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The enclosed photographs of Melbourne are shot on a Canon Canonet 28 35mm film camera and post-produced using a desktop computer and Samsung Galaxy S4. The Canonet that I purchased from a Queenscliff thrift-shop in 2016 is a 1972 release, sharing its birthday with one of the most reproduced images in human history, The Blue Marble. This photograph of the earth was taken by the team of Apollo 17 who were the sixth and last humans to walk on the moon.
From stained glass windows to the radio, to the television screen, to wireless communication, to the smart phone, the spectacle of images has maintained its revelatory and religious character. It is The Blue Marble that inspired the Whole Earth Catalogue and a rediscovery of the planet we inhabit.
Hallmarked as the precursor to GOOGLE, The Whole Earth Catalogue’s slogan, “access to tools”, is still the technocratic ideology of today. These are symptoms and agents of the information age, a new industry that does not produce matter but produces light, does not produce new worlds but rediscovers old ones.1 The centenary stamp of 1934 is an example of this ahistorical rediscovery of the world – the Aborigine is in awe of the city as though he has returned to it, an expression of wonder at a civilization that is both from the future and from the past. There are absurdities in the expression of this Aborigine having ‘stumbled upon’ Melbourne. European occupation and terraforming could not escape the gaze of any Victorian Aborigine and any subtle changes to it were deeply perceived. More to the point: This experience of the discovery of a new world is an acutely European one and requires a suspension of disbelief made only possible by the psychosocial condition of the tourist. The notion that Aborigines could have an ahistorical and sublime experience of an urban image is misguided.
Today’s street corner reveals the city as though rediscovered in spite of never having left it. Melbourne has a history of returning to itself again and again. Stopping is rude. Loitering causes public nervousness. The idler in suspect, in this case Subject Ii, stands on the corner of Swanston and Elizabeth Street.2 The entire central city population has emerged from their daytime storage place. For the street crowd there is an undocumented agreement to meet and eat between the hours of twelve and two. The crowd moves in a rhythm of side glances, stand-offs and improvised shuffles. Innocent until proven motionless. Is this the same self-propelling upright motion that distinguished homo-erectus from its hunched-back cousin? |
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1. “The American cinema became the major site for trade in dematerialisation, a new industrial market which no longer produced matter but light, as the luminosity of those vast stained-glass windows of old was suddenly concentrated into the screen.”Page 41 Paul Virilio, 2009. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception (Radical Thinkers). Edition. Verso. 2. Swanston and Elizabeth streets are parallel. The speculation that there exists a corner between the two implies that the streets were supposed to meet. The generation of an adjacent internalised streetscape between the two is the city attempting to force a corner into being. This ‘corner’ extrudes laterally through the grid. |
3. Spiro Kostof, 1993. The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History. Reprint Edition. Bulfinch. Page 52. 4. Stella M. Barber, 2008. Your store Myer: the story of Australia’s leading department store. Focus. 5.Ibid |
6.Ibid 7.Ibid |
8. washingtonpost.com. 2016. washingtonpost.com.[ONLINE] Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bush_092701.html. [Accessed 30 December 2016]. 9. George Jones, Political Editor and Michael Smith. 2016. Britain needs you to shop, says Blair - Telegraph. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1357871/Britain-needs-you-to-shop-says-Blair.html. [Accessed 30 December 2016]. 10. Participate Melbourne :: Walking Plan. 2016. Participate Melbourne :: Walking Plan. [ONLINE] Available at: http://participate.melbourne.vic.gov.au/walkingplan. [Accessed 30 December 2016]. |
11. Herald Sun. 2016. Get tough call on aggressive beggars jeopardising Melbourne’s reputation. Herald Sun. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/get-tough-call-on-aggressivebeggars-jeopardising-melbournes-reputation/newsstory/d9792807e8287dd31138d7d36664a3d1. [Accessed 30 December 2016]. 12. Herald Sun. 2016. Plan to Clean Up South End of Elizabeth St in Melbourne CBD. Herald Sun. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/plan-to-clean-up-southern-endof-elizabeth-st-in-melbourne-cbd/news-story/aaf38e8c590463ec6b6a9602c92bd233. [Accessed 30 December 2016]. 13. The Service is a social media system that facilitates public and private interaction and through which the citizens of the city receive their news media. 14. Dr. Samuel Johnson disproved Bishop Berkeley’s immaterialist philosophy by kicking a large stone and stating, “I refute it thus.” Alexander, Samuel (2000). “Dr. Johnson as a Philosopher”. In Slater, John. Collected works of Samuel Alexander. 4.Continuum International Publishing Group. Page 119. |