This is beautiful. I would consider this sublime. It is too large to comprehend, but still can be experienced at the local level. Post experience might leave one with a feeling of awe or heightened sincerity. Thus inverting this process completely by creating indexical maps ironically seems like the necessary thing to do.
For the record, I found these images while looking through a gallery of "the sublime." They convey the sublime even though they are mere snapshots of the entire reality. Like Daniel pointed out, they are being experienced at the local level. However the part is not only beautiful on its own, it also explains the whole.
I completely disagree... you cannot comprehend the whole in this case. It will remain infinitely fractal. This is the dilemma that land artists, like Robert Smithson, faced in the 60's. How do you represent a site that is unrepresentable? Use the nonesite, which essentially is an indexing/map of a signifier.
However, through a repetition of objects with slight variation, the infinite can be implied and the user feels sublime. The whole is therefore represented by the repetition of parts. I think that is the essence of the sublime feeling.
as the sublime deals primarily with scale these images are a perfect representation of it...but because we have a preconceived notion of what aerial photographs are do these not get filed away into that category and skip the sublime all together? that is to say if this was the first time you had seen an aerial photograph maybe then you would experience some sense of sublimity, but as im sure most of us have seen photographs of this nature before has this experience become less intense if not lost all together?
for example, after satellites first photographed the entire earth people were asking why haven't we seen these photos yet, where are they, this is big, we need to seem them. do we ask that same question now with each new mission to the moon, mars, etc.? no, why? because we have seen similar images for 50+ years now. are there ephemeral pleasures/senses that we don't even realize we have? are we are slowly dissolving them with technological evolution?
Sublime is not just scale, but also an aesthetic value (as Kant argues). Yes, photography has changed the face of 'site'. But with the advent of photography came the practitioners who perfected photography into a craft. James Corner talks about this, and the concept of 'technological evolution', and says technology must be mastered which makes it's use not necessarily better but perhaps more intelligent, the way anything well designed responds to its purpose.
This image is sublime. It cannot be compared to a typical, grainy, un enthusiastic moon/mars picture I think you are referring to. Rather a comparison to nebula gasses, Saturn's rings, or the sun's corona professionally photographed and not mass distributed would also fit the description of sublime. Scale and Aesthetic.
Yes, maybe the aerial photograph found commonly on mapping websites do not produce sensation any more, but images like the posted ones are of those moments that still have an immense effect on us. It is more than just the technologies ability that plays a role in making these images sublime. Their ability to transcend scale, the initial confusion in identifying the locale and their deep textural quality all contribute to the sublime feeling. They are successful because they are not typical aerial images and they evoke that feeling of infinity.
Technology will continue to push the boundary on the sublime image and eventually these images will pale in comparison with the amazing images that new technologies will be able to capture. After all the Sublime is supposed to be the absolutely great but technology continues to redefine the absolute boundary.
Whether these photographs can be considered "natural" is integral to categorizing them as sublime. If we are to believe Peter Eisenman's analysis, classically the sublime (the unnatural and unpresent) may be thought of in opposition to beauty (the good, the rational, true). Photography constructs a subject via the point of view of the camera. In this case, technology has extended our classical notion of body to the sky, to points humanly unattainable and unnatural. So the question perhaps is, has technology, and post-modernity in general, constructed a new notion of body and if so, is it a stable one or is it undergoing constant transformation? While aerial photography once projected a sublime omniscience, I would argue that the sublime, as Artur said, recedes with the advancement of technology. Nonetheless, the notion of omniscience that comes from aerial photography and acquisition of previously unknown datasets produces an unaestheticized fascination. Is that sublime? I'm not sure, but it is certainly unnatural.
This is beautiful. I would consider this sublime. It is too large to comprehend, but still can be experienced at the local level. Post experience might leave one with a feeling of awe or heightened sincerity. Thus inverting this process completely by creating indexical maps ironically seems like the necessary thing to do.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I found these images while looking through a gallery of "the sublime." They convey the sublime even though they are mere snapshots of the entire reality. Like Daniel pointed out, they are being experienced at the local level. However the part is not only beautiful on its own, it also explains the whole.
ReplyDeleteI completely disagree... you cannot comprehend the whole in this case. It will remain infinitely fractal. This is the dilemma that land artists, like Robert Smithson, faced in the 60's. How do you represent a site that is unrepresentable? Use the nonesite, which essentially is an indexing/map of a signifier.
ReplyDeleteHowever, through a repetition of objects with slight variation, the infinite can be implied and the user feels sublime. The whole is therefore represented by the repetition of parts. I think that is the essence of the sublime feeling.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletei feel you.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteas the sublime deals primarily with scale these images are a perfect representation of it...but because we have a preconceived notion of what aerial photographs are do these not get filed away into that category and skip the sublime all together? that is to say if this was the first time you had seen an aerial photograph maybe then you would experience some sense of sublimity, but as im sure most of us have seen photographs of this nature before has this experience become less intense if not lost all together?
ReplyDeletefor example, after satellites first photographed the entire earth people were asking why haven't we seen these photos yet, where are they, this is big, we need to seem them. do we ask that same question now with each new mission to the moon, mars, etc.? no, why? because we have seen similar images for 50+ years now. are there ephemeral pleasures/senses that we don't even realize we have? are we are slowly dissolving them with technological evolution?
-sRGB
Sublime is not just scale, but also an aesthetic value (as Kant argues). Yes, photography has changed the face of 'site'. But with the advent of photography came the practitioners who perfected photography into a craft. James Corner talks about this, and the concept of 'technological evolution', and says technology must be mastered which makes it's use not necessarily better but perhaps more intelligent, the way anything well designed responds to its purpose.
ReplyDeleteThis image is sublime. It cannot be compared to a typical, grainy, un enthusiastic moon/mars picture I think you are referring to. Rather a comparison to nebula gasses, Saturn's rings, or the sun's corona professionally photographed and not mass distributed would also fit the description of sublime. Scale and Aesthetic.
Yes, maybe the aerial photograph found commonly on mapping websites do not produce sensation any more, but images like the posted ones are of those moments that still have an immense effect on us. It is more than just the technologies ability that plays a role in making these images sublime. Their ability to transcend scale, the initial confusion in identifying the locale and their deep textural quality all contribute to the sublime feeling. They are successful because they are not typical aerial images and they evoke that feeling of infinity.
ReplyDeleteTechnology will continue to push the boundary on the sublime image and eventually these images will pale in comparison with the amazing images that new technologies will be able to capture. After all the Sublime is supposed to be the absolutely great but technology continues to redefine the absolute boundary.
Whether these photographs can be considered "natural" is integral to categorizing them as sublime. If we are to believe Peter Eisenman's analysis, classically the sublime (the unnatural and unpresent) may be thought of in opposition to beauty (the good, the rational, true). Photography constructs a subject via the point of view of the camera. In this case, technology has extended our classical notion of body to the sky, to points humanly unattainable and unnatural. So the question perhaps is, has technology, and post-modernity in general, constructed a new notion of body and if so, is it a stable one or is it undergoing constant transformation? While aerial photography once projected a sublime omniscience, I would argue that the sublime, as Artur said, recedes with the advancement of technology. Nonetheless, the notion of omniscience that comes from aerial photography and acquisition of previously unknown datasets produces an unaestheticized fascination. Is that sublime? I'm not sure, but it is certainly unnatural.
ReplyDelete