context for this post: i include this post as it underpins my reason for being in the studio pulling prints which i include for assessment. i also feel that the manipulation of landscape images is also related to my video work (‘i slouch and i asymmetric’) which looks at symmetry, balance and the search for an ideal be it landscape and/or image and/or body. it also ties in with the text video work i have been doing ‘i see and i saw‘.
real and unreal landscape: following on from my weather forecast recordings and ideas about a real versus an ideal landscape, i have started to look at some of the photos i have taken of landscapes while out walking over the years and how i have edited them, presenting a more ‘ideal’ landscape of where i’ve been. often the unavoidable photo-editing programmes i use on the computer suggests an enhanced version; brighter, darkener or colour corrected depending on the original. sometimes i just crop the parts i don’t want to show or straighten according to what feels balanced. framed, balanced and corrected according to what aesthetic values and what power relations?
hyperreal landscapes: as images, they are not real landscapes anyway. even without editing, the landscape is framed by the camera and now represented by a set of digital information. Jean Baudrillard has written a lot about real experience being replaced by a hyperreal. in Simulacra and Simulations (1988), Baudrillard outlines how real experience is replaced in three ways; 1) by representation (first order: maps, images), 2) representation where the lines between real and representation are blurred, making it hard to tell the difference (second order) and 3) hyperreality where a simulation of something real precedes and replaces real experience; something more real than the real itself (third order)…. even better than the real thing.
making connections: i think the weather forecasts might make an interesting way to contrast a framed and ‘ideal’ landscape. the weather forecasts could also influence how and why images of landscapes are edited; correcting photos according to the weather conditions or overlaying the photographs with text. i have tried an overlay here, arbitrarily taking some of the texts from my weather forecast recordings. immediately the walking artist Hamish Fulton comes to mind. in relation to gender, i want to start thinking about perspective and position (or indeed edit) in relation to my lens based captures. other ideas – i think the words and text might be an interesting way to develop some print work but i still keep thinking about my 3d processes and how these ideas could relate to them on some level.
reflection: i need to consider the relationship that text has to image. are they together on something or contrasting some idea. there is also all the physical properties of their relationship – the scale, position, direction to each other. if every manipulation i do has some reason, does the visual of it get lost … is that the point? and can i live with that?
links and references:
Click to access Baudrillard_Simulacra%20and%20Simulations.pdf
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/courses/phi4804/baudrillard1.htm
elaine crowe 
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