The Rogue

Central to photo art is the question of how far to go. How much to change a photographic capture to transform it from ‘ordinary’ to ‘art’.

I was initially attracted to the patterns of the image repeated on the left and right sides of this work. I didn’t lose that attraction but as I worked with it I felt more strongly that taken at face value there wasn’t enough there to stand as art. A step or two later it had exploded. There wasn’t a middle ground – usually there is, and usually that’s where I find my art. Perhaps due to the high contrast of the photographic capture the pixels jumped from too subtle to too extreme.

It occurred to me that in this case the ‘art’ doesn’t exist at all in the visual spectrum – the ‘art’ is in the juxtaposition between two extremes. Not to come on like Yoko Ono, but in this case the art is conceptual. It’s not something that can be seen by the eye, but only in the mind.

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.

***

OK. I’d like to set the record straight from comments I made in my previous posting. Yes, I still count Apple as a company rooted in anticipatory learning, but, no, it did not change the way I listen to music by dismantling iTunes.

My fear was that I would no longer be able to keep a music library comprised about half of music downloaded from the iTunes store, but instead could only access that music via a subscription to the Apple cloud. I would no longer be able to own my music but could only access it for a monthly fee. Those fears proved to be unfounded, and in fact on PC’s iTunes is not going away at all. I hope it stays that way – I can clearly see that in the near future subscription streaming services will nickel and dime us to death. I also anticipate that it’s an economic model of great potential that will pervade everything we consume.

​I wonder … how will it apply to art.