Tag Archives: tourism

In defense of an (un)original aesthetic

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My Modern Met has posted a hauntingly beautiful gallery of photos that manages to tease striking originality out of a tired world of copies:

Switzerland-based Corinne Vionnet is our guide to the world’s most famous landmarks, monuments millions have visited before. Her art is created not by acrylic, oil, or watercolor, each piece is made by combining hundreds of tourist photos into one. After conducting an online keyword search and sifting through photo sharing sites, this Swiss/French artist carefully layers 200 to 300 photos on top of one another until she gets her desired result.

You really need to click over to My Modern Met to see this stuff for yourself.  Words alone doesn’t do it justice.  (Vionnet’s own website is here, if you want to look further into her work.)

I first became interested in intellectual property law as a part-time photographer.  I was intrigued by the legal implications of photographing the world around me, including the ever-encroaching restrictions that narrow the subjects “safe” from litigation threats.  Not surprisingly, then, I get pretty excited when the fields of copyright and photography intersect as explicitly as they do in Vionnet’s work.

Vionnet’s pieces — beautiful in their own right — serve as a meditation on the artist within the collective and the unique within the copies.  Her works have an ethereal and timeless aesthetic because they are composed of photos taken by hundreds of people over many years (they are literally ethereal and timeless).  The “originals” (taken by tourists) are simply copies of what everyone else takes, but her “copies” (clearly lovingly composed by Vionnet) are truly original takes on these famous landmarks.  Brilliant.

The article quotes Vionnet’s own summation of this series:

“Why do we always take the same picture, if not to interact with what already exists?,” Vionnet asks. “The photograph proves our presence. And to be true, the picture will be perfectly consistent with the pictures in our collective memory.”

Well said, Vionnet.  This is why our shared, cultural commons is so important.  Artists always have to “take the same picture” in order to “interact with what already exists”.  It is what artists do with their picture that makes them unique, not in some divine ex nihilo sense, but as mirror-holders who call our attention to a part of the larger whole and allow us to see one bit of reality in a new way.

However, artists do not “own” reality any more than their creative fore-bearers — or any of us.  In the slow passage of time, we all receive, create, and relinquish back.  Hopefully, in the words of John Locke, we relinquish “as good as” what we have ourselves received.

To be sure, copyright law is needed to allow Vionnet to enjoy the full fruits of her creative labor.  Nonetheless, take care to remember that, in a very real sense, she does not “own” her works any more than she took the underlying photographs — or than those tourists built the towers, mountains, and waterfalls they themselves copied with their cameras.  Vionnet’s pieces are “out there” now, part of our collective memory.  We can discuss them, critique them, applaud them, reject them, or even build on them.  However brilliant, Vionnet doesn’t “own” them in an absolute metaphysical sense, and she shouldn’t “own” them in an absolute legal sense.

Given the genesis of her work, I doubt that Vionnet would be overassertive with her copy-rights.  (Though one never knows.)  Unfortunately, lots of other people routinely assert “their” divine rights in “their” intellectual property.  As sad as this state of affairs is, one has to laugh a bit.  Just because they have a mirror doesn’t mean that they made the sun.

Las Vegas Sun reports on ASA move to Las Vegas

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Last week, the American Sociological Association announced that the 2011 Annual Meetings have officially been moved to Las Vegas from Chicago. This news made it into the tourism column in the Las Vegas Sun with some interesting commentary:

The public usually doesn’t have many kind things to say about unions because of the labor disruptions they can produce. But here’s an instance in which union tactics are playing in Las Vegas’ favor.

Last week, the American Sociological Association announced that it’s going to have its 106th annual meeting at Caesars Palace Aug. 20-23. The reason: A protracted labor dispute involving two Chicago hotels is showing no sign of resolution and the American Sociological Association Council opted against taking a chance that it wouldn’t be solved by August…

It’ll be the first time that the association has met in Las Vegas, and members seem delighted, not only because for the first time since 1990 the organization with 5,000 attendees will be able to conduct its event under one roof but because sociologists find Las Vegas to be interesting laboratory.

“Not only is Las Vegas vibrant and fascinating from a sociological perspective, but it’s also easily accessible for our members across the country,” Hillman said. “When we decided to move our meeting from Chicago, we put an emphasis on finding an alternate location that offered optimum convenience for our members. By selecting Las Vegas and Caesars Palace, we believe we’ve achieved that goal.”

Workers at Caesars Palace have union contracts, but they don’t expire until 2012.

LVCVA representatives have to be happy with the association’s decision, since it’s wanted to get more medical groups to give Las Vegas a try.

The next goal should be to work hard with the association to convince leadership to keep the event here. If the event shows a healthy attendance increase from previous years, the group would have to think twice about returning to Chicago.

A couple of things strike me as interesting in this report:

1. So the sociological meetings can be written off as a research trip? Las Vegas is a fascinating place and it will be interesting to see all of the sociologists out on the town. But most sociological work I have read about Las Vegas, mainly in the field of urban sociology, has been negative. Las Vegas is described as a simulacrum, a fake place that illustrates the worst of American consumption. Perhaps the convention people in Las Vegas don’t care what a group says about a place as long as they are willing to spend money there.

2. Is this report suggesting that sociology is somehow related to medicine?

3. Did the reporter look at how ASA rotates its annual meetings between certain cities? I would be shocked if the meetings are in Las Vegas again next year, not because it is a bad place or has poor facilities but because ASA seems to like to move around.

Plans to revamp Navy Pier

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Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin takes a look at new plans to revamp Navy Pier. Overall, Kamin argues the plans lack coherence even as they offer a few nice ideas:

That’s what’s missing from the new report: A bold design framework for the future of the 3,300-foot-long pier (above, in its current state), which was envisioned by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, completed in 1916, and remains Chicago’s top tourist attraction, even if it’s not as popular as it used to be.

Drawn up for the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority by the Urban Land Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate developers’ group, the report unveiled Wednesday has a certain urgency because Navy Pier’s annual attendance has fallen to 8 million from a peak of 9 million in 2000.

But the report’s principal recommendations lack flashes of insight about the great public work, which originally consisted of classically-inspired buildings framing freight and passenger sheds. The sheds disappeared as part of the pier’s $225 million makeover, completed in 1995.

My complaints about the space would be a little different and not focus so much on the design. My main issue is that it is primarily a tourist attraction that has little revisit value and is not connected enough to other Chicago attractions like Michigan Avenue or the Chicago River. As a tourist destination, it doesn’t actually offer much to do – the stores are limited, there are limited eating opportunities, attractions like the Ferris Wheel aren’t something you would come back to several times a year, and the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre is a great performing space but doesn’t add much to the atmosphere. Additionally, Navy Pier is a bit of a walk from Michigan Avenue which features much more interesting shops and restaurants.

The contrast I would draw with Navy Pier is Millennium Park. The park doesn’t cost anything (outside of some concerts, ice skating, and food) but has attractive elements: interesting design, some great gardens to walk through, and great people-watching opportunities, as people converge from the train stations, State Street, Michigan Avenue, and the lakefront. Most of all, the park is not a mall or amusement park, which Navy Pier can often feel like. Millennium Park feels and operates like a real public space, not a controlled commercial environment.

What might be helpful are some low-cost options for boasting interest. Why not have revolving (and interesting) art displays or themes? Why not have more street performances? Why not work on connecting the Navy Pier streetscape with Michigan Avenue so it doesn’t require a drive to the overpriced Navy Pier garage? Navy Pier needs to offer more unique and cheap features that tourists and others can’t find elsewhere in Chicago.

Listing the “coolest suburbs worth a visit”

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Critiques of suburbs have often included the charge that they are boring. But perhaps this stereotype is cracking: Travel+Leisure provides a list of the “coolest suburbs worth a visit.” A few things seem to unite these communities: they have “cool” cultural attractions (and some have drawn the attention of celebrities) and have a uniqueness or character that sets them apart from the “typical” suburb.

While I don’t suspect that suburban tourism will soon explode, this is a reminder that there is a lot of interesting things to see and do in suburbs. And if more and more visitors and tourists do head to the suburbs, I’m sure the communities will be happy to see them.