Day 26

Vaneeesa Blaylock in Corvo, aka LEA18

Yesterday I reached land’s end, LEA17. That, and, even if I hadn’t, my bones have grown weary of this 64°N latitude. It’s way time to head south. How I dream of slipping into non-frigid equatorial waters. And it is a dream. I am so far from that, that it might as well be another life.

Venturing south from LEA17 down into LEA18 I am struck by how the same, and how different it is. At the sim crossing little changes, Yooma Mayo’s installation at LEA17 segues effortlessly and seamlessly into the waters of ArtGyro at LEA18. I climb a steep rockface and find myself on this bridge with thundering waterfalls at my back.

And different?

Oh yes! A few degrees of warmer water, hahaha more like a few degrees “less frigid,” but anyway it feels like bathwater to me now.

LOCATION: 39.710902N, 31.112001W
NAME: Vila Do Corvo, Corvo, Azores, Portugal

CAMERA: Firestorma V330
FILM: 1080p
LENS: 14°

Photograph of Corvo

I’ve been tri-posting these pix on DailyBooth, Flickr, and 500px, but as I wrote yesterday, Flickr is, unexpectedly, feeling the best of the three, so in 2 days when I finish week 4 I’ll stop posting “365days” on DailyBooth & 500px. I love both of those sites a lot and will try to use them for other projects.

Linden Endowment for the Arts Archipelago Map

Meanwhile, Monerda Skute has joined me on 500px and I have sad news to report, they’ve taken down, or partially hidden / blocked her work. Here’s the message I got from her:
[01:56] Moni: ok so I am NOT wanted on 500px. Look at this response I received from my “support” ticket: “Your photos were hidden from the community and can be viewed in your portfolio (http://monerdaskute.500px.com) . We are a photographic community and usually discourage illustration in the community section. You are welcome to continue to use 500px and upload your illustrations to your portfolio. You can do this by going to 500px.com/upload and deselecting the “Post to: Community” option. 🙂 Thank you for your understanding.

Google Map of Corvo's location

Here’s what I wrote on Moni’s wall:
http://500px.com/MonerdaSkute/wall

What, what? So you have pix but they’re hidden? Uggh. Come on internets! We can do better!! This is like photography now perpetuating the chauvinism that photography itself received a century ago. At the dawn of photography they said it “wasn’t art,” and all these early peeps tried to “prove” that photo was art by doing all these “painterly effects” with it… but photo didn’t really become photo till dudes like Eddy Weston ‘n Andy Adams formed Group f64 and said of all those subservient “painterly effects” and painting hegemony, “FUCK THAT, WE DON’T WANT PHOTOGRAPHY TO BE PAINTING… WE WANT IT TO BE PHOTOGRAPHY!” that photo really became “art.”

So nobody complained when I switched from a Nikon F5 to a Nikon D300, that was still “real”… so now if I switch to a Firestorma V330, why is that any different? I’m still selecting lenses, composing scenes, controlling light and focus. What’s not photography about THAT???

We’re so smart in the 21st century and it has the desire to be such an empowered and enlightened time, but as long as those who shed their own shackles only moments ago are non-the-less eager to place them on someone else or on something new, then we will have achieved nothing, save for a minor variation in how we entertain ourselves.

Yahoo map of Vaneeesa's Corvo photo located on globe


Audio track by vo1k1 featuring voice by Snowflake:
http://ccmixter.org/files/vo1k1/35716

As a virtual public artist my work invites avatar communities to express their identity, explore their culture, and demand their civil rights.

4 thoughts on “Day 26

  1. Wow, you have been trekking! Love the “photos” but erm you know it isn’t considered “photography” unless you can prove that there was a significant amount of gaseous atmosphere between the subject and the recording instrument 😛

    Seriously, ty for the quite eloquent response on my wall. I am grateful that they just didn’t ban me outright but yeah “chauvinism” 🙁

  2. How could I forget to say the vid is wonderful! And the soundtrack adds a mood, made me somehow feel like I was the traveller. Quite nice!

  3. Aww, thanks & thanks, AND thanks mostly to the wonderful audio track by vo1k1 & Snowflake… their work does add a lot of gravitas to a dumb “document border crossing” vid! 🙂

  4. I wasn’t even going to post the video since it was so simple, but I’m glad I decided to, it really is a nice audio track, yay vo1k1 & Snowflake & CCMixter!

    And your comment made me watch it again and — duh! — realize something I missed. When I walk underwater you might notice two surface layers… I didn’t really think that much about it, but it did sort of puzzle me, but — duh! — it’s a halocline! The top layer you see is, of course, the water::air boundary, the one a bit below it is where the lighter top layer of fresh water hits the more dense layer of saltwater! 🙂 I guess on Corvo freshwater streams out to the ocean and salwater flows inland and in this case the vertical stratification is quite pronounced. Also the saltwater is warmer, so I was kind of motivated to stay under the halocline! 😛

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