Rouding Up
Ed. Note: I have neglected you, dear reader, for a long time. And so...
August Roadtrip
The route was dictated mostly by architectural sites: The spectacle of Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, Kahn's Kimball Museum, Ando's new Modern Art Museum in Ft. Worth, Ando's Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis, Saarinen's Arch, Hadid's Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Wright's Fallingwater. Along the way we found KFC in Kentucky, a white buffalo in Arizona, a forty foot tall Indian sculpture in New Mexico, some trains on stilts in western Texas, a bunch of jerks in Cincinnati, and the fabulous Ukranian-run Melody Motor Lodge in western Pennsylvania.
I am here to tell you that the Mini Cooper has not reached the interior of the country yet. Somewhere in Oklahoma right now there is a group of teenage girls who "have never seen nothing so cool."
Copenhagen
The best way I can describe Copenhagen is Venice without most of the things that make Venice generally unpleasant. The latter is host to mosquitos, too many tourists, too many people trying to sell bad food to the tourists, foul stenches, etc.
Perhaps the most interesting thing for me in Copenhagen was the use of still water reflecting pools throughout the city. Although the sea is ever present, and obviously an important part of life, the Danes have also given a good bit of their dry land to pools and fountains. At first it stuck me as a bit of an odd gesture, but then I began to understand that these pools capture the one aspect of water which their sea never yields: reflection. It is in Copenhagen's many reflecting pools that the city and sky float in liquid dreams and on those glassy top surfaces that the city's relationship to Water becomes complete.
Iceland
It seems like a land of oppositions: Just below the arctic circle but in the path of the Gulfstream, volcanoes under glaciers, shards of rock formations giving way to fields of lumpy frost heaves. When cresting hills one may find a glacier, a geyser, a water fall, open plains, more mountains, sheep, practically anything but a city. Reykjavik is the only city of substance (there is a much smaller place on the north edge of the island) and even it is quite small at 180,000 people.
Iceland is also the only country I've visited that has such a prominent national angle. Due to the position of Reykjavik at 64°N the sun ends up shining at the acute angle of 13° from the ground. Most glazing transmits light and captures solar energy best when the angle of incidence is perpendicular to the angle of the glass, so walls and clerestory windows are frequently tilted in at the gentle angle of about 103°.
Recommended: 101Hotel, Apotek restaurant, Nonna Bud.
Chicago
Landed with five hours to spare so I took a train to Chicago ave., bus to Austin ave., walked ten blocks to the FLW House and Studio. The woman selling tickets was so rude to me that I turned around and left. The Water-Tower Sofitel provided a surprisingly nice place to stay and the rest of the evening is better left to memories.
Vegas/Tokyo Through The Lens
Driving past the Lion-fountain that marks the entrance to the MGM Grand hotel, Las Vegas assembled itself into an array of pixels. In the faceted base of that fountain the lights of the strip were abstracted into squares of color. The more I think about those real-life pixels that more I come to consider Las Vegas as an act pixelation. Digital representation is a process that reduces everything to sharply deliniated segments which, examined individually, are entirely flat, flimsy, lifeless but when examined en masse often produce effects of sheer awe. Representation may always be an act of simplification, but digital representation has no in-between to fall back upon as an acknowledgment that something else may exist in the gaps. Las Vegas has mastered the art of assembling elements into an impressive whole. It has embraced pixelation.
Upon close inspection, however, things spread thin and gaps appear between the areas of definition. A walk through the interstitial space between the casinos reveals a territory of nothing. Neon and asphalt gives way to dirt, construction sites, disused lots: areas awaiting further definition, more pixelated infill.
Suddenly I understand why Wayne Wang decided to shoot Center of the World digitally. All issues of the movie's questionable merit aside, digital was really the only option. If we are bothered by the squared-off grit of his shots it is to be bothered by the fractures of the city itself. In its true form Las Vegas is digital: concurrently awesome and deceptively simple.
How surprising, then, that I would find myself watching Lost In Translation after returning from Las Vegas, as it provided a sharply contrasting relationship between city and cinema. Representing a city that is largely digital (Tokyo loves the Jumbotron), Sophia Copola has chosen to stay with celluloid and limit herself to available light. One minute contrast is high and the next everything recedes into a gloom as our eyes adjust to sharply illuminated foreground and background. This is the effect of shooting with available light and an analog to being culturally lost in transition. Taken as a whole, the movie is essentially a capsule of jetlag: swimming in language, knowing exactly where you are but feeling lost, enjoying the unexpected, compound contrast.
I suspect that Tokyo's ability to at least appear to have a richer experience has to do with the relative nonchalance of its creation. On the other hand, Las Vegas truly is one of the monuments of 20th century civilization and a testament to the will to inhabit. It's a monument in all of the best and worst ways possible.
--Posted 09/30/03 11:21PM