Leaving the new Costco north of Cincinnati I had Google find the nearest Culver’s Burger. I was lead past the sprawling VOA Metropark, not only to a late lunch but down a rabbit hole spanning from the dawn of the Age of Radio to the Cold War to our post industrial present.
Next to the burger joint was a field populated by a 831 foot radio tower, which according to Wikipedia “WLW’s distinctive diamond-shaped antenna is featured on the official seal of the City of Mason. Designed and erected by the Blaw-Knox Tower company in 1934, it was the second of its type to be built, after WSM‘s in Nashville, Tennessee, and is one of eight still operational in the United States.”
I’d assumed it has something to do with the Voice of America, whose 600 acre broadcasting facility became the Voice of America Metropark after ceasing broadcast operations in 1994. The tower had it’s own history, however, as depicted on this historical marker:
BLAW-KNOX ANTENNA
In 1922, during the infancy of broadcast letters WLW were assigned to the station begun by. Cincinnatian Powell Crosley, Jr. The station moved its transmitting operations to Mason in 1928, and by April 17, 1934, WLW had permission to operate experimentally at 500.000 watts. Becoming the radio and only commercial station to broadcast at this superpower, WLW was formally opened at 500,000 watts by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on May 2, 1934. Using its 831-foot Blaw-Knox antenna to broadcast at ten times the power of any station, it earned the title “The Nation’s Station.” Locals reported hearing broadcasts on barbed wire fences, milking machines, rain spouts, water faucets, and radiators. The custom built transmitter, a joint venture between RCA, GE, and Westinghouse, remained in operation until March 1, 1939 when the Federal Communications Commission Communications Commission (FCC) ordered the station. to return to broadcasting at 50.000 watts
THE VOICE OF AMERICA BETHANY STATION
During the height of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt turned to the innovative engineers of the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation to build powerful short wave radio transmitters capable of delivering broadcasts overseas. On farm fields near Crosley’s WLW facility, six 200 kilowatt transmitters and 24 directional reentrant rhombic antennas were built and on September 23, 1944, the Voice of America Bethany Station was dedicated. The first broadcast was directed at Nazi Germany and began with, “We shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or it may be bad, but we will tell you the truth.” For more than fifty years, the Voice of America Bethany Station delivered “truthful news” to the people of Europe, Africa, South America, and parts of Asia… New technology and budget cuts resulted in the silencing of the Bethany Station in 1994.
The company was founded by pioneer radio station operator Powel Crosley and was based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Its flagship station, WLW (AM), was first licensed in March 1922.[5] Most of its broadcast properties adopted call signs with “WLW” as the first three letters. In the 1930s, WLW had an effective power of 500,000 watts, and was the only commercial U.S. AM broadcasting station ever to be permitted to transmit regularly with more than 50,000 watts. The 500,000 watt transmissions were only allowed by the FCC in the “experimental” hours, midnight to 6:00 AM, and the signal was heard in many places, including Europe.[6]
By the 1950s, the company operated a small television network in Ohio and Indiana.[6]
The deserted ruins of the major Crosley manufacturing facility can still be seen on the west side of I-75, just north of the area where the Cincinnati Museum Center (previously the Union Terminal train station) is currently located and near where Crosley Field once stood.
Stålenhag grew up in a rural environment near Stockholm,[2] and began illustrating local landscapes at a young age. He was inspired by different artists, including Lars Jonsson.[3] Stålenhag experimented with science fiction artwork after discovering concept artists such as Ralph McQuarrie and Syd Mead; initially, this body of work was done as a side project, without any planning behind it. Thematically, his work often combines his childhood with themes from sci-fi movies, resulting in a stereotypical Swedish landscape with a neofuturistic bent.[2][4] According to Stålenhag, this focus originates from his perceived lack of connection with adulthood, with the science fiction elements being added in part to draw audience attention and partly to influence the work’s mood.[5] These ideas result in a body of work that can feature giant robots and megastructures alongside regular Swedish items like Volvo and Saab cars.[3]
Stålenhag uses a Wacom tablet and computer for his work, which is designed to resemble oil painting.[2][3] Initially, he attempted to use various physical media to mimic a more traditional style, including gouache. Even after switching to digital methods, he has stated that he puts “a lot of effort into making the digital brushes behave naturally and preserve a certain amount of ‘handwriting’ in the brush strokes.” The majority of his work is based on pre-existing photographs that he takes; these are then used as a starting point for a number of rough sketches before the final work is completed.[5]
We believe in the power of artisanal digital photography as a means of capturing the beauty of the everyday and expressing oneself through creativity and craftsmanship. We embrace both the traditional aesthetic of using low cost point and shoot cameras and freeware photo editing software, as well as the collaboration with technology to produce work that exceeds the capability of the human photographer alone.
Our mission is to strike a balance between tradition and technology, leveraging the best of both worlds to create images that are not only aesthetically stunning, but also imbued with the personal style and character of the photographer. We believe that the limitations imposed by budget-friendly equipment can be a source of inspiration, forcing photographers to focus on the essentials of composition and light and opening up new avenues for creativity. At the same time, we recognize the importance of embracing technology in elevating the art of photography.
We embrace the philosophy of hybrid digital photography, taking the time to carefully craft each image using both manual controls and digital tools. We reject the limitations imposed by outdated photography methods and embrace the full range of possibilities offered by technology, while never losing sight of the importance of personal style and craftsmanship.
We call on all photographers to join us in our mission to balance tradition and technology in the pursuit of maximum impact. We invite you to experiment with different techniques and tools, to take the time to carefully craft each image, and to never be afraid to embrace new technology and push the boundaries of what is possible, all while maintaining the personal touch and style that makes your photography truly unique.
In conclusion, the Artisanal Digital Photography Manifesto is a call to action for all those who believe in the power of photography as a means of capturing the beauty of the everyday and expressing oneself through creativity and craftsmanship. Join us in our mission to strike a balance between tradition and technology and create images that are truly impactful.
“Jack Davison is one of the U.K.’s leading portrait photographers, known for his boldly experimental, libertine approach to image-making. Davison studied English literature but has been interested in photography since he was a teenager, when he began taking pictures of friends and family in rural Essex. The self-taught photographer has carved his own path fusing diverse styles, moving between art history and internet culture references, from Man Ray to Tumblr. He also works with both analog and digital cameras and techniques. Davison’s ever-changing subject matter and mix of methodologies reflect his voracious curiosity as an artist. His photographs are unified by an interest in chiaroscuro. In 2016, Davison mounted his first solo exhibition at Foam Fotografiemuseum.”
Eric Pickersgill is an artist who has created a series of images of people with their phones removed. It reveals the true costs of our supposedly interconnected reality. From his website :
” The work began as I sat in a café’ one morning. This is what I wrote about my observation:
Family sitting next to me at Illium café in Troy, NY is so disconnected from one another. Not much talking. Father and two daughters have their own phones out. Mom doesn’t have one or chooses to leave it put away. She stares out the window, sad and alone in the company of her closest family.”
” Adam Magyar is a computer geek, a college dropout, a self-taught photographer, a high-tech Rube Goldberg, a world traveler, and a conceptual artist of growing global acclaim.”
“In a growing body of photographic and video art done over the past decade, Magyar bends conventional representations of time and space, stretching milliseconds into minutes, freezing moments with a resolution that the naked eye could never have perceived.”
His work encompasses both still images and video, a number of examples of which are posted to Vimeo, such as this:
“We just don’t use this time for observing things, and we don’t necessarily have to — I’m just trying to change the perceptions of these moments, and time, and trying to make something that makes you experience some kind of being, and precious time passing in a situation that is absolutely non-existent.”
“Originating in Taoism during China’s Song dynasty (960-1279) before being passed onto Zen Buddhism, wabi-sabi was originally seen as an austere, restrained form of appreciation. Today it encapsulates a more relaxed acceptance of transience, nature and melancholy, favouring the imperfect and incomplete in everything, from architecture to pottery to flower arranging.
Wabi, which roughly means ‘the elegant beauty of humble simplicity’, and sabi, which means ‘the passing of time and subsequent deterioration’, were combined to form a sense unique to Japan and pivotal to Japanese culture. But just as Buddhist monks believed that words were the enemy of understanding, this description can only scratch the surface of the topic.”
“Born of the Mahayana Buddhist understanding of life as impermanent, marked by suffering and ultimately empty, wabi-sabi adds to that recognition a distinctly Japanese sensitivity to natural processes and materials, and to the pleasures of simplicity. Whereas classical Western aesthetic ideals were of beauty and perfection, of symmetry and a fine finish, wabi-sabi is hard-nosed and realistic: Nothing lasts, nothing is perfect. Accepting these hard facts opens the door to the realistic appreciation of a deeper beauty.”
Youtube offers this:
And from TEDx:
Here’s a documentary from the BBC:
All in all an intriguing aesthetic of imperfection, impermanence and transcendence that serves as a deep insight into Japanese culture
UPDATE: Arthur I Miller, the author of the book “The Artist in the Machine” shares his thoughts on AI and creativity in an interview on Nautilus :
” Each part of a machine is made by means of the good old laws of Newtonian physics, which were deterministic. But when you put this conglomeration together, it’s capable of unpredictable or chaotic behavior. Unpredictability is one of the hallmarks of creativity. So right from the word go, machines can be creative.”
A collection of ‘faceless portraits’ rendered by an artificial intelligence were featured at the HG Contemporary gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan.
Faceless Portrait of a Merchant, one of the AI portraits produced by Ahmed Elgammal and AICAN. (Artrendex Inc.)
Here is a video from Mashable of the gallery opening with information about the AI software that produced these portraits and it’s creator, Ahmed Elgammal, who gave this TEDX talk:
You can see the catalog of the gallery show, including images of each painting, in pdf form here.
This an overview of Ahmed Elgammal’s work, from the show ‘State of the Arts NJ’. It’s interesting to note that when he sits at his terminal, it’s running Ubuntu:
Faceless Portrait #5, 2019. [Image: AICAN/Dr. Ahmed Elgammal/courtesy HG Contemporary]
” Elgammal is doing something different. First, he asked AICAN to scan and analyze a vast body of artistic masterpieces to build a database of expert brushstrokes, themes, and imagery. Then he used what’s called an “adversarial network” technique to teach the machine to think up its own iterations. Adversarial networks basically give a machine two conflicting tasks, like a right brain versus left brain that will ultimately result in compromise.”
” Over the course of more than 15 years, Andrew Wyeth created 250 secret paintings. He hid them from everyone—including his wife, who was also his business manager—in the loft of a millhouse near his home in rural Pennsylvania. When they were discovered, in 1986, they generated a media frenzy that extended well beyond the art world. The Helga paintings, as they came to be called, all depicted a single subject: Helga Testorf. ”
Oddly, and not mentioned in The Atlantic’s article or the film, we have Monty Python alumni Micheal Palin to credit with finding the reclusive model. Here is an article from “Big Think”.
marksblog 