Sunday, June 30, 2013

On the Road | Canberra: Geometry & the City

Canberra celebrates in 2013 the centennial of the commencement of its construction, started in 1913: the site of the new capital of Australia was chosen between the two major Australian cities of Melbourne and Sydney.
The city planning follows the "garden city" model and was designed by the Chicago landscape architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin. An axis connects the Australian War Memorial with the Parliament House, with a series of framed view visually reinforcing the axis.


The visual axis connecting the War Memorial with the Parliament House

 The National Museum of Australia, in opposition of the geometric rigor of the Parliament House and urban planning presents a chaotic, disorganized yet vibrant organic free form arrangements

 The Black Mountain Tower

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Northern Solstice: Changing Perspective Point


Once again I am reminded that life is about change and adapting to change. For the past decade I have been celebrating nature cycles marked by sun positions in the sky: namely solstices and equinoxes. My celebration is quite simple: wherever I am in the world I go outside with my camera and take photographs of the sun rising and setting, to record these special marking of the sun in the sky. So far my sun recordings have always been in the northern hemisphere and I was referring to December 21 as the winter solstice day and June 21 was the summer solstice. Now that I am in the southern hemisphere I am learning to call June 21 the northern solstice, and December 21 the southern solstice. Everything is relative and now June 21 has become the shortest day of the day announced by the northward equinox, which once for me was the spring equinox.
This morning I woke up with the sense of depression which has become almost constant in the past two months —a cocktail of stress, anxiety, sadness, nostalgia and regret; but I decided to greet this important day of the year, even if for me was announcing the second winter in six month. I was rewarded, as the sense of heaviness lifted while I was witnessing the sun rising from across the Corio Bay. It was not really a spectacular sunrise, yet it brought a sense of calm and feeling of connection with this foreign land.

Walking back to my accommodation, I looked at low sun light from a different viewpoint, which offered one of the sought after sunrise compositions.  I had an epiphany that sometimes the same object of observation is more interesting and can become beautiful is seen from a different perspective point. Perhaps I should apply it to my troubled academic journey and embrace this change, although quite different from expectations.


Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Interactive Multimedia Publication | The Sky from Earth: Sky Spirals

 

I am pleased to announce the publication of Sky Spirals, the first interactive book of the series  “Frames of Sky from Earth”. Sky Spirals captures the intersections of art, astronomy and architecture and brings to the digital media the spirit of of the ancient interpretations of the sky, often illustrated in the celestial atlases, merging imagination with science in a poetic view of the cosmos.
Sky Spirals also includes also multimedia content from proposals for public art projects developed by the author in the 1990s and based on the spiral shape as a metaphor and literal expression of a link between remote and local places, virtual and geographic locations. The aim of Frames of Sky from Earth, in conjunction with the public art projects, is ultimately to construct theories and methodologies of placemaking reconnecting ourselves to the perception of universe — the belief that the self and the universe and are not separate entities but part of the same system can bring ecological awareness to be integrated in our daily life practices.

To purchase or download a free preview visit the iTunes store:  Frames of Sky from Earth | SKY SPIRALS