Landscape as Architecture: Edward Burtynsky

below is my personal favorite from the Prix Pictet 2009. for a bigger image see http://www.prixpictet.com/2009/view/537


Rock of Ages # 15, Active Section, E.L. Smith Quarry, Barre, Vermont
Series: Quarries, Chromogenic Colour Print,
image and board size: 121.9 x 152.4
1991, Vermont, USA

korku öfkeye, öfke nefrete, nefret ıstıraba, ıstırap da karanlık tarafa götürür mü?

2-3 yaşlarındayken bir vapur gezisinde çok korkmuşum. hayal meyal hatırlıyorum. yağmurlu, karanlık bir gündü ve yer durmadan sallanıyordu. bizimkilerden biraz uzaklaşmıştım. onları bulmaya çalışıyordum ama koltuklar çok yüksekti, insanları seçemiyordum. anneannem o vapur gezisinde ne kadar korktuğumu bana kurşun dökünce anlamış: suya dökülen kurşun vapur şeklini almıs.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Tamamlanamaz hiçbirşey ben bakmadan,
durur tüm oluşumlar kıpırdamadan.
Olgundur artık bakışlarım ve bir gelin gibi
yaklaşır herkese arzu ettiği her nesne.

(Dua Saatleri Kitabı, syf. 25, çev. Yüksel Özoğuz)

A note on the Bullet Time scene in Matrix 1999

photo by Entertainment Weekly, http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,702023,00.html
the scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhxbYTMNMxo

The Bullet Time Effect is an advanced and strangely magnetizing technique of freezing the moment,which mixes the techniques of strobe flash photography, slow motion and time lapse. The most known scene displaying the technique is the famous bullet scene from the movie Matrix where several different techniques of capturing time is applied: the high speed photography used for shooting the motion of the bullets coming towards Neo; slow motion to make Neo’s fall more visible; and again high speed photography to unite the frames attained from cameras installed around the actor to create effect of camera revolving around Neo.

“In The Matrix, the camera path was pre-designed using computer-generated visualizations as a guide. Cameras were arranged, behind a green or blue screen, on a track and aligned through a laser targeting system, forming a complex curve through space. The cameras were then triggered at extremely close intervals, so the action continued to unfold, in extreme slow-motion, while the viewpoint moved. Additionally, the individual frames were scanned for computer processing. Using sophisticated interpolation software, extra frames could be inserted to slow down the action further and improve the fluidity of the movement (especially the frame rate of the images); frames could also be dropped to speed up the action.”[1]

What is so interesting about the Bullet Time Effect is that, it does not only slows down the motion to a perceptible degree, but also allows the audience to see the object and the environment in motion from different perspectives as a three dimensional reality. With the bullet time effect, the audience is made to revolve around the object in space, and this revolutionary technique may only be compared to walking around a sculpture in real life. Moreover, The Matrix Bullet Time is an important example how the visual perception is shaped through popular visual culture by different techniques of time and freezing the moment.

The aim of the Bullet Time scene in Matrix is to make the motion of different objects simultaneously visible from as many perspectives as possible. With the use of effects of time mentioned above, condensed motion hidden in a few seconds is revealed to the extent that there is nothing left for the mind to dream about. Flaxman states that “Deleuze distinguishes cinematographic movement from these other arts because the latter are essentially "immobile in themselves so that it is the mind that has to 'make' movement."[2] In cinema, on the other hand, the movement is there as it is in real life and therefore, the mind only follows the motion on the screen. The Bullet Time scene, however, in that sense goes beyond what Deleuze calls the movement-image; the audience does not have to imagine any motion mentally but even a single five-seconds-long scene is visually and mentally very demanding because of the complexity of notion although it is all in slow motion. While the over-exposure of motion creates a strange excitement due to the over-stimulation of visual perception, it is also exhausting, difficult to perceive and difficult to remember. In the Bullet time scene, the mystery of stillness in a single frame in photography is replaced by the pleasure of seeing the imperceptible as a moving image. The scene is a good example on how Hollywood cinema develops and incorporates strategies of stillness and slowness in itself to produce new forms of the movement-image.
[1] Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Time

[2] Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time Image (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 156, quoted in Flaxman, Brain is the Screen, 18-19.
Elif Gül Tirben, from the thesis draft.

do not defeat, do not fight back, do not surrender/Uzupis Constitution

Everyone has the right to live by the River Vilnelė, while the River Vilnelė has the right to flow by everyone.
Everyone has the right to hot water, heating in winter and a tiled roof.
Everyone has the right to die, but it is not a duty.
Everyone has the right to make mistakes.
Everyone has the right to individuality.
Everyone has the right to love.
Everyone has the right to be not loved, but not necessarily.
Everyone has the right not to be distinguished and famous.
Everyone has the right to be idle.
Everyone has the right to love and take care of a cat.
Everyone has the right to look after a dog till one or the other dies.
A dog has the right to be a dog.
A cat is not obliged to love its master, but it must help him in difficult times.
Everyone has the right to sometimes be unaware of his duties.
Everyone has the right to be in doubt, but this is not a duty.
Everyone has the right to be happy.
Everyone has the right to be unhappy.
Everyone has the right to be silent.
Everyone has the right to have faith.
No one has the right to violence.
Everyone has the right to realize his negligibility and magnificence.
Everyone has the right to encroach upon eternity.
Everyone has the right to understand.
Everyone has the right to understand nothing.
Everyone has the right to be of various nationalities.
Everyone has the right to celebrate or not to celebrate his birthday.
Everyone shall remember his name.
Everyone may share what he possesses.
No-one can share what he does not possess.
Everyone has the right to have brothers, sisters and parents.
Everyone is capable of independence.
Everyone is responsible for his freedom.
Everyone has the right to cry.
Everyone has the right to be misunderstood.
No-one has the right to make another person guilty.
Everyone has the right to be personal.
Everyone has the right to have no rights.
Everyone has the right to not be afraid.
Do not defeat.
Do not fight back.
Do not surrender.

Uzupis Constitution @http://chamberoftenthousandflowers.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/the-uzupis-constitution/

Blade Runner

Diptychs of Uta Barth

Untitled, (nw 1) ... from nowhere near, 1999

Untitled (aot 1) from ... and of time, 2000

Untitled (aot 2) from ... and of time, 2000

Images from Tanya Bolakdar Gallery

http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

Carla Klein and the Urban Landscapes 2

http://www.carla-klein.com/

Carla Klein and the Urban Landscapes

http://www.carla-klein.com/

Esther Stocker

Untitled, 2006, wooden boards,wooden panels, photo by Rainer Iglar
http://www.estherstocker.net/

Nesrin Topkapı, The Most Amazing Turkish Belly Dancer Ever in an Old New Year's Night Show on TRT

"Turkish Belly dancer,Nesrin Topkapi ,first belly dancer on Turkish Tv,new year 1979,time for Turkish who can see dancer once a year just on new year times!"

We could see ballet but we couldn't see belly dancers on TV, because it was low art, it wasn't even considered art, it was thought as female exhibitionism I suppose. This is one year before the military coup though. I really wonder what was on TV one year later.
To see the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccdKukcGE08