Interstitial #10. City borders south east Milan

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Complexity in landscape

Despite the general rule that wants the project come first in the last years I have, frequently, tested some ideas assembling pictures before they got to the resemblance of a well defined project. One of these projects is about the liminal places, grown from my observations of the way in which the city of Milan goes on expanding in the south (/east,/west).

The urban expansion progresses occupying sparse spots that get filled up in time by a progressive division of the available space by roads or other connecting infrastructures. The remnants of this division lies there either as memories of the previous space either waiting to be part of the next landscape building plan. One may be tempted to expect this to be a geometrical progressive process. The linearity of the process, though, is broken by the the distribution of the private property, as it got configured along the time, by the persistence other human activities favoured by the richness of the soil and the need to preserve some kind of place identity. These are just few of the many factors coming into play. This is the way in which suburban spaces, as they are also called, reshape. The pace of the changes in those spaces is quite fast. Understanding, albeit partially, the dynamics of what is going on really gives and idea of what complexity in landscape formation is.

But complexity is also something that has always been considered evil in landscape image making (and, perhaps, at large, in all our western culture). It seems that the picturesque requires some simplifications to be successfully carried out. If I had to characterize most of the contemporary landscape photography I would certainly ground it into the cultural clash against complexity.

Those of you interested in complexity studies applied to landscape understanding may find some interesting insights from these "Spatial Complexity Lectures" made by Michael Batty.

La complessità nel paesaggio

Nonostante la regola generale che vuole che il progetto venga prima negli anni scorsi ho, spesso, verificato alcune idee assemblando immagini prima che raggiungessero lo stato di un progetto ben definito. Una di questi progetti riguarda gli luoghi liminali, cresciuto dalle mi osservazioni sul modo con cui la città di Milano si espande a sud (/est, /ovest).

L'espansione urbana procede occupando macchie sparse che vengono riempite nel tempo da una progressiva suddivisione dello spazio disponibile da strade o altre strutture di interconnessione. I resti della divisione giacciono sia come memorie dello spazio precedente sia in attesa di divenire parte del prossimo piano di costruzione paesaggistica. Si potrebbe essere tentati di paventare un processo geometricamente progressivo. La linearità del processo tuttavia è rotta dalla distribuzione della proprietà privata, cosi come si è configurata nel tempo, dalla persistenza di attività umane favorite dalla ricchezza del suolo e dalla necessità di preservare una qualche identità dello spazio. Questi sono solo alcuni dei fattori che entrano in gioco. Questo è il modo con cui gli spazi "suburbani" cambiano. Il ritmo del cambiamento in quegli spazi è piuttosto veloce. Capirne, seppur parzialmente, la dinamica da realmente una idea di cosa sia la complessità nella formazione del paesaggio.

La complessità però è anche una cosa che è sempre stata considerata un qualcosa di malvagio nella produzione di immagini di paesaggio (e forse in generale nella cultura occidentale). Sembra che il pittoresco richieda semplificazioni per essere conseguito con un qualche successo. Se dovessi caratterizzare molta della fotografia contemporanea di paesaggio mi baserei certamente nello scontro culturale con la complessità.

Chi è interessato negli studi sulla complessità applicati al paesaggio può trovare alcui interessanti spunti da queste "Spatial Complexity Lectures" di Michael Batty

Interstitial #9. City borders. Pictures from the suburban Milano.

A message from the afterlife and a massage from the past

I'm not sure if my Internet good friend Mike Chisholm was including me in his resurrection post focusing on the blogs' blight but I suspect that for the usual parameters this blog may actually be dead. Instead, not to reassure anybody, it is not. To be honest I find that the migration of compulsive blog followers to other shores (facebook above all) is somewhat a liberation. Several times I felt guilty to not post enough but as I see it now it's only because it takes time, and a lot of effort to say something that i feel strongly enough.
In the meanwhile my researches on paths, trails and roads took me to the medieval pilgrimages and in the detail that of the "Camino de Santiago". It is a bit early to say something that has not been said upon though. Mainly what fascinates me there is the spread of visual resemblances along the various routes, and the related issue of how visual cognition is transmitted among us. The idea that I started to caress is that a trail may also be considered a visual media, a very ancient one that, perhaps, we even share with other species. This idea was reinforced by a personal revival I had for Herbert Marshall McLuhan's "The media is the massage" in particular I've found these youtube videos: part1 and part2 that I think maybe of interest to anyone who's engaged in understanding the current state of things in visual, and not only, media. An other interesting suggestion came from this post that I've found that describes a tradition in molding trees along pathways walked by American Aboriginal peoples.
As an aside consideration a thing that amazed me is McLuhan's prediction of the "easternalization" of the western culture that he viewed as a consequence of the diffusion of the electronic devices (or "electric" given the zeitgeist he was in). His general idea was that the spread of "electric" devices would led, as a consequence, to the lost of the western obsession with the identitarian ego as opposed to a "into the flow" perception of the self that, he says, characterizes the eastern culture.

Un messaggio dall'aldilà e un massaggio dal passato

Non sono sicuro se il mio buon amico Internet Mike Chisholm mi abbia incluso nel suo post sulla moria dei blog ma ho il sospetto che in base ad alcuni parametri questo blog possa considersi morto. Invece, non per rassicurare alcuno, non lo è. Per essere onesto trovo che la migrazione verso altre spiagge (facebook sopratutto) dei seguitori compulsivi di blog sia una liberazione. Spesso mi sono sentito in colpa di non "postare" a sufficienza ma per come la vedo ora è solo perchè ci vuole tempo e un sacco di sforzi per dire qualcosa che senta con sufficiente intensità. Nel frattempo la mia ricerca sui cammini, sentieri e strade mi ha portato ai pellegrinaggi medioevali e nel dettaglio sul "Cammino di Santiago". È tuttavia presto per dire qualcosa che non sia già stato detto in merito. Quello che mi affascina in tutto ciò è lo spargersi delle assomiglianze lungo le diverse strade e l'argomento relativo di come la cognizione visiva venga trasmessa tra di noi. L'idea che ho iniziato a carezzare è che un cammino possa anche essere considerato un media, uno molto antico che, forse, condividiamo anche con altre specie. L'idea è stata rinfrozata da un revival personale che ho avuto per McLuhan e il suo "Il media è il massaggio" e in particolare ho trovato questi video su youtube: "parte 1" e "parte 2" che penso possano essere d'interesse per chi sia impegnato a capire lo stato delle cose nei media visivi e non solo. Una altra interessante suggestione è venuta da questo post che descrive la tradizione di modellare le piante lungo i percorsi di alcuni Aborigeni Americani.
Come considerazione a lato quello che mi ha stupito è la predizione di McLuhan circa l'orientalizzazione della cultura occidentale che egli ha visto come conseguenza della diffuzione dei dispositivi elettronici (o elettrici dato lo spirito dei tempi in cui era immerso). L'idea generale è che il diffondersi di dispositivi "elettrici" avrebbe portato, come conseguenza, alla perdita della ossessione occidentale incentrata sull'ego identitario opposta a quella orientale che è, lui dice, caratterizzata da una percezione del sè inserita nel flusso.

Interstitial #8. City borders. Southeast Milano

 

 

 

Interstitial #7. Alignments

Locate Triulzi

For those of you interested in readings in postmodern condition "narrative" an interesting list has been published a few days ago by aphotostudent blog. It contains references worth to be considered for an historical perspective on modernism and postmodernism. As clearly put in the paper from Habermas, in the list, the problem is that (post)modernism is a moving target, something that clearly depends on the point in time/space where the question about what is to be considered modern is raised. I have to confess that some recent developments in sustainable technologies are hard to not be considered modern, the word, however, became, so to say, unspeakable.

Interstitial #6. Promenade

Milan, Nosedo. Purifier

Interstitial #5. Liminality

For a brief definition of Liminality see here.

Interstitial #4. Ephemeral

Interstitial #3. Red vase

In its unceasing expansion the city grows embracing portions of space that will be progressively filled. The space in between, the interstices, in the wait, is colonized by natural creatures, trees, weeds or other unwanted living forms. In other cases the, once, natural spaces get smaller and smaller. It is an ephemeral landscape that is not going to last.

Interstitial #2. Drawing a line

Since when I've started again to take pictures, three years ago after a stop of seven, my approach changed sensibly, and it is still changing fast. I'm not sure if it is only an effect of speed at which today we are moving ideas in and out of the Internet, after all seven years ago the Net was there, and I was there since day one.
I intimately think that it is something new. For a long time I've followed several theoretical and practical paths hoping to reach, at some point, some kind of synergy. I'm not totally sure, after all my lack of self-confidence is a distinguishing trait of myself, but in some way it is going to work, more now that I've filled many of the gaps I had on the history of landscape painting. An other point is that of my studies in Psychology and Physiology of vision. This one is having a great impact on my photographic doing. Mainly my visual interest are shifting from the object/subject to my subjective vision and the effort to communicate it. Yes in many ways I feel that I'm getting close to what Paul Klee said in a conference about which I've posted here.

Interstitial #1. Misplaced

In a recent post in his blog Joerg Colberg, stripped out the essence of an article appeared in "the Village Voice" and titled "Contemporary Art Photographers Mess With the Medium". Joerg's quote is worth considering for itself.

The quote seems to suggest that the attention to the the process is to be considered a waste of time given the many things waiting to be documented about the deep cultural and economical crisis we are facing now. But I'm not in for a commentary, instead I would like to point out this little experience I had a couple of days ago with my teenager daughter about what is to be considered a photography. The question rose on the meaning of the term "posa" (in Italian a mix of exposure and pose). In photographic terms the posa is the first technical step in the process.

The obvious reference was to read the first pages of Stephen's Shore "The nature of photographs" but after a while I realized that the cognitive problem was a bit deeper that initially thought. The highly theoretical assertions by Shore are not easy to grasp in the absence of a sound practice.

Being a guy photographically born in the darkroom, the idea that a photograph is a product of a process that goes from visualization till the finished print took form the first time I developed a roll of black and white Ilford Panf (for several reasons that may surprise you I've always avoided Kodak :-) and what came out was not only far from being satisfactory but evidence was that the things to work out were quite a lot. Along the rather steep learning curve in making photographs I've come across several conceptual frameworks that helped me in separating the strictly technical processes from the cognitive ones. A conscious approach to the processes my be of some help in playing the visual game. Reflecting on the process is a question that recurs every time there is a change either in techniques or, if I may simplify, in our second nature or in the general Gestalt.

Instead my daughter grew up the purely digital instant picture world. For her taking an exposure/pose and making a photograph was the same thing. The purely digital grown uses a more opaque tool than ours. I wont say that everybody must do reflection on the media, may the Gods save us from this, but a specialized niche may have some sense for a lot of people. Usefulness anyway has never been a decisive support to Art making.

This is to be intended as a critique to the content referred by the post and not the post itself, of great utility.