Artist's statement of no more than 400 words. Include a description of the ideas and intent of your work.

All This Useless Beauty is a tribute to the passing of time, small sounds and the less assertive subtleties which are hard to remember to notice during a loud and abrasive day. Created in my last year of university, this image was a study. I was curious if I could apply the same techniques used in my musical composition studies to create a piece of visual art. We were just learning Wabern’s serial and total control techniques, which made use of cold science, math, and logic to create music. And, for contrast, our music history books then reverently presented us with John Cage, the truest believer in “anything is art”. This enormous image presents my best efforts to create a work which conforms to both ideals. Ratios and procedures where set up regarding how and when the images would be taken, and I left the chance elements of the composition up to the weather conditions of lower New England.

The photograph’s length, was created to articulate the feeling of the long and lonely walk across campus from the dormitories to the music conservatory. Growing admission throughout my course of study in the university created steep competition for the small number of practice rooms. This was a trip diligently made, early, each morning till the day of graduation.
The picture serves as a 360 degree panoramic, doubling back across the campus through an altered rout sometimes taken, only to end where it began, illustrating the days, months, and ultimately, the four years this routine repeated itself. Over 1,500 individual photographs were digitally hand sewn together to create the final piece.

Publishable technical statement of 400 words or less. This statement should explain how digital or electronic technology was involved in the piece.

All This Useless Beauty is a composite image made from many smaller digital photographs merged into a larger panoramic. The digital photographs were taken with an Olympus D-460 ZOOM, 1.3 Megapixel camera. Adobe Photoshop 7.0 was used to sew the images together. Once the desired walking path for the photo was established, a production schedule was created. It incorporated a time span of over one year, so every season, and time of day could be represented in the completed image. Nine photo shoots where needed to complete the task, with months built in between to process the photos, and account for the possible need to reshoot any sequence. Over 1,500 photographs, and a the full year production time were used in the creation of this image. The final dimensions of the photograph are in ratio 1-high, by 204-long. If lined up, the farthest right, and left side seamlessly join, making All This Useless Beauty a large “360” degree panoramic.