9_11_01_Scapes by Jo-Anne Green and Helen Thorington 2001-2002 Found images layered in Adobe Photoshop

ABOUT . Jo-Anne Green .

I began 9_11_01_Scapes just days after the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City were attacked and I continued to add new pages in the aftermath. My palette consisted of NASA.GOV satellite images of earth; photographs of Ground Zero found online; and Diatoms, scanned from National Geographic three years earlier. Each Scape consists of multiple layers visualized in the Adobe Photoshop Layers Palettes. Helen used the layers’ names I’d assigned, our emails, and the descriptive texts on NASA.GOV, to weave her multilayered narrative for the Notes; and just as I used found “pigments” and “textures,” Helen used found sounds to create her chilling Soundscore for my Photocollages and her Notes. I used Diatoms — microscopic sea cells that live in “glass” houses and are food for many underwater creatures — because I could make them appear both beautiful and ominous: they represented the continuity of life despite the ghastly aura of death; their micro architectural structures were mirrored, on a macro scale, in the steel remains of the Twin Towers after they’d collapsed; and, being life giving cells was the antithesis to the constant references to terrorist cells in the media. As an artist, I have always worked in series, often in book form to: reflect the continuum of human experience; connect my own visual narratives to our collective consciousness and memory; and accentuate the subjectivity and changeability of “Truth.” I have always chosen to represent reality with transmutable metaphors rather than immutable or literal forms. Scapes was designed to be viewed on the World Wide Web, and on a large monitor screen. It was the only version until the publication of this book [PDF, 97MB], but it mimics the book format: each click of the mouse turns a page; and with each turn, a popup window containing a Note appears beside its corresponding image. I was proficient at using Adobe Photoshop (PS) after three years’ experience as a Graphic Designer at the University of New Mexico. However, Scapes was my first digital art series. Having previously been a “physical” mixed media painter, I naturally attempted to emulate those textures on the screen. To some extent, I could manipulate space and time, but despite PS’s use of terminology such as “brush,” “texture,” “layer,” “canvas” and “palette” — all metaphors for painting — my Photocollages lacked tactility, both on their light-emitting screens and in print (fundamentally, there’s nothing tactile about images on computer screens; and the light emitted by screens cannot accurately translate to print). By Photocollaging the images I’d found, and manipulating them with various PS tools, I had begun to approach the illusion of texture. However, I soon realized that using a new medium to emulate an old one made the work feel somewhat inauthentic. When I created Scapes in 2001/’02, I did so on a Mac PowerBook G4 that had 256 MB of RAM and a 10 GB hard drive. I’d recently moved back to Boston after living in New Mexico for five years. Helen was still living in Staten Island, NY and it was from me that she learned that the two planes had struck the Twin Towers. Because all of the city’s communications systems were down, she needed me to be her eyes and ears. My housemate had a single phone line connected to a 56K dial-up modem. Given the technological limits of both my PowerBook and my home’s Internet connectivity — and the fact that my PS files were so large — it took hours to save and send them: after I had completed each Photocollage, I would wait until my housemate was asleep so that I could use the only phone line: I’d attach the file to an email and click send; it took all night for the file to upload and make its way through the Internet to Helen’s computer. Helen’s 9_11_01_Scapes Soundscore was created from her library of field recordings and processed musical sounds; and she used the sounds that New Yorkers had recorded and uploaded to SonicMemorial.org. The score was used by Magnum Photos to accompany its grim photographs of the event on its memorial website; and it won several awards. — Jo-Anne Green, 2024

BIOGRAPHIES

Jo-Anne Green (1959-) was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa (SA); she emigrated to Boston in 1983. From 1985-1992, she volunteered for the Anti-Apartheid organization Fund for a Free South Africa where she co-founded Cultural Resistance (with Kim Berman and Rachel Weiss) to educate — through exhibitions, screenings and publications — the American public about Apartheid. Jo is an artist, designer, curator, writer and activist. She has exhibited her paintings, prints, artists’ books and installations in Johannesburg (SA); Boston (MA); New York (NY); World Wide Web; and the online game, Second Life, among others. Her first solo show, "Well, as a result...", was reviewed in the Boston Herald. Her most recent exhibition, "Pursuing Reality: Possibilities," was shown at The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University (MA). Jo’s artworks are in the collections of the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts (Wits Art Museum, SA) and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (MA). Her essay "Parsing Truths" was commissioned for "Michael Takeo Magruder: (Re)mediation_s: 2000-2010"; and her co-authored chapter "Mixed Realities" was published in "Unsitely Aesthetics," Maria Miranda (ed). In 2013, Jo contributed the essay "Generative Systems: (Re)Producing Hands and Faces" to Sonia Landy Sheridan’s "Art at the Dawning of the Electronic Era: Generative Systems." She has taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Emerson College, Boston; and UMass Boston. Jo was co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (2002-2016), a small nonprofit organization that was world renowned for Turbulence.org and New American Radio. Prior to that, she was Graphic Designer at the University of New Mexico’s Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center. There, she was instrumental in starting the Artist-in-Residence Program which led to the founding of the Art Technology Center (ATC). She was Grants Administrator, Program Coordinator and Graphic Designer for both the ATC and the Arts of the Americas Institute until she returned to Boston in 2001. Jo received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours in Printmaking and Art History from the University of the Witwatersrand, SA; a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from UMass Dartmouth, MA; and a Master of Science in Art Administration from Lesley University, MA. http://sympoietic.net

Helen Thorington (1928-2023) was founder of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (1981); founder and executive producer of the national weekly radio series, "New American Radio" (1987-1998); and founder and co-director of "Turbulence.org" (1996-2016). She was a writer and composer whose documentaries, dramas and sound compositions were as of American Radio Art," Helen’s productions for National Public Radio were the first works broadcast nationally (1977). She was commissioned by RAI (Italian Radio), RNE (Spanish Radio) and ORF (Austrian Radio), among others. Her early dance compositions (1978-80) included "Monkey Run Road," "Blauvelt Mountain" and "Valley Cottage" for the Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane Dance Company: the first two were revived for its 20th Anniversary Performances at Jacob’s Pillow (MA, 2002) and The Kitchen (NY, 2003). Helen’s soundscore for Barbara Hammer’s "Optic Nerve" premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial (1987). She created a second soundscore for Hammer’s "Endangered," which was presented at the Whitney Museum’s 1989 Biennial. Helen created two Net Art (online, interactive art) works, "Solitaire" and "North Country," and the seminal Networked Performance "Adrift" (with Jesse Gilbert and Marek Walczak): it combined movement through 3D space, multiple text narratives, and richly textured sounds streaming between virtual and real geographies. "Adrift" — first performed at Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria, 1998) — was last performed in the aftermath of 9/11, New Museum (NY, 2001). Her first Networked Performance, "turbulence," was part of the exhibition PORT, MIT List Visual Arts Center (MA, 1997). Helen lectured worldwide on Radio Art, Net Art, and Networked Performance. She was included in numerous exhibitions of Sound Art in the US and abroad. Her writings were published in several periodicals including Contemporary Music Review (2005, ‘06); Performance Art Journal (2021); and Intermedia Art (Tate Modern, London, 2008). Rip on/off (Switzerland) published a collection of Helen’s texts, "Il est si difficile de trouver le commencement," in 2017. She co-authored, with Jacki Apple, the limited edition artists’ book, "The Tower" (2015). Helen’s oeuvre is archived at the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.) http://sympoietic.net

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