RPHC4002
The Commission.
The Environment
As my initial idea has not work out, i had to rethink my whole project and start it again. As so i begin to look for inspiration in the local area, Medway Towns, especially in Chatham, for 2 nights; i took a camera and a wide and 50 mill lens to capture some ideas. Walking around i discovered that because the city it is formed on the hill, here are a lot of public footways, some of them stairs and other interesting in shapes.
Having this inspiration i decided to use this idea of shortcut, of places where you can change your course, as this was exactly what i actually begin to do, changing my project idea.
I found that this project base has a emotional and personal impact, meaning that regardless of situation, you need to rethink, accept that you was wrong, trying to find the bad element, giving a self honest feedback.
For me this idea of side road, paths, a different way of approaching means a different perspective and attitude, risk and courage to go into the unknown; the unpredictable.
My whole choices in life was more or less different than the straight ones, so finding a challenging approach, for me it is more interesting than the normal way of doing thinks, so i will involve in this project for the challenging part of it, for his adventure meaning.
At first for my project i started to experiment with this idea of roads, paths, in 2 different environment, a descriptive on in the city, hihhlighting the particularities and especially the stairs inside medway towns. Second one was a bit of personal touch, an appdoach for more loneliness places, not often used, more on a cistance than the usual used paths inside the town, so i go to the paths living on the city edge, more nearly a wilderness, forgotten by the public majority, could say nearly abandoned.
My initial research involve discovering the general roads functions history throught times, focussing on roman times, and discovering a similittude in chatham that the waitling road, was actually called roman road, a remembering of old romanic road to the historic medway.
Throughout the times roads have evolved from some really basic forms of paths, unmarked, to developed systems, functionals and a important industry,economy with own rules and authority.
The basic forms of roads dates way back in history, made by the need of mobility, with a small distance, often made through forests, mainly used by primitive populations, and late by professionals, as examples the shepherds.
Roads, has evolved in the classicals times, starting by the greeks, formerly roads who connect important cities called polis, Athens, Efes, Byzantion, Sparta.
The revolution in this domain come in romans times, basically romans organised the roads, and improved them, constructing roads with slaves labours at first as a connection between the empire centre and the capital Rome.
Romans build strategically this roads, the unique factor been that they used rocks, bricks from old constructions, and so making a straight pavement witch could be used in all seasons, for a fast mobility of army and in this way the knowledge of making roads was a priority and from now on a science in the roman world.
Also they made this quote saying that, ,,All roads leads to Rome"/,, Omnes viae Romam ducunt" in latin, a qoute witch has a larger and older form ,,Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam", saying that a thousand of roads are all leading people to Rome.
This old qoute is coming long way from the Romans Empire pick moment, when they said that a thousand roads, meaning the romans ambitions of constructing the new infrastructure, witch actually was just only 29 of them realised, are all having the central point in capital city Rome.
The importance that romans give to roads is obvious, from this idea of thousands, a concept with helped them control the large empire, and always having a new place for conquering new territories, for this porpouse they will go a step further and developing some large projects witch involves the construction of bridges, an example it is the bridge to Dacia, made over Danube river by Apolodor from Damascus, a state of technique and art on that era, long for 135 feets, a bridge who helped romans to conquer in 101-102 Dacia, an land full of resource, and rich in gold and silver, and other resources.
The reason for speaking about this achievement was, that apart of the importance it had in romans times, it connects to my original project idea, the old roman gold and silver site, in my home country.
For romans the roads were called ,,via", a term nowadays used to discribe a connecting city, a general term now, witch in old times has specific city regard, the Rome.
Roman knowledge is still available and used widely in road construction, there are 4 principle charactheristics, the curved shape on the edges to drain the water when raining, multilayers pavage, the hight up of the land level and the using of sides water ditches for excesive rainig water.
In late roman emperioum times, the eastern part, Byzantium was the one who made the connections between Asia and Europe, the name Silk road, comes from the his main purpose the commerce with silk.
Byzantines made this long road at first to have their loved silk for clothing, but after this they transports from there, China more precissely, a wide products area, like china porcelain,glass, fine paper, gemstones, gold and silver, guns, and really important spices.
After centuries, spices become the main product imported. Spices had that importance, because they were used to preserve food and especially meat,as in that times there was not available the modern tecnologies as fridges or freezers. The ones who made this travel were now europeans, most of them living in Venice, were called Negozi di Venezia, shoppers from Venice.
Because of the expensive travelling and most because of the struggle to match the increassing borders taxes, to increase profit, they started to find a new road.
This new road will be through sea, this the moment of the Discovering Era, now is discovered India, nearly than China, and reach in resources and obviously in spices and preservers.
As we can see, the roads, sometimes have a side road, a challenge who can end up in a nice prize, an advantage, India at first in our case, a way to highlight the importance of this calculated and assumed risk.
The modern roads starts again in 18 th century, with pavage made with rocks and helped by cement and sand a technique called macadam.
The revolution of technique, used even today, come in late 19 th century, and it was called asphalt.
Asphalt was composed of bitum and sand, bitum was used in state of cement.
Bitum and his properties were well known from antique times, first used in Mesopotamia, nowadays Iraq.
In 1867 Charles Tellier, an ingenier was used on a macadam surface a mix of gudron and sand pressed under steamed compressors
After the first world war, in italian city Milano, was built the first modern highway, an italian iniative not american as often it is said, using modern features like lane separators, wide lanes and wide angle road virages.
All this because of a simple reason, Milano was the industrial car makers center, and by making this highway, that was their way to encourage more costumers to buy their expensive cars.
I started my visual research with my first image from Edward Burtinsky art project called Oil, an image of landscape who reveal a rough s shape, more like an angle s, witch make me think of a road, with a deep perspective who was reduced his round form to edges, from curve to straight lines, a symbol of transforming, in the industrial era,
In contrast with the image above i found this one, in the art project called Homesteads, a really calm, with the same wide opening idea, but more delicate, a subtile form of wilderness, a beautiful one, even though we can see that there are a lot more forest cut, probably you can say that 3 qouarters of the original forest missing, a sad aspect.
Although we have this sad aspect, i find it really welcoming, in terms of colour and framing, the eye catcher at first can be the red ceiling of that tiny house, a huge contrast with the surrounding envivroment, but after some seconds my mind investigate that road, his starting point and obviously the end. We can dream, and feel free to choose any of the
paths, or follow the road, having some difficulties causing that river obstacle, and more important the hope we see nearly the far mountains and horizon line, that road who trespass the road again after the trees line, an fact that others has adventured in this trip and pass it.
An image i found quite in the same approaching in the Hudna art project of Simon Roberts, an image who speak about other idea, but the representation of the road has the same base, with that dreamy feeling of unknowing the end of it. I choose to speak about this image as i found it inspiring in my inspiration resources, even though here the road has a secondary importance, and it is in the lower part, obviously a disadvantage who suggest us, like the showing hand in the above part to investigate for the main subject and meaning, more like a psychological approach.
This one it is a image from the Polyarnye Nochi, meaning winter nights, of Simon Roberts, taken in 2005 in Northern Russia.
The colour it has a cod mood, unwelcoming, especially in the down side, the trees are on a shadow. You can almost guess the temperature, a couple degrees under zero, is like that nice place, witch you wannna see it only in summer.
Despite this coldliness we have some positive things over there, that mountain covered in a gorgeous snow, highlighted by the a smooth sunshine, this light puts the mountain in the subject area and gives us a positive feeling.
The road has that s sneaky shape leading to an industrial place and we can suppouse that the terminus point it is actually the mountain pick, but we can see that now no one has the courage to hike it.
This image is fdom the project We English of Simon Roberts, a plain and straight view of a river road, an subtile road, with a little twist of s shape, more curved, situated somewhere on the edge of the city.
The most important thing i learn fro this image it is the artist position in relation to his subject, in control but really distant objective, waiting for the right moment, calm, this approach i want to usd and hopsfully transfer in my images.
This one is part from the same project, We English, but it has a different subject, here we have a road leading to the hill pick, a well described road, with an human sillhouete, and an well known starting and terminus point. For me this approach to the road shape is too descriptive, but i am willing to use this approach as i like how it works in the general picture, perhaps more of the that man, for me in this way it making sense as it discribe the human long and hight road he make in order to achieve his goal.
The next 3 images are from the Simon Roberts The Election Project, and involve peoples in an urban, neigborhood.
I choose them because i thought anout the interaction with peoples and if it will be a positive thing if i will include peoples or their silouhettes in the envivromental images, as part of the envivroment, as creators.
I know that if i include humans this could transform a lot even can change the original subject, so at the end kf the day i choose not to use humans, as my brief include envivroment, and this will help focus the subject and keep it clear ffom any alterations.
The first image is looking ideal as it has that human factor and my main s shaped road, a type of road i like the most as it has that portion of dreaming, mystery and perhaps a fairytale behind it, waiting to be discovered.
The other 2 are more flat in therms of road shape, something pretty common to roads in Medway area, a detail to be considered for my approach.
In terms of the city scape first 2 we can definetly say that they are on the edge, maybe more outside in the first one, but definetly on the edge of the city, an aspect witch represents one of my initial ideas.
The last one it is straight on the city landscape, a more common and approchable situation, but as we can see, hard to represent due to the peoples presence.
The next 3 pictures are Edward Burtinsky work, part of the project Oil, and the second one from the China project. All of them are illustrating an industrial scale, an approach witch i found to be really interesting to think as, but witch will not apply to my idea, even though i thought to use these part to introduce in my image an actual road, as a reminder of time and place, just to give an initial context.
This image is form Edward Burtinsky ass well, part of the project Homesteades, even though it illustrate homes nearby an wonderful envivroment, it has that attraction for me, the mystery and shape of the road makes finding it really impressive.
We can see a similiarity to the russian landscape from Simon Roberts, with the same part of road who is leading to the mountains through the subject, in this case the houses, but this representation it is more soft feeling, been properly illuminated and having a more closer look.
I chossed this image from Mark Power project Different endings, because is a similar descriptive looking to normal sideroads and roundabouts are in UK.
It has a sad autumn feeling, more like an abandoned place, witch makes you interrogate his state.Even though is facing straight the middle with the roundabout and the blue sign it has a pacefull view. And more interesting this blue sign it is like helping the contrast an just adding seasoning to nice soft food.
The next image is from Mark Power same project, a more nearly approach with my intention, on the side edge of the city, being following the road in a mystery, and especially indicated that this is the subject by the side trees.
My last but not least image ass well from Mark Power same project, it illustrating a more calmed part, an kind of aestethical side, more likely to be compared to pitoreque, giving you a nice feeling calm and inviting to have a little of reflective moments.
I started to search for same places locally and by travelling physical in the Medway Towns, some place i found them using Google maps, here i have some prinscreens of the places that i visited and made some pictures on.
My first project ideal location were looking like the ones underneath, i was actually discovered afterwards the new locations so i decided to live this idea as a plan b.
My final images come out to be this ones, made in the proximate of Rochester airport, near Asda shopping center in Chatham, and on the Caperstone road.
As my initial idea has not work out, i had to rethink my whole project and start it again. As so i begin to look for inspiration in the local area, Medway Towns, especially in Chatham, for 2 nights; i took a camera and a wide and 50 mill lens to capture some ideas. Walking around i discovered that because the city it is formed on the hill, here are a lot of public footways, some of them stairs and other interesting in shapes.
Having this inspiration i decided to use this idea of shortcut, of places where you can change your course, as this was exactly what i actually begin to do, changing my project idea.
I found that this project base has a emotional and personal impact, meaning that regardless of situation, you need to rethink, accept that you was wrong, trying to find the bad element, giving a self honest feedback.
For me this idea of side road, paths, a different way of approaching means a different perspective and attitude, risk and courage to go into the unknown; the unpredictable.
My whole choices in life was more or less different than the straight ones, so finding a challenging approach, for me it is more interesting than the normal way of doing thinks, so i will involve in this project for the challenging part of it, for his adventure meaning.
At first for my project i started to experiment with this idea of roads, paths, in 2 different environment, a descriptive on in the city, hihhlighting the particularities and especially the stairs inside medway towns. Second one was a bit of personal touch, an appdoach for more loneliness places, not often used, more on a cistance than the usual used paths inside the town, so i go to the paths living on the city edge, more nearly a wilderness, forgotten by the public majority, could say nearly abandoned.
My initial research involve discovering the general roads functions history throught times, focussing on roman times, and discovering a similittude in chatham that the waitling road, was actually called roman road, a remembering of old romanic road to the historic medway.
Throughout the times roads have evolved from some really basic forms of paths, unmarked, to developed systems, functionals and a important industry,economy with own rules and authority.
The basic forms of roads dates way back in history, made by the need of mobility, with a small distance, often made through forests, mainly used by primitive populations, and late by professionals, as examples the shepherds.
Roads, has evolved in the classicals times, starting by the greeks, formerly roads who connect important cities called polis, Athens, Efes, Byzantion, Sparta.
The revolution in this domain come in romans times, basically romans organised the roads, and improved them, constructing roads with slaves labours at first as a connection between the empire centre and the capital Rome.
Romans build strategically this roads, the unique factor been that they used rocks, bricks from old constructions, and so making a straight pavement witch could be used in all seasons, for a fast mobility of army and in this way the knowledge of making roads was a priority and from now on a science in the roman world.
Also they made this quote saying that, ,,All roads leads to Rome"/,, Omnes viae Romam ducunt" in latin, a qoute witch has a larger and older form ,,Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam", saying that a thousand of roads are all leading people to Rome.
This old qoute is coming long way from the Romans Empire pick moment, when they said that a thousand roads, meaning the romans ambitions of constructing the new infrastructure, witch actually was just only 29 of them realised, are all having the central point in capital city Rome.
The importance that romans give to roads is obvious, from this idea of thousands, a concept with helped them control the large empire, and always having a new place for conquering new territories, for this porpouse they will go a step further and developing some large projects witch involves the construction of bridges, an example it is the bridge to Dacia, made over Danube river by Apolodor from Damascus, a state of technique and art on that era, long for 135 feets, a bridge who helped romans to conquer in 101-102 Dacia, an land full of resource, and rich in gold and silver, and other resources.
The reason for speaking about this achievement was, that apart of the importance it had in romans times, it connects to my original project idea, the old roman gold and silver site, in my home country.
For romans the roads were called ,,via", a term nowadays used to discribe a connecting city, a general term now, witch in old times has specific city regard, the Rome.
Roman knowledge is still available and used widely in road construction, there are 4 principle charactheristics, the curved shape on the edges to drain the water when raining, multilayers pavage, the hight up of the land level and the using of sides water ditches for excesive rainig water.
In late roman emperioum times, the eastern part, Byzantium was the one who made the connections between Asia and Europe, the name Silk road, comes from the his main purpose the commerce with silk.
Byzantines made this long road at first to have their loved silk for clothing, but after this they transports from there, China more precissely, a wide products area, like china porcelain,glass, fine paper, gemstones, gold and silver, guns, and really important spices.
After centuries, spices become the main product imported. Spices had that importance, because they were used to preserve food and especially meat,as in that times there was not available the modern tecnologies as fridges or freezers. The ones who made this travel were now europeans, most of them living in Venice, were called Negozi di Venezia, shoppers from Venice.
Because of the expensive travelling and most because of the struggle to match the increassing borders taxes, to increase profit, they started to find a new road.
This new road will be through sea, this the moment of the Discovering Era, now is discovered India, nearly than China, and reach in resources and obviously in spices and preservers.
As we can see, the roads, sometimes have a side road, a challenge who can end up in a nice prize, an advantage, India at first in our case, a way to highlight the importance of this calculated and assumed risk.
The modern roads starts again in 18 th century, with pavage made with rocks and helped by cement and sand a technique called macadam.
The revolution of technique, used even today, come in late 19 th century, and it was called asphalt.
Asphalt was composed of bitum and sand, bitum was used in state of cement.
Bitum and his properties were well known from antique times, first used in Mesopotamia, nowadays Iraq.
In 1867 Charles Tellier, an ingenier was used on a macadam surface a mix of gudron and sand pressed under steamed compressors
After the first world war, in italian city Milano, was built the first modern highway, an italian iniative not american as often it is said, using modern features like lane separators, wide lanes and wide angle road virages.
All this because of a simple reason, Milano was the industrial car makers center, and by making this highway, that was their way to encourage more costumers to buy their expensive cars.
I started my visual research with my first image from Edward Burtinsky art project called Oil, an image of landscape who reveal a rough s shape, more like an angle s, witch make me think of a road, with a deep perspective who was reduced his round form to edges, from curve to straight lines, a symbol of transforming, in the industrial era,
In contrast with the image above i found this one, in the art project called Homesteads, a really calm, with the same wide opening idea, but more delicate, a subtile form of wilderness, a beautiful one, even though we can see that there are a lot more forest cut, probably you can say that 3 qouarters of the original forest missing, a sad aspect.
Although we have this sad aspect, i find it really welcoming, in terms of colour and framing, the eye catcher at first can be the red ceiling of that tiny house, a huge contrast with the surrounding envivroment, but after some seconds my mind investigate that road, his starting point and obviously the end. We can dream, and feel free to choose any of the
paths, or follow the road, having some difficulties causing that river obstacle, and more important the hope we see nearly the far mountains and horizon line, that road who trespass the road again after the trees line, an fact that others has adventured in this trip and pass it.
An image i found quite in the same approaching in the Hudna art project of Simon Roberts, an image who speak about other idea, but the representation of the road has the same base, with that dreamy feeling of unknowing the end of it. I choose to speak about this image as i found it inspiring in my inspiration resources, even though here the road has a secondary importance, and it is in the lower part, obviously a disadvantage who suggest us, like the showing hand in the above part to investigate for the main subject and meaning, more like a psychological approach.
This one it is a image from the Polyarnye Nochi, meaning winter nights, of Simon Roberts, taken in 2005 in Northern Russia.
The colour it has a cod mood, unwelcoming, especially in the down side, the trees are on a shadow. You can almost guess the temperature, a couple degrees under zero, is like that nice place, witch you wannna see it only in summer.
Despite this coldliness we have some positive things over there, that mountain covered in a gorgeous snow, highlighted by the a smooth sunshine, this light puts the mountain in the subject area and gives us a positive feeling.
The road has that s sneaky shape leading to an industrial place and we can suppouse that the terminus point it is actually the mountain pick, but we can see that now no one has the courage to hike it.
This image is fdom the project We English of Simon Roberts, a plain and straight view of a river road, an subtile road, with a little twist of s shape, more curved, situated somewhere on the edge of the city.
The most important thing i learn fro this image it is the artist position in relation to his subject, in control but really distant objective, waiting for the right moment, calm, this approach i want to usd and hopsfully transfer in my images.
This one is part from the same project, We English, but it has a different subject, here we have a road leading to the hill pick, a well described road, with an human sillhouete, and an well known starting and terminus point. For me this approach to the road shape is too descriptive, but i am willing to use this approach as i like how it works in the general picture, perhaps more of the that man, for me in this way it making sense as it discribe the human long and hight road he make in order to achieve his goal.
The next 3 images are from the Simon Roberts The Election Project, and involve peoples in an urban, neigborhood.
I choose them because i thought anout the interaction with peoples and if it will be a positive thing if i will include peoples or their silouhettes in the envivromental images, as part of the envivroment, as creators.
I know that if i include humans this could transform a lot even can change the original subject, so at the end kf the day i choose not to use humans, as my brief include envivroment, and this will help focus the subject and keep it clear ffom any alterations.
The first image is looking ideal as it has that human factor and my main s shaped road, a type of road i like the most as it has that portion of dreaming, mystery and perhaps a fairytale behind it, waiting to be discovered.
The other 2 are more flat in therms of road shape, something pretty common to roads in Medway area, a detail to be considered for my approach.
In terms of the city scape first 2 we can definetly say that they are on the edge, maybe more outside in the first one, but definetly on the edge of the city, an aspect witch represents one of my initial ideas.
The last one it is straight on the city landscape, a more common and approchable situation, but as we can see, hard to represent due to the peoples presence.
The next 3 pictures are Edward Burtinsky work, part of the project Oil, and the second one from the China project. All of them are illustrating an industrial scale, an approach witch i found to be really interesting to think as, but witch will not apply to my idea, even though i thought to use these part to introduce in my image an actual road, as a reminder of time and place, just to give an initial context.
This image is form Edward Burtinsky ass well, part of the project Homesteades, even though it illustrate homes nearby an wonderful envivroment, it has that attraction for me, the mystery and shape of the road makes finding it really impressive.
We can see a similiarity to the russian landscape from Simon Roberts, with the same part of road who is leading to the mountains through the subject, in this case the houses, but this representation it is more soft feeling, been properly illuminated and having a more closer look.
I chossed this image from Mark Power project Different endings, because is a similar descriptive looking to normal sideroads and roundabouts are in UK.
It has a sad autumn feeling, more like an abandoned place, witch makes you interrogate his state.Even though is facing straight the middle with the roundabout and the blue sign it has a pacefull view. And more interesting this blue sign it is like helping the contrast an just adding seasoning to nice soft food.
The next image is from Mark Power same project, a more nearly approach with my intention, on the side edge of the city, being following the road in a mystery, and especially indicated that this is the subject by the side trees.
My last but not least image ass well from Mark Power same project, it illustrating a more calmed part, an kind of aestethical side, more likely to be compared to pitoreque, giving you a nice feeling calm and inviting to have a little of reflective moments.
I started to search for same places locally and by travelling physical in the Medway Towns, some place i found them using Google maps, here i have some prinscreens of the places that i visited and made some pictures on.
My first project ideal location were looking like the ones underneath, i was actually discovered afterwards the new locations so i decided to live this idea as a plan b.
My final images come out to be this ones, made in the proximate of Rochester airport, near Asda shopping center in Chatham, and on the Caperstone road.
