chronology

the story – zircon

psychographs

thursday, august 17, 2010

01.riding the scooter is much more pleasant than driving. it is presenting us with more chances to be adventurous. being curious is in my nature.

02.today I scootered north during my lunch brake along don mills road. I was looking for a pleasant place to have my lunch and glance thru the newspaper.

03.as we all know by now I am in constant lookout for the psychographs , this one looked promising: TASTEE BREAD & PATTIES [is tastee spelled correctly????].

04.this is typical first psychographs as envisioned in a guidelines I created few months ago [guide lines if you are curious]. this first one triggered the chain of reactions.

05.once inside the store I found out that choice of available food was to my satisfaction. after 17 years in canada I am still not considering this meal in the middle of the day "lunch" and treating it as "uzina" as we say in serbia – equivalent would be sneak. two cheese boureka and one feta-spinach was perfect.

06.do not forget I am looking for the next psychograph since the first one was already discovered.

07.scooter is very mobile so in 2 minutes I crossed don mills road, having in mind that I've seen some greenery on that side of the road in google maps. I discovered myriads of "things" and hidden places this way.

08.I am always having with me my panasonic DMC LX3, camera small enough to fit a pocket but powerful and reliable for this type of creative photography. I already mentally converted first shoot to the first psychograph , and what was left is to find convenient safe parking near the next one.
this lonely bench was visible from the road in what I found out later is a zircon park. [zircon is a mineral, usually light yellow or colorless and contains trace amounts of uranium. later that day my wife told me that zircon dust is present in most granite stones and the radiation from them might be quite dangerous in the kitchen environment!!!?]. ontario is one of the places around the world where zircon can be found but what is a connection with this park is unknown. anyway it is adding new dimension to this place.

09.this must be it: second psychograph . for quite a long time I have an obsession to search for significant places. my experience with those spaces can be trough books, movies or observed on my travels. connection made in that way is contributing to development of belonging to the global community. it is helping to comprehend different cultures, languages, articulation of encrypted urban events; complex language of urban space. psychogeography or mythogeography, as this social activity is sometimes called, is aiming at restorative development of contemporary civilization.

10.this empty bench facing the the dark area [in the middle of sunny day] of what looked as a stream deep in the ravine, reminded my of the mystic atmosphere in one of the cult moves of our time. I set on that bench, reading manly stupid comments in the "the sun" only newspaper I can find at the college [where I work].

11. let's find a third psychograph , it must be here somewhere. as I stood up I've noticed a shape on a bench, right beneath me slightly resembling a human face, mhhhh, I'll be disappointed if this is it, somehow I was expecting much more. 10 minutes along the path up the hill and new vista and a third psychograph appeared. movie I briefly mentioned in the previous point was blow-up. this 1966 masterpiece movie by michelangelo antonioni, left a huge impact on my generation. I was a regular visitor to the FEST, international film festival in belgrade – yugoslavia, where I saw this move back in a turbulent 1968. this same year after participating in some of those events I enrolled to the school of architecture at belgrade university.
main plot of the movie is happening in a park, where a young photographer stumbles upon what looks like a love scene. he took some photos. back in the studio the photos were blown-up to the humongous grainy shapes. on them he discovers a corpse and the pistol visible behind it in a bushes. [more about the blow-up and its significance and some peculiar facts you can find here]. for 42 years I was looking for a park with similar atmosphere and I remember that the first one somewhat resembling it is a park in then divided [1977] west berlin. but I was not happy, I looked for it everywhere, many parks in canada, states, all over west europe, even in london where originally movie was shoot. at that point I did not know that it was made in maryon park. just compare this two shoots, original maryon park left and my psychograph right. almost identical, at least identical in my mind. [original image was found on my return to the office not seen by me in any way for what must be 30 years, of course I watched blow-up many times and it was imprinted in my mind].

12.just to confirm rightness of the place I did not find corpse in the park but just opposite of the direction of the third psychograph I found a person in a distance. she was only human present in the park during my whole visit and visible only from this spot. two black and white photos bellow are original used in a movie on the left and my photo right. even in them there are some similarities.

13.draw your own conclusions.

ifyou are really curious check out all the other images considered psychograph taken in last couple of months on our photo blog. my opinion about net art, I am of course considering what I am doing here net art, is here.

a.j. [psychographs@urbansquares.com]