To see with (but through) the visual memory baggage we carry. That accumulated perceptual junk, recalled and recycled, floating through our minds’ eyes. (These images drift into the wind and flutter back - into thinner air - back to thicker earth. Our ears hear what our eyes see; our minds translate, and the culturally mediated conversation continues.) We remember what we see, and we remember what others have seen for us. Our human limits overcome - our imperfect memories perfected.
They claim that this is the end of abstraction. I believe it is just the beginning.
I’m thinking here about the difficulties of separating our collective memories, particularly of landscapes - separating our collective memories (in popular culture - movies and pictures) of experiencing or seeing land - from our individual memories. Less experienced directly than experienced together indirectly, or anyway, what we have seen ourselves affected by what we have seen otherwise. Do we remember the most picturesque view - the quintessential postcard snapshot - or the imperfect view from more vernacular sources: from the backseat of a dirty car, cluttered by family banter and am radio, covered in a patina of sweat, tears, and sno-cone syrup. Borrowed images, borrowed memories are the white strings that we tie around parts of our minds to remind us what we’ve seen (if not how we’ve seen it). We need these strings to place us in the land, to externalize it, to frame all the context that our more vernacular sources provide.
So what do we mean by vernacular sources?
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