gone in a flash

I've been an amateur "photographer" for nearly ten years now. All that really means is that I enjoy taking pictures when my eyes and mind are compelled, usually based upon some sort of mathematical symmetry | asymmetry that catches my eye, and that I'm not interested in developing any capacity of a career from taking pictures. I may not be very good at it anyway.

I used to have a rather advanced Canon point-and-shoot camera until a couple years ago. It was nice but nothing special. Its big selling point was that it could take pictures in low lighting (WITHOUT A FLASH! HOLY 2009!). Being the night creature that I am, this was a very attractive feature to me. Flashes ruin every picture unless the art is in itself about the flash. And I leave that kind of art for, well, art students.

When that camera eventually shattered after I fumbled it onto its lens, the technician at my local camera shop smirked between his picturesque mustache, pointed to my more modern iPhone 5, and said "that's a better camera than this thing ever was". Minus the optical zoom, he was correct. Digital imaging is a fast moving train that ages the waving bystanders faster than its passengers. There's no fixing a camera from 2009; there's only replacement. On the upside, I realized that I always had my phone on me, which meant that I would always have my camera on me.

I lamented the times I had to "remember to grab my camera" for some trip to some obscure Oregon unicorn grove, or even trying to remember to bring it to a bar so I could document my youthful adulthood of flashed-out group huddle poses and an occasional improvised gang sign from a photobomber in the background. But now I always have my phone -- I mean my camera -- with me. 

And so does everyone else. In a way this has induced dramatic photo-inflation: with so many photos streaming on every medium possible the art has become significantly devalued. This is especially true thanks to Instagram and its savvy automatic filters (or was it the "Hipstamatic" app at first?) that are akin to using Auto-Tune on a voice or retaking studio tracks a thousand times until they are "perfect". I actually like the imperfections of life. I want to hear small vocal blemishes in a singer, or the sound of fingers sliding up and down a guitar neck on a recording. They provide vulnerability and texture -- and therefore induce human empathy. We aren't programmed to empathize with perfection.

At any rate, I increasingly mixed ones and zeros into my images with no hesitation or apology. So long as I was manipulating the dials it was simply a new and exciting medium for photographic art. This is no different than my love for electronic music -- it's still music in every way, it just requires a new set of instruments with their own learning curve, refining period, and technical mastery. I suppose I breached the level of "amateur" photographer for a brief moment when I had an art show in the Pearl District (our obligatory "expensive warehouse art district" that allows the New York Times to keep caring about Portland). It was a small show but a new frame for my craft nonetheless, one that allowed me to publicly display my experience of the world, printed on canvas, and available for sale. I don't think I sold a single canvas to anyone that wasn't a friend or a family member, but that was never the point (again, because I'm an amateur). It was simply a chance to express myself through imagery alone and not use my more comfortable medium, music. Coincidentally, this show was happening during the time of my PhD defense. This meant that my family was in town to watch me become a doctor, and my band had a show to celebrate this educational milestone as well. And all the while my images were up on display a few blocks down the street. Indeed, there has never been a denser time in my life of self expression -- science, music, and imagery all in the same week. In fact, I now look back and worry it may have been a little obnoxious to those around me. I hope not. It's rare life grants a full stage and audience, so when it does I embrace the opportunity for all its ephemeral flair.

And then it was all over in a flash. The reality of struggling to find work after a lifetime in school quickly got the best of me, my images were swapped out for the next batter up, and my band, while we did go on to play some great shows and put out some albums, saw members come and go. Hence, the mediums have moved on, but perhaps so have I. I simply don't care as much anymore to expend exhaustive effort to be heard. I'll just have to let my creations speak for themselves and capture any audience on their own. Or maybe they never will. Regardless, artists do things not because they want to, but because they have to. I still play music often because I have to. And I will continue to do so as a solo artist and with bands. And I still love science. I ask questions of the universe because I have to if I'm to feel alive. These are my ingredients that don't beg motivation from me; they are the substance of the fuel within me regardless of any broader audience. And so I still take pictures. With my iPhone 5_

//

I recently cleaned up the archives of images that I've created over the past decade. Below is a collection of the ones I liked the best from oldest to newest. They are LOW RESOLUTION samples.

Click HERE to see the album_

the surgeon

Risk has been removed. That purposeful human appetite for the unknown has been starved to such an extent that it's been surgically extracted from our collective social body. It was extracted as any surgical procedure would ordain: with intent, method, and razor-sharp precision. And just like any skilled surgeon, the craft employed was as much the work of an artist as it was the work of a magician. The slight of hand was swift and forceful in its deceitful, painless trickery. Alas, every last dangling tentacle of risk was excised like an alien sea creature incapable of breathing at the surface, squirming in its plead to return from whence it came, from whence it belongs. But after starving it for so long, we wanted it removed entirely. And with it gone we can now reanimate from our acute surgical sedation to drift along with less internal mass to bear, less concern of what could have been had we embraced the uneasy taunt of our forlorn appetite for risk. Indeed, we are now liberated to fill that human-shaped hole with our pills of prescribed gimmickry -- that comfortable distraction of relentless self validation so meticulously curated by the glowing preachers within our digital alters. Risking makes us uncomfortable, and we don't like to be uncomfortable. In fact, we'd rather not feel at all.

The human appetite for risk is cyclical. Human history is fossilized with waves of courage and regresses of cowardice. And like any slowly advancing tide, the incoming waves eventually overtake the receding interregnums, and the water line rises. This is the progress risk bestows: a higher water mark within the vessel of human achievement. Homo sapiens inaugurated our lineage of risk by wandering from the once-comfortable bosom of Northeast Africa and into the unimaginable frontier beyond the horizon. The reward was significant. Our exodus from Africa was instigated by environmental stressors, which most likely included chronic drought. Hence, our sapient ordinals were among the first to add to their environment what currently wasn't there rather than rely upon their environment to provide what they couldn't. In doing so they risked the imagination of what lies beyond Africa's horizon -- a horizon that eventually stretched beyond our planet, beyond our moon, and into the dark corridors of our cosmic Universe. Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Rosalind Franklin, Albert Einstein, John Lennon, Jesus of Nazareth*, Martin Luther King Jr., Alan Turing, Henrietta Swan Leavitt -- these are examples of human beings that risked the horizon despite the cost. Indeed, the cost was often great (if not ultimate) for these individuals, but their risk permanently changed history and advanced our human tide one ring higher.

Today there is no such appetite for risk. Our appetite doesn't have time to digest a diet of substance, and so we've removed our appetite altogether. We've come accustomed to a malnourished zombie diet of the superficial and immediate. We select only the cotton candy, lured by bright colors and instant satisfaction -- we don't even have to bother to chew before the unrefined sugars flood our system and hijack our dopamine. This is the kind of nourishment that soaks through the tongue, through the skin -- superficial. We are addicts with no patience. And we are numb and we are dead -- or rather, the "undead" iZombie. But we are comfortable.

If banality has become our steady diet of nothing then social technology has become its packaging. Text messaging is now expected to supplant the articulate complexities of human communication. And here, even the boundaries of text have been further castrated to contextless acronyms and emoticons. Insight, inspiration, opinions, date plans, marriage proposals, break-ups, divorces, life ambitions, births, deaths -- they are all now expected to contort into a prison of 140 characters. And if they cannot, the phone will ring unanswered only to later receive a text response asking what the "missed" phone call was about. It's as though the risk of actually confronting issues in emotional detail and glorious vulnerability is too great, too imposing, too uncomfortable. And we don't like being uncomfortable.

Moreover, "social" services such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and ".com" have further starved our appetite for risk such that any discomfort is simply deleted -- extracted -- from a comment board, "unfriended," or mocked with an impunity akin to insults shouted from a passing car. Rather than connecting the world as it initially did, digital socializing now isolates us by making it too easy to surround ourselves with only the things we "Like!" to further validate our comfortable, established sense of self. Google and other companies exacerbate this by downloading our digital thoughts to show us advertisements of things they think we want to buy. Hence, we groom and are groomed to keep our world consistent and unchallenged. Dissent is seen as a threat to this addiction of approval-induced dopamine. On the contrary, dissent should be viewed as a check and balance to our ego that, through rational and courageous confrontation, illuminates new paths towards personal and peer discovery. But our current state of social leprosy just doesn't have the appetite for this type of dissent -- this risk. And so we remove it.

Similar reflections of our current cowardice are evident through art -- as is art's role. Music has been beleaguered by gimmicks that are unfortunately similar to the orthodox of the late 1980's where visual theater was more important than sonic craft. Supplant Marshall amplifier stacks with wired nests of seemingly important laptops, mega-hair with mega-beards, feline-themed leather with ugly animal sweaters, and listless lyrics of "Girls, girls, girls" with meek-voiced mumbles of schizophrenic babel, and we're seeing the same tired actors of years past starring in modern pop and indie music -- all pre-packaged for your "scene" of choice. Real art takes risk. It challenges the audience and shows them something new; it imposes the discomfort (and delight) of being human -- of feeling human -- that leaves the audience and performers enlightened and inspired. Art is a conversation, not a megaphone to force your validation of an insipid status quo. As always, there are many exceptions where current artists are taking risks. These avant-garde artists are advocating a cultural reflection that few want to see. But most of what I hear and see from the local, national, and global stage is churning out hackneyed, pre-packaged imagery fit for easy consumption. Artists that do risk delivering substance struggle to find an audience among a populace that is too numb and impatient to recognize the value in a confrontation. It's no coincidence that the most revered, indelible art of our species took enormous risks to deliver its message. The conversation this art cultivated was certainly one of confrontation, conversation, discomfort, and, as a result, significant cultural advancement. Leonardo da Vinci, Artemisia Gentileschi, Amadeus Mozart, Kurt Cobain, Pablo Picaso, Georgia O'Keefe -- these are examples of notable artists that risked naked exposure not just of themselves, but of society. It was a reflection of the greater human experience, not a selfie. For the true artist, gimmicks are an insult to the craft; they are distractions for quick anemic consumption. Real art takes time to digest. It challenges what you think and feel about yourself and about your environment, and it requires no gimmick. It's loud enough all on its own.

Science is also currently suffering. For a generation past, scientists were heroes. They were curing polio, exploring the moon, releasing the power of the atom (for better and worse), and further liberating the human race from the often cruel environment Mother Earth imposes. The risk invested in science paid dividends in new ways to feed people, cure diseases, mobilize a global economy, and -- among countless other dividends --  provide the wireless magic on everyone's "essential" mobile and social devices. Of course, it hasn't always been a smooth road to these advances but the alternative would have been much rougher ride -- so rough that our race may have already bounced out of the back window by now if it wasn't for the safety belt of science. Yet, science is somehow increasingly being relegated to the annals of conspiracies and religious voodoo. Sure, it's been devalued by quixotic demands of panaceas falling short, as well as by zealous demigods spouting myths of impossible Creationism, toxic fluoride, virulent vaccines, and other nonsense ad nauseum. But the true culprit is -- once again -- a lack of risk that keeps the ship of discovery sailing ahead. Science discovery requires perseverance, creativity, a lot of time, and yes, faith -- but the kind of faith that is purely motivational to keep trying despite faults, missteps, and rewrites in its attempt to document reality. And the reality science often illuminates is inconvenient, if not scary. It can be cold, unforgiving, and bleak. And so it seems we'd rather just bundle up and go to sleep. But this is not how we came to be human, nor will it define how we will become whatever step is next. We must awaken from our somnabulistic amnesia and explore the next horizon. Science is our faithful vessel for this expedition.

Alas, a society that refuses to take risks feels entitled. It feels entitled to get what it wants without discomfort, without humility, and without looking at its true reflection. This where Narcissus was wrong: he was obsessed with his projection, not his reflection. It's our current reflection we're afraid of most. But this fear doesn't have to persist. We can (and in my opinion will again soon) take the risk to crawl out of our insulated grave of self-inflicted comfort to seek the next horizon. Instead of excising all our discomfort we can again learn the power in embracing what it can teach us about ourselves and our potential. We can see risk as a means towards a more perfect end -- an end that is never actually reached, but sought for nonetheless. We will do this because our human nature demands it -- it demands that we take risks. Despite cycles of regress, the tide of human human advancement has always been one that continues to rise. But unlike our seas, this tide is not mandated by the moon. It's mandated by our will. If we so risk it_

*I'm referring to the historical Jesus of Nazareth, not the mythical Jesus Christ. Jesus of Nazareth undeniably changed the world with his radical rebellion of peace. His message would eventually empower the poor and underprivileged, and revolutionize the concept of societal governance. Unfortunately, that message has had thousands of years to be distorted and manipulated -- a topic perhaps for a different blog entry.