"Jim Charter" <jrc### [at] aolcom> wrote in message
news:3edba7e3@news.povray.org...
|
| Here the role of the artist is not found in the invention of an
| expressive subject, or even in the expressive mimesis of an
| existing subject, but rather, in the exercise of a choice of subject.

Tek feels the same way. Perhaps this is a geographic issue. Where I'm
at, I see pictures expressing this sentemantality on every other page of
Time and Newsweek magazines. It has become trite. Maybe I'm just a
cynic.

| Afterall, we are shown a postcard commoditization of an exotic
| culture at a time when that culture just happens to be the focus
| of western foreign policy.  And the theme of the
| picture, old vs new, not to meantion western commoditization,
| just happens to be what is at issue in the current conflict.
| Further, the picture has a geometric stability and serenity.
| The simple beauty of the picture, and a certain inscrutability
| of the structures underscores the geometric basis of both
| architecture and picture composition.

I wouldn't ascribe such grand aspirations to a person who would do this:
http://images.webshots.com/ProThumbs/23/12823_wallpaper280.jpg


| Raytracing provides a different wrinkle in the old debate
| between synthesis and mimesis in art, precisely because
| it achieves mimesis through synthesis.  Pictures are achieved
| in a two step process,  first making a virtual model of the
| subject, then taking a virtual snapshot of it.  We refer to
| what results with legacy terms such as "picture" or "image"
| that don't quite fit.  Given this newness, it is not yet clear
| what different statements are made when the raytraced image is
| taken from the culture of images, the culture of real objects
| and vistas, or from the individual imagination.

This is why I do not share code anymore, not even to the very limited
extent that I share pictures here. I like to keep everything as simply a
picture, when as you said the nature of code, models, etc. make a ray
traced image much more than that. This entry shows how close raytracing
can be to photography, even though the processes are so different. Here,
a near copy of a photograph was "built" and then essentially
rephotographed with almost nothing being added to, or taken away from,
the image.

| I noticed that the artist is from Iceland.  I remember a certain
| paradox that I noticed when I spent a summer in the North West
| Territories of Canada.  There is both the cultural isolation
| imposed by the distance, but also a equalizing of cultural
| experience because, since it is a long way to "anywhere",
| anywhere is where people would travel. Amsterdam and Vancover are
| held up to comparison as possible sources of amusement. So I also
| wondered how his geographic location might also have effected
| his choice of subject.

I just got back from Montreal, and for various reasons am actually
considering moving there, but that is an entirely different discussion.

 -Shay

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