ABOUT THE PROJECT (Beta / more to come):

Since 2015, REVISITED has led me from photography to video, film, 360°VR video and (3D) generated representations of one and ‘the same’ place, the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. In every medial representation, as well as in every translation of the source material I created using a wide variety of techniques, the place can be clearly recognized as such due to topological reasons and experiential values.

Material and immaterial qualities of the city that are often associated with architecture, but also with non-places and vegetation characteristics, make up a place and are necessary for an individuals own integration, orientation and identification within it. Events and stories associated with the so-called lived space further develop its ‘image’. Just as the Sunset Strip is associated with its landmarks and all the stories woven around them like legends, Los Angeles and Southern California is associated with sun, beach, carefreeness and palm trees as well as streets, highways, cars and concrete.

Most species of palms, like the Mexican fan palm that is now characteristic for the cityscape of Los Angeles, are not indigenous to the area. Most of them have been planted in the early 20th century for practical reasons and then became part of an artificially created image of the city that today functions as its identity anchor. Seen from an environmental perspective, they are neither sustainable nor suitable for this increasingly hot and sunny area of the world as they need far too much water and at the same time hardly provide any shade.

Quoting a scene from ‘Dune’ by Denis Villeneuve (2021) that takes place in the capital of the desert planet Arrakis:

Paul: Hello. Gardener: You shouldn't be out here at this hour of the day.
Paul: I did not know date palms can even be found out here.
Gardener: Oh. These aren’t indigenous. They cant survive without me. Each one of these drinks each day the equivalent of five men. 20 palm trees. A hundred lives.
Paul: Should we remove them? Save the water?
Gardener: No. No. These are sacred; old dream.

The palm trees omnipresence and popularity as a motif is anchored within cultural memory and our profane, romanticized idea of the palm tree. It is associated with ‘sex, glamour and celebrity’ 3 as well as a sacred ‘old dream’. With Wanderlust, the light sea breeze on the French Riviera, the eternal summer, the tropics, the exotic Orient or the carefreeness in sunny California. A region whose image it has co-created, but from whose skyline the so-called ‘Skydusters’ will most likely disappear during this century. An event which the L.A. Times referred to as ‘The death of a star’. 4 Having some of these thoughts and associations in mind I remodelled all palm trees in Ed Ruscha‘s book ‘A Few Palm Trees’ in a 3D program called Blender.

Ruschas book from 1971 depicts a collection of 14 palm trees together with information about where and how the photographs were taken. For my project it is therefore defined as the so-called ‘parent’, my 3D palm trees as ‘first children’ of this parent and the place the palm trees were/are located, as ‘root location’.

Terms like these are used in both real life and programming. In programming, they refer to hierarchical relationships within data structures, such as trees and graphs, where ‘parent’ and ‘child’ denote nodes with a direct connection, and ‘root’ signifies the topmost node. Metaphorically they describe dependency constructs and relationships within the project, reflecting the interconnected nature of documentation and imitation, as well as the digital world 5 in general.

The analog cutout method Ruscha chose gives his images a model-like appeal that, if interpreted that way, plays with the kind of ‘fake or real’ and ‘true or false’ idea my project emphasizes. In contrast to his parents, that are based on real palm trees, my 14 ‘children’ are depicted as wireframes. The foundational layer for all 3D objects, whether they are further processed as 3D-printed objects or digitally rendered. They resemble templates in a coloring book, waiting to be interpreted.

‘The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.’

This short excerpt from a poem by Wallace Stevens with the revealing title ‘Of Mere Being’ from 1971 already seems to call attention to the (semi-)artificial visual landscapes we consume today, both still or moving, often without us even being aware.

Apart from photography — at least that which is traditionally defined by light directly writing on a light-sensitive layer, for example a negative —, visual landscapes are increasingly digitally generated, edited, altered, retouched, prompted, 3D modelled and/or supplemented by it.

Paul Virilio who reflected upon the change of perception of reality in the individual and the increasing disability to distinguish between the factual and the virtual, already pointed out in his book ‘The Vision Machine’ from 1994 that ‘the time frequency of light has become a determining factor in the apperception of phenomena, leaving the spatial frequency of matter for dead [...] (lines on a screen are never still, resolution, detail, ...) [The] virtual and the real are one and the same thing for the sensor or the human observer.’

It is the way our bodily senses perceive things, which makes our reality what it is: real, actual, or virtual.

Classic photography is an essential part of our society whose visual culture is based to a large extent on exactly this very photographic foundation that has been sourced to train neural networks and generative AI. It plays a crucial role in how we humans perceive and understand the world around us and shapes public opinion. Regardless of whether it is used as a form of artistic expression or as a form of documentation. What was once considered a reliable medium for depicting an ‘actual state’ has been undergoing a radical change since the advent of digital photography which has made editing and retouching much easier; and not least through 3D or generative AI.

Responsible use of image-changing, supplementary or holistic-generative techniques - and learning to critically deal with a world in which photographs and other medial representations of actually experienced moments mix with high-quality „fake“ visual content and hybrids - is therefore of great social importance. In a rapidly evolving world, flooded with information that often casually passes by, the challenge of discerning between authentic, documented content and generated material is not exclusive to the untrained. Boundaries blur, suspension of disbelief and subjectivity of perception contribute to the condiffusion.

CON[DIF]FUSION (VERSE I)

In shadows cast by setting sun,
We question what is real and what is not.
In dreams, we find the line undone,
A fleeting truth that can‘t be bought.

In whispers of the night‘s embrace,
The boundaries blur, the edges fade.
We chase illusions, in this endless race,
Seeking clarity, in the twilight‘s shade.

Amidst the palms that dance and sway,
We ponder life‘s elusive way.
In rhythm, truth we will perceive
, Their fronds like whispers in the breeze.

More information about REVISITED: DOWNLOAD HERE