Bergson

The new year, another after last before the next

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And yes, another year begins in earnest.

     I am hoping to explore new territory as well as show paths that go from one land to the other. I know that I am getting known as the “time guy” but in the end, it is in the use of duration, speed, wave or undulation that seems to be what is being brought forward in acute ways within the complex of activity of the human/computer~interface.
     And what of the new landscape created by data pathways? Has it been represented? Should it be? Much is made of the use of affect in New Media, it is articulated as a “fait accompli” of the medium. Brian Massumi, whose writing I very much appreciate, seems to be looking very closely at what is the coming-to-being of sensation and experience. Though the potential is obviously out there, it seems like the artwork that stays at the forefront is the work that uses clever sensorial hooks and technologies that seem to be reviewed in the journals. The look towards them is always fairly similar, using what I perceive to be the Whiteadian position. I still wonder how exact Einstein was in his calculations; much of this thinking seems to build from the concept of relativity and tends to use it as a given, a proof, a theorem. All well and good, but what if it is wrong and instead of the apple falling on Newton’s head, it was rather Newton who fell upward into the apple?

 

Studio work

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At the studio today, hard to believe that this is actually part of my job. I always feel like I am playing hooky or something when I come get some work done. Today, I am finalizing some work for a small showing of work around an upcoming talk by Gwynne Dyer from his book “Climate Wars“.

The work was chosen because of my tendency to photograph landscapes under reclamation. Reclamation landscapes is the term used by several landscape photographers who are interested in how the land eventually consumes and erases human passage. As usual, my contrarian manner of looking at things makes me turn this question into something else. For me it is more about our inability to see past a few dozen years into the future and think that if it exists after I am dead than it has existed long enough. We are such shortsighted animals.

The Clock of the Long Now is an interesting experiment in altering perceptions about duration (I tend to use duration instead of time, according to Henri Bergson it is a more accurate description of how we use the word). http://www.longnow.org/ Instead of writing 2009 we shoudl write 02009, that little zero will remind us of how recent of an apparition we are and of how short an influence we will exert on the planet. Chances are we will cause a whole bunch of harm, but in the scheme of things the planet will live on.

Still thinking of the title, images should be viewed in a horizontal line about 12 cm from each other.