1368 - Electric Ladyland XI

I’m still pretty far from having a book, but I’m coming along. This is greatly helped by an epiphany that I had yesterday. Let me explain.

This book, this SoFoBoMo 2010 book, it is inspired by a comment Ted Byrne made. He said:

I have increasingly grown aware of how each generation leaves its mark (debris) among the architectural detritus through which we wander. And in our ancient places gaps are consistently filled with non-sequitur-constructions… ideas/feelings that bare no relationship to the ancient bookends which surround them. New York is a total construction of generational cacophony. In fact there is a trend in older American cities to “preserve” older ideas by slashing off facades, or building atop structures. Thus the “children” poke out around or above their “parents” in ways that are too frequently like the child who suddenly “WHOOPs” or squeals in the most somber setting.

Now you will be traveling through places where olden ideas have literally been cast in stone (cement/wood/metal/plastic/etc) where simultaneously retro fades into nostalgia into history…. all the while surrounded by this generation wearing its “modern” costumes and wielding devices that are simply impossible to meld with the idea-installations of previous cultures who created the sets for this theater-of-the-moment.

You frequently display this reality in your city shots, less frequently in your scenics. And yet you have a much more vast setting of historical self-indulgences all sitting over, under, and around one another.

Odd how we allow all of this to blend together in our minds. It is a sort of forest-tree thing. But as an artist, you can “unblend” through deconstructing it with light, color, texture, POV, DOF… and on and on. You have both a wonderful opportunity to see these discontinuities of thoughts/cultures and the talent to communicate them. Plus you have so many hundreds of generations contributing to the layers available to your eye …. an inventory that America cannot possibly provide me.

It’d be cool to see how you reveal the abrupt differences which visitors minds blend together into a macro whole. Seriously, I think both of us would find the culture of only a century ago quite toxic. And yet we live on its movie set (or at least among its pieces). Can you reveal any of that toxicity as those thoughts swirl together along streets, behind walls, and inside as well as outside of everything?

Just a thought…

And of course this caught my interest. You have seen some images that go along these lines, and in fact during our stay in Italy, my eye was constantly scanning for these things. It may still not be enough though.

But then … epiphany I said, and that was the sudden insight, that I had not thought in terms of a book, not in terms of a story. A book is not a random collection of images, and the images in a book love to be embedded in context. In other words: It won’t be failure to have images that don’t exactly fit Ted’s description. To the contrary: I will need them anyway, need them to frame the story, to provide the context. And all of a sudden 1200 images begin to look quite enough again 🙂

Today’s image is not from Italy though. It was made today and here in Vienna. Basically I still look for the same things. You can’t suddenly switch a vision off, or at least I can’t, and of course it is also a continuation of an old series of images.

The Song of the Day is one more time “Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)” from Jimi Hendrix’ 1968 album “Electric Ladyland”. Interesting: Amazon bundles the digital downloads with two videos.

Hear it on YouTube.