faint surroundings

yet another stream of things/thoughts/links that somewhat connect to one another.  i think this has become the default structure for my posts.

i finally watched werner herzog’s 1971 ‘land of silence and darkness,’ a documentation of the deaf-blind experience.  the film follows a woman, fini, who lost her hearing and vision in her late teens.  she’s aware of all that she can no longer experience /and/ she remains able to communicate (outwardly through speech and she receives input through a touch-based code system tapped and stroked across her palm) - herzog travels with her as she acts as an ambassador, visiting others with her condition.

the movie, hauntingly sad yet hopeful, explores what it is to be human and what it is to perceive.  fini describes a constantly undulating roar in her ears and an optical fluctuation of light intensity - i wonder what she made of this feedback received from her surroundings and if she had, over time, formulated some method for comprehension.  i also wonder about her perhaps heightened sensitivity to aspects of our environment which i am only vaguely aware of.

which reminds me of jean noël hallé and his 18th century smell-maps of paris.  hallé, napoleon bonaparte’s own physician, was concerned with parisian hygiene and hoped that his cartography of stenches (i love that word) would bring about health reform.  and it worked - bonaparte introduced to paris its first vaulted sewer network.

hallé’s maps remind of me of this old nytimes feature: scents and the city.
it’s an olfactory map of new york city!  and it’s interactive!  some highlights: “deep-dust-mineral smell of subway, warm bacon-y wind” (tribeca), “moldy newspapers, dried shrimp, still-breathing fish, tiny dried fish, soap, pickled pavement” (chinatown), “hot bus tires” (theater district), “damp tennis ball, general dog scent, melon mixed with air conditioner, socks” (morningside heights), “strong urine becoming floral, wintergreen, printed cotton” (greenwich village).  i appreciate the juxtoposition between north central park (“canada geese, runner’s sweat, mulch, beer, ripe blackberries (untouched), pungent chihuahua”) and south central park (“horses, ice cream, duck dander, glossy magazines, swampy algae”).  this makes me miss the US.  i’d love to find something of this sort for london.  or perhaps i’ll make my own.

and one final thing.  immaterials: light painting wifi.  i’ve seen this project pop up in the blogs i follow a few times already and it brilliantly plays into this theme of environment and perception (and lack thereof).  thus far, i’ve mentioned the tangible aspects of landscape and how these sensory stimuli are received at varying levels depending on person - ‘immaterials’ presents to us the unseen world of wifi (the project literally /maps/ the topography of wifi in multiple places).  it’s kind of fascinating.  it’s kind of crazy.  the “electromagnetic terrain” that envelops us will without question become more extensive and intricate as time and technology progress and maybe one day we will become so reliant on these invisible networks that the non-physical will dictate our behavior to a larger extent than the physical.  maybe.

not to mention, as my mother (the source of my luddite tendencies, who once warned me to not sleep next to my cellphone as it radiates god -knows-what-sorts-of waves) insists, all this space-age crap will probably give us cancer.

Immaterials: Light painting WiFi from Timo on Vimeo.

okay, that’s it for now.

p.s. ‘land of silence and darkness’ is available for instant-stream via netflix.