A DATA PORTRAIT OF THE CITY OF EDMONTON

Artistic Themes

Like all competent artworks, the shape and mediated actions of River work – aesthetically and intellectually - on many levels, representing and indicating many relationships. The North Saskatchewan River physically defines a central (albeit curvy!) axis of Edmonton; it is an important element in determining the sense of social, cultural, and geographic place people feel in the city. Building on this "placement" functionality, River (the artwork) addresses - among others - the following dimensions of historic context, city life, and intellectual thought:

Edmontonians' bond with the prairie landscape that surrounds/engulfs us; the historic importance of the river to the city - both as drinking water and for commerce; the continuous flow of time and reality past/through all of us and the paradoxical impermanence of all things that change while remaining the “same”; the (to us) long, slow, effects of erosion, shaping of bedrock and evolution of flora, and fauna – in both our physical environment and our culture; the flow of major “currents” of knowledge/thought and the (perhaps more important) small, individual, eddies of information which sometimes affect/effect society to an extent far beyond their apparent importance; the potential of our modern day telecommunications data “streams” to bring people together in news ways - aiding communication, sharing of information, and collective social witnessing; and, finally, in cultural terms, the continuous evolution of tradition and language, which change while remaining the "same" (in the anthropological/sociological sense of continuing to fulfill necessary human social needs).

River is a “data portrait” of the city; an experiment in using interactive media and information databases as a new sort of non-linear representational artistic form. However, in addition to the information encoded into its website database (which is, in turn, extracted and viewed via visitor “search poems”), the photos used in River were taken with a number of themes in mind. These themes, which also shape the River experience, are as follows:

  1. Geologic Agency – Through our presence and activities, we shape the river and its surrounding valley. It, in turn, responds - on what to us is a very long time scale - with its own geological agency. While we do not normally think of geological structures as being “alive”, it is a fact that they respond to their environment, albeit over a time scale of millennia. The “Gaia” theory of the earth essentially regards our planet as a very large scale equivalent of a single celled organism, all of its ecologies and processes being interrelated and acting to keep each other alive; the concept of geologic agency is compatible with this view. Thinking of a river as a geologic “entity” begs the question of how we define “alive”. Perhaps everything in the universe can be considered “alive” on one time scale or another, sharing the bath of sub-atomically mediated information exchange that is part and parcel of our universe. If an entity existed which conducted its thoughts on a time scale of femtoseconds, would it consider a human being (whose thoughts occur on a time scale of tenths of a second – a hundred thousand billion times slower) alive? Rivers may not satisfy all of the normal pre-requisites for being considered alive - they don't seem to “think”, nor do they really reproduce in a biological sense. However, like the internal organelles of a cell, they have certain functionality in relation to local and global ecologies; this functionality exists on a time scale of thousands of years, perhaps not so different a temporal ratio to humans as that of our hypothetical example above. To indirectly point up this line of thought, a number of photos are taken looking up from the river valley towards the banks where humans live…as if the river was, itself, eerily watching us and our activities; aware and not necessarily all that happy about our presence. To characterize this sensation more fully, a number of photos have been taken as if there was surreptitious surveillance of human presence in the river valley itself. Such photos are typically taken of people in the river valley from a distance and are sometimes a bit blurry or indistinct, as if the secrecy required to take the photo compromised the quality of the photo itself.
  2. Boundaries and Divisions – The River bounds and divides us physically, socially, and economically. While the river valley is nominally a public space, open to all as parkland, it also divides and privileges, functioning to enact a perimeter of wealth and social status along its borders by virtue of the expensive and prestigious homes on its banks. To exemplify this, a number of photos of houses bordering the river valley have been taken as part of the photographic data set of River.
  3. Social Control – Nominally an area of free-access public parkland, the river valley contains a surprising quantity of instructional signage. These sign-posted orders create a geographically distributed textual instruction manual for the river valley, which codes to modify social behaviour within the valley’s boundaries. A number of such signs have been photographed and included in River’s photographic dataset.
  4. Fractal Similarity: Human Echoes of Natural Structure - An old architectural adage says “we make buildings and then they make us”, referring to the way in which we are, in turn, shaped by what we create. In a similar but inverted manner, the river shapes us and we respond – its geological presence and curvilinear form influences the structure and planning of our city. This is most readily seen in our transportation routes. Whether by car, bike, or walking path, our routes respond to the shape of the river, emulating it with an almost fractal mathematical precision. A number of photos have been taken of paths, roads, and freeways through or across the river indicative of this – their shape emulating that of the river.
  5. Bridges – Metaphorically, “to bridge” is a very powerful human concept. It brings to mind the connection of previously divided territories for the benefit of mankind. In River, a number of the many physical bridges present have been photographed and incorporated into its photographic dataset.
  6. Human “In-Vivo” Presence – While it contains many elements of natural beauty and is a major source of recreational enjoyment for city residents, the river valley is not a pristine, cheerful, environmentally safe, park where all is joy and happiness. There is a dark side to the valley as well: it functions as a dumping ground for pollution – effluent from oil refineries, sewage (albeit processed), and storm-sewer run-off laden with city chemicals/pesticides are all dumped into the river. Further, the valley itself is a receptacle for non-bio-degradable “human droppings” - litter such as plastics and cans that are "thrown away" only to remain indefinitely. Additionally, “human litter” - such as the homeless - occupy portions of the valley, living in tents or makeshift dwellings, generally in the more remote parts of the valley…out of sight and mind of their more genteel, bank dwelling, cousins. Some photos of these dystopian items have been included in the River photographic database to remind us of the river valley’s true and total nature.