Mucking about with the gorgeous and generous Ting Ting, Adam, Cha, Courtney, and John. On another cold night. With hit or miss success.

“Some Wilderness” attempted to playfully document my classmates’ relationships to animals and natural states. The most successful portraits depicted a ghillie-suit clad friend’s attempt to camouflage into a field (“Devolution of Hunting”); a belly dancer’s favorite party ensemble and the resemblance of her stately surroundings and physical characteristics to that of a dignified lion’s (“Party Royalty”); and the physical and behavioral similarities of two friends and their pet rodents (“A Fancy Rat Affinity” & “Nesting Instinct”). The collection of portraits was shoddily bound into a book, in which each page spread opened up into a 38″ x 4.3″ strip.

In my peer/teacher review, the “Meat As Ice” page got the worst reaction. But Mike was an absolute angel about putting up with me, so I won’t exclude it.

For my thesis project in Technocultural Studies I created large 12.5×36” montages illustrating man’s changing perception of self as a result of technologies of science, war, and entertainment. I composited CG-versions of fantasy objects modeled in Autodesk Maya, as well as assorted scans of source material, into my original photography.

There are display texts to go with each photo…..but I don’t think they’re super coherent. Oops.  They’re below if you want to wade through some muck.

AMERICAN PROMETHEUS

Two weeks after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6^th, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9^th, Life magazine expounded the science of atomic technology through editorials and background features that aimed to demystify the technology and ease pubic anxieties born out of the idea of nuclear proliferation. The texts played down the fact that America was responsible for the immediate deaths of over 130,000 Japanese people (another 70,000 would die in the years that followed), and the articles varied in their optimism towards a post-Atomic world (Boyer 8). Whereas Life’s editors promoted the idea that humans could live underground like ants—“many ants have long lived underground in entire satisfaction” (9)—if atomic warfare were to make the Earth’s surface unlivable, an editorial by New York Times military analyst Hanson W. Baldwin warned of the unleashing of a Frankenstein monster if America’s enemies developed nuclear warheads (9). The Frankenstein monster that Baldwin refers to was engineered from human body parts and “reanimated” through an electric machine. The monster sought revenge on its creator—Doctor Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus—for its lack of place in the world. Alternatively, scholars have interpreted Dr. Frankenstein’s death as a punishment for playing God or inventing a creature in man’s likeness.

Life magazine also identified the United States as a modern Prometheus, having introduced the “fire power” of nuclear fission to mankind, and warned the “political man” and the American public to never again “play God”. According to Greek mythology, Prometheus not only created man out of clay and mud but bestowed fire on man—fire stolen from the mantle of Zeus. In retribution for the theft, Zeus condemned Prometheus to the daily torture of having his ever-regenerating liver eaten out by a giant eagle that would visit the mountainside upon which the Titan was chained.

President Truman had a battery of reasons for dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: a swift and final end to WWII, especially in light of the projected casualties for a planned invasion of Japan; an opportunity to demonstrate technological-prowess to the Soviet Union (Kohn 148); as well as a desire to exact revenge upon Japan for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Whether or not the U.S. military’s tactical reasons for terrorizing Japan were historically valid, as firebombing had already brought Japan to the brink of surrender, at the time, the president and many American citizens felt justified in utilizing the bomb against the Japanese. Immediate shock intertwined with relief of the war’s end and feelings of retribution nonetheless preceded fear that an atomic bomb could one day be used against the United States.

“Physically untouched by the war, the United States at the moment of victory perceived itself as naked and vulnerable. Sole possessors and users of a devastating new instrument of mass destruction, Americans envisioned themselves not as a potential threat to other peoples, but as potential victims.” (Boyer 13)

Boyer, Paul. “The Whole World Gasped.” By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Kohn, Richard H. “History at Risk: The Case of the Enola Gay.” History Wars. Eds. Edward T. Linenthat and Tom Engelhardt. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996.

Collaborator: Samuel H.

ATOMIC MONSTERS

America “had emerged from World War II ‘with radically different practices and standards of permissible behavior towards others’” (Boyer 9). The A-bomb forced Americans to analyze their self-concepts as moral beings, the impermanence of life, and even how one views the sky—now stigmatized as a threatening point of entry for a nuclear attack (Kahn). Atomic themes flooded into mainstream culture through media, advertisements, music, fashion, irreverent humor, and children’s games. The science fiction movie industry capitalized on the very non-fictional existence of a technology that could bring about mutations (both grotesque creatures and superhuman powers), games of nuclear football (i.e. threats and Cold War deterrence policies) between nuclear powers, the need for recolonization, and, most climactically, a Doomsday scenario—the obliteration of all life on Earth and the destruction of the planet itself.

Boyer, Paul. “The Whole World Gasped.” By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. 3-26.

Kahn, Douglas. One day in TCS 6. Wellman Hall, UCD Campus, Davis. Fall 2005.

Collaborator: Becca C.

MILITARY CYBORG

In recent decades, the evolution of warfare techniques has prompted a regression in the ethical principles of the military cyborg, or human weapon operator, and the removal of the body from combat. Adapting to the constant fear of a nuclear apocalypse, the “Cold War military forces took on the character of systems, increasingly integrated through centralized control as the speed and scale of nuclear war erased the space of human decision-making and forced reliance on automated, programmed plans” (Edwards 7). The sterile computer interfaces and missile-nose views through which operators saw their targets during the Gulf War transformed men into “virtual cyborg[s]” (Robins and Levidow 120). Men were perceived to become as cold and unfeeling as the machines they controlled when “killing [was] done ‘at a distance’, through technological mediation, without the shock of direct confrontation (120) or the sight of a bloody aftermath.

Computers assist tasks of perception, reasoning, and control, such that the human operator makes fewer decisions. Technology also dehumanizes the enemy by reducing them to a target, often represented through some graphic arrangement of pixels—a white worm, in the case of Operation Igloo White:

Operation Igloo White ran from 1967 to 1972 at a cost ranging near $1 billion a year. Visiting reporters were dazzled by the high-tech, white-gloves-only scene inside the windowless center, where young soldiers sat at their displays in air-conditioned comfort, faces lit weirdly by the dim electric glow, directing the destruction of men and equipment as if playing a video game. (Edwards 3-4)

Igloo White, which took place during the Vietnam War, is an example of early human-machine integration that produced ineffective and impractical results. Camouflaged sensors lying along the Ho Chi Minh Trail would electrically submit a target’s location on a map to ISC (Infiltration Surveillance Center) computers. However, the sensors—disguised as twigs, plants, and animal droppings and designed to detect noise, body heat, motion, and the scent of urine (3 Edwards)—were duped by the Vietcong who would set them off with low-tech tactics such as tape-recorded truck noises and bags of urine (4). ISC soldiers would calculate the target’s direction and its rate of motion, and then radio the exact coordinates to Phantom F-4 jets that would fly out and release bombs over that area. Since the drops occurred at night, the pilots rarely saw their targets. For four years, the U.S. engaged in the computer-controlled bombardment of the supply trail and, though aware of its inefficiency, maintained the operation as a public relations exercise.

“In 1971 a Senate subcommittee report pointed out that the figure for ‘truck kills claimed by the Air Force [in Igloo White] last year greatly exceeds the number of trucks believed by the Embassy to be in all of North Vietnam’” (Edwards 4).

Edwards, Paul N. “‘We Defend Every Place’: Building the Cold War World.” The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. The MIT Press: Cambridge, 1997. 4-7.

Robins, Kevin, and Les Levidow. “Socializing the Cyborg Self.” The Cyborg Handbook. Gray, Chris Hables, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, eds. Routledge: New York, 1995. 120.

Collaborator: Daniel E.

A PLACE THAT IS REALLY FREE

The mass exodus of approximately ten million Africans into Europe and America through the Atlantic Slave Trade marked the beginning of over 500 years of oppression, whether in the form of slavery, racism, or less overt social inequality. Cultural critic Mark Dery defines Afrofuturism as a “speculative fiction that treats African-American concerns in the context of 20^th century technoculture” (“Black to the Future”), such that music, performance, and mythologies reshape predictions of a future African dystopia “over-determined by intimidating global scenarios, doomsday economic projections, weather predictions, medical reports on AIDS, and life-expectancy forecasts [that] demoralize [African-Americans]” (Eshun 291-292). Afrofuturists recognize race and “blackness” as malleable social constructs and chose to create a new social identity.

Sun Ra, jazz composer and creator of Afrofuturist mythology, grew up in Alabama during the racially turbulent 1920s and 1930s when mobs flogged, shot, lynched, burned, and tortured blacks; the KKK boasted five million members; and Jim Crow laws further encroached upon black civil rights (Lock 57). In the 1960s, Ra drew from the mysticism of the ancient Egyptians in constructing concept albums and cosmo dramas in which African-Americans overcome social oppression. He embraced ancient Egypt as the true historical legacy of African Americans. His name-change from Herman Poole Blount (45) to that of the Egyptian sun god confirms his belief that names and related ancient mysteries “conferred both a history and a destiny [that are] key to acquiring a future identity” (Hollings 103). The Egyptian name also associates him with “an advanced race of amphibious aliens” from the Sirius system, which according to Dogon folklore, visited Earth 6500 years ago and passed their alien knowledge to the people of predynastic Egypt, Sumeria, Mesopotamia, and Babylon.

In his 1974 film Space is the Place, Sun Ra landed on Earth with the intention of “[planning] for the salvation of the black race” (Hollings 111) by promoting space as a new homeland—a future—for African Americans. Aliens and space travel—recurrent topics in Ra’s music—operate as “image[s] of an imminent technological future, [which prompted Ra to advocate] the practicality of pursuing studies in the fields of electronics or engineering” and stay[ing] in school” (Lock 28). Lyrics from the song “Space is the Place”, in the 1973 album Concert for the Comet Kohoutek, exemplify Ra’s desire for technological liberation: “Outer space is a pleasant place / A place that’s really free / There’s no limit to the things that you can be.” Mark Dery explains in “Black to the Future”: “[Africans Americans] inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official histories undo what has been done to them; and technology, be it branding, forced sterilization, the Tuskegee experiment, or tasers, is too often brought to bear on black bodies.” Furthermore, by claiming an alternate history in which black civilizations encountered the first “technology”, in the form of alien knowledge, Ra instilled a sense of pride in an ethnic group historically subjugated by technology.

In the seventies, George Clinton and his collective Parliament-Funkadelic (P-Funk) adapted Ra’s space mythologies and ritualistic stage shows to the funk musical genre. Clinton adopted the personae of a funkatized mad scientist and ignored conventions of history and time in combining the visual aesthetics of gangsters, aliens, and disco into his act (Hollings 105). Clinton’s “Afronauts” or “brothers from another planet” returned to Earth on their Mothership to reclaim the pyramids. P-Funk’s highly reflective, lights-and-smoke laden Mothership alluded to the contemporary slavery of blacks, as it landed to the song “Swing Down Sweet Chariot”. According to funk historian Rickey Vincent, P-Funk not only identified Egyptians as a black civilization but “symbolically [claimed] blacks were responsible for civilization” (254).

Dery, Mark. “Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0.” The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink. Feb 1999.

Eshun, Kodwo. “Further Consideration on Afrofuturism.” CR: The New Centennial Review. 2003:3.2. 12 Nov. 2005.

Hollings, Ken. “The Solar Myth Approach: The Live Space Ritual: Sun Ra, Stockhausen, P-Funk, Hawkwind.” Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music. Ed. Rob Young. London: Continuum, 2002. 101-105.

Lock, Graham. Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton. Durhan & London: Duke University Press, 1999.

Vincent, Rickey. Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One. Macmillan, 1996.

Collaborator: Anthony C.

MUTANT GILLMEN

Whereas Ra and Clinton utilized existing genres of African-American music to underscore feelings of alienation or “otherness” in people who identify as neither African nor American, techno functioned as a new musical vehicle for the same space-aged mythologies. Although techno first emerged in the club scenes of suburban and affluent west side of Detroit (Williams 159), techno’s founding members—Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson—were inspired by a local DJ’s radio show that mixed up “New Wave synth pop, hop hip, P-funk, electro, early ambient music, [the German electro band] Kraftwerk, and sci-fi movie soundtracks” (159). The dilapidated inner-city neighborhoods, from which two of techno’s founders emerged, also heavily influenced the genre’s content. Derrick May alludes to the “blown up or neglected cities” (161) of science fiction films in describing late 1960s Detroit. Detroit functioned as the heart of the U.S. automobile manufacturing industry until “substitution of machines for labor and global outsourcing” (158) resulted in the industry’s economic downfall and the city’s degradation into something reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic landscape. The fact that robots usurped humans working in car factories led Juan Atkins to realize African Americans have had a history of being robots—engaging in unwanted or menial jobs—as slavery signifies the “original unit of capitalist labor” (170). But rather than see a robotic identity as dehumanizing, it “becomes a form of power; robots, after all, are stronger, tougher, and more enduring than mere humans” (161).

Cultural critic Mark Dery notes that ever since African-Americans achieved equal rights, Afrofuturism shifted its focus to signification (“Black to the Future”) to provide meaning and consolation to a race of people forced to act as subhuman slaves to white men. Noticeably absent in techno are the “traditional signifiers of the black body as gospel-derived vocal harmonies, oral narrative, and instrumental virtuosity” (Williams 163) in favor of cold, machine-driven rhythms.

The Detroit techno band Underground Resistance led a musical side-project called Drexciya, which in a 1997 album called The Quest, applied the theme of mutation to a race of sea creatures formed from pregnant African slaves thrown overboard during the Middle Passage. Drexciya’s myth creates “an origin of blackness that, since it is characterized by the concept of mutation rather than that of skin color, cannot be reduced to blackness” (171), easing feelings of alienation “from [an] African ancestry by the scythe of slavery and from an American heritage by being excluded from history” (Mosley 405). The sleeve notes of UR’s 1998 album Interstellar Fugitives claimed that a mutation of African American genes produced the “warrior” figures Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela (Williams 169). UR related cyborgs to African Americans, whether as products of human and alien technology or mutants arising from the actions of white capitalist greed. Since cyborgs by nature “incorporate rather than exclude humans, the comparison of African Americans to cyborgs erases the distinctions previously assumed to distinguish humanity from technology” (167). Thus, UR’s version of Afrofuturist mythology eliminates technology as a form of repression altogether.

Dery, Mark. “Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0.” The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink. Feb 1999.

Mosley, Walter. “Black to the Future (2000).” Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. Ed. Sheree R. Thomas. Warner Books, 2000. 405-406.

Williams, Ben. “Black Secret Technology: Detroit Technology: Detroit Techno in the Information Age.” Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life. Ed. Alondra Nelson and Tuy Linh N. Tu. New York: University Press, 2001. 167-171.

Collaborator: Anthony C.

SUBVERTING TECHNOLOGY

Gene Roddenberry created the Star Trek Universe through the humanist, exploratory, and scientific missions of starships and space stations featured in five different live-action television series. Though the shows originally aired between 1966-2005, the multi-billion dollar franchise continues to thrive, not only through the watching of reruns, but the interactive experiences offered by Star Trek video games, fan fiction, conventions, and a themed attraction in Las Vegas.

Fan fiction writers, in particular, embrace the series’ use of science, pseudoscience, and technobabble in new or reworked stories that also reappropriate Roddenberry’s characters. However, one subcommunity of mostly-female writers has written and published underground fanzines that subvert the technologies featured on Star Trek: The Original Series by emphasizing the fictionalized, homoerotic relationship between protagonists Kirk and Spock, rather than the scientific veracity of “hard SF”stories.

“K/S” or “slash” fiction simply elaborates upon the pre-existing physical and emotional closeness of Kirk and Spock, placing sex at the forefront in a departure from “soft SF” or stories informed by “ideas found in the human and social sciences, like sociology, psychology, or anthropology rather than the ‘natural’ or physical sciences” (Penley 148). Penley argues that women Slash writers “have defined technology in a way that includes the technologies of the body, the mind, and everyday life. It is a notion of technology that sees everything in the world (and out of this world) as interrelated and subject to influence by more utopian and imaginative desires than those embodied in existing technological hardware” (147-148).

Although Roddenberry championed the sexual and racial equality of women crew members, many slash writers contend that women characters in the original series were demeaned through foolish personas and by being denied of the opportunity to exercise the duties and privileges of their rank (Jenkins 183-184). The majority of slash writers, however, claim they’re just having fun (Penley 137), re-reading Star Trek as a women’s fiction and “[turning] to the more familiar and comfortable formulas of the soap [and] the romance [...] for models of storytelling technique” (Jenkins 187). This is not so strange a concept, considering one can purchase textbooks about imaginary phasers and tricorders as well as dictionaries of the artificial language spoken by Star Trek’s most belligerent race: Klingon.

Jenkins III, Henry. “Star Trek: Rerun Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Close Encounters: Film, Feminism and Science Fiction. Eds. Constance Penley, Elisabeth Lyon, Lynn Spigel, and Janet Bergstrom. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.

Penley, Constance. “Brownian Motion: Women, Tactics, and Technology.” Technoculture. Eds. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.

Collaborators: Tyler E. & Mateo B.

SLAVERY

In its most basic form, a robot is a programmable or automated machine with motor ability. The word “robot” has its etymological roots in the Slavic words rabota, which means “servitude”, and rabu “slave”, among other similar-sounding words that would suggest for robots a fate of performing hazardous labor like mining or menial labor like prostitution. Proposed similarities between man and cyborg threaten the (perceived) uniqueness of humans as the most intelligent creatures on the planet, who so far in history have had the upper hand in deciding the fate of the planet and all its life forms. How robots would interpret their bondage, if ever constructed with enough cognitive power to reflect upon their social status, is explored in science fiction films like Blade Runner and AI, as is the possibility of an autonomous intelligence out-smarting and out-performing the dominant human race (like Skynet of Terminator). After all, the survival of an organism depends on its ability to defend itself and minimize risks whenever possible. If robots or cyborgs (defined loosely as anything part human and part machine) employ the “digital logic” of their “problem-solving, self-controlling, symbol-processing systems” (Edwards 19) to recognize humans as a threat to their survival, the ethical issue arises if they qualify as a life form deserving of the right to exist and defend themselves from humans.

Edwards, Paul N. “‘We Defend Every Place’: Building the Cold War World.” The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. The MIT Press: Cambridge, 1997. 4-7.

Collaborators: Ting Ting L. & Courtney A.; Alex W. & Joe S.

“On Horror and Torture” was my reaction to President Bush’s March 2008 veto of a bill banning the CIA’s use of waterboarding as a form of interrogation. Metaphorically illuminating a dark topic, each image in this series is a montage of a dozen or more individually lit frames of the same scene at slightly different angles. Human subjects related to Iraqis fighting on (or caught up in by place/circumstance) the other side of the war on a sculptural and physical level. My classmates assumed the forced standing and bondage positions sustained by “enemy combatants”, as researched from guard-taken Abu Ghraib photographs and written accounts.

The methods of torture depicted in the photographs:

1. exposure/sleep deprivation
2. psychological humiliation
3. bondage
4. waterboarding
5. forced standing

It was my hope that the image of American people relating to “the other side” on a sculptural, physical level would be sufficiently unsettling to viewers who have never considered what it would be like to have their peers/children/countrymen (and women) on the receiving end of oppression.

On a lighter note, collaborating with my classmates on issues of disposition and dress produced some interesting personalized results: my dancer friends wore skin-tight spandex to simulate nudity and my fashionable friend wore a silk slip with a chain-and-shackles print.

The work of tableau-vivant photographer Gregory Crewdson, who constructs elaborate theatrical sets and directs the dramatic performances of his models, inspired “Horrorshow”. Mimicking Crewdson’s narrative technique of depicting a bizarre fragment—or cinematic frame—of a larger unrevealed story, my photos vaguely alluded to themes in horror films: isolation, ritual, fearful reverence of nature, infection, and persecution.

This shoot was stylized in the fashion of Rodney Smith’s work. Think sculpted figures in grandiose surroundings often veiled in sharp, cutting contrasts. We tried to use talcum powder to create some atmosphere, in place of a fog machine.

This was also my one and only attempt using a large format field camera. Had a mediocre success rate with 2 out of 3 shots exposed properly, but nothing beats that narrow sliver of shallow depth of field.

PS not relevant for clients who’ve already scheduled sessions :)

I was not able to form a strong client base in the last two years. So maybe it's time to take a different tactic and not try. Not try to the extent of putting people off? Brilliant!! I don't like interacting with (most) people, being out in the daylight, or asking people to pay me.

Since you are on this poorly listed site, you're more likely a friend not foe. And if you are indeed a stranger, well, be gone. OR don't hesitate to contact me, but please know my limitations. I shoot solo. I have lens and equipment limitations that would preclude certain types of shots like the studio headshot or the tight, telephoto shot of the bride and groom at the altar.

I'm equipped (and game) to shoot at anytime (twilight, daytime, dusk). I can indeed be bothered to change my sleeping habits for the right price.

As Sherlock Holmes once said, my fees never vary, except when I remit them altogether (you know, for noble stuff like the greater good).

To be more clear, I'm done with "public practice" (or being publicly listed? or trying to appeal to the common man/not offend? or having to convince clients that I am knowledgeable enough to operate a camera?). I'm only in business for those (friends or anyone) with eyes that can judge my skills for what they are/what they aspire to be.

later champs and chumps.