Netbehaviour

NetBehaviour List Residencies:
- an ongoing in-house project built by users of this list

comments by list members:-

posted by: marc garrett - Date: 7/11/2004 1:01 AM.

Netbehaviour residency No. 1

brief bio: fast disappearing

[But perhaps the function of disappearing is a vital one.
Perhaps this is how we react as living beings, as mortals,
to the threat of an immortal universe, the threat of a
definitive reality. So this whole array of technology could
be taken to mean that man has ceased to believe in his own
existence, and has opted for a virtual existence, a destiny
by proxy. Then all our artefacts become the site of the
subject's non-existence. For a subject without an existence
of his own is at least as vital a hypothesis as that of a
subject decked out with such metaphysical responsibility.
Seen from this angle, technology becomes a marvellous
adventure, just as marvellous in this case as it seems
monstrous in the other. It becomes an art of disappearance.
It might be seen as aiming not so much to transform the
world as to create an autonomous world, a fully achieved
world, from which we could at last withdraw. Now, there can
be no perfecting of the natural world, and the human being
in particular is a dangerous imperfection. If the world is
to be perfect, it will first have to be made. And if the
human being wishes to attain this kind of immortality, he
must produce himself as artefact also, expel himself from
himself into an artificial orbit in which he will circle
forever.]

12hr: serial, eccentric, continuous, hypermodern imagery
posted online since 1994

Other | Mirror: http://www.eskimo.com/~bbrace/bbrace.html
Projects | Reverse Solidus: http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/
| http://bbrace.net

--- bbs: brad brace sound

----------------------------------------------------
---
--- http://63.170.215.11:8000 ---

The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project >>>> posted since 1994 <<<<
"... easily the most venerable net-art project of all time."

+ + + serial ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/b/bbrace
+ + + eccentric ftp:// (your-site-here!)
+ + + continuous hotline://artlyin.ftr.va.com.au
+ + + hypermodern ftp://ftp.rdrop.com/pub/users/bbrace
+ + + imagery ftp:// (your-site-here!)

News: alt.binaries.pictures.12hr alt.binaries.pictures.misc
alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.misc alt.12hr

. 12hr email
subscriptions => http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/buy-into.html

. Other | Mirror: http://www.eskimo.com/~bbrace/bbrace.html
Projects | Reverse Solidus: http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/
| http://bbrace.net

{ brad brace } <<<<< bbrace@eskimo.com >>>> ~finger for pgp

----------------

posted by: michael Szpakowski - Date: 7/15/2004 11:42 AM.

Nobody else seems to have commented, but I'm really
enjoying receiving these.

I know very little about Brad's work & he seems a man
of few words so it would be nice if someone could put
this into context.

(although I'm a sucker for stuff that is "just there")
It also seems a shame to have a resident artist and
not to have some sort of on list discussion of the
work.

best
michael

----------------

posted by: wally keeler - Date: 7/15/2004 11:29 PM

Perhaps Brad could say something.

------------------
posted by: steve black - Date: 7/16/2004 2:44 AM
------------------
This work is background, wallpaper, distant texture. It doesn't do or
say anything more unless there is a context of silent screaming.

I am enjoying receiving them (especially as part of the wider residency idea ++good) but I would prefer that they were ladled consistently so that they are all in the same thread unless the artists thinks that the subject or dispersal is significant to the work.>
-------------------

posted by: Color's Torrid Function! - Date: 7/16/2004 8:21 AM.

i like brad because he thinks the new york art world
can be full of shit too

(and honestly those distant texture do evoke something
in me, like de chirico)

bliss

-------------------

posted by: michael Szpakowski - Date: 7/16/2004 9:53 AM.

I'm interested to know -how the jpegs are sourced ?
Does he take them? Lift them from the net? Scan 'em..
or whatever?

Then there's the issue of greyscaling and also of
cropping/scaling - there's quite a high level of human
intervention required surely to create something which
is actually *highly unified* in tone, although very
varied in its particular manifestations.
Becuase I'm new to the series I don't know, for
example, whether some of the parameters of the series
change over time or not, size, approach to the
preparation of images &c.

The project seems to me a species of minimalism , if
one is forced to categorise ( and I'm not opposed to
this as an initial approach to things, to get a handle
as it were) -I certainly don't think its empty or
valueless -I quite like the way the project makes us
do some work of our own.

best
michael

-------------------------

posted by: Sim - Date: 7/16/2004 10:49 AM.

Hi all,

Looping brads images in a flash film...

http://www.soy.de/main/index.php?varLogFile=NetBehaviour

best

sim

-------------------------

posted by: Sim - Date: 7/16/2004 12:44 PM.

Like pictures from a distant dream...

If you like to use the "animated" Netbehaviour -
Residence Pictures on you site add...
<script language=JavaScript src="
http://www.soy.de/NetbehaviourResidence/bcast_javascript_out.php?w
=480&h=360"></script >

best

sim.

---------------------------

posted by: david papapostolou - Date: 7/16/2004 5:37 PM.

Hi Tati,

I totally agree with you. I didn't mean there was no audience for Brad's work so there was no work, I was just talking/thinking more generaly, the audience being anybody receiveing the piece, no matter the scale. I was just wondering if a piece exists only if it makes its way in somebody else's mind. At the moment I am reading the documentation for pure data, and yesterday i read that in the case of a box A followed by a box B, the action from box A only exists if box B had worked out its own, even if the message/signal "stimulating" box B is coming from box A (i am wrong, pure data people ?). Let's say box A is the artist and box B is the audience, no matter the size of it.

--------------------------------------

posted by: marc garrett - Date: 7/21/2004 6:15 PM.

Comments on the Brad brace's Residency-work.

As Brad Brace's residency postings on Netbehaviour have been slowly appearing day by day on my screen, via an email client, I have found them quite an eye opener.

He has managed to advance and transcend the singular function of a medium, a practice such as photography, in finding a way of presenting it to a larger audience using the networking processes of the Internet - thus bringing about a sort of collective experience via email, many are able see/view the work on their screens alternately from visiting a web site or going to gallery space.

It is networked art that rather than trying to impress via flash (not the application, I mean attitude here) manipulations, it seems to settle, quiet and timeless, just doing its thing - letting the observer receive the visual experience in slow motion each time with a single image. It is still, transient and somewhow loud at the same time.

any other thoughts?

marc

---------------------------------------

posted by: helen varley jamieson- Date: 7/21/2004 11:01 PM.

i've been appreciating them; sometimes i have a pile of emails & i just whiz thru & delete without too much thought, but other times i pause & look & think. i like that there is no instruction, nothing other than the image, so i can take it or leave it or interpret it as i choose.
h : )

----------------------------

posted by: Color's Torrid Function! - Date: 7/22/2004 3:45 AM.

no offense to brad, because i really do like the work,
but aren't you stretching it a bit with this
description here? am i transcending letter-writing by
sending an email to a list?

profound? perhaps...in 1994...

like i said, no offense to brad, because i do love
these images...

>He has managed to advance and transcend the
>> singular function of a
>
>>> >medium, a practice such as photography, in finding
>
>> a way of
>
>>> >presenting it to a larger audience using the
>
>> networking processes of
>
>>> >the Internet - thus bringing about a sort of
>
>> collective experience
>
>>> >via email, many are able see/view the work on their
>
>> screens
>
>>> >alternately from visiting a web site or going to
>
>> gallery space.

>marc

--------------------------

posted by: color's torrid function! - Date: 7/22/2004 3:45 AM.

yes, it's networked art, but not network art....

maybe

that said, everything you've posited here marc could
be said for photography in ANY space-----

it IS good stuff....i too like the quietude of the
works, which does reach deep into its
opposition---it's a quietude that impacts....

--------------------------

posted by: john nowak - Date: 7/22/2004 8:13 PM.

I agree... (no offense!).

- John

-------------------------

posted by: michael szpakowski - Date: 7/22/2004 9:56 PM.

They have the same austere beauty ( and I think for
similar reasons) as the work of the Bechers:

http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_works_14_0.html

http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_bio_14.html

A question that interests me still is how these things
are sourced and how much intervention takes place
before they're presented -but this is just curiosity
on my part -whatever their provenance they have the
same quiet slightly disturbing beauty.

I compared them to the Bechers, who of course exhibit
in galleries. A number of people have wondered whether
there's any difference between gallery based
photographic exhibitions and what we have here.
I do think that the delivery mode comes into play here
- the gentle inexorableness of it all gives a faint
but distinct rhythmic quality, a quality of existing
in time, of unfolding in time, of being *time based*,
as the horrible phrase goes, to the project.

Having said that: idiomatic for the network ( or
however you phrased it Lewis- "yes, it's networked
art, but not network art...." ...I looked it up)

I don't care - the question of whether something is
idiomatic or not interests me less and less -I 'm
beginning to feel it's a complete red herring. Why
should whether something is a "natural" usage of a
resource -ie using the network, interactivity &c, have
*any bearing whatever* on whether a piece of art is of
any worth? I don't discount it's significance for the
artist her/himself in terms of her subjective feelings
and approaches to her/his work and I suppose it can
have a marginal bearing to our reception of a piece in
that we might be taken by, we might admire, the
particular virtuosity with which an artist either
embraces or rejects the possibilities of the network
-but I think to make the distinction a central one is
short sighted and is a bit like saying that we like
paintings with lots of red in them , for example.

best
michael

------------------------

posted by: ryan griffis - Date: 7/22/2004 11:53 PM.

On Jul 22, 2004, at 1:56 PM, Michael Szpakowski wrote:
> They have the same austere beauty ( and I think for
> similar reasons) as the work of the Bechers:

i'd have to disagree with the Becher comparison... not in terms of beauty (how could i possibly support or deny that), but other than the grayscale palette, i see little aesthetic similarity. maybe the cataloguing aspect is the "similar reason" you're pointing to - which does make sense to me conceptually. but the Bechers' project seems a didactic aesthetic that contains the obvious in the grouping of images, whereas Brad's work seems a kind of useless (not meant pejoratively) archive of undisclosed pictures. The austerity of the Bechers' images comes from the desire to isolate forms - i don't see that in Brad's images.

> Having said that: idiomatic for the network ( or
> however you phrased it Lewis- "yes, it's networked
> art, but not network art...." ...I looked it up)
> ) I don't care -the question of whether something is
> idiomatic or not interests me less and less -I 'm
> beginning to feel it's a complete red herring.

yeah... i'm sure greenberg's ghost is analyzing the computerness of net art as we write

ryan

--------------------

posted by: color's torrid function! - Date: 7/23/2004 7:19 AM.

i'm not dismissing them because they aren't networked art----because, yes, it IS SOMETIMES a red herring>>>>>

they're beautiful pieces..........

i was simply trifling over marc's description>>>>which in itself was a good description>>>

i have a great interest in networked art...that's all...it doesn't stop me from appreciating this, of course, but i'm more interested in how the network itself can be used to make art(and that's a personal aesthetic for me, which i am never really consistent with)

bliss
l

Michael Szpakowski <szpako@yahoo.com> wrote:

>They have the same austere beauty ( and I think for
>similar reasons) as the work of the Bechers:

----------------------

posted by: michael szpakowski - Date: 7/23/2004 1:18 PM.

HI Ryan
<i'd have to disagree with the Becher comparison...
not in terms of
beauty (how could i possibly support or deny that),>

How can a responsible critic possibly not do one or
the other, or at least locate a nuanced position in
between?

Well the grayscale palette is quite a big deal, I
think, though clearly not the main prop of my
argument.
It *is* one of the big deal choices in dealing with
machanically captured images ( it's salutory to
remember the fuss that Egglestone's colour work
provoked not that long ago), and it carries masses of
cultural, social, historical, personal baggage, more
so, I venture, as time passes.(And this brings me back
to the question of how much Brad Braces images are
manipulated -I assume that he greyscales them -and of
course we *register* this in our viewing as we
*register* the Bechers' decision to shoot in black and
white )

I also assert that we should make trusting our eyes a
bigger feature of our critical practice - of course
things that have surface similarities can be arrived
at by vastly different routes but this doesn't obviate
the fact that those simlarities are there.

( There's an interesting parallel in linguistics in
terms of classiication of language families -the
principal one involves classifying languages in
families by descent through history, - but many
languages also develop grammatical similarities simply
by existing in geographical proximity -hence Greek,
Albanian, Bulgarian, now very distinct languages ,
have all *converged* in terms of certain grammatical
features to do with the infinitive - this kind of
grouping is called a sprachbund
http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-1997.10/msg00560.html
I suppose I'm suggesting we need a concept of a
"kunstbund" -and there are perfectly clear forces, not
least of which is that nowadays most work is highly
and immediately accessible to all other artists
militating for this)

My immediate & visceral repsonse to both bodies of
work is that of a vast melancholy, expressed in
manifold specific & concrete ways, and I want to make
that personal response the starting point for any
criticism I do ( of course it won't do to stop there).

I'm not convinced that conceptually there's many
miles between your <useless (not
meant pejoratively)
archive of undisclosed pictures> and the Becher's
decision to photograph *water towers*, for God's sake
,( do they claim that it's didactic in some way? -I
don't know -but if so this seems to me more evidence
against trusting anything artists ever say about their
own work)

In both cases what seems to me to be important is the
end visual result ( and to a lesser extent how it's
delivered to us) rather than the conceptual
underpinning that any of the artists might use to get
into gear creatively.

As a footnote I *do* think there's a cataloguing
impulse at work in Brad Brace's project that is not
dissimilar to the Bechers' - his parameters are
slightly wider but in both cases the artists force us
to confront in an aestheticized way objects or scenes
that would not normally occur in that context ( and
this similarity seems to me to be way more
siginificant than delivery mode, although I think
that's probably another extended discussion)

best
michael

------------------------

posted by: michael szpakowski - Date: 7/23/2004 1:18 PM.

HI Ryan
<i'd have to disagree with the Becher comparison...
not in terms of
beauty (how could i possibly support or deny that),>

How can a responsible critic possibly not do one or
the other, or at least locate a nuanced position in
between?

best
michael

-------------------

posted by: color's torrid function! - Date: 7/23/2004 6:28 PM.

--- Michael Szpakowski <szpako@yahoo.com> wrote:

/*
one of the things i admire about the work is the sense
of melancholy i get from it...for me it resembles de
chirico, not in terms of execution but definitely in
terms of content---there are no people in these
images, this hypermodern imagery seems centered on the
moodiness of certain locales (which resonates strongly
with me, i too am drawn to places like those
depicted)--

i would like to hear brad talk about his use of
locale, of site actually---how does he choose a shot,
is it a concious process of does the place simply
latch onto him....

-----------

posted by: color's torrid function! - Date: 7/23/2004 6:31 PM.

the question as to just how much these images are
manipulated after the initial shot is a good
one...what i do love is the immediacy of it, which
would possibly be lost with too much post-field
manipulation---

yes---quiet pockets of post-cApitol landscape----many
of these images remind me of my hometown of lorain:
rusty sprawling lonely lands...steel and rubber and
dust....

*/
---------
posted by: ryan griffis - Date: 7/23/2004 8:47 PM.

Hi Michael and all,

> <i'd have to disagree with the Becher comparison...
> not in terms of
> beauty (how could i possibly support or deny that),>
>
> How can a responsible critic possibly not do one or
> the other, or at least locate a nuanced position in
> between?

for starters, i'm not interested in agreeing/disagreeing with anyone's definition of beauty. And should we start making connections between everything that anyone deems beautiful (or are we just talking Art here).

>
> <but other than the
> grayscale palette, i see little aesthetic
> similarity.>
>
> Well the grayscale palette is quite a big deal, I
> think, though clearly not the main prop of my
> argument.

sure it is. i have no argument with that. but the B+W palette would expand the catalogue well beyond the Bechers. i'm merely saying that i find little visual correlations between these two bodies of work. Most of the WPA Farm Bureau pictures are B+W, as are Diane Arbus, the f-64 group, Rodchenko and millions of others and most surveillance tapes (which i find more related to Brad's work that the Bechers')

> I also assert that we should make trusting our eyes a
> bigger feature of our critical practice - of course
> things that have surface similarities can be arrived
> at by vastly different routes but this doesn't obviate
> the fact that those simlarities are there.

i'm totally with you on the need to discuss manipulation (whether conscious or unconscious) of aesthetics. But i guess i'm caught up in what YOU/WE want from a comparison between the Bechers and Brad. the desire to use the aesthetics of B+W (along with the cultural/historical baggage) IS important to think about. and the Bechers obviously wanted to compare the form (but not color) of all their architectural typologies. There's a ethnographic/scientific history to such collected imagery.

> I'm not convinced that conceptually there's many
> miles between your <useless (not
> meant pejoratively)
> archive of undisclosed pictures> and the Becher's
> decision to photograph *water towers*, for God's sake
> ,( do they claim that it's didactic in some way? -I
> don't know -but if so this seems to me more evidence
> against trusting anything artists ever say about their
> own work)

i haven't read a quote from the Bechers claiming didacticism, but come on... the work is pretty didactic. and i don't mean that in the usual derogatory sense, but the work is about making pretty clear comparisons between the pictures. not that there aren't numerous subtle meanings one can get from them due to their specific use of the medium - but that can be true of anything, including the most seemingly obvious pedantic art.

>
> In both cases what seems to me to be important is the
> end visual result ( and to a lesser extent how it's
> delivered to us) rather than the conceptual
> underpinning that any of the artists might use to get
> into gear creatively.

again, sure. i'm not interested in intent at all. but it would be dishonest to say that one can look at a single Becher picture to "get" their work. the "end visual result" is also a series that relies on memory and juxtaposition, no? this isn't based on a reading of their "conceptual underpinnings" as they see it (thought that certainly is there), but is based on a reading of conventions existing within photography, art, design, linguistics (as you rightly bring up) and historical knowledge (that both the artists and viewer participate in).

>
> As a footnote I *do* think there's a cataloguing
> impulse at work in Brad Brace's project that is not
> dissimilar to the Bechers' - his parameters are
> slightly wider but in both cases the artists force us
> to confront in an aestheticized way objects or scenes
> that would not normally occur in that context ( and
> this similarity seems to me to be way more
> siginificant than delivery mode, although I think
> that's probably another extended discussion)
> best
> michael

i guess this is what i find a more interesting comparison... but what do you mean "not normally occur in that context"?
care,
ryan
-------------------

posted by: ryan griffis - Date: 7/23/2004 8:49 PM.

just wanted to throw another comparison out there that just came to mind after seeing this image:
http://www.geh.org/fm/atget/htmlsrc/m197601090003_ful.html#topofimage
ryan

------------

posted by: michael szpakowski - Date: 7/23/2004 9:58 PM.

HI Ryan

slightly altering the order of your points...

I'm just talking about art - I might find a water
tower that I see on my walk beautiful -this is an
aesthetic experience, but not I think an artistic one.
For me the core of art consists in two things:
Substance or content and a formal structure involving
the artist intervening to shape this content in a way
that gives us artistic pleasure ( we find it
beautiful, engaging, we recognise it as a kind of
skilful truth telling - even if it's one of the Goya
Disasters of War or Primo Levi writing about the
Holocaust )
As for the specific point -I'm not just talking about
some general connection in temrs of beauty, nor indeed
the fact that its B&W -I hastened to point out that
although this was an obvious starting point it was by
no means a substantial part of my case.

And this seems to me an abdication. Its a difficult
question to be sure but that's all the more reason not
to dodge it -and although of course this process
involves expression of personal feeling and opinion,
it also requires deployment of all sorts of arguments
form the very fields that we are ranging over now and
that you list towards the end of your post.
I think it also involves an appeal to what other
people have said/are saying about a work -I think
you're entirely right to point out that art does not
operate in a vacuum , but it's this very factor which
allows us to move from the subjective to an attempt at
an objective appraisal of a work, the work's "beauty"
being one paramenter of this.
I suspect it's down to the colonisation of artistic
discourse by spuriously scientific teminology and
concepts which have made people shy of expressing what
are seen as dangerously subjective responses.
Nothing of course will be "proved" either way by our
debate on this topic -but in the process of having it
we will learn something and others might find it of
interest, that it touches concerns they too have.

< and the
Bechers obviously wanted
to compare the form (but not color) of all their
architectural
typologies.>

Obviously? It isn't obvious to me. If that's what I
perceived them to be doing ( or if I thought that was
central to their project) I'd be much less interested
in looking at their work when I get the opportunity
than I am.
I'm with Lewis on this one -what grabs me about the
Bechers is the affective force of their work -like
Lewis with Brad's work, it fills me with delicious
melancholy.
Like Lewis, I come from a former center of industry,
in my case Sheffield, the former world centre of the
steel industry, so I have a big and complex space in
my soul for the poetry of machinery and brick and dirt
and debris and oil and decay &c -if it were just a
personal pecularity then it wouldn't be worth
considering but I suspect it is a sensibility that is
actually quite common. The Bechers speak to that in me
rather than any notion of typologies of water towers.

< There's a ethnographic/scientific
history to such collected
imagery.>

Indeed -whether that's the interesting thing about
what the Bechers are doing seems to me to be open to
debate.
I happen to think its the *least* interesting or
significant thing about their work.
I'm not even convinced it's *a* significant aspect.

< but the work is about making
pretty clear comparisons
between the pictures. >

Is it? How do you know that with each new opportunity
to photograph a water tower they were not filled with
joy and delight at the glorious specificities of that
particular water tower, of the complex of feelings
that the image of it might summon up in the conscious
and subconscious minds of those whose dream landscape
is factory, furnace, cog and gear, farm machinery or
indeed water tower.
(I imagine Hungarian farmers, for example, have
extremely complicated feelings about water towers,
these being the only objects that break up the
expanses of the plains, and these feelings are not
simply those surely which arise from checking out the
water tower mail order catalogue when the old one
springs a leak, but all sorts of things to do with
*knowing you're home*,*making the land
rich*,*stability in changing world* , *different
skies seen behind my water tower*, * the tower in the
storm of '63*&c )

Would it? Why? I was captivated by a single Becher
image -it was like a kick in the stomach in the same
way that my first Hopper ( Train Approaching a City)
was.
Why is that way of "getting" it inferior to your
proposed way?

Yes - I do agree that we gain from seeing the series
and I agree with your excellent list of what we bring
to this ( or any) work.

< i guess this is what i find a more interesting
comparison... but what
do you mean "not normally occur in that context"?>

Yes -I should have said something like "not normally
placed within an artistic context".

best
michael

---------------

posted by: ryan griffis - Date: 7/24/2004 3:07 AM.

Hi again,

> slightly altering the order of your points...

mix it up

> And this seems to me an abdication. Its a difficult
> question to be sure but that's all the more reason not
> to dodge it -and although of course this process
> involves expression of personal feeling and opinion,
> it also requires deployment of all sorts of arguments
> form the very fields that we are ranging over now and
> that you list towards the end of your post.

i don't mean to dodge it. i only meant to say that your statement on beauty isn't up for argument as far as i'm concerned. it's not that i'm not interested in notions of "beauty," i just didn't see it as a interesting starting point for a critical comparison - i could agree or disagree, but it only matters if we start to flesh out beauty in this context and it has some consequences. i guess i'm saying that i don't see notions of "Beauty" to be central to the concern of either bodies of work -- not that they are or aren't beautiful to myself or anyone else.

> I think it also involves an appeal to what other
> people have said/are saying about a work -I think
> you're entirely right to point out that art does not
> operate in a vacuum , but it's this very factor which
> allows us to move from the subjective to an attempt at
> an objective appraisal of a work, the work's "beauty"
> being one paramenter of this.

this is interesting... maybe we should be discussing the shifting from individual (subjective) to social (objective) constructions of beauty? i attach social to objective here in relation to conventions of beauty - since i don't want to start a discussion about transcendental Beauty.

> I suspect it's down to the colonisation of artistic
> discourse by spuriously scientific teminology and
> concepts which have made people shy of expressing what
> are seen as dangerously subjective responses.
> Nothing of course will be "proved" either way by our
> debate on this topic -but in the process of having it
> we will learn something and others might find it of
> interest, that it touches concerns they too have.
>

agreed.

> < and the
> Bechers obviously wanted
> to compare the form (but not color) of all their
> architectural
> typologies.>
>
> Obviously? It isn't obvious to me. If that's what I
> perceived them to be doing ( or if I thought that was
> central to their project) I'd be much less interested
> in looking at their work when I get the opportunity
> than I am.

you mean that the serial nature of their work isn't obvious? the titles are another clue, but the way they're presented is always at least in pairs - and usually much larger groupings. i certainly don't mean to simplify or neutralize other meanings of the work - and i don't think that this didactic aspect detracts from complexity at all.

> Like Lewis, I come from a former center of industry,
> in my case Sheffield, the former world centre of the
> steel industry, so I have a big and complex space in
> my soul for the poetry of machinery and brick and dirt
> and debris and oil and decay &c -if it were just a
> personal pecularity then it wouldn't be worth
> considering but I suspect it is a sensibility that is
> actually quite common. The Bechers speak to that in me
> rather than any notion of typologies of water towers.

i can totally relate to the melancholy feeling... there's a kind of non-spectacular dystopian sublime for me...

> < There's a ethnographic/scientific
> history to such collected
> imagery.>
>
> Indeed -whether that's the interesting thing about
> what the Bechers are doing seems to me to be open to
> debate.
> I happen to think its the *least* interesting or
> significant thing about their work.
> I'm not even convinced it's *a* significant aspect.

agreeing to disagree - though i find that aspect interesting in manner parallel to the industrial poetic you mention. they're not mutually exclusive in my response.

>
> < but the work is about making
> pretty clear comparisons
> between the pictures. >
>
> Is it? How do you know that with each new opportunity
> to photograph a water tower they were not filled with
> joy and delight at the glorious specificities of that
> particular water tower, of the complex of feelings
> that the image of it might summon up in the conscious
> and subconscious minds of those whose dream landscape
> is factory, furnace, cog and gear, farm machinery or
> indeed water tower.

i don't know, and it wouldn't change anything for me. but their consistent presentation means something, no? again, i don't think such things are mutually exclusive.

> (I imagine Hungarian farmers, for example, have
> extremely complicated feelings about water towers,
> these being the only objects that break up the
> expanses of the plains, and these feelings are not
> simply those surely which arise from checking out the
> water tower mail order catalogue when the old one
> springs a leak, but all sorts of things to do with
> *knowing you're home*,*making the land
> rich*,*stability in changing world* , *different
> skies seen behind my water tower*, * the tower in the
> storm of '63*&c )

totally nice narrative - and exactly what i want to think about when viewing their images.

>
> <it would be
> dishonest to say that one can look at a single
> Becher picture to "get"
> their work. >
>
> Would it? Why? I was captivated by a single Becher
> image -it was like a kick in the stomach in the same
> way that my first Hopper ( Train Approaching a City)
> was.
> Why is that way of "getting" it inferior to your
> proposed way?
>
i guess i didn't mean to imply any inferiority, or at least i feel bad about it if i did...
but if one knows of their work, it would seem difficult to negate any given picture's relationship to the series. indeed, i like some more than others for aesthetic reasons, but they're relational reasons.

> Yes -I should have said something like "not normally
> placed within an artistic context".

OK that makes sense...
btw, thanks for the discussion Michael - really enjoying your responses.
care,
ryan

-- ------------------------

posted by: john nowak - Date: 7/24/2004 9:08 PM.

Lovely, this one (07045.jpg).

- John

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