Concerning Landscape Tour: Buffalo Waterfront

The Buffalo waterfront is a home for US Navel and military history.  Hidden in the harbor of a once prosperous shipping port, a few retired naval vessels can be found.  The ships are complimented by many monuments and military vehicles that are now retired.  As a youth in America, it is important for one to visit such locations and experience a part of history.

In the shipyard, the city of Buffalo surrounds us.  With my camera, although at night, it was easy to capture feelings and emotions via photograph.  Nighttime photography is not always the easiest way to capture a space.  In this situation, the lights were dim and the river produced unusable fog in some locations.  In a sense, this was not the best time to shoot.  However, I managed to pull some nice photos out of the space.  Using a low shutter speed with the digital camera’s aperture wide open, the camera recorded some surprisingly nice photos.  Additionally, since I was using a digital camera, it was simple to recreate images and take multiple attempts (considering digital images are cheap to produce!)

While walking through the space, we (my film crew / roommates) came to the canal opening where the river connects.  This is newly created for 2011 and turned out very nice, and gave me (as a Buffalo native) a rare sense of pride for the landscape.  It is a nice place to visit and live, and although three fourths of the year this beautiful landscape will be covered with ice and snow, it is nice now.  Additionally, the landscape proves as a rebirth.  When I was a child, the downtown south of Buffalo was very old and underdeveloped.  With the harbor created and in the summer time where the concerts are held, I believe this area will be very popular.

Another thought about this area concerns the choices I chose when deciding where to go.  When you arrive to the water front, one may go left or right.  Right is a large lighthouse that sits on an outskirt of the waterfront.  It is very nice and creates a very beautiful space. The opposing option is right, where the ships are located.  This also directs into downtown Buffalo.   I chose to head left.  If I haven’t I may have discovered a completely different space.  And this is odd because I created very cool virtual spaces from the real space I found.  With a large landscape in an area with many choices, it is difficult to fathom the choices we did (or did not) make. Moreover, it is interesting to think how my attitude towards virtual space and digital photography would change if I would have gone right. 

Overall the waterfront is a very nice and historic place recommended for anyone.  Before this day, I have never visited that area like I did.  Of the places I have been on this landscape tour, this was by far the most rewarding.

Concerning Landscape Tour: NFTA Metro

The NFTA Buffalo subway system is many things, impressive is not one of them. Built in 1985, the metro has been operating as two parallel rails transportation tens of hundreds of people every day.  Viewing the subway system as a work of landscape art, it is hard to find a place to start.  With this in mind, one can make an argument that even the darkest of tunnels produce a widely interesting space. 

The metro system is a tool used to transport people from location to location.  As a reaction to its space, it (like most other subway systems) uses its space well being underground.  In relation to other spaces, a subway system is a convenient addition ot any city.  The buffalo subway system is especially different because it travels in one straight line.  This is an unusual design for a subway system that can virtually go anywhere; in buffalo it connects the downtown area to upper buffalo, disregarding everything east and west.

Being born and raised in Buffalo, it is hard to not take the subway for granted.  This was reflected in the art I created with this location.  It is easy to find something in a space where it is located; however it is hard to not find something when it is supposed to be right in front of you.  This gave me the first artistic realization that is sometimes the absence of space is space in itself.  This is a contrast to most classical art ideals.  Realistically contemporary art thrives on the idea of new, unique and rebellious.  This was my goal.

Concerning the buffalo landscape tour, I chose the subway system because I rarely use it.  The idea of traveling underground in a cheaply made and operated machine is unnerving.  For the scope of the project, the subway was an excellent choice for the video portion because of the terrible conditions.  Lack of light and a dirty atmosphere may seem as terrible conditions to the normal person, however to a video artist displaying the void in space that the buffalo NFTA metro system creates, the conditions were ideal.  Surprisingly enough, the weather outside was just as terrible the day of filming, which is common in buffalo. 

As a reflection of the space, there was a lack of it.  The problem with this location is the lack of extraordinarily exciting events, or any events at all.  If one was to go to this location looking for an exciting film grade location, they would be unsatisfied.  This location is essentially the lack of space, like what white is to colors.  The lack of space creates space itself and in doing so provides a dark and dirty area for video art.

In Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening: Bridge to Collaboration she explains the importance of hearing and specifically listening; and gives a statement that encompasses the genre of audio art.  The main idea she uses to create her art is collaboration.  She states how people collaborate on a daily level.  When a baby is born, two people collaborated to form a single entity.  Additionally, in music, two or more people can add content to form one substance.  This is seen in modern day music when mash up artists make popular remixes.  Her style of collaboration consists of sounds that are heard but not necessarily listened to.  She mixes these into a piece of art and sells it.  Audio art can be heard but not always listened to; much like the world around humans every day.

Oliveros states that everyone who can hear, does hear things around them, however very few people listen.  This is a very old realization that she has marketed.  Yes, people may have selective hearing however that does not mean a mix tape will spark the genius within them.  This is debatable.  The idea that people hear but not listen is based on the business and distracted nature of the public today. Deep listening is a plot to overthrow the human mind’s fixed on haste and relax the mind with everyday sounds.  To me this sounds a bit familiar; such as meditation, Buddhism, monks and monasteries, etc…  Her work is well created, however to me hardly an inspirational piece to all.  Indeed my style may differ from everyone else in the world, and if she has reliable customers, more power to her.  To me her work seems empty and although 100% original, seems a bit taken, but this is not a critique upon her. 

The work she creates takes the listener to a completely different level of tranquil that is said to ease the mind into calm realization when listened to 20 hours a day… The study showed that to some, her music is effective and produces great results.  This is interesting as a result since the sounds she produces are mere reproduction of everyday life.  Essentially all she is doing is forcing individuals to slow down and release their thoughts through listening.  For this fact alone, she is successful.  Her music is acting as a form of audible therapy which is very effective in some cases.

Relating to digital media, this has the tools of digital audio art.  In that sense she creates digital media. However since her music acts more as mental therapy I classify her more in the psychology field.  Overall, she is a successful artist who uses collaboration to create art.  

In the modern age today, technology is consuming individual lives to a point where one merely cannot function in daily life without it.  Spoken as a victim of the time, I devote my life to electronics.  Being in the field of electrical engineering it is hard to knock the subject, however as I get older it is hard to dismiss the sight of 5^th grade kids using cell phones and facebooking all day.  Regardless to all of this, in Image Simulations, Computer Manipulations: Some Considerations, the author Martha Rosler speaks how art in “virtual museums” differs from art in real buildings.  Tangible art in my eyes is no less of art than any real art.  However, in modern day life it is very distinct to see things in person.  For example yes, a person may go on Google maps and see the Eiffel Tower, however this does not compare to the sublime feeling of literally standing underneath the glorious superstructure.  In her article, she expresses this idea when she says,

 ’Still, let’s say you want to move that pyramid. “Technology” makes it possible to move it photographically with hardly any trouble. Now, before we proceed with moving the pyramids, be forewarned that critical considerations of the possibilities of photographic manipulation tend to end with a tolling of the death knell for “truth:’ This discussion will not end that way.⁴ It’s possible that certain modes of address are near exhaustion as ways of communicating “facility,” but that doesn’t amount to asserting either that “truth is dead” or that “photography is used up.”’

Where here she states how you can move the pyramids into an area that misguides the truth of the structure.  This relates to art online in a virtual collection.  Additionally, this can be allegorical to the idea of art online in general.  This relates to the last art exhibit I attended at the UB Anderson art exhibit.  Being shown was a Vietnamese artist whose work was shown in person; however there was a variety of video exhibits and other pieces that could be viewed which were not present in person.  This relates to Martha Rosler’s idea of computerized art.  I do not agree nor disagree with the exhibit, however it would have been more meaningful if everything was available in person, other than the video art pieces (as I would have to be in Vietnam to witness these scenes). 

This additionally is a clear response to an earlier idea that challenges the validity of images in digital photography.  In this article, she challenges the truth of photography, which can be a take on “staged” photographs.  This does not discredit the fact that this was in fact a photograph.  Photoshoped of not, a photo and the space (whether changed or original) exists in one form or another).  That is art as a definition. In the late days during the Hudson River art school, the artists painted sublime landscapes, and many times used the landscape merely as inspiration for a greater image.  Does this discredit the painting as real art? Debatable. But this idea will always exist.  Art is merely an interpretation of a space.  That may be a exact copy, or a changed imaginary space, however the photograph is truth, but that depends on the definition of truth.  Somewhere, that exists; even if it is only on a piece of paper. 

The Train - Project 3

http://youtu.be/mANmZe5Q6GQ

The Last Image vs Temporary Image

The last image can be interoperated in a variety of ways.  Now according to Bill Viola, in his essay Video Black – The Mortality of the Image, he describes a variety of ways an image may subdue further existence.  Starting off with a personification of a ever long video camera, spanning a parking lot, unaged until upgraded in the current passage.  The reader views the camera as a person, however the fact that “no memory” makes the camera lacking the ability to exist.  Now Viola can describe this event as an image going black, or ending.  However is the image ending, or just not being recorded any more. 

Regardless, the image turning black relates well to early art during the high renaissance in western Europe (or so Bill Viola likes to write).  Florence gave birth to great art during these years, within this the concept of perspective came to be, for example the Florence Cathedral Dome by Bruneschelli, as he will come to relate this artist quite frequently.  Additionally, this allegory can relate to his image turning black as the eye can not see any more, as the camera shutter also closes… Now the image will exist however the video of the process goes black, which is an interesting concept. 

Another interesting fact is the idea of a black (non-existant) tv signal which produces a black image.  This relates to his idea of black being the absence of light, or the absence of data.  This is a temporary image since the black can dissipate into an image or video, within seconds.  The image is not dead, or non existant any more as a last image entails.  This temporary image or lack thereof is a good example.

Unrelated, he relates an eternal image to that of artwork, from what I interoperated specifically very old artwork.  This I do not necessarily agree with, for time is merely a vessel to exchange ideas and art is exactly that.  This however is not the comparison I am trying to make, for eternal is not the last image.

The last image is merely that, the last.  In the essay and overall, the last image may relate to the black color mentioned earlier and the human eye.  The image itself is the last thing projected into the viewers mind and into the black pupil.  He states that black is the ground of nothingness, and the ground is a low state.  This derives a very depressing concept and ends this passage on a low note.  The way this relates to video is the way that video comes and goes, and never exists.  This cannot be more false in some views, however it can be true.  Contemporary art explores this idea daily.  Lastly, this idea that video is a temporary image is a useful idea, however video is art (images) since video can be broken down into many small photographs.  They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and apparently if video is to been seen as “art” then the pupil of the eye of the beholder must not yield the author’s idea of video black.

 Anthony C Alongi

Project 2 Revising: Artistic Approach 

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