sky appreciation

Every week over the semester students in the Metro Nature course are given a metro n'sych task that builds their connection to the natural systems we depend on and/or ignore in our city lives (like; water, food, lunar cycles, waste, etc.). By the end of the semester the hope is that the class will become much more in tune with nature from within the city and better appreciate the complex systems that effect our lives and biological selves.

This week's task it to pay attention to and keep track of the weather which has us all looking to the sky a bit more than usual. If there ever was a city or urban area where the sky should be considered and regarded regularly it is the that above + around San Fran...

'If the earth is the record of what has happened, the sky is the realm of portents and prophecies, from the practical stuff of incoming weather to the apparitions of dieties and omens.' - (From Rebecca Solnit's 'Excavating the Sky'.

Check out: The Cloud Appreciation Society + Berkeley Weather Cam (AKA The View)

CCA metro nature round 3

So begins spring semester 2012 and round three of the CCA Metro Nature course. I'm looking forward to getting into it with the new team.

and we're off...

AK6 Unknown Fields Division

I have just happily arrived back to Alaska to keep working away on my latest project Markers of Time in the dim short light of winter. This time around I am traveling for 12 days as a guest collaborator with a group of nine graduate students out of the architecture school at AA in London with fellow Headlands Center for the Arts 2011 resident Liam Young and his teaching partner Kate Davies. As a collaborator on their latest Unknown Fields Division graduate nomadic studio 'Strange Times: Far North Alaska' I will be leading some workshops, working with these fine students to help them develop their range of fascinating projects and they in turn will be assisting me with my work.

(photo into the night from my flight north)

Day one adventures included a visit to a world famous taxidermist, tour of the arctic studies exhibition of the Alaska native collection at the Anchorage Museum and a presentation by Charles Wohlforth author of 'The Whale and the Super Computer' (a great book that explores differing Inupiaq and science based perspectives on climate change). The day ended in a search for infrared camera gear for some graduate projects at a massive hunting store (after about half an hour I have to admit I started to freak out a little. A lot of camo. A lot of weaponry. A lot of decoys... the kid section and baby bottle with camo on it kind of took me over the edge).

Tomorrow we are off into the wilds all geared up... more soon.

In the mean time here is a description of the program:

Strange Times 0 - 180 Longitude. Far North Alaska

"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."Kurt Vonnegut

Far from the metropolis lie the dislocated hinterlands and remote wildernesses that support the mechanizations of modern living. Diploma 6 - the ‘Unknown Fields Division’ - probes the fertile territory between nature, technology and culture to explore our contemporary condition through critical acts of speculation. We map the complex and contradictory realities of the present as a site of strange and extraordinary futures.

The Division is a nomadic design studio embarking on expeditions to explore these unreal and forgotten places, techno-landscapes, alien terrains and obsolete ecologies. The otherworldly sites we encounter afford us a distanced viewpoint from which to survey the consequences of emerging environmental and technological scenarios.

Last year we speculated on the reinvention of nature and spun aboriginal creation myths with the modern mining technologies of the Australian ‘Never-Never’. This year we continue to slip suggestively between tradition and science as we voyage to the edge of today, through the strange times of far north Alaska.

As Winter Solstice approaches we will head into the darkness of an eternal night. We will dance along the Date-Line, our paths illuminated by twin electric skies, as we spend neon afternoons in the city and bask under the flickering Aurora in the wilds of the frozen tundra. We will stalk the arctic fox, marvel at the vast military outposts scanning the frontier and listen for the roar of ice road truckers snaking along the oil lifeline stretching south.

It is a cyclical landscape of natural and artificial time. Alaskan Inuits, informed by ancestral memories of their environments and its patterns, embrace the uncertainties of the future with a deep belief in their own adaptability. Meanwhile, environmental scientists attempt to assemble their observations into climate models in order to predict the future as precisely as possible. Caught between improvisation and premeditation these cultural relationships to landscape and time will define the future of the North and in turn our cities beyond.

Here in the darkness we will be explorers in time, deploying time-based media. Film, animation, storytelling, gaming and choreographic drawings will define dynamic spaces of motion and commotion, cycles and shifts, ebbs and flows. We will draw on the rich uncertainty of this territory, speculating on possible futures, rewriting histories and altering the present. Joining us in the division will be fellow time travellers from the worlds of technology, science and fiction and together we will examine the Unknown Fields between cultivation and nature and spin cautionary tales of a new kind of wilderness.

"The future is not google-able."

William Gibson

pop up magazine issue #5

I'm excited to be participating in another sold out issue (#5) of Pop Up Magazine tonight at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.

f.lux

Over the last year I've been constantly musing over humans' relationship to time and natural cycles while working on my new project Markers of Time. In 2010 I moved to Alaska for a 6 month stint from summer to winter solstice in order to experience what it feels like to go from the longest day of the year (with 20-24hrs of sunlight) to the shortest (2-0). It is fascinating to be at a latitude where, whether city or country bound, the solar cycle dominates. The human biological relationship to light is a mighty powerful thing (I recommend heading N or S at some point in your life around one or the other solstice to really experience this). Now back in my busy urban life closer to the equator I am constantly thinking about and noticing how out of touch and out of synch we are with natural rhythms as human urban animals. So when on a recent stretch in New York City artist friend Penelope Umbrico passed on F.lux I was instantly fired up.

©seely

F.lux is a software program you can install in your computer that,'...makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.' Not only am I wildly into it because it's SO much better for your eyes and brain if you need to work into the night (past the natural time your eyes would be exposed to any 'true' light source that is nothing like the harsh cool tint of your screen) BUT it gets us urbanites to actually PAY ATTENTION to the solar cycle in a really nice way. It links the incredibly distracted experience of computering with the natural rhythm of the day (yes in a simulated way but I'll take it). Better than continually ignoring the fact that we've evolved since the dawn of time with this cycle, right? I can already report fewer late night computer headaches and a deeper appreciation for the shift from day to night at dusk even if it is merely a computer screen sunset...

Try it.

books.3. library shout out

On a further book note I am also a huge nerdy fan of libraries. The best libraries in my opinion have dramatic interiors that honor their function and encourage reverence for what they house.

Two of my favorite libraries span the spectrum of contemporary to old school. One is the Seattle Central Library designed by Rem Koolhaas that opened in 2004.

It is basically one giant window with slick primary colored design elements that make up its five storied inner structure including shiny bright yellow escalators and a candy red hallway in the center of the building.

My other favorite is the New York Public library main branch on 42nd street which was built between 1902-1910 and apparently has 75 miles of shelving to house its massive collection. This is a classic building and one of the few left where it is apparent real thought went into its longevity and what it would represent about the city for years to come.

My favorite space in the New York Public Library is the Rose Reading Room where I will spend all afternoon tomorrow and a few more days working while I am in New York over the next few weeks.

The Rose reading room's gilded ceiling is complete with painted clouds. Not a bad place to read, think about or work on a book or two.

books.2.notes

I am a big fan of books. Always have been, always will be. As I'm in the throes of producing one of my own they are on my mind with a new fervor. There has been a lot of debate lately over their future. In most of my classes I often bring up the book in terms of its importance as a context for viewing and experiencing art and photography and its role in the history of how we have experienced and come to understand photographs in culture. For the most part I am glad to find, even from the younger laptop/Kindle dependent generation, there is still a dedication to and adoration for books and what they can offer that the indirectness of an LED screen cannot especially when it comes to viewing photographs.

In 2009 Andy Adams, creator of the blog Flak Photo, started up a dialogue with the photo art world particularly about the future of photo books that sparked a lot of lively conversation. I posted contributing notes then that still ring true for me now and I find that as the threat of losing real live books increases the interest in designing and preserving unique books is becoming a consistent trend. Publishers like Aperture and Twin Palms Press are publishing books that push a little outside of the traditional book design box. While the threat to their future is gaining a lot of attention we may be on the cusp of an exciting time for books. It will be interesting to see where things settle.

books.1. prototype

Last October after five long years I finally finished photographing all 45 cities for my project Lux and last week, almost a year later, I finished the production of my first prototype book of the entire project. I have been dreaming about this book for the last 6 years...

I did some serious paper research, 'mastered' the basics of Indesign with the help of a designer friend to proof all of the cities in two days on my new Epson 3880, and one week of non-stop-studio-time-out-at-the-Headlands later I had designed and printed my 100 page dream version of the book. I then took the pages to an incredible book binder, John DeMerrit, to work his magic.

We decided on using a tipped binding that allows the book to fall open perfectly flat no matter which page the book is opened to and settled on a dark blueblack cover cloth with a pearlescent foil dye cut for the title on the front. The 12x15 inch book flips up as it runs through all 45 cities and then turns to open from right to left to reveal the NASA map of the world at night KEY and thumbnails organized by region. A pocket is tucked into the back cover that holds a smaller version of the NASA key so the viewer can pull it out and start again in order to identify each city.

I am coming around to the Epson 3880's capabilities (though it still lacks the arc of brightest brights to darkest darks you can get with an analog print) and the binding work is gorgeous (thank you John!).

To hold the whole project, completed in my hands after so many years, so much travel and work, I have to say feels amazing.

Wrapped tight in white paper and bubble wrap, we're off to New York...

summer 2011 update

Because of a busy summer spent with periodic spurts off the grid I have not kept up on my Metro Nature posting as diligently as I might like but here begins again a more frequent habit of doing so...

- SUMMER 2011 -

Sadly summer seems to be winding down after an amazing few months.

HEADLANDS

My summer started at the beginning of May with the end of the CCA semester, which marked the last month of my official Headlands Center for the Arts residency spent mostly in one of, if not the most amazing studio spaces I will have the privilege of using in my art life. My time there working on my latest project, Markers of Time was spent along side an incredible set of creative folks and Headlands' generous and gracious staff (and the most insane food).

denver holt being dive bombed by a protective snowy owl father

ALASKA

I then packed up and took off in June for six weeks of travel to continue photographing in Alaska for Markers of Time. The trip started with six days of perpetual sunlight in Barrow, AK, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean where I photograph the midnight summer solstice sun and had the incredible honor of working with owl guru, Denver Holt, to photograph snowy owls in their tundra habitat on the edge of the world.

glacier boulders @ byron glacier

Next was the adventure of collecting glacial ice boulders from Byron Glacier outside Anchorage (and then shipping them back to California through an unfazed seafood company). This was followed by a tour along and near the Kenai Peninsula to make portraits of 6 of many glaciers that are rapidly receding due to climate change.

photographing matanuska glacier

The visit north was topped of by the consumption of some of the best smoked salmon I've ever had, caught fresh and smoked by my summer neighbors. I even squeezed in kayaking and some brave swimming in gorgeous frigid Alaskan waters.

Kayaked to a waterfall, Prince Edward's Sound

boat spray Resurrection Bay, near Homer, AK

KICKSTARTER

While in Alaska I also successfully raised 10K through Kickstarter for The Markers of Time project with the support and help from all sides of about a thousand souls. This experience simultaneously made me realize, connect to and broaden my community and was a way to see and understand the incredible and intricate foundation of support I have in my life and for my work.

I have never felt more overwhelmed with gratitude and in what can be a both taxing and seemingly solitary venture on the edge of things. The reminder of this experience now gives me great strength when things get rough or I get overwhelmed or exhausted. Plus I gratefully gained the funds to cover my travels this summer and to focus on the next phase of the project.

LUX BOOK

And now I am back in California working on the design of the Lux book. So next will come posts related to research and thoughts about book design and the relationship between photography and the book.

Thanks for checking in.

success!!

The Markers of Time 10k Kickstarter was a success!

Thank you so very much to everyone for all the support and help along the way.

I am deeply grateful. Thanks to you all now I am back to it.

Markers of Time updates to come...