Nigt time wanderings of Washington DC

Washington: With the sibling, and his car, upon which i had relied to get to and from the mall complex, sitting somewhere in Virginia doing something for the government, i realized as the final deadline for this project approached, i had to/had an excuse to go on a great venture.
After exiting metro center, i decided to walk by the White House, i took a few shots of probably the most over photographed location in the US. It was dark, the night was cold, it was a Wednesday night.
The Protester/ homeless lady, on a one woman crusade about something, sits there like the Chinese statue of liberty from Tienanmen square, that one stared Mao's image down, she sits in her bags and stares at Bush. The Wednesday night drunks harass the cop as they stumble along, the cop yells at the drunks, the crazy lady yells at them all. I stand back and shoot the scene until i am informed i need to move on, apparently my tripod might be dangerous and needs to be on the opposite side of the street from the white house.

The Washington monument, giant standing obelisk, standing alone in all its massive size and in it regallity. It needs not adornments or details to make it great, it calls to you with its outstanding presence.
The road way to heaven, where is the sky, where is the road, what does it mean? This marble is Really cold.
The Capital via the Washington monument, the cold starts to get to me here, i turn allot more introspective, ether my two coats aren't helping or i really need some coffee.......
That car just sits there, lights on, maybe it is the glow of the promise of America!
More likely it is security pissed off at the red flairs of my light sampler.

Lincoln Memorial stands alone, in the darkness of its eternal solitude, this looming monument, from which Lincoln glows forth sits at the end of the row, staring out at the Washington monument, the only veil between Lincoln and the capital.
Vietnam memorial, the soldiers stand on eternal patrol. I am not going to lie, at 1am the Vietnam memorial is creepy, there is a vague sense of an interment the location is so simple yet so emotional for so many.
The Vietnam memorial became all the more disturbing when i started taking these shots. This shot mystified me, the image and the building complete over into it self, within the wall. I just felt like this was the shot of the collection. I had an unbelievable easy time taking it, there was no one, just me and the name on the wall. I realized at least from what i could see in the dark, they are just names, no titles or ranks, the wall is just for the man.

Lincoln sits a lonely sentinel, Watching out from within. It was simply him and me, no one else and nothing else moved, standing there on the raised citadel of the memorial, the cold wind whips past you. I kept trying to capture the momentum of the place, kneeling to get ever lower and better perspectives.
The massive inscriptions on the inside of the temple of Lincoln hold one of the few passers by enthralled, he stares up and read the contents of a messages from long before his time.

The Inscription to Martin Luther King, paying tribute to his great speech. You stand there and think of the changes that have happened int the last ear, last 30 or 40 years have made so much of our world different.
The shacks of the nick nack sellers sit on the mall, they stand there to sell two dollar tributes to the soldiers who are memorialized in the two flanking memorials beside the Lincoln Memorial. The grandest and the tar paper, well ply wood shack stand by and shape the world, standing forth at the persons image.

Wandering

The Situational Tour

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For my project i will look at the emotional impact of the area around the lincoln memorial. I did a first tour if the area last night to examine it for its possibilities for a project. I have a special foundness for all of the momuments in the middle of the night. It is a very provocative experience to be the only one at the veitnam memorial, or to be the one standing on the spot where MLK gave his I Have A Dream Speach. I actualy didnt even rember he had given it there or coralate the spot yesterday, i just happened to look down and there were roses on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The Location has obvious ritualistic and ideological impact as the emotions of Korea, Veitnam, Civil Rights Movment, and the civil war are combinded together in a few hundred feet of bog land covered with emotionaly moving symbols of events in are nations past. As to Ideology, the Lincoln memorial itself may stand in some ways to a unionist and federalist opinion, there could also be construed to be some civil rights appeals in the small placks, the war memorials however are very ideology nuteral. I think the greatest thing about going in the middle of the night is that in the isolation that you feel all alone in the dark by these great monuments the feeling of security fade away, any shadow could be dangerous, you must stand on your own two feet, and secondly there is no authority, you feel like standing in the middle of this or that and taking a picture, it hurts no one else.

Technoligy for art, or technoligy used by art?

As i read the assaginment i was brough to the distinct impression that while there where thinkers who were perdicting the great synthessis of information that would soon be possible, and while there where those who used the technoligy available to make art, it does not seem atleast based on the short peice where are working from that they altered and created new on the technoligy. The Technoligy was not made with the art, but the art was made with the technoligy, which seems to imply that the creative process was curtailed based on the availability of technoligy and that the final project was a side affect of the technoligy, shaped within it.

Techno Evolution? Does the Technologies of our time evolve the way in which we express ourselves, do they destroy classical forms?

Techno Evolution?
I would find this to be a very challenging question, can the tools we use change how we express ourselves? The most simplistic answer is yes. They do not added to what already exists but they slowly shift it away from are current equilibrium. Tools such as text messaging and VOIP have made it so phrases like TTYL OMFG NOOB, Hax, l8ter, merge into are dialect, it changes the ability to communicate and affects are social network as a society.
For me, The changes from classical means of communication may have served to make up a fairly large and contributing factor in how i perceive the world. Instead of having grown up reading about, be it in the paper or in letters, or hearing about, radio or word of mouth, I have grown up speaking to individuals all over the world.
In high school, i hung out if you could call it that with a giant conglomeration of electronic whizzes from the 4 corners of the earth. So for me the concept of England or turkey was not some distant place that you read and watched documentaries about, it was Rock and the boys trying to figure out was everyone safe after the subway bombings in London. The group i hung out with used team speak, a voip program, so when it came down to it, you would spend 4-5 hours a week hanging out with almost any of the individuals, getting a first hand perspective on almost anything from English police brutality, why the french hate the Americans, who really shot JFK, if you brought it up, you would get the global perspective, thought they might be in stinging words, from some drunken swede who could talk about kosovo because, well, he had been on the ground there.
It all changed my perspective.
Yet at the same time there is death with this change, the performer theater is no longer so well demanded, the number of musicians has fallen through the floor, few retain an ability to appreciate truly masterful paintings.
But from the decline of art forms comes beautiful new work. One of my Friends is a 3d animator who is so good at what he does that while still in college he had a job with the military making animation to project new systems, i have seen his academic work, and it is so monumentally more detailed then you could ever hope to be on canvas, and even with a medium such as stone, you cant make it move and do what you say.

What is the diffrence between electrionic art, and random junk that happens to fall together?

So, electronic art, what is it? I come to this with some very heavily shaped opinions of art. I grew up in and around massive amounts of "modern art" some of which only could be seen as art because someone had declared it. I am talking about art pieces that were in fact pieces of structural steel, combine together in the shapes that could only be described as reminiscent of beach defences at Normandy.
I developed my dividing line of the difference from art and a mess while looking at the pieces that my brother performed in in college. My brother was a student at Dartmouth and was the star or a performer in numerous pieces in his time in college. I remember looking at some of the pieces that he was in that made it to the Ivy league film festival, they were weird but they were art.
I define my taste in art based on movies. So to make my tastes clear i will list some of my favorite movies. Leon, the professional(french cut), Blade runner(anyone else note the similarity in the ad of the female runner and the female android), Fifth element, Fight club, Lord of war, Pitch Black, Black Hawk Down, just to name a few.
So for me art is in the development of emotion in the individual who sees it, if a piece does not steer and control your emotion it is not art.
http://multimedia.american.edu/courses/gned220_sp08/