Doris Salcedo/Abyss

images and more at Alexander and Bonin @http://www.alexanderandbonin.com/artists/salcedo/salcedo.html

for an article on this work and the artist's other works see Joshua Mack http://www.artreview.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1474022%3ABlogPost%3A806

Almost one year ago I was thinking how it would be possible to create a space in Istanbul that would function as a temple for people from all beliefs and nonbelievers. The idea came out of a very basic need: to have one place for contemplation. This place should not have any signs, symbol, anything that reminds one of any religion. One friend at that time (a landscape architect) told me about the Garden of Poets in Japan. I could not find many images about the place but I liked the idea that the temple could actually be a garden, or even an inner court; a hidden place in the middle of the city. I know Istanbul is full of forgotten spaces like that. But later, I realized that people in Istanbul already have such places of contemplation which are the boats that transport people from one side of the city to the other. And the Bosphorus with its magnitizing beauty just saves these people to be drawn in the chaos of their inner troubles, even for a moment.

Doris Salcedo's piece with its direct reference to death and claustrophobic pressure seems to have the power to fear the audience at first instance. This architectural "trap" which looks like Noah's ark made upside down might really be dreadful for the audience who is not willing to face the existential questions the work poses. However, it seems to me that Abyss may also be experienced as a place of contemplation where we leave our eartly concerns out and think about death as the inevitable signifier of life itself. Design of the structure that allows for sunlight to enter from the gallery windows proves that life is just there to enter any moment and we are free to leave whenever we want (to either side).

Christopher Wool / The Harder You Look...

Untitled 2000
Enamel on aluminum, 108" X 72"


I Can't Stand Myself When You Touch Me,
1994 Enamel on aluminum, 108" X 72"

Official web site: http://wool735.com/cw/home/

Mario Giacomelli/ Questo Ricordo Lo Vorrei Raccontare/I Would Like to Tell This Memory

For more and the famous "Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto/ I don't have hands that caress my face" series, visit Mario Giacomelli official web site: http://www.mariogiacomelli.it/

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.