a fan of particular artists knows the obsession for certain exhibits. I've been a longtime admirer of Francesca Woodman (who I last wrote about on the Chris Townsend book for American Photography in 2007) so I've been waiting for the exhibit at Guggenheim in New York (March 16 – June 13). Then last week I had a time-gap that I spent in in San Francisco, where a large-scale retrospective of Woodman's work is currently on display at SFMOMA, for an early close-up.
It's the first major U.S. Exhibition of the artist's work in two decades; which feels surprising when you register her influence within female self-portraiture, as well as the impact of her body of work within its limited time frame. Woodman had graduated from RISD only one year before her suicide, at the age of 22, in 1981; the photos on display at SFMOMA now, like those in several published monographs of her work, consist of images during her undergraduate MFA (in Rhode Island and study-abroad in Italy), and her one year in New York.
One of the debates in criticism of her work follows whether or not she was a student, still struggling to find a principle or grounding, or if she was a prodigy, who had already found that grounding and almost positively would have expanded it to greater territory. Considering the influence of her work since then, and the fact that whatever mysterious element in her work has since inspired lengthy critical discussion, monographs, and now large-scale exhibits of the type now at SFMOMA, you kind of just imagine she was both.
Woodman's work draws us into dimension that is both intensely personal and obstructed, by the sense of the artist moving in and out of frames, in a universe that she's created and that we're allowed to observe. The sense of capturing while avoiding being witnessed might be the main element that's inspired her followers since then. It's in the way we're brought into her Alice-in-Wonderland universe – the female form lost in cupboards, passing within and without interior landscapes, ever-conscious and ephemeral.
And because space and dimension have such significance in her work, the retrospective now at SFMOMA and soon at Guggenheim are amazing to wander around in. In earlier work, Woodman limited herself to small-prints to allow a sense of intimacy; in her final year at RISD, she created larger works and, in New York, blueprint printing processes on a more expanded scale. You can love her work in print version, but exhibition shows you a better sense of what she was trying to accomplish within scale. There's the small and intimate display of moments in print-books while at RISD, with her blurred presence hidden within architecture, and the larger cyan prints from New York, where the figure fits full-frame.
The photos here are from a series that I particularly love by Woodman, “Some Disordered Interior Geometries.” Of the ones she put together, this was the only artist book published in her lifetime. It's small-capture on printed pages in Italian on geometrics.
Later critical review included “deranged,” “bizarre,” “peculiar,” a “three-way game,” “strange distance,” yet “we are the richer for it." (Which, when you think about it, feels like the necessity/fault of criticism. It brings out concepts that might have been discreet for the viewer, but generalizes awareness instinctive to the artist.)
Woodman never had the chance to respond to that critical view, and maybe that is what makes her work so significant. It was her own interior world, uninterrupted by contextual influence, and years later, remains important as a universe unto its own. It still registers in terms of the impact of space, and her work may have the most impact in how little you can tell (about what that space means to her).
In 1997, I liked the internet because it let me stay up until 3 a.m. on school nights, talking to people I couldn't sneak out to see. In 2000, I liked the internet because it let me listen to songs I wouldn't hear anywhere else. In 2003, I liked the internet because it helped me find sources for academic essays I wouldn't necessarily find through bibliographic references; in 2004 I liked the internet because it told me where I was supposed to be at 7 o'clock.
In 2006, I liked the internet because it occasionally earned rent. In 2007 I liked the internet because it helped me find the photo projects I became increasingly obsessed with finding. In 2008 I stopped knowing if I liked the internet or if it had just become the new virtual organ of the world, like Stelarc's robatic third arm
In 2009 I ceased to question, in 2010, I tried to escape, in 2011, I believed that in the end it would turn us all into conspiracists. We're approaching the end of the world, supposedly, at the end of December, so it's possible there will be no opinions to be had, on the internet, on the internet.
My favorite Tumblr blog is Nevver.com, by Peter Peteski, which uploads film stills with uncorrelated MP3 tracks.
A book I liked in 2006 was Still Moving by Steven Higgins (MoMA; 2006).
If film stills are their own art, like stop-motion is its own art on the opposite end of the cage, it's the art of taking the instant out of a narrative, and reconceptualizing it beyond the narrative. I like Peteski's blog because he takes that film moment out of its context but also gives it a new soundtrack. He makes two unrelated works of art into their own, independent, multidimensional (if virtual) reality.
The issue of reproducing artwork across mediums comes up in media more as a case of rights-issues (such as Shepard Fairey and the Hope poster conflict). The reality of it for many, in our Stelarc third-arm virtual universe, is that art's availability in a medium we now put our work in (virtual), allows us to display that work in a way that directly relates to art's contact.
I still obsessively seek out photography on the internet, and today I found an Adirondacks-region photographer named Nathan Farb, who has a series, "Summer of Love," shot in b&w mostly here on the EV/LES in the '60s:
I found his work because I went onto youTube to find a song that I felt like listening to, because I didn't have my iPod on me:
(Farb allows download of his images for computer desktop images, so I'm going to be looking at the Fat Lady of Avenue C for awhile when I wake up in the morning.)
His series is looking for a publisher, and I hope he finds one. His capture of downtown Manhattan is all odd moments, like Eno's song is itself an odd moment; having them put together (multidimensional reality) makes it feel, in a personal way, more alive.
Still checking the internet [until 2012, obviously, when it all becomes conspiracy.]
Reverse negative scans from the East River. This was around dusk in mid-July. The air was a bit humid and like always at sunset, a mild fog rising up from the waterfront; I photographed alongisde the promenade down the underpass, until it got too dark, and then turned around and walked home.
