s2z Photography Blog

Flânuering during lockdown 5.0

Melbourne was recently placed into its 5th lockdown since the pandemic began. I found this one more taxing the previous ones. By about the 7th day I decided I needed to get outdoors. I decided to walk aimlessly. Walking aimlessly is harder than it sounds.

So I decided to walk into the park adjacent to our house. Then once on the other side of the park wander in the direction of some incongruous land. This land runs between a rail siding and the medium to light industry either side of it. This gives me access to places that are inaccessible any other way. Carrying a large camera (and tripod) in this instance may not have been permitted by the lockdown rules I suspect. So I carried my small Canon point and shoot as well as my iPhone 12.

I walked for about one and a half hours. I took approximately 6639 steps. Sadly I forgot to run my mapping software as I walked, so I’m using other software to trace my route. In this instance Aperture. I took very few iPhone pictures it seems, anyway. I manually added these images to Aperture’s map feature.

screengrab of map of walk taken 23-07-2021 — The place I walked, 23rd July 2021

All up I took 189 pictures. Below is a small selection of them in chronological order.

Parsons Reserve facing South East 2021-07-23 14:51:59

Abstraction of urban forest Parsons reserve 2021-07-23 14:49:40

Trees and silos at the Western edge of Parsons reserve 2021-07-23 14:53:52

Wright Street Sunshine facing West with Silos in the background — Wright Street with Silos in the background, 2021-07-23 14:59:00

Linda Street Sunshine, facing South West 2021-07-23 15:04:47

Looking North from the Freight Rail siding in Linda Street Sunshine, 2021-07-23 15:08:13

Melbourne Container Park, from the rail siding. 2021-07-23 15:10:15

Looking North from the freight rail siding 2021-07-23 15:11:50

Track along the freight rail siding looking North with Melbourne Container Park in the background 2021-07-23 15:29:28

Facing South West overlooking the old 'Huntsman Refinery Site'. 2021-07-23 15:35:30 — Facing South West overlooking the old ‘Huntsman Refinery Site’. 2021-07-23 15:35:30. Soon to be a major infrastructure site.

Melbourne Grand Prix infrastructure storage 2021-07-23 15:40:36

Pile of stone used as filler 2021-07-23 15:41:23 — Texture, of a pile of stone used as filler 2021-07-23 15:41:23

Atop a rail siding overlooking Melbourne facing south east 2021-07-23 15:36:47

CBD Skyline with Melbourne Grand Prix infrastructure in storage 2021-07-23 15:48:00

Stony Creek and Environs looking West 2021-07-23 15:58:56

Wright Street, Sunshine. Facing North East. Sunbury Train line in the background. 2021-07-23 16:04:52

The whole experience was definitely one of heightened senses, visual, aural and olfactory. This in my mind made the journey one that was entirely psychogeographic, even if only partially aimless.

Some changes are occurring in this area also. I have walked this area on and off since moving to Sunshine in 2000. When I next walk it, who knows? The ninth picture is about to undergo a major infrastructure project. This is one of the reasons I walked there. I shall return and use a film camera soon hopefully.

Digital Garden?

Notion have recently changed their note taking software to make publishing webpages of notes easier.

As a consequence I have begun my digital garden here is the link

In the spirit of a digital garden it is of course a work in progress and may expand or may not.

Issuu Account

I recently rediscovered an account I had forgotten about, on Issuu it is a series of digital publications I put together in the early 2000s.

Melbourne, a Zombie city?

Much 21st-century architectural discourse has orbited around two dominant paradigms of urbanism: on the one hand, the rapidly growing city-region, exemplified by the Pearl River Delta; on the other, the shrinking post-industrial city, exemplified by Detroit.

Matthew Soules, “Zombies and Ghosts,” Places Journal, May 2021. Accessed 07 Jul 2021. <https://placesjournal.org/article/zombies-and-ghosts-architecture-and-finance-capitalism/>

New Photobook progress report

My current Photobook’s silver gelatin contact prints are taking a bit longer to print than I initially imagined. After about 20 plus hours I’m at the half way mark. Just over 20 prints.

In the interim, between dealing with other aspects of my life, I have been considering the text component of the book. These ideas sometimes come to me while in my darkroom.

notebook notes from my darkroom workbook

So using a pencil, I scrawl them down in a notebook that lives beside my enlarger. After I finish up, I digitise them and then add them to my notes both Apple note and Voodoo Pad . I then digitally transcribe them to make searching them easier later. Some ideas include the idea of the flaneur and by extension ‘The Situationists’ and the idea of the derive. Society of the spectacle by Guy Debord is proving especially fruitful.

I actually ran out of silver gelatin paper and had to wait till the shops opened to buy some more. Adding another delay.

Weekend Notes?

Here’s a few web links:-

http://daywreckers.com (an old school link blog)
https://www.habatat.com/artists/ (modern digital? artists?)
https://urbanmaoism.neocities.org/index.html (just weird)
https://same.energy/ (visual search engine)(very cool)
https://dietz.ee (art prints)
https://hubertfischer.com [books! Hubert & Fischer is a design studio with offices in New York and Berlin with a global client base]
https://shutdown.gallery (gallery? Where?)(Based on the idea to use limitation as a creative tool instead of declaring it as constraint, SHUTDOWN.gallery aims to rethink existing concepts and to reestablish focus in a world of distraction. Every week, there will be a new exhibition with an artist whose work moves the world of art and design and thus maintains the fertile environment of constant change.)(is the site broken?)

More thoughts on Blogging

Short form blogging as a form of note taking, thinking out loud, and public learning has taken off quietly in the last few years. I have spent some time recently reading about and trying to setup my own disparate set of tools to do this as well.

It’s all a bit too technical right now. Some options I’ve considered are, Notion as a webpage, Voodoopad as a self constructed wiki, some suggest simply writing a html page and updating as I see fit, this is the least technical option for me and may yet take shape. At the moment I’m dropping most snippets of text, some pdfs and images into Apple’s notes app. From a search and retrieve perspective this is fine, however a digital garden is more than that. [See the links below for more on the ideas and approach to digital gardening.]

For now I have rejigged my WordPress blog in an attempt to better reflect this approach, adding a menu option in the main menu at the top for a links page. Also adding content to my about page that explains a bit about digtial gardens. I also moved categories to my sidebar to make the interconnections between my words/posts and other media seem more obvious.

Moving forward I will try to add as much link rich information as I can in each post. This will allow for some non-linear reading. In the meantime my motley collection of links can be found on pinboard.in/u/:s2art, there is a social element there and it has a small annual fee attached, as well as a taxonomic tool for tags and organisation.

Here’s a list of articles that have been sitting in my open tabs in my browser for over a week now that have me thinking abot this idea of a digital garden.

How Blog Broke the Web, Amy Hoy
Building a Digital Garden, by Tom Critchlow
My blog is a digital garden, not a blog, by Joel Hooks
The Garden and the stream, by Mike Caulfield.
A GitHub reference point for all things digital gardening. by Maggie Appleton

Research Note 20210703

bendigo art gallery's header image — Bendigo Art Gallery’s header image for the Mary Quant Exhibition

A visit to Bendigo Art Gallery for the Mary Quant exhibition yielded these notes:-

New Photobook?

I have begun a new book idea.

It is going to be a small book, physically and in the number of copies I make. Three and an artists proof.

It will be approximately 42 small silver Gelatin contact prints. Tipped into a 110 gsm cartridge paper book.

Some working titles include:-

[sub] urban gothic,
The map is not the territory
“…looking back…”
Forty two
42
“… the sum or the parts…”
The path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.

The images are drawn from my archive stretching back to 1989. All shot on medium format film. The whole process has been enlightening and made possible in part by Gary’s interview . We collaborated on part 1 and I deep dived into my archive to consider some responses to his questions. Part 2 is going to be forthcoming.