Roy’s talk was interesting. However he mostly raised questions rather than attempting to answer them. Probably a good thing in this critical realm. He did have some interesting imagery to illustrate his points. However he quickly left his title subject of Genius Loci and drifted around for the last half of his talk.
Genius Loci - Term coined and popularised by Alexander Pope (poet and landscape gardener) to refer to the personality of a well designed landscape. The phrase can also refer to the built environment.
Modern media leads to a wide range of framings and a wide dispersal, also fragmenting the recorded experience of a place leading to a fragmented and unclear Genius Loci.
Also Genius Loci may be more temporally than spatially located.
These days images of architecture are often seen well before the actual artefact is experienced.
Again we got on to who is the author of the work? The architect? The photographer? Editorial? Etc? Obviously it is a combination but where does the majority of the authorship reside? What is the balance?
He showed work by Andres Gursky, Matthias Hoch, Luisa Lambri, Christian Richters and referred to Catherine Yass, Heidi Specker and Frank Thiel.
