After the Awards, the next thing on the agenda was (is? I keep tripping up on my tense when typing while something is happening) a featured speaker: Steve Ditz and “The New Topographics: Documenting the Hertzian City.” The guide synopsis states that “more than 30 years [after New Topographics] in a “flat” world of global flows, ubiquitous networks, micro transmissions, what does it mean to document the Hertzian-induced sprawl surrounding us – and what do those documents mean for us?
So right now, as I type, some sponsor guy is yamming about his company and technical staff, and canons, and epsons, and selling and supplying, and helping you. Probably a nice guy and it’s good of them to sponsor this, I just don’t care, sorry. I wonder if they’re making a video of this somewhere, well not this but the speaker coming up.
Someone with a smooth voice introduces Steve Dietz, executive director of northern lights, founding director and curator of new media at the walker art center, and formally of aperture publishing.
Once he’s got the mic working Steve is up: And it seems like he’s got a slide show that will actually be synced with him! Thank god, haha.
“It’s a pleasure and an honor to be invited here to speak tonight. At one time SPE was my annual pilgramige. I’ve strayed since then it’s true, but —- something, but I bring greeting from the land of geeks — to you photo weenies” – Something like that.
He introduces New Topographics with some images from the exhibition – saying that they were imprinted on him as if a primer and he couldn’t imagine a better source of ideas for sprawl – but then when he tracked down a copy of the catalog he was surprised that such a minimal amount of text had such a huge effect (perhaps a lesson for curators).
He first thought that it was a screed against the evils of sprawl and capitalisim, but apparently that was last night’s talk. He says that’s not the topic of his talk tonight – at least not presented that way. He’s interested in what it means to make a documentary photograph.
What does it mean to document? What can it mean to document? What are we talking about documenting?
He says Jennings saw all photographs as maps of sort – typography is about place and how it is mapped. Steve is interested in how this interacts with the land of Turing, the analytical and digital land of information.
He then shows a piece (a trailer) that I didn’t catch the name of, unfortunately. It’s a 3d animated montage of scenes – roads winding to nowhere, landscapes pulsating like soundwaves, floating houses. “Scalable city (I think)” visualizes an environments formally made from 3d environments and conceptually concerned with our urban sprawl. “It neither indites or embraces this”
It’s a mapping of data, perhaps a worldview, but is it a document? It’s invented, but the important word is description, because what photography does first and best is describe subjects.
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This is a little disjointed. I’m going to just listen and try and respond after.
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Overall, I found Steve’s subject matter very interesting and his selections very relevant to the ideas he was presenting. Unfortunately, even after I tried to concentrate wholly on his ideas versus trying to transcribe some of them at the same time, I found it to be a little underwhelming.
It isn’t because it didn’t make sense and it’s not because things weren’t explained clearly – it’s just because the entire talk seemed like someone reading a paper and I found myself desiring to simply read the paper (or an online version with embedded video along with the images.)
Maybe I’m just not used to seeing papers presented (something I may be asked to do in the near future) and am used to speakers who usually write specifically for presentation. I’m sorry I had to miss the one last night, actually, after hearing he was a TED presenter. They usually, at least, have great delivery.
I think I really want to read more from Steve, but the talk was just not very exciting – a lot of people were leaving after a little bit. Anyway, enough on that, I feel bad for being too harsh on him.
The work that he presented was awesome – showing rhythms of commuters that looked like circulatory systems, etc. Great data visualizations (He says we’re thinking just visualizations, but I don’t think there is any such thing as just.) Hah, he used the word cyberspace. I didn’t think anyone did that anymore.
He went on to show a lot less simple data visualizations, some created using elaborate camera like equipment. I couldn’t help noting at that point that he reads quotes one word at a time, in such a manner that the next word seems to be lost by the time he’s done with the last one. It’s hard to comprehend the whole thing together, unfortunately.
The next work was Semaphore (made for the Adobe campus) – which seems like some kind of strange clock, but with spinning disks that are actually encrypted text, with a soundscape broadcast over low power FM. The wheels cartwheel under planes.
Concerning his ideas (or the ones he’s trying to teach us about), I don’t feel like I can comment on them in my current sleep denied state. If I get a chance to read it again as a paper, I’ll definitely post a response. Right now some of these phrases “There are interesting precedents for any future we can imagine” just don’t make any sense to me. Sorry guys, no in depth analysis on this one right now.
I think that the work he selected was all very interesting and well executed – I can definitely see his prowess as a curator. I’m looking forward to examining more things he’s worked on in the future and hopefully finding a transcript of this speech.
[Typed during event - to undergo future revision]