Picturesque Geography: Flint to Detroit

Time lapse can supply many different aspects of a subject that we would normally never see with our eyes naturally.  We as humans are always in motion and it is almost impossible for us to stay still for long periods of time, even if we could it would be inconceivable to take all the information in and process it in this manner. Since time lapse creates the possibility to witness motion, light, and nature in ways that  we cannot see with our naked eye it offers plenty of applications.  I think it will be interesting to see how Alex uses this technique to complete his project, there are a lot of diverse areas that he can document from Flint to Detroit. Flint and Detroit are two cities that have suffered considerably from the decline of the auto industry, although there are a lot of affluent communities that lie between the two so it will allow for a good contrast of social and economical demographics.  Pontiac has suffered considerably from the decline of the auto industry as well and it's just about half way between Flint and Detroit. It is unfortunate how reliant we are on the auto industry here in Michigan, three of the so called worst cities in Michigan are all in the financial situation that they are in because of it. I think that it would be an interesting aspect to represent this problem with this particular project because it is something that people could relate to that are from different cities throughout the entire country, and world for that matter, because of the economic climate from the recession.

Food and color

Photographing food can be considered an art form, most critics refer to it as still life and I must agree to a certain degree.  Many people shoot food because they are interested in the forms, colors, and textures which I agree should be considered still life or sculpture.  However, I think that when food is photographed merely for the sake of advertising and promotion, of specific products, that it shouldn’t be considered art at all.  I thought that the majority of the images that were posted on the blog fell more into the advertising/promotional aspect of food, so I was inspired to look up some artists whose works would actually be in the fine art canon.  I hope these references can offer some inspiration to you all; they did for me.  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Martha Friedman, Carl Warner, Dieter Roth were some of the people whose work I thought fell into this category. 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo  is an artist who used food as art; although he was a renaissance painter and not a photographer, I think he exemplifies the use of food in fine art. 

  Martha Friedman uses food or the forms of food in her art; she creates playful, large scale sculptures using the forms of food in many of her works.  

 Carl Warner uses food to create interesting 2D landscapes that he refers to as being “foodscapes”.

 Dieter Roth’s use of food is different than that of the others, because he actually used real food to create his imagery so that he could see how the work evolved as it decayed. 

 

Perception, Stop Motion, and the Circle of Life.

Stop motion animation is another technique that we have learned about this semester that actually has very old roots in the arts, but because of contemporary practices is considered New Media.  Thomas Edison’s invention of the kinetoscope and Casler’s mutoscope invention pioneered the way for the film industry to become such a success and also were the technological inspiration for special effects.   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope

Both of these machines worked on the same principal of stop animation and created the same effects that we are creating in the 21^st century, they just used different photographic techniques and were unable to project their images.    

Like most people, I really enjoy stop animation and can remember it from my youth because of the Christmas movies Rudolph the red nosed reindeer and the Grinch who stole Christmas, as well as all of the truly bad dinosaur “B” movies from the fifties and sixties. It would also be a travesty to forget Gojira for Godzilla’s sake.    

I think that Amanda’s choice to use the topic of the “circle of life” is really interesting because we don’t generally notice the decay of things on a time lapse so for us to actually be able to perceive it will be entertaining.   Her choice of subject should be the most important element of the piece; however, the way that she demonstrates the circle of life and the decline of her subject will be interesting to see because it can be, depending on the subject, a pretty grotesque thing to watch. I am extremely interested in seeing how she incorporates all of the elements of the circle of life in her project as well: birth, life, and death.