August 2017 – Dietmar Tallroth

Symbols versus Representation

In Art & Photography

A while ago I mentioned that are ways to extend the meaning of a picture beyond its obvious content. In providing certain clues, which I called “trigger information”, the artist hopes that the viewers mind will do the rest of the work by unfolding new layers of meaning to the picture. Symbols are one of the better known types of such trigger information. Some of them are so strong that we quite automatically expand their underlying meaning in our mind. In the Western world, at least, the cross as symbol for Christianity has such an effect. While, therefore, symbols can be incredibly powerful, there are problems, too.

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The Joy of Seeing

August 12, 2017 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography / Lose thoughts / On Location

The business of photography is often, actually, hard work. We landscape photographers also like to highlight the long hikes, the heavy backpacks with gear, the early hours, the long hours and so on. Does this make our work miserable? No, not at all. Often, it is a bliss.

Today I spent the day at the Komio Nature Reserve in Tavastia, Finland. The area is little known, but good for hiking on eskers and exploring other glacial landscape features like small kettle lakes. My favorite spot there, however, is a small lake with the name Luutalammi. In 1933 the water level in the lake had been, for agricultural reasons, lowered by a meter. In 2003, when the Nature Reserve had been founded, the water level was raised back. In the 70 years inbetween new trees had grown on the shore and they then died off when flooded. This gives Luutalammi a frame of dead trees. I would love to call this poetically a sunken forest, but it is a bit too mundane for that: mostly the former trees are now bare, broken sticks. Like this:

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Things – A Discourse in 3 Cups of Coffee

August 4, 2017 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography / Lose thoughts

2017-05-Timelapse-Merged 1.jpg — Timelapse of a budding plant merged into one photo. (c) 2017 Dietmar Tallroth

But in physics, it’s dangerous to assume that things ‘exist’ in any conventional sense. Instead, the deeper question is: what sorts of processes give rise to the notion (or illusion) that something exists?
Karl Friston

A Western school of thinking from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus to the English mathematician and philosopher Alfred N. Whitehead (1861-1947) has maintained the idea that reality is better viewed and understood in terms of processes than in terms of substance, objects and things. This school, loosely termed “process philosophy” has implications on visual art, so let’s have a look.

Have you ever asked yourself, where the atoms and molecules in your body came from? No? Well, take a second to think about it. An easy answer, of course is: from your food. But this answer opens the question where the atoms in your food came from. If you continue tracing, you actually describe a history of the atoms in your body. We don’t have to go all the way back to the Big Bang. Closer to home, so to speak, there is a set of atoms that most likely are part of that history. We call this set: Earth.

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