The International Latitude Observatories (39° 08' north latitude), Google, Research and Machine Intelligence, What We Don’t See
A collaboration of sight and automated vision alongside dovetailing research of the six International Latitude Observatories. ”Where we amplify ourselves in the boundlessness of watching while excusing ourselves from the mechanics of capture, we perceive alongside AI, not as separate beings but rather as dual remote prostheses, reflecting and extending each other. As we become interconnected with technology, we are not evolving and adapting, or being replaced, dominated, or destroyed. We are being seen.” - C.Caro. Creative authorship and AI, Paul Fusco, Andy Warhol, Norwegian Slow TV, Robert Walser.
Suomenlinna (Fortress Island, Helsinki, FI), HIAP AIR Research, Go-Round
An island church’s nested dome doubles as externalized eye; a lighthouse, shining upward for planes and outward for sea vessels. Expanded study of visual perspective and structures for observation. Combined horizontal/vertical projection extends a metaphorical multi-vision of containment and communication. Suomenlinna’s dual role as directional beacon and cloistered tourist destination distinguishes it as a point of exchange, defense, and historical curation.
Zitny Ostrov (Great Rye Island, SK), Fulbright Research, There, there, Zitny Ostrov
Perpetual reassignment of Slovakian land under Communist rule. Continued study of islands, scientific survey, and local cultural museums, in this case, Zitny Ostrov, its museum, and astronomical observatory. As Europe’s largest river island, Zitny Ostrov straddles the constancy of pastoral Danubian tides amidst the topographic instability of shifting political boundaries. Cultural artifact and production of personal/collective memory where narration and documentation meet.
Perspective/Horizon: Landscape as Durational Site, F_AIR Research,This That-Region
Renaissance as arbiter of perspectival innovation. Garden as island. Artist-in-residence project designed around Florence, Italy utilizing its surrounding gardens as a system for exploration. Blindness, 3-dimensional tactile photographs/2-dimensional perception. Reflection, refraction, line, circumference. Galileo, sidereal desire, myths of proximity, and the anti-preservationist third landscape.
Charles Plicka: Artist – Auto-Ethnographer – Subject
Czech photographer/ethnographer Charles Plicka and definitions of ethnography, anthropology, and art as they relate to outsider observation of Slovak folk culture versus insider documentation by a “native” (auto-ethnography). Topics: Margaret Bourke-White, Edward S. Curtis, ethnological poetics, visual anthropology, artist-as-anthropologist, photograph as cultural artifact/evidence, nostalgia, ostalgia.
Double Reliquaries: Eggleston’s Election Eve & Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook
A comparison of William Eggleston’s 1976 Election Eve and Alexander Gardner’s 1865 Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War. Topics: Formal and conceptual relationships between text/image/narrative arc, imaginative reconstruction, and the historically charged southern landscape. Timothy O’ Sullivan, rephotography, photographic “truth” and the directorial mode. Research Internship: Museum of the Confederacy archive, Richmond, VA.
Island Institution: Cultural Tourism, Landscape, and Myth (Tangier Island, VA), Talk About Your Best Day Outdoors
An island community forms its identity in relation to limited contact with the mainland. The selection, display, and definition of personal objects by natives forms the unique institution that is the local heritage museum. Topics: Tangier Island History Museum, sinking islands, island as container, inter-cultural othering, authentic experience/object, folk culture, tourist-anthropologists, National Geographic, wunderkammern, curiosity VS antiquity.
Anti-Archive: Margot Kelley Explores Geocaching
A study of Margot Anne Kelley’s project, “Local Treasures: Geocaching Across America.” Kelley’s imagery reveals the place yet conceals the cache. While employing textual language to convey the experience of geocaching, she creates a photographic anti-archive through negation of the preserved object. Topics: mapping, psychogeography/derive, artists using geospatial technology, performance, landscape, experiential practice, gifting/exchange, and the mythic explorer.