Look Up, Look Out

Look Up, Look Out
Originally uploaded by mortsan.

On January 19th 2008 I will co-exhibit a photography exhibition together with David Shanks. The exhibition is titled Look Up, Look Out and will focus on black and white photography. Thematically photos are best described as trying to explore solitude in urban environments and the relationship between subject and photographer.

I believe we have some fantastic photos to show the curious visitor, so if you're in Trondheim in Januar/February please stop by at beautiful Baklandet Skydsstasjon and have a look at the exhibition and eat the fantastic fish soup.

Happy Holidays!



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR. My photos from the exhibition.

Let it snow, let it snow

Listening to Chris Isaak while traveling by train through gorgeous Norwegian winterclad landsscape. Looking greatly forward to come home this year. Merry Christmas, everyone

The Florida of Europe

Beach huts on Lido
Originally uploaded by mortsan.

In an interesting article at Herald Tribune Italy is discussed as one of the once great European nations that has fallen greatly behind. Tourists flock there to take in the natural and cultural beauty of a nation which has stalled.

Business is bad, no innovation, families decreasing and young people fearing the future. What happened along the way?

Thinking back at my working days in Venezia, described by the International Herald Tribune as a beautiful corpse, Italy might suffer the same destiny - becoming a Florida of Europe - trampled and humiliated by hordes of tourists visiting an open air museum.

And as La Bella Italia dies, small gems awake - head off to stunning Slovenia next time for a different experience. Meanwhile, lets hope Italy will experience a miracle in the near future. Magari.

dumb and dumber?

Here's a thought:
Internet and blogging make us dumb... and dumber. I have a past as a firm tech-skeptic, but got turned over after living in Tokyo. Technology and in particular Internet has transformed how humans interact and communicate. This year's Nobel Prize winner in literature, Doris Lessing, is not impressed. She believes that it has stalled intelligent dialogue and debate. Commentator and author Andrew Keen has criticized the Web 2.0.-development and the "cult of the amateur", including schmucks like me who blogs for nobody. Mrs. Lessing and Mr. Keen thinks the Internet has spawn a generation of semi-thinking individuals with superficial knowledge of their cultural inheritance.

If anyone cares... I agree and disagree.

Personally, reading books and immerse myself in meaningful intelligent pursuit of knowledge have been increasingly harder after the intertextual multimediality of the web with constant IM, mobile communications etc. On the other hand, it has given me the opportunity to access a global community of information and communication with people with shared interests and shared past through social networks such as Flickr and Facebook. It has given me the opportunity to build knowledge together with others through communities like Wikipedia, and as a teacher I have helped students find an enthusiasm for writing through blogging.

There's a lot of BS out here, and a lot of meaningless gibberish, but that's nothing new in human activity. I'm an optimist, and I believe the likes of Mrs. Lessing and Mr. Keen tend to have valid points, but lack to see the full potential for meaningful discourse and communication through the advances of technology. A, to me, new magazine (printed and an innovative online edition) named Monocle is an example of this. Covering a vast area of topics ranging from politics and culture to architecture and design it has an interesting look at the near future. Have a look!

flickr/places

I've been an avid Flickr user for a couple of years now, and the online photo storage/stream service keeps on improving. The latest offering is online in-house photo editing called Picnik, but personally, as a globetrotting geography lover, I dig the new Places feature under the Explore flag.

Type in a place and you'll get the best from this particular place. A great way to research before any holiday-making. I'm proud to discover too of course that my good friend, larskflem and myself are featured photographers of our hometown Horten, while my sister's eminent photographing boyfriend Mixmaster has the featured interestingness photo on the same page. Yeah!