San Ardo oil fields on Highway 101 — by Joe Reifer
Watching, Reading, Listening, Doing (WRLD) is an experiment in paring down artistic input/output into quick summaries to refer back to. Disparate inputs help create interesting output. Let’s see what’s been in the blender lately.
San Ardo oil field gigapan: The image above is composed of 2 rows of 7 images, with 2 bracketed shots at each camera position. The iPhone app PanoCalc was useful in figuring out the number of photos to shoot. The images were stitched in PTGui Pro using a Mercator projection. The final image is 10,000 x 8,000 (80 megapixels). Below is a zoomable version created using Pano2VR.
Reading
Charles Burns continues to amaze me with his unique vision in the 2nd installment of his darkly original, narrative-shifting trilogy – The Hive. Highly recommended. The ASMP Guide to New Markets in Photography was worth reading for the 50 concise photographer biographies. Judy Herrmann’s values analysis exercises are also quite good. The remaining material is a high level overview of changes in the photography industry, but the advice is rather general. Worth checking out from the library for photographers of all levels. May be of particular interest to photography students who don’t already understand the industry. If you enjoyed David Hurn and Bill Jay’s On Being a Photographer, you might try tracking down Occam’s Razor. What was true about the art world 20 years ago is even more true today. The photography world needs an articulate curmudgeon like Bill Jay to stay honest. I wish the photo blog world had half of his wit and insight.
Watching
Aki Kaurismaki’s Le Havre blew me away. A bohemian shoe shine man protects an African refugee from being deported. Those of you familiar with Kaurismaki’s long history of dour films will be surprised how uplifting Le Havre is. And the cinematography is fantastic. Highly recommended.
I really enjoyed this Thomas Pynchon documentary with music by The Residents. The film is a goofy speculation about Pynchon’s choice to remain out of the public eye. Word on the street is that a new Pynchon novel called Bleeding Edge may be released this year.
Another excellent holiday gift (thanks ss!) was Cul De Sac. In 1995, a 35 year-old plumber and ex-soldier from suburban San Diego dug an 18 foot hole in his back yard looking for gold. Apparently meth was involved. He ended up stealing a tank from the National Guard and went on a rampage crushing cars before the police opened the tank and shot him. A really interesting meditation on the decline of the post WWII 50′s suburban dream.
Listening
ALTO! is a three piece band from Portland, Oregon with Derek Monypeny on guitar, and Steven T. Stone / Kyle Reid Emory on drums /electronics. Somewhere between krautrock, outrock, progrock, and experimental. Listen to side one of the album on ALTO!’s Bandcamp page, download a track for free, or name your price to buy the whole album.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s recently restored 1973 film World on a Wire is a paranoid dystopian epic. The only science fiction film Fassbinder ever made, World on a Wire was filmed in 16mm for German television, and largely forgotten. Thanks to the Fassbinder Foundation, we can finally view this lost classic that predates Blade Runner by 9 years.
And World on a Wire is recommended viewing for Philip K. Dick fans. A scientist named Stiller who runs a virtual world discovers a corporate conspiracy to use the simulation for financial gain. People disappear or are forgotten. Newspaper articles mysteriously change. And soon, much more troubling questions emerge about the nature of existence.
This lo-fi sci-fi film is refreshingly free of CGI and special effects. The use of mirrors and reflections in the cinematography is superb, and the electronic incidental music is wild. Ed Halter’s article for Criterion provides an excellent overview of the film. The special features include an excellent interview with Fassbinder scholar Gerd Gemünden. Available on DVD or on Blu-ray.
The new Geoff Dyer book Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room, is a light take on a heavy film — Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. In a notable passage, Dyer talks about the time span in our life that we’re receptive to forming our personal favorite works of art. The time in our late teens and twenties when certain films, books, and music become our lifelong favorites. For me, some of these films were Brazil, Blade Runner, and Blue Velvet. At a certain point, this openness may not come naturally anymore. Those of you who are over 40 know what I’m talking about. I want to stay open to that feeling.
I’ve been following author and free-jazz aficionado Jeff Jackson’s Destination Out for a long time, and I’m also connected to him on Goodreads where he gave Zona a favorable review. I really enjoyed Dyer’s photography book, The Ongoing Moment, so I picked up a copy of Zona, and rented Tarkovsky’s Stalker.
If we’re lucky, every once in a while we encounter a work of art that changes our perception of how deeply art can affect us. Something truly exceptional. Stalker is a mind-blowing film. If you’re interested in the strange time warps and dream states that can be encountered in night photography, Stalker is an amazing journey. I’ve never seen a film that captures the state of hyper-awareness of exploring abandoned places so well. The intense attention to every little sound and texture. And the location in Stalker takes on a life of its own.
So do you remember the time period in your life when you were most receptive to artistic input? When a 2 1/2 hour subtitled movie was something to look forward to? If you’re open to that feeling, watch Stalker and let me know what you think.
Stalker is on DVD at Netflix but not available streaming. The DVD is $16-24 at Amazon, or perhaps you’re lucky enough to have a good local video rental store.
If you’re not familiar with the film at all, I encourage you not to look up Stalker online. Don’t look at YouTube or IMDB. Just track down the DVD and set aside the time to watch. If you enjoy the film, Dyer’s book is a lot of fun. If enough people who live in the San Francisco Bay Area are interested in discussing the film and the book, I will schedule a meetup at a bar in April to compare notes. Until then, enjoy your trip to the Zone.
Spending too much time on the computer lately? Here are some recent book recommendations:
The Deep Focus series is a collection of pocket-sized books that are a love letter to a quirky film. Josh Wilker’s homage to The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training is one of the most insightful books I’ve read about growing up in the 1970′s. If you had feathered hair, played Little League, and remember Carter vs. Reagan, this book is for you.
The first book in the Deep Focus series is Jonathan Lethem’s wide ranging analysis of the classic John Carpenter film They Live. I really enjoyed watching the film again after reading the book. You can watch They Live on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Lethem also has a forthcoming book in the 33 1/3 music series on Talking Heads’ Fear of Music.
A friend sent me a review copy of Steve Erickson’s forthcoming book These Dreams of You. I’ve been a fan of Erickson’s work since the late 80′s when the same friend turned me on to Days Between Stations. Thomas Pynchon wrote a blurb for this brilliant first novel that holds true for much of Erickson’s work:
Steve Erickson has that rare and luminous gift for reporting back from the nocturnal side of reality, along with an engagingly romantic attitude and the fierce imaginative energy of a born storyteller.
These Dreams of You follows an L.A. family’s adoption of an Ethiopian girl just after the election of Barack Obama. Erickson weaves his interest in music, politics, and race into the family’s search for their daughter’s history. There are some amazing episodes in These Dreams of You, but overall it’s not as cohesive as some of his other work. Of course any kind of follow up to Erickson’s brilliant ode to cinema Zeroville would be tough.
While I was in Tucson, I picked up a copy of the book Junkyard Jets at the Pima Air & Space Museum. Junkyard Jets is a look inside the airplane storage and scrapping industry. If you’re a junkyard fan, you need this book!
When I meet someone for the first time, and the conversation turns to movies, I always ask “What is your favorite Coen Brothers film?” I picked up this Virgin film series book used and was pleasantly surprised by the interesting analysis of their first 10 films, and also the information on the critical reception.
Two dudes gettin’ drunk and stoned and playing with as many amps as we possibly can and basically just playing Melvins and Earth riffs but trying to play them slower than those bands played them. — Sunn O)))
I enjoyed watching the heavy rock documentary film Such Hawks Such Hounds. The full documentary is available above on YouTube, or the DVD is available directly from the filmmakers.
This time-lapse documents a 2-hour visit to Pier 24 in San Francisco to see the Here exhibit that features over 700 photographs of the Bay Area. Visiting Pier 24 is free, but you need to make an appointment online a few weeks in advance.
Time-lapse technical details: Still photography is allowed inside Pier 24, you just can’t use a flash. I asked permission before making this time-lapse. I used the string from a sweatshirt to hang a GoPro HD camera around my neck (Flavor Flav style). The camera took a photo every 5 seconds. The time-lapse was assembled at 6fps in Quicktime 7 Pro. Titles and music were added in iMovie. As the show is Bay Area focused and has suburban themes, I thought music by The Residents would be appropriate.
I hope you enjoy the time-lapse tour, and that you are inspired to book a 2 hour time slot to visit Pier 24!
Update: Thanks to Blake Andrews for spreading the word about my tour of Pier 24.
ALTO! is a three piece band from Portland, Oregon with Derek Monypeny on guitar, and Steven T. Stone / Kyle Reid Emory on drums /electronics. Somewhere between krautrock, outrock, progrock, and experimental. Listen to side one of the album on ALTO!’s Bandcamp page, download a track for free, or name your price to buy the whole album.
