Cyberian Dispatch 2: Russia's Vast Galapagos

By Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

How to comprehend -- and then convey -- the enormity of Siberia and the incalculable volume of the world’s deepest and oldest lake? These are early problems for our project on Lake Baikal.

Russia is the world’s largest nation in terms of area, with more than 17 million square kilometers. But more than 77 percent of Russia is Siberia, still larger than any other nation on earth. In fact, Siberia alone is larger than all of the United States and Europe combined.

Lake Baikal is the deepest, and by volume of water, the largest lake in the world. All of the Great Lakes could be drained into Lake Baikal, and it contains more than 20 percent of all the freshwater in the world. It is also the oldest lake in the world, formed 25-30 million years ago.

Standing on the Western shore on the Great Baikal Trail, we can easily spot the sprays of snow on the peaks of the storybook mountain range on the Eastern side, in the Republic of Buryatia. Our eyes are rewarded by the endless dancing reflections of light on the Lake’s surface. But we cannot see 1,642 meters into its depths, to its murky bottom carved by a geological trauma. And we cannot see to the northern reaches of its crescent shape, beyond the villages that draw most of its tourists.

Around us are thousands of aspens and birch trees, decorated in gold, shivering in the emphatic wind, shedding leaves rapidly. But we cannot count the thousands of species of plants and animals that live in and around Lake Baikal, 60 percent of which are unique, causing it to be labelled “Russia’s Galapagos.”

On the shores, we can easily locate small sponges that have washed up on the pebbles and bleached white. But we cannot see the vast colonies of living sponges beneath the waves or the 350 different species of indigenous amphipods, crustaceans essential to the Lake’s health that find their home under rocks on its bottom.

Indeed, one of our most compelling findings thus far is that our lensed devices fail to do justice to the physical vastness of Siberia or Lake Baikal. Over and over, we remarked on and lamented this failure and worried about what it might mean for our project. But now we are mapping an alternate voyage. Instead of capsizing on the Lake’s biggest waves, we are drifting on its tender swells. We hope these modest crests will aptly communicate, not the enormity of Baikal’s size, but its immeasurable importance.

Willow Paule Photography Interview with Altantika Members

Untitled, from the series “Who Speaks for Me,” by Gabriela Bulisova, Mark Isaac and Taylar Nuevelle, 2017.

Willow Paule Photography is featuring an interview with two of Atlantika’s founding members, Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac. Please check out this article and its insights into their collaborative process.

https://willowpaule.com/interview-gabriela-bulisova-mark-isaacs-photography-and-collaboration-powerful-mix/

Ukraine Sketchbook: Photo Workshop in Antonivka

by Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac

Since we’ve been in Ukraine, we’ve met some incredibly warm and giving people, who have been kind enough to let us into their lives. One of those individuals is Dmytro Say, who is involved in so many projects locally that it’s impossible to know when he sleeps.

One of Dmytro’s most important efforts is on behalf of an orphanage in a small village north of Mykolaiv called Antonivka. Dmytro taught there for several years and now he returns to assist them with a variety of programs. He asked us to come with him to the orphanage and conduct a photo workshop for the kids there, who range in age from about 5 to 16.

Dmytro used an older car for the drive, which he warned is on one of the worst roads in Ukraine. After some truly outsized bumps along the way, we arrived in Antonivka and were warmly welcomed by the staff, who took us on a tour of the facility, which includes a museum of Antonivka’s history, first as a place dominated by a wealthy landowner, then as a very productive collective farm, and now as a place where many have volunteered to fight in the East.

But the most important part of the visit was the kids, of course. We met them first in a classroom, offering some pointers on photo taking strategies that would move them beyond the selfie. Then we all walked out on the steppe, known for its constantly blowing winds, sharing cell phones to take some experimental portraits and landscapes. When we were safely back in the classroom, we downloaded the photos, projected them on a wall, and discussed the results. The kids participated enthusiastically, showing a surprisingly advanced intuitive command of composition.

We don’t know if any of them will go on to become professional photographers, but we do know that Dmytro has forged a wonderful bond with some very loving and talented young people, and we were glad to become a small part of their lives.

Mykolaiv Sketchbook: Roma Remembrance

By Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac

We were exceptionally honored and pleased to be welcomed yesterday on a bus by members of the Romani Bacht ensemble to travel more than 200 kilometers northwest of Mykolaiv to a site that is very important to Roma history and remembrance. We joined local Romas and their friends in commemorating a massacre of 5,000 Romas, many of them women and children, that occurred in World War II during German occupation of this territory. A wreath was laid, songs were sung, and poems were recited near the village of Krivoe Ozero (Crooked Lake) where  a monument marks this terrible event. After solemnly remembering this tragedy, local residents also embraced their heritage with a celebration in song and dance -- and a meal -- before the long ride back to Mykolaiv. By the time we returned, late in the evening, we felt we had made a lasting link to new friends -- and we certainly honor and respect their outstanding contributions to local culture and their history. We are sharing a small number of photos that document the proceedings, but we also made connections that will further our project on ethnic identity and the reasons why so many peoples of different backgrounds have been able to live together peacefully in Southern Ukraine.

Mykolaiv Sketchbook: Druzhba Festival

Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac

Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac

Following a whirlwind of activity in Kyiv, we took the night train to our new home in Southern Ukraine: Mykolaiv. Mykolaiv was named by its founder, Prince Grigory Potemkin, in honor of St. Nicholas, on whose day he won a significant military victory. The city is at the confluence of two major rivers, the Southern Bug and the Ingul. After they join, they flow to an estuary where they meet the Dnieper and then the Black Sea. For years, Mykolaiv was one of the most significant shipbuilding cities in the entire region, and because of its contributions to the military might of the Tsars and the Soviet Union, it was a closed, secret city. People from other parts of the Soviet Union were not permitted to visit the city, and if people from Mykolaiv wanted to visit relatives from other places, they needed to leave the city and meet them somewhere else. In the post-Soviet era, the three major shipbuilding centers in Mykolaiv are all closed, and the city is now open to all, though few tourists venture here.

Here in Mykolaiv, we are working closely with our affiliate institution, Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University, including the Dean of the Philology Department, Professor Oleksandr Pronkevych, a noted Cervantes scholar, and other faculty and students to create two projects. First, we are focusing on the reasons why people of so many ethnic backgrounds have been able to live together peacefully in Mykolayiv for many generations. Second, we are creating a documentary on the relationship of the people of Mykolaiv and the surrounding region to the water that is such an important part of their lives.

On the first full weekend we spent in Mykolayiv, a new friend alerted us to the planned Druzhba, or Friendship, Festival. We packed our cameras and started walking to the location to check it out. As we turned onto the main pedestrian street, formerly Sovietskaya and now Soborna Street, we were surprised to see a colorful parade of diverse nationalities marching together. We followed them to the Cultural Palace, where a program of dancing, singing, and ethnic food unfolded. Although the city is dominated by people of Ukrainian and Russian heritage, there are dozens of different ethnic groups living here, and many of them participated in the Festival. In our first sketchbook from Ukraine, here are some very colorful and proud moments from this demonstration of cultural friendship.

RED AND BLUE DAYS (Experiments on the Banks of the Danube)

Greetings from Central Europe, where we’ve begun a year-long adventure  that will have multiple components, including a photo/video Fulbright project, learning about and reporting on contemporary life in Central and Eastern Europe, reconnecting with family, and exploring family origins.

Our first stop is Chl’aba, Slovakia, the hometown of Gabriela’s mother, and the site of a joint project we’ve pursued for almost a decade. Called “Returns,” it’s a very intimate account of village life along the Danube, with chapters that dwell on different generations and try to come to terms with the tragic and unexpected loss of Gabriela’s father and other family members in recent years. We’ve collected a voluminous amount of photographic and video documentation of Chl’aba over ten years, so much that it’s hard to fit on a burgeoning array of hard drives. One key goal is to turn this material into a book, and we hope to make progress on that this month. It’s also likely that Returns will never come to a complete close as we continue to visit, document, and improvise.

In terms of the latter, Chl’aba has become ground zero for experiments on our documentary approach and our aesthetics. On the one hand, when we get here, we’re usually ripe for relaxation on the pebble beaches that line the Danube River. On the other, we quickly get itchy about image-making. While sitting on the banks of the river the last several years, we’ve explored a plethora of new approaches to image capture, many of them centering around alternative (and sometimes found) lenses and alternative surfaces. That process is continuing this year, with a burst of new images that we hope are pushing the boundaries in terms of what one expects to see in a photograph or a video. We’re living in a world that gives birth to more than a trillion photographs per year, so when planning to gestate new ones, it’s a good idea to make sure they have something new or special to say.

We’re sharing a few of the latest experiments today, in keeping with the spirit of Atlantika, which embraces transparency on process, and also in the hope of getting some feedback. We’ll share more as the summer continues, and it will be interesting to see if they influence our approach to the Fulbright in Ukraine (which will begin in mid-September) and our work more generally. We invite you to react, reply and become a part of an “Open Circle” of collaborators who are informing our work in the coming year and beyond.

New Video: Songs in the Key of Free

Previously, we've shared some still images from a project called “Songs in the Key of Free.” Now we're sharing the main product of our work -- a video that showcases the extraordinary songwriting and performing talents of incarcerated men in a maximum security prison in Pennsylvania.

The program, which is the brainchild of August Tarrier and Miles Butler, ended a period of about two decades in which music programs were unavailable at State Correctional Institute – Graterford, which is about 45 minutes northwest of Philadelphia. After repeated visits to document these exceptional individuals, many of whom are serving long sentences or even life without parole, we became very attached to their passion, their humanity, and their commitment to do everything possible to make the most of their situation. In fact, our work on Songs engendered some of the strongest emotions of any of our experiences working on incarceration issues. That’s because the many men who we met inside were so warm and giving — and so grateful for the opportunity to express themselves through music.

Fortunately, their talents were highlighted at a concert inside the prison, which is available to view on Facebook Live, and subsequently in an outside concert in Philadelphia at the Painted Bride. In the future, the men’s original songs will be available in an album. Moreover, the Songs in the Key of Free will begin serving women in a downtown Philadelphia prison in Fall 2017.

Please check out our video — as well as the still images available here — and let us know your reactions. (Please note that prison regulations in Pennsylvania forbid us from showing the faces of those who are incarcerated.) And also please consider supporting Songs in the Key of Free in their work, which relies mostly on the help of volunteers to date. There is no question that this program is embracing and preserving the humanity of those involved — something that is sorely lacking in most prison environments in the United States.

The Faces of Music on the Inside

Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

“We shall overcome. We shall overcome. We shall overcome, some day….” This song always tears on the heartstrings, no matter who is singing it. But when it’s sung by musicians inside a maximum security prison, desperate for a taste of freedom and a link to the outside world, it becomes plaintive beyond words.

We’ve both spent many years working on issues related to mass incarceration. But recently, we worked for only the second time inside a prison. We were invited to join a program called Songs in the Key of Free, which is conducting a series of workshops at State Correctional Institute-Graterford, about 45 minutes outside Philadelphia. Philadelphia-based musicians, some from the Curtis Institute, are working with musicians at Graterford on improvisational songwriting and musical performances inside the prison. Later, the songs will also be performed in a public concert in Philadelphia, and our job will be to represent the men on the inside through a multimedia presentation.

One of the imperatives in working on incarceration is to represent the humanity of those who are incarcerated, since the criminal justice system does so much to deny them their dignity and individuality. But this is made more difficult by prison regulations that forbid showing the men’s faces. Our task becomes that much harder, and we have to use a variety of unusual techniques to capture their warmth, humanity, and encompassing love of music.

Songs in the Key of Free is focused in part on the healing power of telling stories in song. As visual storytellers, we are honored to be a part of the team that is helping participants use the power of their stories to transform and heal their lives. We’ve witnessed firsthand the enormous potential of those who have made mistakes to make a fresh start and bring talent, skill, and passion to helping others.

Here is a first glimpse at some still images from our work with Songs in the Key of Free, which will also rely heavily on video. We’ll have more work to share soon, since we travel to Graterford again in early March. We welcome your feedback.

The Watershed Project: Testing the Installation

Mark Isaac

Part of what makes Atlantika different as a collective is transparency. As our inaugural blog post made clear, “We’ll offer a more public view of our creative process than is typical, to provide some insights into our methods for shepherding work from idea to completion.”

That’s not always so easy to do. It offers a peek behind the curtain to moments of uncertainty, chaotic experimentation, and even outright failure. It risks having the veneer of a poised, highly skilled, confident artist stripped away and replaced with something a lot more fallible and human.

So in the interests of taking this goal seriously, here’s a rare glimpse behind the scenes to the very first test of the collaborative installation I’m creating with Gabriela Bulisova. In this video -- that somehow managed to become partially corrupted, adding to its charm -- you’ll see us testing our first concept of the installation using, what else? A baby pool, a mirror purchased at Target, and droppers left over from Trader Joe’s liquid stevia drops! If that doesn’t lead to great art, I don’t know what will!

If you come out to the opening at Boyden Gallery of St. Mary’s College of MD on October 21st, you can gauge whether we managed something a little more polished and sophisticated…and better yet, see how the early test informed the final vision.

Importantly, the final work calls attention to the way in which the entire Chesapeake Bay Watershed, comprised of 150 major rivers and streams, is interconnected. And as an interactive installation, it offers you a way to personally participate and demonstrate that anything that happens to part of the watershed has ripple effects throughout the entire ecosystem.

We’re hoping it’s a lot of fun to play with the water. But we’re also hoping the installation will convey that the Watershed, which supports innumerable life forms, including 17 million humans, is severely threatened and now relies on us for essential interventions that will restore and preserve its vibrancy for the future.

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Life Support, an interactive installation by Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac, includes an IV bag, drip pan, beakers, droppers, projectors, water from the Chesapeake Watershed, and sound. It is on view at Boyden Gallery from October 18 to November 22.

It's a Robot, Baby

Joe Lucchesi

Like a lot of folks, I’ve been thinking about love in the time of robots lately. A recent viral video of a smiling electronic baby happily squirming in its UCSD Machine Perception crib really sent me over the edge, plunging into the uncanny valley. Looking at something close - its nubby teeth and charmingly squinty expressions, but not close enough - its rubbery skin jaggedly meeting its acrylic blue skull, produced a visceral sense of existential angst that took me by surprise.

Could this almost-baby potentially be my technological successor, my reaction already intuiting my own technological insufficiency? Maybe. Could it also be that the video is yet another irresistible metaphor of machinery mediating any and all intimate relationships? But this is a social media fact that projected our love lives into the digital realm back in the internet equivalent of the stone age.

Or perhaps my response was a jarring realization that our robot overlords have arrived, and unlike what pop culture has led us to believe, it wasn’t in the form of an inexorable army of powerful replicants, or deceptively charming and attractive lackeys lulling us into a false sense of pampered security, or even the friendly neighborhood drone delivering my mail. It arrived in the form of a gurgling, happy baby making cute for my benefit. Some aspect of all these notions fed my momentary vertigo on the edge of the technological ravine, but mostly I think I reacted from a sense of self-betrayal - the robot baby caught me off guard because this already exists. It might be too late, and I hadn’t even noticed.

Programmed using newly-available big data drawn from studies of infant responses by developmental psychologists, one of my more sobering thoughts in staring down that video was that our physiological human reactions had been recorded, translated, crunched, freely exchanged and turned into a simulated replica of ourselves, programmed into a silicone equivalent whose goal is then to teach us about developing human interactivity and emotion. The breathtakingly efficient inversion of that exchange is what worries me now, as though we’ve already ceded the territory of invisible human connection to its quantified doppelganger. This feels like one more step to making technological conquest both plausible and palatable.

Human relationships mediated by technology are nothing new, only taking new forms appropriate to the age. The camera, the telegraph, and the telephone all opened up new possibilities for connectivity across time and space even as they subtly initiated an easily-ignored gap in which we’re dealing with disembodied versions of each other, negotiated across this divide. And that’s only in recent history. As that video suggests, some folks think of the uncanny valley as only a warning of an unsolved problem. But others see this sense of uneasiness when confronted with our almost-selves differently, as a prompt to think about the human within that gap. 

So maybe I should thank the robot baby for its charming and off-putting chubby grins, its inability to perfectly simulate human behavior and - in turn apparently - teach us about our own development.

Our human relationship to the natural world can’t be far behind in all this unsettled estrangement, and of course is already here. Server farms succeed the agri-business conglomerate that itself replaced the family farm in the vast plains of American productivity, producing a new crop we increasingly rely on for sustenance.

The question then becomes: can we live on data alone across the rolling hills of the fertile uncanny valley? We can’t, but robot babies do.

The Geography of Genius

Hotbeds of genius and innovation depend on these key ingredients

"People were living out of each other’s intellectual pockets. They were sharing ideas. There was enough trust to share your ideas, but enough tension to create some sparks."

"Genius is not really about individuals. It’s really about a collective. It’s about a community of practice."

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/hotbeds-of-genius-and-innovation-depend-on-these-key-ingredients/