In this respect Seattle's Space Needle is the same.
> (2)there is no parisian glance
> the tower fails to touch at some point in the day... and in this sense it
> doesn't matter wether it is the actual tower or it's picture-posctard
that
> touches... it is always there, periodically encountered, forming a ground
> against which perceptions of the city figure...
But in this respect, Seattle is very different. It is a much smaller city
and is built on a collection of hills. The Needle itself is in an area
devoid of tall buildings, but the downtown area is not too far away and has
plenty of skyscrapers. Thus from different vantage points in the city, it
is possibe to see the Needle in contrast to the much taller skyscrapers,
the much shorter Elliott Bay, towering above one's vantage point, barely
creeping over the horizon of one's vantage point, close up, far away, fully
visible, obscured behind buildings, and "creeping after you" as you walk
around, like some giant UFO preparing to suck you into its maw....
> here, the tower acts simultaneously as a conduit and a collector: a
conduit
> in the sense that the imagination is mobilized and dispersed into the
field
> of mnemonic images of the city acquired through both mediated and
> non-mediated experiences, some mythic, others directly lived; a collector
> in the sense that it serves to gather together these images through its
> agency as a spark igniting the recollective act.
On postcards the Needle is often shown in "standalone" mode, as a symbol of
Seattle. But other postcards try to show the whole city with the Needle as
just one part. This has rather the effect of the TransAmerica building in
San Francisco: the Needle is a landmark but its importance is diminished
relative to the downtown skyline. Monuments are often offset from the rest
of urbanity, because they cannot command in the face of skyscrapers. When
I first went to New York City, I was shocked to find out that the Statue of
Liberty (as seen from the Empire State Building) was a tiny sculpture in
the middle of the water. All previous commodifications on postcards and
postage stamps had led me to believe otherwise.
> now barthes states (after maupassant's example) that the only way to
negate
> the tower is to (literally) inhabit it, to identify with it (we're told
> maupassant would eat his lunch there because it was the only vantage
point
> from which he could avoid looking at the thing)... the tower being "the
> only blind point of the total optical system of which it is the center
and
> paris the circumference"... yet by doing so, the tower acquires a new
> power: it becomes a 'lookout', offering the objectification of paris up
to
> our searching gaze...
In Seattle, the landscape itself negates the tower. It's difficult to take
the thing too seriously when one is bombarded with so many different views
of it.
> what is perhaps most important about the tower for the tourist industry
is
> that no matter what paris becomes, the tower endures: reliable,
efficient,
> infinitely reproducible; this would be so even if it were to be torn
down...
Seattle's tourist industry is something of a joke. I can't imagine why
people would spend much time on tourism up here, as aside from the Needle,
a few "Epcot Center" like features, and some local history, there simply
isn't much to tour. The tourist exports of Seattle are atmospheric:
caffeine, music, trendyness, and rain.
Cheers,
Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery@blarg.net> DEC Commodity Graphics
http://www.blarg.net/~vanevery Windows NT Alpha OpenGL
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