This Critical Visual Essay takes the form of a Virtual Book and aims to contribute to current dialogue within the Critical Topologies Of Landscape Department based on the question what is criticality? This it does in two ways:

Firstly, this Critical Visual Essay should be seen in its relation to the subjects which involve criticism, and offers an intervention and reference source to a topology of Henri Lefebvre's philosophy of space. The work identifies entries in “The Production of Space” and takes up on its fixity of 'space' as bounded. In the work, related aspects are built up which establish links to the common theme of ‘borders’, a theme which seems to be topical and yet somehow very dated given the current emphasis on fluidity and the global. This work asks when does the shift occur between inside and outside and what happens to the things that do not quite fit.

Secondly this Critical Visual Essay mixes disciplinary perspectives of the visual and the critical alongside the criticism of books, ideas and theories. Taking the form of a 'Virtual Book' the work links images that are actual and virtual, the World Wide Web and Lefebvre's spatial terminology at the same site. In this 'Virtual Book' each page is a marker of a moment in time in an ongoing production and creation. Each newly generated page is created in real time every time the Virtual Book is visited. Each visit opens an experience which materializes and dematerializes with each connection. In the mixing of concrete environments and abstract space, connections, inconsistencies and internal contradictions emerge that could be seen to combine and to problemise the differences that co-exist and undermine the seamless spatio-temporal order offered by Lefebvre.

The essay abstract

Samples from the Virtual Book follow: -

AAL

MS7 Book of Hours Image courtesy of Syracuse University Library Special Collection NY

landscaping9

Flare observed with various instruments Hanaoka,Y 1997, Solar Physics 173, 319

 

Images sourced electronically are attributed underneath the actual image in the manner specified by the author or licensor. The resulting work was created under the Creative Commons License described at the following address: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/

 

This project was possible with the support and generosity of: -

Steve Yewdall, Marcel Tam, John Erhart, Nicolette A.Schnieder - Syracuse University Library- Special Collections, National Radio Astronomy Observatory Associated Universities Inc and Bruce Campbell/Smithson Instution, Kiyoto Shibasaki -Nobeyama Solar Radio Observatory, United States Geological Survey Maps, Larry Cruse-University of California,San Diego,Jim Siebold,NASA Earth Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy/National Science Foundation.