"Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald


I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
-Alan Watts
Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts

Monday, January 16, 2012

New Works of the Morning (1/16/2012)

I had a difficult time sleeping throughout the night and, to be honest, had a rather odd dream. There was nothing overtly strange about it except how cemented it was in reality. No laws of physics were broken or thrown away with. The only strange thing about it was that there was nothing strange about it. Anyway, I woke up this morning, wandered down to my friend Anthony's place and woke him up asking if he wanted to go to the bookstore and get some breakfast or brunch. After hearing that he too did not sleep well I decided it was best if I give him some more time to rest, I returned to my room and picked up my camera. I discovered something though. While I normally create while listening to music I may have to stop doing so from time to time. The first image I'm going to show you comes equipped with a sound clip. Actually it will be an entire song because I'm not going to bother to edit out the specific portion that took me from the beginning to end of making the image. Anyway, the song is called "God Fearing Man" by Ben Harper (personal website here). It features an instrument known as the Weissenborn lap-slide guitar, favored by Mr. Harper. I think that the meshing of the slide guitar portions of the song combined with the subject matter and visual texture of the original photograph contributed greatly to the resulting image. I find it almost works better (as in it is better understood) when it accompanies the music. Though it is not my intention to create images that accompany music but rather images that posses a musical quality I cannot help but feel a significant connection between the image and musical piece. This I attribute to the fact that I was listening to it, rather loudly, while creating the final image. However, if I am to take a step back and look at the situation a different way I could make the argument that my current train of thought is only possible because I desire it to be so and that I'm projecting a biased opinion and created an argument to make sense of that. Whichever it may be I'll let you all be the judge of that.

The image has no name yet but the text "Created while listening to God Fearing Man by Ben Harper" accompanies it. Possibly a mistake, but for the purpose of this bolg post I feel it serves as supporting evidence.



And here is the song: (Please, if you will let it play through for a bit. It wasn't until the energetic solo that I created the image.) I couldn't upload the mp3 with this blogging site. Probably best since even though it could be considered for educational purposes and thus be filed under the "fair use act" I'd best not tread on thin ice. If you'd be so willing, please open it up in a new tab or window and open this image up. Thank you.

Below, I have another image that was made with no external stimuli such as music. Rather, it was made by an open window and though I live in New York City it has been a surprisingly quiet morning, just the wind has been blowing. This image was made before the first image in this post.





This is an un-edited image and my only thoughts towards editing it are to possibly crop a bit off of the bottom.

I sincerely thank you for your time,

Peace


-S.


UPDATE 1/16/2012:

Here is the alternate crop of the second image:


Sunday, June 5, 2011

An Interesting Read About the Need for Artists

A close friend of mine wanted to bring to my attention an article he'd recently read. THIS article, entitled Why We Need Artists from the Center for Faith and Work discusses the importance of art and those that create it from a christian perspective which I found quite interesting.  Something I'd like to add is that this article doesn't make the claim that all artists are religious or that it is necessary for religion to be present in the heart of creation.  Rather, the beautiful subjectivity of art, the very nature of it being dependent on the interpretation made by the viewer allows it to be used as a tool of faith and faith building even if that was not the intent of the artist. Something worth thinking about.  Anyway I strongly recommend this article to any and all who've got five minutes time to spare in their day.

Sincerely,


-S.