This site sums up a lot of what I plan to do with the space I've chosen for my project. Its a database of Lunar data collected by the Clementine space probe. It currently has a resolution of 1 km/pixel, but I've found maps that are more focused. The disclaimer about lunar prospecting is also priceless, no pun intended.
As I stated in class, I want to find an out-of-the-way spot, a few square kilometers in area. No landing sites of probes or Apollos. There's a whole moon's worth of space to wander, and while the space itself has not physically changed much in the past billion years, our perception of it has.
Galileo found mountains on the moon, moving topology beyond the Earth, and opening up an astronomical can of worms.
While the moons has had its share of mythology, modern scientific theory proves every bit as intriguing, if not more so. A current, widely accepted theory about the moon's origin suggests that a mars-sized planetoid collided with the Earth during its formative years. A large number of simulations have been done testing what the details would have been, although to my knowledge no movie rights have been sold.
I'm still staking out my spot to look at...I'll probably be limited to whatever sections have the highest resolution, which, ironically, may indeed include the more famous spots.
Watch this space for some 3D topographical reconstructions, something of a hobby of mine.
i am still very much interested in what it takes to define a space without a character being present. to that end, i picked a virtual space i have never seen. i am trying to get a space arranged through webcams. failing that, i will get digital photos of a space i have never existed in.
the rules:
i have never set foot in the space. it exists only virtually for me. inside this space, the stories only exist as i understand them. these object are all - but to me they are nothing but pixels.
the history:
the history comes from my understanding. since i wont have any time-lapsed photos (as of right now), there is no comparasion between one photo and another. the history is inferences and ideas.
the signs:
again, i am only given what the intermediate person choses to present to me. the signs might be anything; i have not asked for a specfic type of place, only a diverse range of photos from an apartment. these pictures will not be of the intermediate person's apartment, so no previous knowledge on my part will color the space as i imagine it.
the allusions:
the ideas of personage, identity, space, material objects defining a person. i always enjoyed the quote by either lynch or frost about 'twin peaks' stating that the whole point of the show was to make a story about an absent main character. the entire structure depended on one character who never appeared in the show.
As per our discussion in class...
I was thinking what it was like for me during my most informal and informative walks as a child growing up with an outdoor'sey type family. Much of my time was spent in a backyard, on the edge of a lake, in a canoe, camping, fishing, what have you, and the only way I learned anything was through a guide (my father or mother) and oral tradition. These oral traditions gave me a great appreciation for my surroundings and an abundance of information. I see them as my tour guides through an early version of an ongoing nature walk between the ages of 6 and 16. When Scott Rustin mentioned Heron's (rather large waterbirds found in North America) I realized that the only way I learned anything about them was through this sort of oral tradition. This is what I find to be the most important aspect of any walk that I would design, the ability for the user to aurally gain information through a headset. I think this gear is less cumbersome than anything else, and also the most informative. I am not intending this to be a national geographic special on audio tape (to which I am partial, being raised on NG specials on TV with pops), but more of an aesthetic taste that would include light sounds, noises, campfire stories and tidbit facts (species names with their noises). Instead of binaural sound, think mono, for it's enjoying the real thing that's important!
The artist everyone was trying to remember is most likely Andy Goldsworthy and the film about his work is titled, Rivers and Tides. From FilmForum's review:
"Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy “builds elaborate installation pieces out of Mother Nature’s flotsam and jetsam in its own natural habitat (open fields, seashores, riverbanks). Goldsworthy spends hours altering the landscape or working his elemental materials into man-made paths and patterns of harmonious grace. A finished work can last for as long as a few days or as short as a minute before a light breeze or an eddying tide picks it apart like carrion... "
www.roxie.com/rivers.html
physical space: Gelson's Grocery Store
subtext:
two highly narrative phrases are at work in grocery stores:
1) You are what you eat
2) You are what you buy
The first phase typically refers to what you put in your body. however, it can also easily be synthesized with the 2nd idea to be more consumer-friendly. current scholarship on consumer culture and advertising demonstrates how advertisers (for most products) no longer sell products based on the functionality or use-value of the goods, but rather sell products by associating them with a lifestyle image. If you buy pepsi, you are the kind of person that is hip to the 'next generation,' and you will probably try and buy most products based on what type of person you think you are, or what type of person you want to be. Therefore, these two ideas are synthesized in grocery stores. You are what you buy, and you buy lots of food. At no other store can you get a feel for these ideas at work than in a grocery store. Pepsi and Coke are hardly that different based on taste (see also: sprite vs. 7-up, etc.). Yet people at grocery stores are constantly forced to make choices between products that have very little difference, other than how they are branded. Do I buy wonderbread? What does that say about who I am. What if somebody comes over to my apartment and sees that I buy the malt-o-meal off-brand cereal? I personally drink Vitamin Water, a product that is so meticulously branded for a specific eco-friendly, anti-big-business lifestyle types that I often cringe. Of course, when I buy stuff, I like to feel better about the plastic I'm wasting and the corporations I'm supporting.
So I think that grocery stores are interesting spaces, because people are confronted with all these implicit and explicit decisions.
Obviously, whenever people shop, they are met with similar questions, but grocery stores seem to magnify shopping dilemmas. At Best Buy, the diversity of items is more homogeneous, and therefore, the store itself becomes a type of product. /*grocery stores do this too, but mainly when the store offers a more limited range of items (Trader Joe's, Whole Foods)*/ The difference between most products at Best Buy is much more significant than at a Grocery Store. Branding is therefore *less* of an issue. Sony needs to sell an image, but not as much as Coke or Pepsi need to sell an image; not as much as Snickers needs to be a lifestyle choice.
Many items in the grocery store are highly culturally coded, and therefore act as useful objects to tell stories about people and spaces very easily. Taking a picture of someone buying an US Weekly, a Pepsi, and a box of Harmony Cereal for Women can say a lot in very little information (especially if that someone is male).
First post for the 499 weblog, or as pete says, One more weblog to trawl through....
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