Showing posts with label landscape. Show all posts

Saturday, 29 May 2010

Photography and Place-writing of Frank Gohlke

When an idea or a phenomenon becomes widely familiar, it is easy to forget that it came from somewhere, that there is a specific historical moment (of indeterminate duration) before which the thing did not exist.
...
Among the few positive things we humans may do that other species don’t is to create Places. We can quibble about the details, but most people who have thought seriously about the matter would recognize a few necessary components in any satisfactory definition: places, like landscapes, do not occur naturally; they are artifacts. A place is not a landscape; places are contained within landscapes. Place is a possibility wherever humans linger, but it’s not inevitable. Sometimes we just occupy space. Places can be created intentionally or as a side effect of other actions with other intentions. Place seems to be more likely to come into being the longer we stay put, but many nomadic cultures roam in landscapes whose minutest features are named, recognized, and given a place in the story of a people and a world.

Place has something to do with memory.

"An entire new contrivance or apparatus": Panoramas

Robert Barker's 1796 patent:

Specification of the patent granted to Mr. RoBERT BARKER, of the city of Edinburgh, Portrait-painter; for his invention of an entire new contrivance or apparatus, called by him La Nature à Coup d’ Œil*, for the purpose of difplaying Views of Nature at large, by Oil-painting, Frefco, Water-colours, Crayons, or any other Mode of painting or drawing.

THE

REPERTORY

ARTS AND MANUFACTURES:

CONSISTING OF

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS,

SPECIFICATIONS OF PATENT INVENTIONS,

AND

SELECTIONS OF USEFUL PRACTICAL PAPERS

FROM THE

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE

PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETIES

OF ALL NATIONS, &c. &c.

-------------------------

VOL. IV.

-------------------------

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETORS;

AND SOLD BY T.HEPTINSTALL, NO.131, FLEET-STREET;

G.G. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER-ROW; P.ELMSLY,

STRAND; W.RICHARDSON, CORNHILL; J.DEBRETT,

PICCADILLY; AND J. BELL, NO.148, OXFORD-STREET

1796

(165)

XX. Specification of the patent granted to Mr. RoBERT BARKER, of the city of Edinburgh, Portrait-painter; for his invention of an entire new contrivance or apparatus, called by him La Nature à Coup d’ Œil*, for the purpose of difplaying Views of Nature at large, by Oil-painting, Frefco, Water-colours, Crayons, or any other Mode of painting or drawing.

Dated June 19th, 1787.

To all to whom thefe prefents fhall come, &c.

NOW KNOW YE, that by my invention, called La Nature à Coup d’ Œil, is intended, by drawing and painting, and a proper difposition of the whole, to perfect an entire view of any country or fituation, as it appears to an obferver turning quite round; to produce which effect, the painter or drawer muft fix his ftation, and delineate correctly and connectedly every object which prefents itfelf to his view as he turns round, concluding his drawing by a con-

*This invention has been fince called the Panorama.

166

Patent for difplaying Views of Nature

nection with where he began. He muft obferve the lights and fhadows, how they fall, and perfect his piece to the beft of his abilities. There muft be a circular building or framing erected, on which this drawing or painting may be performed; or the fame may be done on canvas, or other materials, and fixed or fufpended on the fame building or framing, to anfwer the purpofe complete. It muft be lighted entirely from the top, either by a glazed dome or otherwife, as the artift may think proper. There muft be an inclofure within the faid circular building or froming,, which fhall prevent an obferver going too near the drawing or painting, fo as it may, from all parts it can be viewed, have its proper effect. This inclofure may reprefent a room, or platform, or any other fituation, and may be any form thiught moft convenient, but the circular form is particularly recommended. Of whatever extent this infide inclofure may be, there muft be over it (fupported from the bottom, or fufpended from the top,) a fhade or roof; which, in all directions, fhould project fo far beyond this inclofure, as to prevent an obferver feeing above the

167

by Oil Painting, Frefco, &c.

drawing or painting, when looking up; and there muft be without this inclofure another interception, to reprefent a wall, paling, or other interception, as the natural objects reprefented, or fancy, may direct, fo as effectually to prevent the obferver from feeing below the bottom of the painting or drawing, by means of which interception nothing can be feen on the outer circle, but the drawing or painting intended to reprefent nature. The entrance to the inner inclofure muft be from below a proper building or froming being erected for that purpofe, fo that no door or other interruption may difturb the circle on which the view is to be reprefented. And there fhould be, below the painting or drawing, proper ventilators fixed, fo as to render a current cirulation of air through the whole; and the inner inclofure may be elevated, at the will of an artift, fo as to make obfervers, on whatever fituation he may wifh they fhould imagine themfelves, feel as if really on the very Fpot. In witnefs whereof, &c.

XX1

Panorama of 'Old Edinburgh' by Robert Barker

"Edinburgh From The Crown Of St. Giles"
300 x 50 feet see it bigger

still in existence at the The Edinburgh Virtual Environment Centre University of Edinburgh

Image Copyright © City Arts Centre

Saturday, 17 October 2009

Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, from Uncommon Places

from interview:
SS: So how my pictures are seen now, as opposed to the early 70s, I see a tremendous difference. People say my pictures are nostalgic, my pictures aren’t nostalgic, they’re nostalgic! My pictures are just pictures. When they were shown in the early seventies in New York, there was no hint of nostalgia. Some people who didn’t get them said, well, it’s just like looking at the world, why would anyone want to show me this? There was no distance from it, now there’s a distance of time.

BRS: In your own work, you’ve set certain rules such as not cropping the image, is that something you only impose only upon yourself, or do you expect that from your students as well?

SS: I don’t want my students to crop, it’s for a simple reason. I want to put as much pressure on myself, and on them, so that they don’t feel that the decision is a soft one. I do some commercial work, and I’ve learned that to sound like a pro, when the art director says “well, what about that one,” I’ll say, “don’t worry, we’ll take care of it in post.” You get used to saying it, you see something you don’t want in the picture, but it doesn’t matter, “we’ll take care of it in post.” But that’s a kind of fuzzy thinking, and it’s fine to meet the requirements of the commercial job. But in the game that I set for myself, I want to be able to make a decision on the spot, and I want my students to. My hero, Walker Evans, he cropped all the time, so it’s not a moral stance, it’s a strategic one.

Sunday, 11 October 2009

armchair travels to the exotic and unfamiliar

(book) The American Rockies
Photographs by Gus Foster

"The American Rockies presents an extraordinary visual diary of Gus Foster’s Rocky Mountain odyssey with his panoramic camera. Foster climbed the major peaks along the backbone of the continent from the Canadian border to the border with Mexico, photographing the spectacular landscape sometimes at greater than 360 degrees. As James Enyeart writes in A Traveler’s Notebook: “A lifetime of travel places Gus Foster in a succession of artists who have gained insight and inspiration from the exotic and unfamiliar.” Foster’s panoramic photographs enable even the armchair traveler to experience the enormous grandeur of the Rockies."

somehow I prefer Matisse's armchair to this one...

Gus Foster website
book on amazon

Essays included are by James Enyeart, Anne and John Marion Professor of Photo- graphic Arts and the Director of the Marion Center at the College of Santa Fe; Alan Wallach, Ralph H. Wark Professor of Art and Art History and Professor of American Studies at the College of William and Mary; Roger Badash, Foster’s longtime climbing companion; and Gus Foster.

Published by The Albuquerque Museum
U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W M E X I C O P R E S S
1-800-249-7737
July 11.75 x 11 inches 120 pages,
30 color plates, 38 duotone plates
Paperback: 0-944282-22-9 $30.00

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

tower of power

Guardian 9 Sept: Global Cleantech 100
BrightSource Energy: thousands of small mirrors reflect sunlight on to a boiler on top of a tower to produce high-temperature steam

Wednesday, 1 July 2009

Solar-thermal technology

The other kind of solar power
Jun 4th 2009 The Economist (print edition)

Energy: Think of solar power, and you probably think of photovoltaic panels. But there is another way to make electricity from sunlight, which arguably has even brighter prospects

IN THE past few months BrightSource Energy, based in California, has signed the world’s two largest deals to build new solar-power capacity. The company will soon begin constructing the first in a series of 14 solar-power plants that will collectively supply more than 2.6 gigawatts (GW) of electricity—enough to serve about 1.8m homes. But to accomplish this feat BrightSource will not use photovoltaic cells, which generate electricity directly from sunlight and currently constitute the most common form of solar power. Instead, the company specialises in “concentrating solar-thermal technology” in which mirrors concentrate sunlight to produce heat. That heat is then used to create steam, which in turn drives a turbine to generate electricity.

Solar-thermal power stations have several advantages over solar-photovoltaic projects. They are typically built on a much larger scale, and historically their costs have been much lower. Compared with other renewable sources of energy, they are probably best able to match a utility’s electrical load, says Nathaniel Bullard of New Energy Finance, a research firm. They work best when it is hottest and demand is greatest. And the heat they generate can be stored, so the output of a solar-thermal plant does not fluctuate as wildly as that of a photovoltaic system. Moreover, since they use a turbine to generate electricity from heat, most solar-thermal plants can be easily and inexpensively supplemented with natural-gas boilers, enabling them to perform as reliably as a fossil-fuel power plant.

Getty Images

A power of tower near Seville

Besides these benefits, the main drivers for the growth of the solar-thermal industry are moves to limit carbon-dioxide emissions and requirements to increase the proportion of electricity produced from renewable sources. According to New Energy Finance, about 12GW of concentrating solar-thermal power capacity is being planned worldwide—a vast amount, given that only about 500 megawatts (MW) of such capacity has been built to date. To maximise the energy that can be collected from the sun, solar-power facilities are being constructed in regions that enjoy daily uninterrupted sunshine for much of the year. According to Mark Mehos of America’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, solar-thermal power could in theory generate 11,000GW in America’s south-west. That is about ten times America’s entire existing power-generation capacity.

Simple techniques for concentrating sunlight to generate heat date back thousands of years. In China and ancient Greece, people focused the sun’s rays with mirrors or glass to light fires. In times of war, the same approach is said to have been used to set enemy ships ablaze. By the early 20th century several scientists had built simple machines that could run on concentrated heat from the sun.

A significant milestone was reached in 1913 when Frank Shuman, an American inventor, created the first large solar-thermal pumping station in Meadi, Egypt. He designed a system based on five large reflectors, each 62 metres long and made of glass mirrors arranged to form a trough in the shape of a parabola. Each parabolic trough focused sunlight onto a tube running along its length, heating the water inside it. The resulting steam powered an engine connected to a pump capable of delivering 6,000 gallons of water a minute from the Nile to nearby fields.

Do try to concentrate

The modern history of solar-thermal power began after the oil crises of the 1970s, which prompted many nations to start to investigate clean and renewable energy sources as alternatives to fossil fuels. Over the following decades America, Spain and a handful of other countries built solar-thermal pilot plants for research purposes. The first company to implement the technology on a commercial scale was Luz International, an Israeli company founded in 1980.

Drawing on prior research, Luz began building a series of solar-thermal power stations in California’s Mojave desert in the mid-1980s. Like Mr Shuman before, the company used parabolic troughs to focus sunlight on to liquid-filled tubes, but instead of water they used oil as the heat-transfer fluid. Once it reached a temperature of about 390°C, the hot oil was pumped to a so-called “power block” where it went through a series of heat exchangers, turning water into steam and powering a conventional steam-turbine. The turbine then turned a generator to produce electricity.

By 1990 Luz had constructed nine plants with a total capacity of 354MW. At the time, solar-thermal power was producing about 90% of all solar electricity in the world, says Arnold Goldman, the former chief executive of Luz, who is now chairman of BrightSource. But when the price of natural gas fell and America’s tax incentives for solar power were not renewed, the industry came to a grinding halt. For nearly two decades no new commercial solar-thermal plants began operating. In the meantime, solar-photovoltaic technology slowly took over the market, and by 2007 worldwide installed capacity reached 9.2GW. Although it is more expensive per kilowatt-hour, solar panels can be deployed in small, modular systems, and thus require much less capital investment. Moreover, they can generate power off the grid, which turned out to be an important market for solar power in its early days.

Now, as the solar-thermal industry is experiencing a revival, parabolic-trough projects are garnering much of today’s investment money because of their proven track record. To improve the economics still further, SkyFuel, a firm based in New Mexico, is replacing curved glass mirrors, which are expensive to make, with a thin, reflective low-cost film. And other competing solar-thermal technologies that were developed in parallel with trough-based systems, but never commercialised, are also ready to be deployed.

Among them is an approach that BrightSource uses, in which a field of small, flat mirrors called “heliostats” redirect and concentrate sunlight onto a central receiver at the top of a tower. The tower contains a fluid, typically water, which boils and the resulting steam is then transferred to a nearby “power block”, where it spins a conventional turbine. The advantage of this “power tower” approach is that it can produce steam at a temperature of 550°C and can thus achieve a higher thermal-to-electric efficiency than trough-based systems, says John Woolard, the chief executive of BrightSource. In addition, he says, power-tower systems suffer from fewer pumping losses than trough-based designs. The first commercial power-tower began operating in Spain in 2007.

Another advance that makes solar-thermal power more economically and technologically viable than in the past is the ability to use a large number of smaller and less expensive mirrors, steered by computer systems, to ensure more accurate and automatic tracking and redirection of sunlight than was ever possible before. Bill Gross, the chief executive of eSolar, a developer of “power tower” technology based in Pasadena, California, says his firm is using software to turn thousands of flat mirrors and shape them into a continuously evolving parabola around the tower.

Storage and hybrids

Both power-tower and parabolic-trough systems can store thermal energy in the form of hot, molten salt. It is then possible to generate steam, and thus electricity, even when the sun is not shining. Solar-thermal plants without storage can operate about 30% of the year; but with storage that number could climb to 70% or higher. Unfortunately storage is expensive, and is only economical when regulators provide incentives. In Spain, for example, producers of solar-thermal power receive a guaranteed feed-in tariff. That makes it particularly appealing for Spanish plants to have storage capabilities, to maximise their ability to sell electricity to utilities. In America the main incentives for solar-thermal projects are a 30% investment-tax credit or an equivalent cash grant. As a result, American plants have to be built more cheaply in order to make a profit, and thus typically do not include storage.

Eyevine

Power from a parabola

A cheaper alternative to storage is hybridisation. All the original Luz plants also have natural-gas boilers that can generate steam when the sun is not shining. Because solar-thermal plants have a power block and turbine already in place, the extra cost is marginal. Hybridisation could also be done the other way around, by using steam generated from solar-thermal collectors to help drive the turbines at existing coal or gas plants. The Electric Power Research Institute, based in Palo Alto, is studying the feasibility of this approach as a means of reducing fuel costs and emissions at existing power stations.

In addition to parabolic troughs and power-towers there is also a third solar-thermal technology, which combines curved, dish-shaped mirrors with heat engines. In a dish-engine design, the mirrors concentrate sunlight to generate heat, which then typically powers a Stirling engine—a machine that converts heat into mechanical energy by compressing and expanding a fixed quantity of gas. The change in pressure drives the engine’s pistons, which drive a shaft that turns a generator to produce electricity.

Although they are highly efficient, Stirling engines have seen little practical use since their invention nearly two centuries ago, and so far there are no commercial solar-thermal systems that use this approach. Critics of the technology say it involves too many moving parts, making it more complex and expensive to operate and maintain than competing technologies. Stirling Energy Systems, based in Phoenix, Arizona, hopes to prove the doubters wrong. It has signed two large power-purchase agreements, for up to 1,750MW, and plans to fulfil them using dish-engine systems built in conjunction with its sister company, Tessera Solar. Both projects are due to start construction as early as 2010.

One obstacle hampering the growth of the entire field is the difficulty of obtaining financing for solar-thermal projects in the current economic climate, says Thomas Mancini, programme manager for concentrating solar-power at Sandia National Laboratories. As a result, some announced projects may be delayed or perhaps never be built. The situation has prompted some companies to change their business models: Ausra, a solar-thermal company based in Mountain View, California, has switched from being an independent power-producer to being mostly an equipment supplier, for example.

Although solar-thermal power produces no carbon-dioxide emissions, it can have some negative environmental impacts. Both power-tower and trough-based systems are typically water-cooled, and require millions of gallons of water annually. That can cause big problems, especially in desert environments. The California Energy Commission recently urged NextEra Energy Resources, a renewable-energy company, to consider dry cooling instead of using water for its proposed solar-thermal power project in Kern County, California. (Stirling-engine designs do not require water for cooling.) Another potential problem when building power plants in remote locations is a lack of transmission lines, since it is difficult and expensive to get new transmission lines approved and built.

Despite these problems, many people think a massive scale-up of the industry is imminent. Among them is Mr Woolard, who believes that solar-thermal power could regain its historical lead over the solar-photovoltaic approach. Competition from photovoltaic systems for large-scale power generation should not be underestimated, however. According to Mr Bullard, thin-film solar-cell modules are rapidly falling in price, and can generate electricity more cheaply than solar-thermal power in some situations. But no matter which approach comes out on top, competition between the two technologies is sure to foster continued innovation, and a growing supply of clean electricity, in the years to come.

Sunday, 17 May 2009

digital enclosure, transaction feedback, & the land enclosure movement

iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era (CultureAmerica)
by Mark Andrejevic (italics his - bold mine)

pg. 2
digital enclosure--the creation of an interactive realm wherein every action and transaction generates information about itself. Although the term implies a physical space, the same characteristics can apply to virtual spaces.
...
I use the term enclosure not just to invoke the notion of a space--virtual or otherwise--that is rendered interactive, but also to highlight the process of enclosure, whereby places and activities become encompassed by the monitoring embrace of an interactive (virtual) space. Accompanying this movement is a not-so-subtle shift in social relations: entry into the digital enclosure carries with it, in most cases, the condition of surveillance.
((re: Eyal Weisman: "the wall curls around itself"))
---
pg. 3
The use of the term digital enclosure is also meant to evoke the land enclosure movement associated with the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the process whereby over time communal land was subjected to private control, allowing private landowners to set the conditions for its use. Over time, the enclosure movement leads to the formation of distinct classes: those who own the means of production and those who must sell their labor for access to these means, whether arable lands or factories. A similar division of groups can be discerned in the emerging digital enclosure between those who control privatized interactive spaces (virtual or otherwise), and those who submit to particular forms of monitoring in order to gain access to goods, services, and conveniences.
...
...the use of interactive technologies--new media devices--lends itself to the generation of cybernetic information: feedback about the transactions themselves. This feedback becomes the property of private companies that can store, aggregate, sort, and in many cases, sell the information to others in the form of a database or a cybernetic commodity.

Wednesday, 6 May 2009

Polar Night / Midnight Sun

The polar night is the night lasting more than 24 hours, usually inside the polar circles. The opposite phenomenon, when the sun stays above the horizon for a long time is called the polar day, or midnight sun.

A common misconception is that at each point inside the polar circle, or that at each place where midnight sun occurs, the shortest day is totally dark. Because of twilight, this is not the case. In areas very close to the Arctic and Antarctic Circle, midnight sun is experienced, but polar night is never experienced. In fact, polar regions typically get more twilight throughout the year than regions located closer to the equator.

Inside the polar circles, the length of the time when the sun is below the horizon varies from 20 hours at the Arctic Circle and Antarctic Circle to 179 days at the Poles. However not all this time is classified as polar night, since there may be plenty of sunlight because of refraction. Also, one might notice that the time when the sun is above the horizon at the poles is said to be 186 days. The asymmetry in numbers is because the time when the sun is partially above the horizon is counted towards the "daytime".

Astronomical polar night

is the period that no trace of light can be seen anywhere and no astronomical twilight occurs. Astronomical twilight happens when the sun is between twelve and eighteen degrees below the horizon. Thus, astronomical polar night happens at latitudes above 84° 33′, which is exactly 18 degrees within the polar circle, or five and a half degrees from the pole.

There are no permanent settlements anywhere in this range of latitude. This portion of the Arctic Ocean is generally permanently ice capped. Some scientific stations in Antarctica, including Amundsen-Scott at the South Pole, experience this.

The midnight sun is a natural phenomenon occurring in summer months at latitudes north and nearby to the south of the Arctic Circle, and south and nearby to the north of the Antarctic Circle where the sun remains visible at the local midnight. Given fair weather, the sun is visible for a continuous 24 hours, mostly north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle. The number of days per year with potential midnight sun increases the farther poleward one goes.

There are no permanent human settlements south of the Antarctic Circle, so the countries and territories whose populations experience it are limited to the ones crossed by the Arctic Circle, i.e. Canada, United States of America (Alaska), Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and extremities of Iceland. A quarter of Finland's territory lies north of the Arctic Circle and at the country's northernmost point the sun does not set for 73 days during summer. In Svalbard, Norway, the northernmost inhabited region of Europe, there is no sunset from approximately 19 April to 23 August. The extreme sites are the poles where the sun can be continuously visible for a half year.

Since the Earth's axis is tilted with respect to the ecliptic by approximately 23 degrees 27 minutes, the sun does not set at high latitudes in (local) summer. The duration of the midnight sun increases from one day during the summer solstice at the polar circle to approximately six months at the poles. At extreme latitudes, it is usually referred to as polar day. The length of the time the sun is above the horizon varies from 20 hours at the Arctic Circle and Antarctic Circle to 186 days at the poles.

At the poles themselves, the sun only rises once and sets once, each year. During the six months when the sun is above the horizon at the poles, the sun spends the days constantly moving around the horizon, reaching its highest circuit of the sky at the summer solstice.

Due to refraction, the midnight sun may be experienced at latitudes slightly below the polar circle, though not exceeding one degree (depending on local conditions). For example, it is possible to experience the midnight sun in Iceland, even though most of it (Grímsey being a notable exception) is slightly south of the Arctic Circle. Even the northern extremities of Scotland (and those places on similar latitudes) experience a permanent "dusk" or glare in the northern skies at these times.

Nautical polar night

is the period during which there is only a faint glow of light visible during midday. It happens when there is no nautical twilight. Nautical twilight happens when the sun is between six and twelve degrees below the horizon. Because of refraction, there is still a place at the horizon with clearly more light than other places. The nautical polar night is limited to latitudes above 78° 33′, which is exactly 12 degrees within the polar circle, or eleven and a half degrees from the pole. Alert, Nunavut, the northernmost settlement in Canada and the world, experience this from late November to mid January.

Monday, 4 May 2009

GARS O'Higgins/ANTARCTICA webcameras, +NeuMayer

Above: Penguin cam to the right and station cam 2 on the left. Both webcams are mounted on the outside of a container without any additional shelter in a standard fitting, just as you order them at the factory! These cams (made by MOBOTIX) are extraordinary robust, have lots of unique features and provide a fantastic picture quality! For example the new software enables each camera for IP Telephony. Each cam has a weatherproof microphone and loudspeaker. And the quality of the pictures speak for themselve! Our cam has two fixed lenses onboard. The best cams I can imagine for any outdoor surveillance, even in an extreme environment like the north antarctic (but they also have brands for indoor use).

If you want to see another MOBOTIX cam in the antarctic, then have a look on this stand-alone-solution on the Larsen shelf ice. As far as I know this is the most isolated webcam on the Antarctic continent at the moment! Energy supply comes from a combined windpower and photo-voltaic system, pics are sent via WLan over a distance of several kilometeres to the German Antarctic Base "NeuMayer"

website

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

more safari history-Rooseveldt's safari

Safari Holidays: Brief History Safari has it roots in Arabic via Swahili and means “to make a journey”. Originally, Safaris were essentially trade missions seeking ivory, rhino horn, and slaves. With the coming of Europeans, the Safari began to be associated with exploration and the discovery. And those early European Safaris were huge operations that involved armies of staff and crew along with supplies and weapons. They blazed a trail for scientific safaris by Stanley and Livingstone or Burton and Speke. Many explorers never returned alive. Disease, starvation or death was part of the early African Safari experience.

African Safaris were trendy too. The novels of Rider Haggard, such as King Solomon’s Mines, introduced Allan Quatermain and the African Safari to an entirely new Victorian audience. Inevitably, along with great naturalists and men of science came the hunters. The European colonial ethic was to rule and dominate the people, the mineral resources and the wildlife. The Safari became synonymous with the “Hunt”. Conquering the wild beast and returning with trophies became the Safari’s entire purpose. Great White Hunters like Cornwallis Harris and Frederick Courtenay Selous prospered and by 1850 they were killing 30,000 elephant a year in East Africa. Gradually, this attitude changed. Those same hunters realised that the wildlife they were slaughtering was a finite resource. The first seeds of a conservation ethic were planted.

The Safari gradually began to change as the hunters began to consider themselves as naturalists and experts in bush craft. Selous’ book “A Hunter’s Wanderings In Africa” encouraged a new respect for natural Africa. Ironic though it may be, it’s because of men like Seleous and Harris that the conservation movement got started. That didn’t immediately stop the shooting parties though.

East Africa became the home of the Safari in the early 20th century and an entire industry grew up to cater for the every need of American and European clients keen to bag a trophy. The Guided Safari was born and probably reached its peak in 1909 with Theodore Roosevelt’s Great Safari, which cost £15,000.00 (several millions in today’s value!). Every Safari, whether undertaken by a hunter, naturalist, explorer, conqueror or colonial administrator, needed an army of gun-bearers, interpreters, guides, cooks and porters. Some of the Africans who made Safaris possible were almost as well known to the European public as the white explorers themselves.

By the middle of the last century portered safaris became less common as automobiles took over. Camping Safaris grew in popularity and so too did Photographic Safaris. The Safari Holiday has come a long way from the days of slave trading and over-zealous hunting. However, some elements of the Safari Holiday remain the same : Africa’s staggering natural beauty, the sense of freedom and adventure and the crucial involvement of Africa’s people. A Safari Holiday also remains a highly personal experience.

Frontier (definition from Nationmaster)

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Frontier

A frontier is a political and geographical term referring to areas near or beyond a boundary, or of a different nature.

In the United States, the frontier was the term applied by scholars to the impact of the zone of unsettled land outside the region of existing settlements of Americans. That is, as pioneers moved into the frontier zone they were changed significantly by the encounter. That is what Frederick Jackson Turner called "the significance of the frontier." For example, Turner argued in 1893, one change was that unlimited free land in the zone was available and thus offered the psychological sense of unlimited opportunity, which in turn had many consequences, such as optimism, future orientation, shedding of restraints due to land scarcity, and wastefulness of natural resources.

Throughout American history, the expansion of settlement was largely from the east to the west, and thus the frontier is often identified with "the west." On the Pacific Coast, settlement moved eastward. In New England, it moved north.

'Frontier' was borrowed into English from French in the 15th century with the meaning "borderland," the region of a country that fronts on another country (see also marches). The use of frontier to mean "a region at the edge of a settled area" is a special North American development. (Compare the Australian "outback".) In the Turnerian sense, "frontier" was a technical term that was explicated by hundreds of scholars. Mark or march (or various plural forms of these words) are derived from the Frankish word marka (boundary) and refer to an area along a border, e. ... A tourism sign post Yalgoo, Western Australia The Dingo Fence near Coober Pedy Fitzgerald River National Park in Western Australia Outback refers to remote and arid areas of Australia, although the term colloquially can cover any lands outside of the main urban areas. ...

Colonial frontier

In the earliest days of European settlement of the Atlantic coast, the frontier was essentially any part of the forested interior of the continent beyond the fringe of existing settlements along the coast and the great rivers, such as the St. Lawrence, Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna River and James.

English, French, Spanish and Dutch patterns of expansion and settlement were quite different. Only a few thousand French migrated to Canada; these habitants settled in villages along the St. Lawrence river, building communities that remained stable for long stretches; they did not leapfrog west the way the Americans did. Although French fur traders ranged widely through the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watershed, as far as the Rocky Mountains, they did not usually settle down. Actual French settlement in these areas was limited to a few very small villages on the lower Mississippi and in the Illinois Country.^[1] Likewise, the Dutch set up fur trading posts in the Hudson river valley, followed by large grants of land to patroons who brought in tenant farmers who created compact, permanent villages. They did not push westward. ^[2]

In contrast, the English colonies generally pursued a more systematic policy of widespread settlement of the New World for cultivation and exploitation of the land, a practice that required the extension of European property rights to the new continent. The typical English settlements were quite compact and small--under a square mile. Conflict with the Native Americans arose out of political issues, viz. who would rule. Early frontier areas east of the Appalachian Mountains included the Connecticut river valley.^[3] The French and Indian Wars of the 1760s resulted in a complete victory for the British, who took over the French colonial territory west of the Appalachians to the Mississippi River. Americans began moving across the Appalachians into areas such the Ohio Country and the New River Valley.

Canadian frontier

A Canadian frontier thesis was developed by Canadian historians Harold Adams Innis and J. M. S. Careless. They emphasized the relationship between the center and periphery. Katerberg argues that "in Canada the imagined West must be understood in relation to the mythic power of the North." [Katerberg 2003] In Innis's 1930 work The Fur Trade in Canada, he expounded on what became known as the Laurentian thesis: that the most creative and major developments in Canadian history occurred in the metropolitan centers of central Canada and that the civilization of North America is the civilization of Europe. Innis considered place as critical in the development of the Canadian West and wrote of the importance of metropolitan areas, settlements, and indigenous people in the creation of markets. Turner and Innis continue to exert influence over the historiography of the American and Canadian Wests. The Quebec frontier showed little of the individualism or democracy that Turner ascribed to the American zone to the south. The Nova Scotia and Ontario frontiers were rather more democratic than the rest of Canada, but whether that was caused by the need to be self-reliant on the frontier itself or the presence of large numbers of American immigrants is debated. Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894-November 8, 1952) was a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of many seminal works on Canadian economic history and on media and communications.

The Canadian political thinker Charles Blattberg has argued that such events ought to be seen as part of a process in which Canadians advanced a "border"-- as distinct from a "frontier"--from east to west. According to Blattberg, a border assumes a significantly sharper contrast between the civilized and the uncivilized since, unlike with a frontier process, the civilizing force is not supposed to be shaped by that which it is civilizing. Blattberg criticizes both the frontier and border "civilizing" processes.

Canadian Prairies

The pattern of settlement of the Canadian prairies began in 1896, when the American prairie states had already achieved statehood. Pioneers then headed north to the "Last Best West." Before settlers began to arrive, the North West Mounted Police was dispatched to the region. When settlers began to arrive, a system of law and order was already in place and the Dakota lawlessness for which the American "Wild West" was famed did not occur in Canada. Before settlers arrived, the federal government also sent teams of negotiators to meet with the Native peoples of the region. In a series of treaties, the basis for peaceful relations was established and the long wars with the Natives that occurred in the United States largely did not spread to Canada. Like their American counterparts, the Prairie provinces supported populist and democratic movements in the early 20th century. ^[4] Pamphlet advertising the last best West Last best West was a phrase used to market the Canadian prairies to prospective immigrants.

Europe

In the European Union, the frontier is a term used to describe the region beyond the expanding borders of the European Union. The European Union has designated the countries surrounding it as part of the European Neighbourhood. This is a region of primarily less-developed countries, many of which aspire to become part of the European Union itself. Current applicants include Turkey and Croatia. Ukraine has also set itself the primary task of eventually joining the Union, as have many small countries in the Balkans and South Caucasus. Romania and Bulgaria, joined the European Union in 2007. Proposals to admit Turkey have been debated (and rejected), partly on the ground that Turkey is beyond Europe's historic frontier. If all or most East European states become members, the frontier may be the boundaries with Russia and Turkey. The European Neighbourhood is the region beyond the frontier of the European Union.

References

US history

The Frontier In American History by Frederick Jackson Turner
Billington, Ray Allen. America's Frontier Heritage (1984), an analysis of the frontier experience from perspective of social sciences and historiography
Billington, Ray Allen. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier (1952 and later editions), the most detailed textbook, with highly detailed annotated bibliographies
Billington, Ray Allen. Land of Savagery / Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier in the Nineteenth Century (1981)
Blattberg, Charles Shall We Dance? A Patriotic Politics for Canada (2003), ch. 3, a comparison of the Canadian 'border' with the American 'frontier'
Hine, Robert V. and John Mack Faragher. The American West: A New Interpretive History (2000), recent textbook
Lamar, Howard R. ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West (1998), 1000+ pages of articles by scholars
Milner, Clyde A., II ed. Major Problems in the History of the American West 2nd ed (1997), primary sources and essays by scholars
Nichols, Roger L. ed. American Frontier and Western Issues: An Historiographical Review (1986) essays by 14 scholars
Paxson, Frederic, History of the American Frontier, 1763-1893 (1924)
Slotkin, Richard, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (2000), University of Oklahoma Press

Canada

Blattberg, Charles Shall We Dance? A Patriotic Politics for Canada (2003), ch. 3, a comparison of the Canadian 'border' with the American 'frontier'
Cavell, Janice. "The Second Frontier: the North in English-canadian Historical Writing." Canadian Historical Review 2002 83(3): 364-389. ISSN 0008-3755 Fulltext in Ebsco
Clarke, John. Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 2001. 747 pp.
Colpitts, George. Game in the Garden: A Human History of Wildlife in Western Canada to 1940 U. of British Columbia Press, 2002. 216 pp.
Forkey, Neil S. Shaping the Upper Canadian Frontier: Environment, Society and Culture in the Trent Valley. U. of Calgary Press 2003. 164 pp.
Katerberg, William H. "A Northern Vision: Frontiers and the West in the Canadian and American Imagination." American Review of Canadian Studies 2003 33(4): 543-563. ISSN 0272-2011 Fulltext online at Ebsco
Mulvihill, Peter R.; Baker, Douglas C.; and Morrison, William R. "A Conceptual Framework for Environmental History in Canada's North." Environmental History 2001 6(4): 611-626. ISSN 1084-5453. Proposes a five-part conceptual framework for the study of environmental history in the Canadian North. The first element of the framework analyzes approaches to environmental history that are applicable to the Canadian North. The second element reviews historical forces, myths, and defining characteristics that pertain to the region. A third element of the framework tests the validity of Turner's Frontier Thesis and Creighton's Metropolitan Thesis when applied to northern Canada. The fourth element consists of an overview of major northern environmental trends. The final element consists of four interrelated themes that identify the environmental relationships between northern and southern Canada.

External links

^ Clarence Walworth Alvord, The Illinois Country 1673-1818 (1918)
^ Arthur G. Adams, The Hudson Through the Years (1996); Sung Bok Kim, Landlord and Tenant in Colonial New York: Manorial Society, 1664-1775 (1987)
^ Allan Kulikoff, From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers (2000)
^ Laycock, David. Populism and Democratic Thought in the Canadian Prairies, 1910 to 1945. 1990; Seymour Martin Lipset, Agrarian Socialism (1950).

Categories: Canadian-American relations | History of United States expansionism

Frontier - Wiki
	In the United States, the frontier was the term applied to the zone of unsettled land outside the region of existing settlements of Americans.

Friday, 17 April 2009

Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics by Rebecca Solnit

page 2-bold and italics mine

I realized that in order to describe the rich tangle of experience there [at the antinuclear actions at the Nevada Test Site in the late 1980s] I needed to describe, to analyze, to connect, to critique, and to report on both international politics and personal experience. That is, I needed to write as a memoirist or diarist, and as a journalist, and as a critic--and these three voices were one voice in everything except the conventions that sort our experience out and censor what doesn't belong. [...]

Since then, I have been fascinated by trying to map the ways that we think and talk, the unsorted experience wherein one can start by complaining about politics and end by confessing about passions, the ease with which we can get to any point from any other point. Such conversation is sometimes described as being "all over the place," which is another way to say that it connects everything back up. The straight line of conventional narrative is too often an elevated freeway permitting no unplanned encounters or necessary detours. It is not how our thoughts travel, nor does it allow us to map the whole world rather than one streamlined trajectory across it. I wanted more, more scope, more nuance, more inclusion of the crucial details and associations that are conventionally excluded. The convergence of multiple kinds of stories shaped my writing on one way; this traveling by association shaped it in others. Early in my history of walking, I wrote that "if fields of expertise can be imagined as real fields, fenced off and carefully tilled, then the history of walking is a path that trespasses through dozens of fields." So are most unfenced lines of inquiry. I learned two kinds of trespassing at the test site, geographical and intellectual.

Friday, 10 April 2009

Smout Allen-Geofluidic Landscape

The Geofluidic Landscape

The passage of abundant water on the Oslo site provides a source of kinetic energy that invades the building. Trenches, gullies, and reservoirs are cut into the rock to channel water and counterbalances and weights shift building pieces. The floors become walls, panels move to reveal new spaces, and garden beds are raised and tilted toward the sun.

Smout Allen-Blooming Landscape, Deep Surface

http://www.smoutallen.com/

Smout Allen-Ballistic Devices

Ballistic Devices

A series of ballistic instruments are designed to momentarily occupy the space between the sky and the ground. Camouflage strategies can be designed to accentuate and reveal figure and position. The instruments use shape, shine, shadow, and silhouette to enable visual recognition of form and consequently to examine the apparent depth of the horizon.

Three ballistic devices are deployed in the deep space of the horizon.