Monday, October 20, 2014

Random Ramble: #1

For *#@%’s sake...I’m so #$@ damned tired. My right knee feels out-of-sorts. I think I have been posting up on it far too often. My hips are tight. It feels excellent sitting with my legs stretched out in front of me, especially when I press my heels away from me and splay my toes up and back towards me. It feels even better pointing my toes by clenching my arches. I can feel a deep stretch in the top of my feet. My hamstrings are short, taut, and bundled. I try bending forward at my waist, seated with my legs stretched before me and parallel to one another. I contract, hard, somewhere below my belly button and above my ding-a-ling. My hamstrings thank me. I realize I am holding on. There is resistance, tightness behind the knees, definitely in my calves, my buttocks—the old rusty dusty. I’m a bloody mess. My groin is groaning in agony. My neck feels exhausted. My shoulders are definitely slumped...hunched. My lower back hates me. My daughter is cackling annoyingly in the hallway. I want to drop my classes. I enjoy Bio. I’m sucking the fun out of it by obsessing over these grades. Attend to your studies as though grades don’t matter. I will try, futilely so. I have something to prove. What? I don’t know. Statistics, on the other hand, excites me, but only when I understand it. Otherwise, it is a miserable situation. “Maybe, I should wash dishes,” I think. I stand. I head out on the patio. I sit on the dusty cushion seat of the barstool, staring at the Jimbo’s...Naturally! off in the distance. It would be much easier if I were a humble man, a man who didn’t just romanticize simplicity, but truly valued it. Alas, I am vain. I am tethered to appearances. I am lured to the idea of becoming... My DNA is tainted with exceptionalism. There is that part of me that knows just enough (yet not enough) to understand that I’d be wasting my potential scrubbing filthy containers and dishes. Perhaps I should invite this lot in life as an opportunity to hone simplicity, I rationalize. I imagine myself walking ten minutes from home to the grocer. Each day washing the dishes, eating their organic food, and then reading books during my scheduled breaks. There's a dream. Damned books. I need to stop comparing myself to people I admire. That is, the authors. I am a covetous person, particularly when it comes to knowledge. I want to know what he, she, they, and you know. The difficulty is that there is far too much to know. I want to know it all. I can’t settle on just one thing to investigate. I am obsessed with the ubiquity of themes—ideas that recur in or pervade the whole of humanity. I’m in pursuit of truth, goddamnit! A bibliophilic hunter, tracking human reckoning throughout the Serengeti of literature. So I bounce from here to there. I read this, which leads to that, and that which leads to this. I observe the beings and becomers, studying the people who study. I suppose it would be better if I would just settle on one subject and make it my life’s work. That’d be simpler but complicated still! Mastery is no mean feat! It takes a consistent effort to achieve the mastery of something or to realize a goal. Some part of me rails in defiance of discipline; useless Przewalski's (shuh-VAL-skee) horse of an attitude. I feel guilty for not being able to control myself–ashamed, irresponsible, and immature. I am confused. I am irascible and broke. And, lost. Oh, my shoulders, slouching shoulders. It’s time to lie back down—to not judge. Stop thinking! Stop talking! Damn these voices in my head and their incessant quibbling. There is always a caucus causing a ruckus. They can’t agree on anything: “He should [be/do] this! No, THAT! There is no he without we! So, we should... He is here to serve the needs of we. Well, who the hell are we?! Exactly! And what are our needs?! More importantly, what is our purpose?!? Without a purposeful we, there can be no he! Let us define our purpose! But we are too many!” Quibble, quibble, quibble. These voices exhaust me. I am weak right now; a dwarf miniature horse.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

On Human Connectedness

'How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy'
The New Yorker (Maria Konnikova)
The link in the caption to the left explores the phenomenon of how human attention becomes increasingly forgetful of "the path to proper, fulfilling engagement" (e.g. self-entertainment or more intimate human connectedness), as a result of certain types of social networking behavior, and the phenomenon's potential psychological effects on an increasingly hyper-stimulated and socially networked populace. Where boredom accounts for unhappiness bored people seek to actively engage their attention so to achieve the precipitated state of happiness.

I imagine the behavior is rewarded in the pleasure center of the brain, leading to the release of the "pleasure chemicals" responsible for the ensuing sense or state of "happiness" that can be derived from (and is hence chemically associated with) actively engaging on social networking media. However, in time, people will seek more avenues through which to engage said attention as the threshold for pleasure elicited from each instance of engaged attention is raised (as in the case of an addiction or tolerance). The ever-increasing need for engagement may reflect an accompanying heightened sensitivity to boredom, and is in itself a form of escapism.

Friday, October 10, 2014

A Gentle Reset: 'The Arctic Light' by Terje Sørgjerd


"This was filmed between 29th April and 10th May 2011 in the Arctic, on the archipelago Lofoten in Norway.

My favorite natural phenomenon is one I do not even know the name of, even after talking to meteorologists and astrophysicists I am none the wiser.What I am talking about I have decided to call The Arctic Light and it is a natural phenomenon occurring 2-4 weeks before you can see the Midnight Sun.

The Sunset and Sunrise are connected in one magnificent show of color and light lasting from 8 to 12 hours. The sun is barely going below the horizon before coming up again. This is the most colorful light that I know, and the main reason I have been going up there for the last 4 years, at the exact same time of year, to photograph. Based on previous experience, I knew this was going to be a very difficult trip. Having lost a couple of cameras and some other equipment up there before, it was crucial to bring an extra set of everything. I also made sure I had plenty of time in case something went wrong. If you can imagine roping down mountain cliffs, or jumping around on slippery rocks covered in seaweed with 2 tripods, a rail, a controller, camera, lenses, filters and rigging for 4-5 hour long sequences at a time, and then having to calculate the rise and fall of the tides in order to capture the essence - it all proved bit of a challenge.

And almost as if planned, the trip would turn out to become very difficult indeed. I had numerous setbacks including: airline lost my luggage, struggling to swim ashore after falling into the Arctic sea: twice, breaking lenses, filters, tripod, computer, losing the whole dolly rig and controller into the sea, and even falling off a rather tall rock and ending up in the hospital. As much as I wanted to give up, the best way Out is always “Through”. I am glad I stuck it through though because there were some amazing sunrises waiting. At 1:06 you see a single scene from day to night to day which is from 9pm to 7am. Think about that for a minute.. 10 hours with light like that.

I asked the very talented Marika Takeuchi to specifically compose and perform a song for this movie, and what she came up with is absolutely remarkable. Thank you very much Marika!" - Terje Sørgjerd

Available in Digital Cinema 4k.

Press/licensing/projects contact: tsophotography@gmail.com

Music: "The Arctic Light" by Marika Takeuchi (marika-takeuchi.com)
Please support the artist here: Marika Takeuchi

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Environmental Photography


"Since 2004 I've been researching, working with biologists, and traveling the world to photograph continuously living organisms 2,000 years old and older: The Oldest Living Things in the World.

My practice is contextualized by the multidisciplinary inquiries of Matthew Ritchie and the new conceptualism of Taryn Simon and Trevor Paglen, who likewise gain physical access to restricted subjects and illustrate complex concepts with photographs supported by text. The work spans disciplines, continents, and millennia: it’s part art and part science, has an innate environmentalism, and is underscored by an existential incursion into Deep Time. I begin at ‘year zero,’ and look back from there, exploring the living past in the fleeting present. This original index of millennia-old organisms has never before been created in the arts or sciences.

I approach my subjects as individuals of whom I’m making portraits in order to facilitate an anthropomorphic connection to a deep timescale otherwise too physiologically challenging for our brain to internalize. It’s difficult to stay in Deep Time – we are constantly drawn back to the surface. This vast timescale is held in tension with the shallow time inherent to photography. What does it mean to capture a multi-millennial lifespan in 1/60th of a second? Or for that matter, to be an organism in my 30s bearing witness to organisms that precede human history and will hopefully survive us well into future generations?"
- Rachel Sussman



"Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."  - Edward Burtynsky